act I dared not take the risk of accusing them. “I thought I had lost

something,” I said.

The one who spoke muttered something threateningly. They were naturally very anxious to get rid of us now.

“Come along,” I said to Tynsdale, resignedly, when I had rejoined him. “We’ve got to make the best of it.” A little farther down the road Kent was waiting for us in the shadow of a bush, with both grips. He had picked mine up when he started to walk ahead and had caused me a few bad moments. Here, we brushed ourselves with our hands and handkerchiefs. A short walk through wide, deserted streets, most of them flanked by factory buildings, proved pleasantly unexciting.

It was still early in the evening, but the wide thoroughfare of Spandau, not far from the railway station, was deserted, except for a small group of people between two tall light-standards, who, like us, were waiting for a tram to Berlin. The arc-lights fizzed slightly now and again, and cast fleeting purple shadows over the island, which served as a platform for the tram-cars.

We three stood a little apart, occasionally exchanging a word or two in German. We were hot with excitement and exertion. I was carrying the large portmanteau and an overcoat over my arm. Kent had the other bag, Tynsdale an oilsilk wrapped in his overcoat.

The first tram was crowded, but a second, immediately behind, was only moderately full. As prearranged, we got on the driver’s platform, the darkest part of the vehicle, and the least sought after.

For the first quarter of an hour of our ride, tram-lines and street ran parallel to, but on the other side of, the railway, which passed along the front of the camp. The eastern gate of Ruhleben camp was at one point not more than two hundred yards from a stopping-place, where officers and men of the camp-guard usually boarded the trams when going to town. Hardly half that distance away a sentry patrolled.

The possibility of an untoward meeting at this point kept us on edge. If somebody from Ruhleben had accidentally entered our car, we intended to take no notice of it, unless he came to the front platform. What we should have done in that case, I do not know. Our resourcefulness was, fortunately, not put to the test.

The front platform became fairly crowded. I succeeded in manœuvering Tynsdale into a corner, and planted myself in front of him, thus cutting him off from any likelihood of being spoken to by any of the passengers. Kent could take care of himself, better perhaps than I, for he was readier with his tongue. Half-way to Berlin, in front of West End Station, Charlottenburg, where eighteen months ago my railway journey had started, the track was blocked by a car which had broken down. It took half an hour to shunt it upon a siding and clear the line. We were not pressed for time, and remained in our places, almost the only passengers who did so.

Our immediate destination was the Wilhelms Platz in Berlin. From there we had to get to the Lehrter Station. Without local knowledge ourselves, we had gathered an idea of how to do it. Kent was to be guide and acting manager, but he kept consulting me, who was well content to follow.

Broadway at the most crowded hour of the day is hardly so packed as were, that night, the far wider streets of the German capital. It seemed as if the whole population of Berlin were wandering more or less aimlessly about. Two solid streams of people moved in opposite directions on the pavements, and spilled over the curb into the roadway. In a way, this was favorable to us. Except by accident, it would have been impossible to find us. On the other hand, it made it difficult for a party of three to proceed by tram or omnibus. At every stopping-place of these public conveyances a free fight seemed to be going on for the places inside them; not the rush we are accustomed to complain about in London, but a scramble in which brute force triumphed unchecked by any trivial regard for decent manners and the rights of others.

After we had alighted and threaded our way across the Wilhelms Platz, Kent found a station of the Underground.

“Take a first-class ticket for yourself. I’ll buy two,” were his instructions, whispered in German.

I bought a third-class one. I did not want to. I was merely too funky to ask for first-class. It meant the pronunciation of an extra word. I could have spoken it as correctly as any German, but suppose there was no first-class on the Underground! They’d get suspicious! It was very silly of me. Mistake No. 1.

Naturally, the third-class was crowded. It is not the custom in Germany to be polite to the gentler sex. I knew it as well as anybody. But when an elderly woman, looking very tired, was clinging to a strap just in front of me, I was on my feet before I knew what I was doing. She declined the proffered seat in confusion. To repair my “break,” I hastily sat down again, my ears burning. Mistake No. 2. Kent looked daggers at me from the opposite seat, and as soon as he had a chance I got my wigging.

At the Leipziger Platz the throng was thicker, if anything. There was not the faintest chance of getting into a train.

“There are some droshkies down there,” said Kent, pulling my arm to attract my attention.

“Get one!” I answered curtly.

The marvelous thing was that the driver accepted us as fares. The luggage we were carrying, and our destination, Lehrter Bahnhof, did the trick, I believe.

The drive through the Sieges Allee, past the greater atrocity of the “Iron Hindenburg,” and farther through deserted residential streets, was splendid. We lit cigarettes, and I regained my coolness. I wanted it. Grimly I reflected that two mistakes were quite enough for one day.

We found the booking-hall of the Lehrter Station crowded at eleven o’clock. Kent and I deposited our luggage and took our places in the long queue in front of the booking-office.

“What time the eleven-forty-seven for Hanover to-night?” I asked a porter who was passing me.

“Twelve-forty-seven, but to-night only.”

We had almost two hours to get through, somehow and somewhere. Not at the station, that was certain.

“Follow Tynsdale and me. Keep as far in the rear as possible, and don’t lose us,” I told Kent.

The Lehrter Station is situated in the northwestern part of Berlin. There seemed no decent cafés near at hand in which we could spend the time and get a drink. As we were very thirsty, however, we found a low-class place not very far off in which we ordered a glass of beer each. When the waitress brought the drink she told us ungraciously that the café was going to be closed in a few minutes. Hastily we emptied our glasses, glad to get out of the place with as little delay as possible. Three German privates were eyeing us from a table close to ours much too attentively for our liking.

Outside, the previous formation was resumed. Sauntering very slowly along, I led back past the station again, along the river Spree, then through the empty streets of a residential neighborhood, and finally, by accident, into the Friedrich Strasse with its dense throng of people. On the way I kept up a semblance of conversation with Tynsdale. I would not go into a café again, so near closing time, thinking we were safest among the crowd, which was moving quite as leisurely as we were. Tynsdale was content to follow me, and Kent had no chance of pressing his objections.

More slowly, if possible, we sauntered back to the station, where we arrived with fifty minutes to spare. Having got our luggage, we spent the time in the waiting-room and restaurant, over beer, coffee, and lemonade. German cigarettes, bought at the counter, enabled us to enjoy a soothing smoke.

“Shall we go out on the platform now?” asked Kent twenty minutes before train time.

“No; wait,” I answered. Later I explained that, since our absence was presumably known in camp by that time, and since there was a chance that passports might be inspected at a terminus, I thought it would be better if we rushed to the platform as late-comers.

If I recollect rightly, Kent was to chaperon Tynsdale as far as Hanover. At the last moment I requested that he should come into my compartment. I should have been worried about my friends if I had traveled alone in comparative security, and was sure of feeling happier with Tynsdale by my side. Rightly or wrongly, I imagined I could take care of him just as well as Kent.

The train was a stopping one, and was crowded to the last seat when we tried to board it.

“Can we get into a first-class compartment?” I asked a busy official. “There is no room in the second.”

“Third and second only on this train,” he answered, and then shoved Tynsdale and me into an already crowded carriage, from which he ejected a soldier who had a third-class ticket.

“Sit down,” I said peremptorily to Tynsdale, who obeyed. I stood in the gangway, leaning against the window. Kent disappeared into another compartment.

Then we were off, past Ruhleben camp to Spandau as the first stop. It appeared a foregone conclusion that our absence was known in camp by now. We feared that the train might be searched in Spandau. I took some comfort from its crowded state. When another crush of people packed themselves into the little standing room left, I blessed the scarcity of trains which caused the crowding. Information has since reached me that the camp authorities did not discover our escape until roll-call the next morning.

* * * * *

Within the next hour the compartment emptied, until we were left alone, but for a German N.C.O., who, fat as a pig, was breathing stertorously in his sleep. Tynsdale was slumbering behind his overcoat. I followed his example for short spells, the uneasy feeling that I had something or somebody to take care of following me into confused dreams.

At the Hanover main station our luggage went into the cloak-room and we ourselves into the waiting-room and restaurant to have a cup of coffee.

I knew Hanover fairly well, and was to conduct my friends to the Eilenriede, a huge public park encircling a quarter of the town. The greater part of it is really a densely timbered forest, where we could spend the morning, or part of it, in safety. Tynsdale and I in front, Kent in the rear, we wended our way thither, as much as possible through back streets.

It was a typical September morning, promising a hot day. The life of the town was beginning to stir: people were going to work, milkmen were making their rounds, a belated farmer’s cart rattled over the cobbles now and again; from the main thoroughfares came the buzzing of trolleys and the clanging of bells.

In the park Kent closed up, and we walked abreast for a time, talking freely in German. We felt tired, and finally sat down in a secluded spot, surrounded by thick timber and undergrowth. At long intervals early-morning ramblers passed us, solitary old gentlemen, and several couples who most decidedly felt no craving for further company, and consequently took more notice of us than the old gentlemen. Near by, two women were gathering wood and loading it into dilapidated “prams.” They were usually out of sight, but we heard them all the time, breaking the dry sticks into convenient lengths.

Gradually the sun sucked up the mists, but the haze of an autumn day remained. Slanting shafts of light struck through the foliage, which sent off scintillating reflections, where it moved in a very slight breeze, while its shadows seemed to dance merrily on the ground. A full chorus of birds warbled and twittered in praise of the warmth of the waning summer. The hum of insects was in the air. A butterfly winged past at intervals, and behind our seat a colony of ants was busily engaged.

The leaves had begun to fall. They covered the ground between the trees, but the branches themselves only showed the dark-green foliage of summer.

Our surroundings moved me intensely. I had not seen in this way a green thing in seventeen months of prison life. I had not been among green trees for over three years. The seat, hard as it was, was comfortable to our tired bodies. We felt lazy, and when we had discussed the night’s events, and outlined the next move, the talk languished. We were hungry, too. Two biscuits apiece and a rather generous allowance of chocolate tasted good.

Kent told us that he had immediately found a seat in the train, the night before. His compartment had emptied sooner than ours, and he had chatted through most of the journey with his only traveling companion, a lieutenant. I do not know how many lies he told him.

At ten o’clock we walked back to the town. The heat was oppressive by now. A circuitous route, to waste time, brought us into the main street, the Georg Strasse. In an arcade I entered a shop for sporting-equipment, leaving Tynsdale to wait outside with Kent, and obtained two military water-bottles and an extremely shoddy knapsack at an exorbitant price. Kent bought cigars. A strong clasp-knife was added to my equipment. At a tram-crossing I inquired from a policeman about the cars to Hainholz. I intended to repeat the trick Wallace and I had made use of ten months before, and avoid leaving from the main station. It was too early to obtain a meal in a restaurant then--about eleven o’clock--so we went into the famous Kafé Kroepke, where we sat at different tables in the order of our entrance.

On the way back from the station, carrying our luggage and walking in the usual order, I caught sight of a very detective-like individual crossing the road toward us. He fell in behind Tynsdale and me, between us and Kent. As well as I could I watched him, but we did not seem to interest him. While we stood waiting for the tram, Kent closed up, and I nearly choked with rage. I thought his instructions, “Do as we do, but keep apart,” covered everything. Now he was asking me questions. But, after all, it was only leveling up the score of the previous night against _me_.

At Hainholz I went to the ticket-window and asked for two second-class tickets to Bremen. Kent had asked for one ten minutes before, and had been told to wait.

“Are you two traveling together?” asked the booking clerk.

“No, no. I’m traveling with my friend,” and I waved an uncertain hand toward Tynsdale, who looked on with an impassive face from a seat behind us.

“Do I understand you to want a pass for two, and you,” turning to Kent, who was standing beside me, “for one?”

Kent signified his assent.

“I want two tickets to Bremen. Two!” said I.

“You see,” explained the man, “I have no tickets to Bremen in stock. I’ve got to write out passes for you. It’ll save work, if two are traveling together. I can make out a joint pass for two then.” Thank heaven it was nothing else!

We rushed to the platform only just in time--and waited for half an hour for the overdue train, another one of the parliamentary variety.

Tynsdale and I got the last two seats in a compartment occupied by a well-dressed and well-groomed man, four flappers with school-maps, and a very pretty woman.

I felt much relieved when the train started. Another part of our venture had come to an end! We had now left the direct route toward Holland, the route by which the authorities would expect us to travel. Cloppenburg, which was the ultimate objective of our railway journey, lay in a straight line not so many miles to the west of us. Yet we were going to spend another seven and a half hours in getting there, and had to change the direction of our flight twice.

It was, therefore, with considerable composure that I sat listening to the chatter of the flappers and the occasional snores of the man, and watching the landscape through the window.

It stretched flat to the horizon, dancing in the heat haze. Toward four o’clock, white clouds made their appearance in the azure sky, followed presently by gray ones. When we drew into Bremen Station, where we had to wait forty minutes for another train, due to start at half-past five, a heavy shower was drumming on the glass roof.

Our traveling companions remained with us all the way. About half an hour before we reached our destination, the pretty lady next to me began to make ready for her arrival. Her hair, an abundance of it, required a lot of patting and pulling about, which did not alter its appearance in any way to the male eye. She sat forward in her seat, and with her back straight and her arms raised, she assumed the captivating pose of a woman putting the last deft touches to her toilet. Although anxious not to appear rude, I tried to lose none of her movements, which were the more charming to me as I had not seen a woman of her class close to me for over three years. Her rounded, well-modeled arms and shoulders showed dimly through the thin blouse. Fortunately, she was half turning her back toward me and my companion, and we could gaze our fill.

“Wasn’t she pretty!” were Tynsdale’s first words in the station restaurant after four hours of silence.

“Wasn’t she!”

* * * * *

We were having a cup of coffee, sociably sitting together at the same table. I went out to buy the three tickets and have a wash. To my astonishment, there was real soap for use, not merely to look at as a curiosity, in the station lavatory. I made a remark about this extraordinary fact to the attendant, who told me quite frankly that he made it a point to have real soap, and that it was profitable for him to buy it at eighteen marks per pound in bulk. This implied illicit trading, and the outspokenness of his statement was illustrative of the general evasion of the strict trading laws and price limits.

The journey to Oldenburg, our next stopping-place, took half an hour only, but was the most trying part of our escape. We were on the main line to an important naval and air-ship center, Wilhelmshaven, and although we did not approach it within fifty miles, the fact never left my mind. Furthermore, the compartment Tynsdale and I were in was so crowded that we had at first to stand. As soon as a seat became vacant, Tynsdale slipped into it. It was next the window on the other side of the car, happily away from an inquisitive and extremely talkative individual, who, having been rebuffed by an officer and earned the hostile glare of a man in naval uniform, lapsed for a short time only into comparative silence. Before he opened his sluice-gates again, I had sat down beside Tynsdale, covertly watching the dangerous lunatic, as I called him, and sending up heartfelt prayers that my friend would stick to reading the book which he held in his hand as usual. He would not do so, however, but kept looking out of the window, giving an opportunity every time, I felt, for our conversational friend to open fire.

The scheduled thirty-five minutes would not come to an end. Even when my watch told me that they were past, the train still kept stopping at small stations and in the open country, and jogging on again after a short halt. My anxiety was great, but at last I had my reward when we arrived at Oldenburg.

What is it that makes one place feel “safe” and another menacing? In most cases it is difficult to explain. The comfortable assurance of security I had here, I put down to the absence of crowds in the station, and to the fact that a booking-office between the platforms permitted the purchase of new tickets without the necessity of passing through the gates with their hostile guard of soldiers. Eighteen months earlier the shutters in front of the windows of a similar intermediate office at Dortmund Station, had caused me to reflect that the authorities wanted to force all passengers to come under the scrutiny of the guard and the ever-present detectives. Now the face of the clerk on the other side of the glass appeared a good omen. We were not in Prussia, by the way, but in the Duchy of Oldenburg.

Our train was due to leave in twenty minutes from the time of our belated arrival. After a short wait on the platform it was shunted in. We all three bundled into the same compartment, but took seats in different corners. We did not carry through very carefully this show of not belonging together, as nobody joined us. Kent bought two small baskets of fruit from a vendor who passed along the train, and we were sufficiently hungry to start munching their contents at once.

During the first part of this last stretch of an hour and a half we remained alone. Dusk was rapidly changing into total darkness. Soon it became impossible to distinguish the names of the feebly lighted stations. I checked them carefully from the open time-table beside me, lest we should alight too soon or too late.

At 8:30 we arrived at Cloppenburg. The first and probably the most dangerous part of our venture lay behind us.