Dave Dawson with the R.A.F.

by Robert Sidney Bowen

At any rate, he had hung onto it, and so each time a guard had opened the door his heart had stood still and the sweat of fear had oozed out on his forehead. By good luck, or otherwise, the visits of the guard had meant nothing of importance. Once it had been to toss rank-smelling loaves of bread at the starving throng, and to fill the huge water buckets at one end of the room. The other visits had obviously been only to see that the prisoners were still there, and were not rioting among themselves.

During those long torturing hours Dave had spoken with a few of the other imprisoned refugees. Their spirits had been no higher than that of the old man. They were there for begging, for wandering about the streets after dark, for not getting out of the way of some strutting German officer in time, and for a hundred other utterly ridiculous reasons. They were there because they were of no use and were in the way of Nazi domination and oppression. What would happen to them they did not know. And most of them did not care. Life for them was ended—and they were spirit-whipped enough to let it go at that.

As Dave stopped staring at the fading twilight through the windows, and lowered his gaze to the silent mass of broken men about him, he grimly pledged anew to give his very all, if necessary, to rid the world once and forever of such a system of living as Adolf Hitler and his crackedbrained cohorts were striving to force upon all mankind. As long as there was an ounce of strength in his body, or a drop of blood in his veins, he would fight on to undo all the evil wrought and make the world a better place for the millions yet unborn.

Presently he got slowly to his feet and started shuffling along the wall as though he were going for a drink of water from one of the buckets. A drink of water, however, was one thought not even in his mind. The water buckets were near the three rear doors, and during the long hours of waiting he had covertly examined those doors many times. The old man had been indeed right. They were not at all strong. The locks were so rusted and worn with age, and the hinges, too, that they would fall apart in pieces from a single sharp blow.

But what lay beyond those doors? Bit by bit he had found that out, too, by an innocent question here, and an innocent question there, spoken so as not to arouse the slightest bit of curiosity. If his attempt to escape was to be successful it depended upon no one even suspecting that he was going to try. He had to surprise the refugees as well as the guards. And so he had been very careful about the questions he asked. He had learned that in back were low-roofed lumber sheds, though the lumber had long since been carted away to Germany. Some one hundred yards beyond the sheds was swamp ground that led down to the edge of the Scheldt River. To the right and to the left of the sheds were the poorer sections of the city, deserted now, blasted by bombs in the beginning, and seldom patrolled by the Germans. That knowledge had boosted his hopes high. It was almost as though Lady Luck, herself, had planned it to be that way.

Halfway to those rear doors, Dave caught sight of the old man with the watery blue eyes. The poor old fellow was trying to stretch out on one of the benches rather than suffer the cold of the floor as most of the others were doing, for there were no cots or anything like that. Seeing that old man was like a knife stabbing Dave's heart. He knew that he was foolish to do so, but he did it just the same. He slipped a hand, inside his shirt, took one of the specially prepared chocolate bars from his ration case, and palmed it in his hand.

Then he moved over close to the old man. Watery blue eyes stared up at him, and thin lips made an effort to smile.

"It is not a comfortable bed, my son," the old fellow said in an apologetic voice, "but you will find it less cold than trying to sleep on the floor."

Dave smiled and leaned over so that his body hid his hand from the others. Quickly he slipped the bar of chocolate into a pocket of the old man's tattered coat. He frowned sharply as questions lighted up the watery blue eyes.

"Don't move!" he said in a low whisper. "When you can see me no more, put your hand in your pocket. But do not let the others see you do it. Good luck, my old one."