CHAPTER IX

BREAKING PRISON

Before I made a move I was going to wait until the probability of a surprise visit should have passed. Such a visit I expected at about eleven o’clock, for at that time the Amtmann would probably go home from wherever he was drinking beer, and on his way would have a look at me. To give my jailers an extra hour to surprise me in, was again only ordinary precaution.

Once in the loft, I was going to take off as many tiles as I must to get through the roof into the garden, from there into the street, and out of the village in any direction. In the country it would most likely prove necessary to work round the village at a safe distance in order to strike a certain turnpike. Several miles along it a brook crossing the road was an indication that I should have to look out for a third-class cart track. Some distance along this a railway, and, shortly after, a first-class road, could be taken as evidence that the frontier was within four miles, and that I had entered the danger zone.

When it was too dark to continue the study of the scrap of map, I lay down, but was too excited to go to sleep. Slowly the hours and quarter-hours, chimed by the church, dragged past. As I expected, just after eleven o’clock the Amtmann entered with the warder. “Why! aren’t you asleep yet?” he asked. I protested that the rattle of the key had awakened me. They left. Half an hour after the warder came in again, said something, and disappeared. At 12:15 I burst into action.

Feeling for the sweater and oilsilks, which lay ready to hand, I rolled them into a bundle. I did the same with my jacket, waistcoat, and underclothes, after having stripped to the waist, the better to get through the narrow opening in the ceiling. Next, I folded the paillasse and propped it against the wall at the foot of the bed. Standing on it, I lifted the loose board and with a jerk of my wrists flung it free. I shoved the two bundles of clothes up, first feeling for an unencumbered space of floor, then levered myself after them.

Arms extended, and with a careful shuffle of my feet, lest I should step on some glass or metal object, I gained the spot where one or two stars glimmered through the hole in the roof.

Grasping the remaining half of the broken tile, I twisted it out as carefully as I could, not without causing a grating noise, which sounded loud in the absolute silence. After some difficulty I drew it through the enlarged hole and, again making sure that the floor was clear, deposited it carefully. The next tile gave greater trouble. It being entire, the ends of the superimposed ones had to be lifted to allow of its withdrawal. When I straightened up, in order to attack the third in the row, I was startled by the sound of a low-voiced conversation close to me and apparently on the same level.

The natural impulse was to keep quiet, which I did. I waited. The even voices went on. Carefully I pushed my head outside and looked about. In the gable of the house on the right, and only about ten yards away, was a small window. The sound of murmured speech floated through the open panes directly toward me from the dark room behind. I took it to be the bedroom of the farmer and his wife, and remembering their complaint about my having been noisy the night before, I cursed the ill chance which had made this one German farmer--one, surely, in ten thousand--fond of fresh air in his sleeping-chamber.

The bitterly cold night air was streaming over my naked shoulders while I stood waiting for the people to go to sleep. Soon the talk ceased, but I gave them a liberal amount of time before I continued my labors.

When I had taken out three tiles in the first row, those in the next and the next again were quickly removed. The opening was now sufficiently large, but the two exposed laths running through it did not leave too much space between them for a man of my size to clamber through.

Stepping back to get my clothes, I misjudged the distance, which was small--a step or two only--and almost fell through the hole in the floor. I saved myself only by quickly shifting my weight from one foot to the other, which touched something soft. With a thud one of my bundles fell back into the cell. Fortunately it was the oilsilks and sweater; unfortunately the piece of map was in the pocket of the former. I did not go after them, but left them where they had fallen, and slipped into my clothes as quickly as the want of light and space would permit. This done, it was only a matter of great care and unusual contortions to get my somewhat bulky person through the laths.

At last I stood on the lower of the two I had exposed, with the night wind soughing over me. Doubtfully, I surveyed the expanse of roof at my feet. How to get across it was the question. Sliding over the tiles meant making a tremendous noise, quite apart from the danger of possible injury. If they were removed one by one, what was to be done with them? Should I chuck them into the garden as they came off the laths? I had it! Why not repair the roof above me as I demolished it in my descent?

My sense of humor was rather tickled at the idea. To imagine the faces of the Amtmann and the warder when they were trying to reconstruct “the crime” was exceedingly funny. It made me use some extra and unnecessary care as I replaced the tiles on the laths above me, taking them, always two and two, from those below.

In a very short time I was standing on the last lath. I was in the denser shadow of the roof now, and the eight feet from the ground might have been eight thousand for all I could see of it. This made me hesitate, since a miscalculation of the distance might easily have meant a jar or a sprain. Without a sound, however, I landed on a soft garden bed.

A few moments after I was at the gate, and over, and in the street. A solitary street lamp was burning here and there; not a soul was in sight. In the shadow of the wall I stooped to take off my boots and socks. As far as I recollect, I got out of the village like a streak of greased lightning. In reality I probably walked with due caution. I did not stop until I found myself in a dark lane outside, where I put on my boots. It was now 1:15.

The news of my escape would spread, I was sure, like wildfire through the country, and a hue and cry would soon be raised. Every man Jack who could spare the time would make one of a searching party. For such a thing to happen in a small community was bound to create a far greater stir than among the more sophisticated inhabitants of even a middle-sized town. I had received a hint that police dogs were kept in Vehlen. This might have been bluff, but it was not safe to bet on it. To put as much distance between me and the pursuers was my only chance.

To do that I had to find the turnpike I have spoken of. As far as I knew, it entered Vehlen from the west. South of and parallel to it was a secondary railway track.

As soon as a sufficient expanse of sky was visible for me to take bearings, which was impossible in the lane on account of big trees on each side, I found that I should have to pass around the southern side of Vehlen to get to the desired point. This would prove difficult and wasteful of my most precious commodity, time, as an extensive copse and generally unfavorable country intervened. The seemingly bolder course of walking back through the village had decided advantages and was at this hour hardly dangerous. Off came my boots again, and at a dog-trot, which increased to a fast sprint in front of a public house with a drunken voice issuing through the window, I crossed the southern part of the village. I did not happen to come upon the turnpike as I had hoped. On taking bearings after this second traverse of the village I found it lying northeast of me and therefore concluded that both railway and road were to be looked for in a northerly direction.

“Northwest now, and damn the wire fences.” It was difficult going at first, the country, criss-crossed by fences and ditches, enclosing swampy meadows. Due north was easier walking and would do nearly as well. A path gave me a rest. It was so heavenly easy to follow. Bang! I stumbled over a rail. “Hurrah, the railway! Now for the road!”

Again across-country, I pushed on as fast as I could in my favored direction. It was not very fast, for the difficulties were enough to drive one crazy. Swampy meadows, ditches, barbed-wire fences, woods, copses, but never a bit of easy ground. Soon I was wet to the hips. Branches plucked at my garments or slashed me across the face; barbed-wire fences grasped and retained pieces of cloth as I got over them; the sides of ditches caved in under my feet and, having jumped short in consequence, I landed half in the water; and ever and anon the village church tolled another quarter of an hour.

It was an absolute nightmare. Panting and breathless, I got up after one of my many tumbles. It was in an open kind of wood. My soaked clothes were dripping, yet I felt warm with the speed of my flight. Then the sensation of being utterly lost came over me, the danger-signal that the nerves are giving way. Luckily I had sense enough to recognize it as such, and promptly sat down in half an inch of water, pretending that I was in no hurry whatever.

I tried to reason out the situation. If the road were where I sought it, I should have come to it long before. My maps were unreliable in small details. Suppose the road crossed to the south of the railway, some distance outside Vehlen, instead of in the village as marked. In that case I had started from a point north of the road and south of the railway. Better go back to the railway and follow it west until I came to the point of intersection.

I turned due south, feeling better for the rest, and ten minutes later jumped the ditch along the turnpike. The night was very fine, the road hard and smooth. My footsteps rang so loudly that it was difficult to tell whether anybody was coming up behind me or not. For the third time I took off my boots and socks, and walked the rest of the night with bare feet. It was simply glorious to be able to step out. The exercise soon sent the blood tingling and warming through my body, which had become chilled during my rest in the woods. My clothes were drying apace; I hardly knew now that they were wet. My toes seemed to grip the ground and lever me forward. It was good to be alive.

After I had traversed the considerable belt of isolated farms surrounding a village, the country became quite uninhabited for a time, until a solitary inn appeared on my right. Here another road joined from the north, and at the point of meeting stood a big iron sign-post. “Dangerous corner ahead! Motors to slow down,” I managed to decipher, clinging to the pointing arm. Soon after, the brook was crossed on a stone bridge. Not being thirsty, I did not stop, but went forward until I came to a track on my right. Posts were planted across it at measured intervals, as if it had been closed to wheeled traffic some time before, yet there were fresh cart ruts running parallel to it. The country was flat, with plenty of cover, and empty. I kept checking the direction of the path, which meandered about a little, and found it one or two points more westerly than I had expected. This worried me a little. Its angle with the road shown on the map was so small, however, that I could not attach undue importance to it. At the worst, it meant striking the frontier ultimately a mile or two farther south, increasing the distance by that much from the point the soldier had so triumphantly warned me against the night before.

In due course I came across another railroad and a turnpike. A quarter of a mile to the north a church steeple was faintly outlined against the sky, indicating a village. This tallied fairly well with my expectations. When crossing over the line of rails I had entered the danger zone, where sentries and patrols might be expected anywhere. Probably the frontier was no more than three miles ahead, and might be nearer.

Instead of proceeding along the road, I walked at about two hundred yards to one side over plowed fields. It hurt my feet until I thrust them hastily into my boots without troubling about the socks.

The sky was paling faintly in the east. It was high time to disappear into some thicket, like the hunted animal I was.

Behind a windmill and a house on my right the outline of dark woods promised cover. There was no possibility now of picking and choosing; I had to take what I could find. What there was of it was the reverse of satisfactory. Most of the ground was swampy. The trees and bushes, which seemed to offer excellent places for concealment while it was dark, moved apart with the growing light, while I grew more anxious.

At last I found a wood composed of small birches and pines, and some really magnificent trees. Several paths ran through it. Fairly in the center they left a sort of island, a little more densely studded with trees than the rest, and with plenty of long heather between them. This must have been about five o’clock.

The heather was sopping wet with dew, and I did not care to lie down in it just then. Instead, although it was already fairly light, I scouted around, trusting for safety to the early hour and my woodcraft.

At the northern end of the woods I found signs of recent clearing work, warning me to keep away from there. Farther on, a dense patch of saplings would have made an excellent lair, had it not been for the ground, which was almost a quagmire. On its farther side a cart road would give me a start on the following night. I did not lie down in the wet heather when I had returned to my lair, but pressed myself into a small fir-tree. I was tired, and soon very cold. Yet I had rather a good time. I was a little proud of myself, and picturing the faces of my late captors in Vehlen when they found the bird flown, which would happen about this time, was the best of fun. I chuckled to myself about the joke whenever my head, falling forward, awoke me from a semi-stupor.

The sun took some time to clear the morning mist from the face of the country. After that, it grew warmer quickly. It must have been a rare morning, but I was past appreciating it. Ere yet the heather was near being dry, I let myself fall forward into a nice, springy tuft which my dim vision had been gloating over for some time. I believe I was asleep before I reached the ground.

My sleep was so profound that I had no sense of the lapse of time when I awoke. As far as the temperature went, it might have been a day in the latter part of May, instead of the 5th of April. From the altitude of the sun it appeared to be between ten and eleven o’clock. Children and chickens kept up their usual concert not far away. The sound of axes came from the clearing close by. I felt quite warm and comfortable, particularly after I had taken off my boots and placed them and my socks in the sun to dry. Neither hunger nor thirst assailed me during the day, although the afternoon coffee and bread and butter of the previous day had been the last food to pass my lips. Sleep stole over me softly now and again, so softly, indeed, that wakefulness merged into slumber and slumber into wakefulness without sensation. Awake, I was as alert as ever; asleep, utterly unconscious. I am quite unable to say when or how often this happened, so swiftly did the one change into the other.

Nevertheless, the day appeared intolerably long. When the sun was still some distance above the horizon, I became so restless that I had to move about in the confined space I permitted myself. The breaking and trimming--with fingers, nails, and teeth--of a stout sapling into a heavy staff, jumping-pole and, perhaps, weapon, occupied part of the time. Then the fidgeting started again. I was eager to do something. The decision was so near. It had to come that night. The weather, still fine, was breaking. I felt it in my bones. Without the stars nothing could be done; without food, and particularly without water, and with only the clothes I stood up in, I should not last through a period of wet weather.

I did not feel apprehensive. On the contrary, I had a splendid confidence that all would go well. The Dutch border could not well be more than three miles away. I had to proceed across-country, of course, away from roads, certainly never on them, to pass successfully the sentries and patrols, who very likely would concentrate the greater part of their attention upon them. However, it would not do to depend on being safe anywhere. As a good deal of my time would have to be devoted to avoiding them, I might find it difficult to keep an accurate course, even if other circumstances did not force me to alter it considerably. All this had to be considered and certain safeguards planned. For those of my readers who are interested in the technique of my endeavors I would add that I expected to find a railroad track which ran parallel to my proposed course on my left, presumably a mile or two off, and a road entering Holland about three miles to the north of me, which in an extreme case would prevent my going hopelessly astray.

At last the sun touched the sky-line. Before it was quite dark, but after the voices of children and fowls and the sounds of work in the woods had ceased, my restlessness forced me to do something. I sneaked along the paths and into the thicket of saplings I had discovered in the morning, there to ensconce myself close to the road. Once a girl and a soldier in animated conversation passed me, while ever so gradually twilight deepened into darkness.

When the night was as black as could be hoped for, I walked a hundred yards or so along the road, bent double and with every sense alert. Then a path on my right led me through tall woods. Coming into the open, I corrected my course, and not long after I was stopped by a deep ditch, almost a canal. Its banks showed white and sandy in the starlight; on the side nearest me was a line of narrow rails. Some tip-over trucks were standing on them, and a few lay upturned on the ground. I remember bending down, in order to feel whether or not the rails were smooth on top, a sign of recent use, but straightened immediately. Since I should be either in Holland, or a prisoner, or dead before the morning, these precautions seemed superfluous.

The ditch threw me out of my course. Walking along it, I noticed a triangular sheen of light in the sky bearing northwest. It looked as if it were the reflex of a well-illuminated place miles ahead. I took it to be the first station in Holland on the railway from Bocholt. Later I was able to verify this.

When I got to the end of the ditch, I struck out across the flat country toward the light. It took me some time to extricate myself from a swamp. In trying to work around it, with an idea of edging in toward a railway line which I knew to be entering Holland somewhere on my left, I suddenly came upon a road running northwest. I left it quicker than I had got on it, walking parallel to it over plowed land and keeping it in sight. Shortly after, I passed between two houses, to see another road in front of me running at right angles to the former.

I crouched in the angle between the two roads, trying to penetrate the darkness, and listening with all my might. I could see no living thing, and all was silent. Just across from me a structure, the nature of which I could not make out, held my gaze. I waited, then jumped across the road into its shadow. It now resolved itself into an open shed, with a wagon underneath. Again I listened and looked, with my back toward Holland, watching the two houses I had passed, and nervously scanning the road.

Far down it a small dog began to bark. Not taking any notice of it at first, I was in the act of starting across a field covered knee-high with some stiff growth, when it occurred to me that the barking sounded like an alarm, of which I could not be the cause.

Gaining the shelter of the shed again, and straining my ears, I became aware of distant and approaching footsteps, regular and ominous. I ducked into the ditch, crawling half under the floor of the shed, and waited. When the sound was only about a yard from me, the helmet, the head, the up-slanting rifle muzzle, and the shoulders of a patrol became outlined against the sky. He walked on and was swallowed up by the darkness. His footsteps grew fainter, died away.

“Splendid!” I thought. “This road must be close to the border. It runs parallel to it. Maybe I am through the sentry lines.” I pushed on, very much excited, yet going as carefully as I could. A barbed wire and ditch were negotiated. A patch of woodland engulfed me. Going was bad on account of holes in the ground; my instinct was for rushing it, and difficult to curb.

Three shallow ditches side by side! I felt them with my hand to make sure they were not merely deeply trodden paths. “This must be the frontier!”

I was shaking with excitement and exultation when I started forward again. My leg went into a hole, and I fell forward across a dry piece of wood, which exploded underneath me with a noise like a pistol shot. I scrambled to my feet, listened, and walked on.