CHAPTER XXVI

FREE AT LAST

We had only gone a few steps when a man came running after us. His Dutch and our German made conversation possible. Kent was rather good at understanding and imparting his meaning.

“Orlog gefangenen?” the man asked.

“Yah, yah!”

“Roosland?”

“Nay, nay; Engelsch!”

“Engelsch?” He gripped our hands and shook them warmly. Then we had to accompany him back to his cottage. He ushered us into the room where Kent had seen the “big dish, full of potatoes.” His wife, in picturesque undress, fired a volley of questions at her husband, clasped her hands, shook ours, and began lighting the kitchener. Two daughters--or were there three?--emerged from cavernous cabin beds, let into the wall. Shyly they dressed in front of us.

Then the table was loaded with things to eat. We had fried veal, bread, butter, and plenty of milk and hot coffee. All this was offered us spontaneously in a farm laborer’s cottage at 2:30 in the morning. Enviously I watched my companions enjoying their meal. I was too done up to make more than a show of it.

A little later the man accompanied us to the nearest village, Sellingen. He walked in front with Kent, Tynsdale and I followed in the rear. The walk was a nightmare to me. Our guide carried a lantern. I could not keep my eyes off its reflex on the ground. The direct rays stabbed intolerably into my eyes. It seemed to hang in a Gothic archway, which always kept receding in front of me. I was almost convinced of the reality of the archway.

“Can’t we get through that gate?” I asked Tynsdale.

“What gate? Here, where are you going?” and he pulled my arm and saved me from walking slap into the canal. After that I pulled myself together and felt better. Both my friends were much fresher than I.

We arrived at the village at last, and were given a delicious bed on plenty of straw, with plenty of blankets.

Kent was up early next morning. He accepted I do not know how many successive invitations to breakfast, while Tynsdale and I slept until half-past seven. In the course of the morning we were taken to a military station at Ter Apel by the village policeman, who appeared in his best uniform, with two huge silver tassels at his chest.

The very atmosphere was different. A sergeant in whose special charge we were placed regretted that he could not put proper rooms at our disposal. “But since the gentlemen will have to be quarantined first, they will perhaps understand if we keep them away from upholstered furniture.”

We had a wash, and an excellent meal, with a bottle of port.

“Did you meet any sentries?” we were asked.

“Not one.”

“Where did you cross over?”

“North of Sellingen.”

“You came over the swamp, then?” with elevated eyebrows.

“Yes, right across.”

“You were lucky. Up to a fortnight ago, sentries stood along the frontier at one hundred-meter intervals. Then they were withdrawn, because the swamp became impassable. You were fortunate, too, in getting across the Ems. A great many fugitives get drowned in it.”

“Once, during my first attempt, I got caught on Dutch soil by the Germans,” I remarked in the course of the conversation.

“What? On Dutch territory? Where was that?” The sergeant was very much interested.

“I can show it to you on a map. It was northwest of Bocholt.”

He disappeared and returned with maps and telegraph forms. I told him my story, and he made notes and wrote two telegrams.

“What you say is possible,” he said at last. “Our men stand three hundred meters behind the actual frontier.”

The next two nights we spent in a hutment in Coevorden. We met a number of Russian privates and N.C.O.’s there, who had made good their escape and were, like us, waiting to be sent to a quarantine camp. Among them were three who had crossed the same night as we, but through the woods at the northern end of the swamp. We were indebted to them and their dead comrade on German soil for the warning shots at midnight.

There followed a fortnight in quarantine camp in Enschede. Under the Dutch regulations, any person “crossing the frontier in an irregular manner,” without a passport, viséd by a Dutch consul, is subjected to this quarantine. We tried to shorten our stay there, pleading that we came from a healthy camp. We were unsuccessful.

We did not like Enschede camp. The food was insufficient for us, who could not live almost exclusively on potatoes. We found it strange that we should not be allowed to supplement our rations by purchasing extra food. The only things we could buy, at first, were apples and chocolate, and only a limited amount of either. Our deep gratitude is due, however, to Mr. Tattersall of Enschede, who indefatigably looked after us and the other Englishmen in Enschede camp, much to the disadvantage of his pocket.

After we had received a clean bill of health, being civilians, we were allowed to proceed to Rotterdam without a guard. We arrived there at ten o’clock one night, and I was promptly arrested, being mistaken for an embezzler who had decamped the same day from somewhere, taking fifteen thousand florins of another man’s money with him. My health passport saved the situation.

The next morning we were at the British consulate. The rest of the day we careered through the town in a motor-car--from the consulate to the shipping-office, from the shipping-office to somewhere else, from there to the consulate’s doctor, back to the shipping-office and the photographer, and again to the consulate. That night we were on board at Hook of Holland.

Two days afterward--!

In the gray dawn of an autumn morning our small ship heaved to the incoming swell as she steamed out to take up her station in the convoy. Soon she was dancing joyously to the shrilling of the wind and the sizzling swish of the seas. Two long, low gray shapes accompanied us on each quarter. Hardly discernible at first, they grew more distinct with the light. There were more of them, but invisible, guarding the long line of ships. Occasionally other shapes appeared on the horizon, very faint in their war-paint.

Toward evening I saw again the well-remembered piles of a British landing-stage. How often had I pictured them during three long years! It was always there that I had imagined my home-coming. It had become reality.

Six weeks later: Time: 10 A.M. Enter servant.

“You’re wanted on the ’phone, sir.”

“Who is it?”

“Doesn’t want to give a name, sir.”

“Thanks.--Hullo! Hullo!”

“That Mr. Keith?”

“Yes. Who’s speaking?”

“Don’t you recognize my voice, Eric?”

“No, can’t say I do.”

“It’s Wace!”

“What’s that?”

“Me--Wallace, Wallace!”

“Good heavens!”

“Yes; arrived last night! Speaking from Hackney. _You_ know!”

So Wallace had won through too, though playing a lone game!