The Road to Freedom
"What's this? An old shovel, by the feel of it--the thing they've dug
the tunnel with," Henri told his comrades as they stood at the entrance
of the tunnel in the dense darkness, and felt all about them. "My
fingers dropped upon it as I bent at the entrance, and, yes--here's a
basket with a rope attached to it, into which, no doubt, one of them
shovelled the earth at the far end of the tunnel, while his comrade
dragged it to the bottom of the pit by means of the rope. Poor chaps!
How hard they must have worked, and what a disappointment it must have
been to have failed just at the last moment."
"That's just what we have got to look to," Stuart told them in a hoarse
whisper. "They've done the work and have failed; let's look to it that
we get out promptly. Come along now. Give me the spade, Henri, for
I'm bigger and stronger than you, and, if there's only a foot of earth
above our heads when we get to the far end of the tunnel, I'll bash a
way through it without difficulty. George! What a narrow space it is!
It hardly lets my shoulders through."
That tunnel, indeed, was hardly better than a rabbit burrow. Perhaps
four to five feet in height, it was scarcely two in breadth, cold and
dark and winding. Let us admit at once that it required no small stock
of courage on the part of Stuart and his friends to force their way
along it, particularly so in the case of the Englishman, whose frame
was such a close fit to the damp earthen sides, that failure to break a
way out at the far end would have left him in a difficult position--one
from which he would undoubtedly have found it hard to extricate
himself. Yet there was liberty beyond, escape from this dreary
Ruhleben with its monotonous routine, with its bullying Commandant and
guards, with its sordid surroundings, and its sorry accommodation and
short commons. Thrusting on, therefore, pushing his way along the
tunnel, squeezing himself into as small a compass as possible, Stuart
forced a passage deeper into it, one hand feeling his way, while the
other gripped the implement which Henri had discovered. Ten yards,
twenty, perhaps thirty were covered before a growl came from the leader.
"The end!" they heard him say. "I'm up against the far end of the
tunnel, and that officer was quite right when he stated that it rose
toward this end. Now, hold your breath for a moment and listen while I
thump the roof. There--hollow--eh? Not much earth above us. Then
stand back a little whilst I make a stroke for the open."
They heard the thuds as the shovel was dashed against the roof, and
listened to clods of earth and debris falling. It was precisely at the
fifth stroke that a grunt escaped Stuart, while an instant later Henri
felt a breath of fresh air, a cold gust sweeping past him.
"The open!" he exclaimed. "Go easy, Stuart, for it might not be dark
enough yet, and impatience on our part might lead to our instant
discovery. Put your head up quietly as soon as you've made room."
There were more grunts in front, while from behind came a low, warning
exclamation from Jules.
"S--s--sh!" he said. "I can hear someone in the hut behind us, for the
sounds are travelling down the tunnel. Push on into the open as fast
as you can go, while I turn back and see what's happening."
There were more sounds then, as Jules, less bulky than Stuart, yet of
formidable size when it came to free movement in this narrow tunnel,
contrived by some acrobatic feat to turn himself about and face the pit
from which they had started this adventure. Then he crawled back
towards the hut on all fours, listening to the suspicious sounds which
he had heard, wondering who caused them, fearing that the German guards
had come to make a nearer investigation of the pit and tunnel. Yes, it
was that, without a doubt; for there came to his ears now the sound of
a man's two feet alighting at the bottom of the pit, a heavy thud, and
the fall of earth as it tumbled from the sides of the pit to the
bottom. Then rays of light reached him as the person who had dropped
into the pit switched on an electric torch and surveyed his
surroundings. Once more then Jules performed that acrobatic feat, and,
twisting himself round with furious energy, hastened back to warn his
comrades.
"There's a fellow at the bottom of the pit already, and no doubt he'll
be coming into the tunnel," he told them in a whisper. "He's got an
electric torch, and that will be far worse than the light outside, for
it'll show us up directly. Shove on into the open. Push your way
through. Hang the sentries! We'll have to chance their seeing us."
More blows came from Stuart, lusty blows, and the sound of heavy
breathing, then an exclamation, an exclamation of delight, of triumph,
and later the sound of more earth falling. That fresh breath of air
which had swept into the tunnel became almost keen, while intuitively,
for they could not see, Henri and Jules both realized that Stuart had
already clambered from the place into the open.
"Come now," they heard a voice. "Come up, quick, and lie down flat as
soon as you are beside me."
Henri stumbled on till he was right at the end of the tunnel, and,
standing upright, felt a hand stretched down towards him. Gripping it,
digging his toes into the sides of the tunnel, and seizing the edge
above with his other hand, he was half dragged, and half forced his way
upward, then, flinging himself on the ground beside Stuart, he leant
over the ragged hole and helped to extricate his comrade.
They were free! They were in the open! They were beyond the wire
entanglements! And Germany lay before them--Germany, an enemy country,
where every man's hand, aye, and every woman's too, would be against
them. Yet they were free, and what did it matter how many enemies they
had to face, how many difficulties were before them? For freedom,
however much it might be embarrassed, however adventurous it might
become, was freedom after all--a godsend compared with the privations,
the gibes, the cruel treatment they had suffered in their prison. If
anyone had ever a doubt as to this, if, when this ghastly war which is
now in progress is finished, a reader happen to think that there has
been exaggeration in these statements, let him but look to facts, let
him but consult the known history of the treatment of interned aliens
and prisoners of war in the Kaiser's country. Though war itself, and
this one in particular with its long and terrible tale of casualties,
is a ghastly business, the deliberate ill-treatment, the calculated
starvation, and the wilful abandonment to misery and death from
preventable disease of prisoners of war is a still more ghastly
affair--an episode frequently repeated in the case of Germany.
"Out! Hurrah! Mon Dieu! Out of that awful hole," coughed Henri,
shaking the dirt out of his hair and brushing it from behind his ears.
"Out, my boys! Away from those German guards, and away from that
Commandant and the whole breed of 'em."
Jules giggled. He was possessed of a lighter nature altogether, was
perhaps of more flippant disposition than his chum, and had less
stamina about him. Not that he was lacking in courage, or in dash, or
in that elan which the French generally have displayed so magnificently
in this conflict, only Jules was, perhaps, just a trifle effeminate,
and giggles seemed to come almost naturally from him. Now, as he lay
close to the ragged edge of the opening through which he had been
forcibly dragged by Stuart and Henri, and as he spluttered and blew
dirt which had introduced itself into his mouth from his discoloured
lips, he gave vent to a laugh, a smothered sound of merriment, perhaps
a semi-hysterical giggle, in any case to a sound which grated on the
senses of the Englishman terribly.
"Burr! Stop that!" he commanded, and somehow, for some unascertained
reason, Henri and Jules, who would have resented such tones from him on
any other occasion, accepted them now without a murmur. "Shut up!"
growled Stuart. "Hist! There's one of those beastly sentries coming
near the entanglements--and what's that?"
There were other sounds than those of steps within Ruhleben camp, that
odious place of misery out of which they had broken, other noises than
the heavy tramp of a ponderous Landsturm guard as he strode from behind
the hut till the barbed-wire entanglements stopped his progress and he
rattled his bayonet upon it, sounds which came from another quarter
from beneath the ground, from the tunnel in fact from which Henri and
his friends had so recently emerged.
"Hist!" exclaimed Stuart in warning tones. "Keep as low and as flat as
you can. Thank goodness! That sentry fellow, after making enough
noise to drown the sound of our voices, has turned away without seeing
us; but--but--what's that?"
Henri stretched out a hand and gripped him by the sleeve.
"Down there," he whispered, "down there in the tunnel from which we
have just come, there's someone stumbling along. And cast your eye
into the opening; isn't that the gleam of a torch? Isn't that light
being thrown in this direction?"
It was, without the shadow of doubt. For, as all three peered over the
edge of the hole they had made so rapidly, thanks to the strength of
Stuart, the depths below were illuminated for just a few seconds, and
then were hidden in pitch-black darkness, which within a few moments
was again lit up by a brilliant beam of light coming from a distance up
the tunnel--that long path which they had followed, which had fitted
the burly Stuart's shoulders so narrowly, and had made turning in his
case an impossibility. It acted now as a tube, and sent sounds along
towards them, accentuated them, indeed, until there was no difficulty
in deciding that a man was struggling and pushing his way towards
them--a man armed with an electric torch, a fellow who breathed
heavily, who swore beneath his breath and then out loud, and who set
masses of earth tumbling down about him.
"Better go," whispered Henri, when the cause of the sounds was quite
certain, "better slip away at once before the fellow finds the opening
and shouts an alarm."
"Wait!" Stuart stretched a hand out and gripped him with a grip of
iron, a grip which held the vivacious Frenchman to the ground. "Not
yet, for that bounder of a sentry is again coming towards us. Lie
low!" he cautioned them; "lie low, or he will see us."
"But the man below with the light--he is nearer, far nearer," said
Jules, who lay with his head well over the opening. "He'll be here in
next to no time--then what?"
Stuart dragged himself a little closer to that opening, and, keeping
one eye on the sentry, glanced down to the bottom of the tunnel.
"Leave the beggar to me," he said. "Look here, Henri, grope about for
a stone--a brick--anything that's hard and will hurt, and can be thrown
easily. Ah! here's one--a big 'un too; you try the same, Jules, and
get ready to heave at that sentry. When I bash my fist against the
fellow below, you throw your stones as hard as you can at the German
inside the entanglements, and so put out his aim; not that there's much
to be feared, seeing how dark it is at this moment."
Quick as thought, Henri grabbed the big stone which Stuart thrust into
his hand, and, groping about, quickly secured another. Then he slowly
raised himself into a kneeling position, ready to spring to his feet
and carry out the duty Stuart had given him. Nor was it likely to be a
very difficult matter to strike the sentry at that moment hammering
again on the barbed wire which formed the fences about the camp at
Ruhleben, for though without doubt Henri and his friends lay invisible,
close to the ground, the burly figure of the German stood out, huge and
broad and solid, silhouetted faintly in the darkness by lights
flickering from the range of shelters on the far side of the camp. As
for Jules, he, too, quickly secured missiles with which to bombard the
sentry, and, as if to show how ready he was for the work in hand, gave
vent again to one of those subdued giggles; whereat Stuart growled--a
fierce growl--and nudged him violently. Then, of a sudden, the
attention of all three was fixed on the hole through which they had
emerged, and upon the depths below it. The rough sides of the tunnel,
the debris and earth which they themselves had dragged down to the foot
of it as they cut their path upward, every stone, every clod, was
visible, as the torch--now closer at hand--lit up every crevice. Then
the torch itself came into view, the hand which gripped it, the sleeve
about the wrist, and finally the shoulders and the head of the
individual stumbling and forcing his way towards them.
"Ach, Himmel! What a find! The wretches were almost escaping. What
perseverance, though; what hard work; and, yes, what hard luck to have
been discovered just on the eve of breaking out of their prison!"
It was the small, snappy under-officer who had appeared on the scene
outside the hut but a few minutes earlier, and who, discovering the
Sergeant there browbeating the unfortunate sentry, had turned upon him
like a dog, had snapped at his heels as it were, had changed the aspect
of affairs entirely, and had ended in putting the non-commissioned
officer under arrest, and in himself capturing those unlucky prisoners
who were hiding in the tunnel.
Doubtless it was a brilliant evening's work for him--work which might
even bring him reward--who knows?--might even, in the end, bring him
that Iron Cross which the Kaiser has been so fond of distributing. Men
in the ranks of the German army had received that reward for lesser
acts than that of the under-officer this evening; there are heroes in
the armies of the All-Highest Kaiser who have been decorated with that
Iron Cross for valour, and others who wear the emblem for deeds which
make the rest of civilization shudder. Yes, indeed, the under-officer
might well earn such reward, for he had shown acuteness, promptitude,
and dispatch in carrying out his duties.
"But what's this?" Henri and Stuart and Jules heard him say, a second
later, as his other hand came into view, groping along the floor of the
tunnel and plunging deep into the loose soil so recently pulled from
the roof above. "The tunnel ends abruptly, and above--what's
this?--above, the ruffians were making a hole. But this is strange,
for when I entered before there was no sign of such a thing. The
tunnel ended just here, as it does now, and the earth at its foot was
hard and beaten, while above it was hard as well, but shook and gave
out a hollow sound. What's this? Ah! A hole."
It was with amazement that his eyes fell upon the ragged edge of the
opening above, as the beams from his electric torch fell upon it. He
stumbled and struggled forward, and, rising to his feet, shot his hands
upward to grip the edge above him. He would, perhaps, have given vent
to a shout had not Stuart, lying immediately over the tunnel, in fact
right above the figure of the German, leaned down, and, stretching his
hands below him, gripped the German by the nape of the neck with one
hand, and the electric torch with the other, jerking the latter back
into the tunnel, where it lay with its beams flashing in the opposite
direction. He then proceeded to draw the German up towards him as one
draws the cork out of the neck of a bottle, to extricate him in spite
of his kicks and struggles; while that other hand, set free from the
torch, was clapped over his mouth, smothering any sounds of which the
under-officer was capable. Not that it was an easy matter to give vent
to a shout of alarm in such a position, for Stuart's huge fingers and
thumb gripped the German so fiercely and firmly about the neck, just
below his jaws, that movement of the latter was impossible, and the
very attempt to make a sound was excessively painful. Up then he came
slowly, struggling, his hands beating the earth and reaching up in the
endeavour to grip his assailant, his heavily shod feet lashing to and
fro and kicking clods of earth from the sides of the tunnel; up till
his head was clear of the opening, till almost half his body had been
extricated; and then, when Stuart, now on his feet and half upright,
had placed himself in a favourable position, suddenly the German was
shot back into the place from which he had just been dragged, shot back
with unexpectedness and violence, till he came with a crash against the
bottom of the tunnel, and, collapsing there, rolled backwards into it.
As one can imagine, though the under-officer had given vent to no
sound--no shout of warning--the noise of his coming through the tunnel,
the flash of his torch and its beams sweeping through the opening
above, had attracted the attention of the sentry. The man faced that
direction promptly, and brought his rifle to the ready. Then for a
while he waited, while Stuart was dragging the German upward, and,
indeed, until there came the heavy thud which told of the
under-officer's arrival at the bottom of the tunnel.
"What's that?" challenged the sentry. "Who goes there? Halt, and
declare yourself!"
"Fire!" whispered Henri, and, standing up, he cast first one stone and
then the other at the sentry, while Jules followed suit without
waiting, a loud cry of pain and the dull sound of a blow telling that
one of the missiles at least had hit the German.
"Now come!" said Stuart. "We're lucky in the fact that the fellow
hasn't fired his rifle, though he's shouting hard enough to rouse every
man in the camp, and will soon have them all about him. Which way, you
fellows? You know more about the business and the place than I do, for
I'm a stranger in these parts, and, bad luck to it, know precious
little of Germany and the Germans. Bad luck, did I say? when I've seen
far too much of them in these months past since I came to Ruhleben.
But what's the move? Which way do we turn? Where do we go? And how
are we going to get on for victuals?"
That was the worst of this sudden escape, this movement out of the camp
without calm thought and contemplation of the future. They had no
plans--not a single one--and they had no idea whither to go, or which
way to turn, nor where they might seek safety. True, Henri and Jules
had discussed the matter on many an occasion, and had, indeed, as we
know, been diligently, and with much self-sacrifice, hoarding up what
food they could--and in all conscience they had little enough of
it--and what money they could gather. But as to their course when once
in the open--that had seemed something so far in the distance, so
difficult to contemplate, so very unlikely, that they had given it but
the smallest consideration. And now they were face to face with the
difficulty and must act promptly.
"Of course the town's out of the question," said Henri, taking upon
himself to guide the party, for, indeed, as we have mentioned already,
he knew his Germany well, just as well almost as he could speak the
language, and both he and Jules were fluent. We have described them
earlier as typical Englishmen when taking a first glance at them; and
we have to declare that they were just as typically French when one had
the pleasure of making their acquaintance; but in the darkness, when no
one could see their spruce and dapper appearance--and how many German
youths can boast of being spruce and dapper?--when the voice alone
could give an indication of the nationality of the speaker, then both
Henri and Jules could pass muster as Germans with the greatest ease and
security. But Stuart, this big, raw-boned, healthy, red-faced
individual, was typically British in build, in gesture, and in action,
and when he spoke just as typically an offspring of the British
peoples. Blunt, direct, uncouth almost at times in his speech, he
couldn't, had he attempted to speak German--which he did at times, and
could make himself understood--have aped the guttural accents of the
Teuton. He despised the German thoroughly, detested him most
cordially, and perhaps it was characteristic of his bluntness that he
thoroughly detested his language. Thus, while in the darkness Henri
and Jules might hope to pass muster, in the case of Stuart there was
not the smallest prospect of this.
"We have got to keep clear of the towns, that's the first thing to be
remembered," continued Henri; "and my advice is that we stay in the
open, right in the country, hiding up in woods in the daytime and
marching during the night. For food we shall have to do just as best
we can; beg it if possible, steal it if necessary. As to our course,
it's not the time now, nor the place, in which to discuss the matter,
for the first thing to do is to put as great a distance as possible
between us and the camp. To-morrow, when the light comes, our guards
will send out a report broadcast, and it may be that they'll put
bloodhounds on our track and endeavour to follow us. So let's put the
best foot forward and march on. Any direction's good enough, so long
as it takes us away from Ruhleben."
Certainly any direction was good enough which would take them away from
the babel of shouts and noise which had now broken out in the camp
outside which they were lying, and which told plainly enough that
another alarm had been given. Indeed, if the noise created by the
discovery of the two prisoners in the depths of their tunnel had upset
Ruhleben, had broken in a moment, as it were, the monotony of the
existence of the unlucky individuals interned there now for so many
months, the commotion at that time, which had drawn Henri and Jules and
Stuart and many another to that hovel, termed a hut, in the corner
beneath which was the entrance to the tunnel, was nothing to the uproar
which now arose, to the shouts which echoed across the dreary camp, to
the reports of rifles which men, almost too aged to work, and employed
as guards, let off in every direction. There was the twang of bullets
in the air, while the darkness was punctuated by many a spot of flame,
which showed where the sentries were doing duty. That commotion
brought the Commandant flaring out of his quarters again, stamping his
feet with anger, bellowing with passion. It would also have brought
every one of the interned people out of his hut had not exit from them
after darkness been strictly prohibited, and almost certain to be
rewarded by a bullet. But guards were free to move about--those on
duty and their reliefs waiting in their barracks--and fifty or more
Germans can create quite a pandemonium when sufficiently excited.
As for sounds nearer to hand, they came in plenty from the corner of
the camp just within the barbed-wire fencing; for there the sentry who
had challenged, and who had been heavily struck by the missiles flung
by Jules and Henri, screamed with pain and terror. Indeed, he was
rather more frightened than hurt, though being hurt he made that an
excuse for his outcry. But it was from the depths of the tunnel that
the most ominous sounds were emitted. Shaken by the manner in which
the lusty Stuart had thrown him through the opening, half-stunned, and
not a little sick from the violent thump with which he had struck the
ground, yet clinging to his senses, stung to action by fierce
resentment of the treatment accorded him, and more still by the
knowledge that he had been outwitted, the under-officer--that short,
spare, dried-up individual who had snapped so vixenishly at the
sergeant--was spluttering with wrath, was mingling his shouts with
those of the sentry, and, as if that were not enough, had drawn his
revolver and was blazing away at nothing.
"Time to be going," said Henri, tapping Stuart on the back; for that
huge individual was leaning over the ragged opening leading into the
tunnel, ready to make another attack upon the German if need be. "Time
to be going, for in a little while men will be sent all round, and may
cut us off. Come along."
"Which way? Where? You'll lead, eh?" asked Stuart.
"Certainly! This way--any way--straight in front of us--follow our
noses," whispered Henri. "Certainly! Catch hold of my coat; Jules,
take hold of Stuart, and let's push on."
One doesn't live in a camp like Ruhleben, or, indeed, in any other
camp, without taking stock of one's immediate surroundings, without
spending whole hours in contemplating the scenery outside, in watching
things usually of little or no interest, and in finding relaxation in
beholding perhaps some figure in the distance, and wondering for
minutes together who it might be, where he or she had come from, and
whither the same individual was going. Thus it happened that without
any special effort Henri had noticed that a road passed near the camp
at the very corner where they had made their escape, and ran right
across the open into the distance. Where precisely it went, why
individuals made their way along it, and what was the destination of
those who traversed the route he was unable even to guess, and
questions to the sentry had received the usual gruff, if not emphatic,
refusals to answer.
"Bang straight on! We get on to the road in a little while," Henri
told his friends, speaking over his shoulder; "we should, of course,
keep to the open fields and make our way right across country, but it
would be precious difficult during the darkness, and we should get
along very much faster if we follow the road."
"Half a mo'--just wait a second," said Stuart, now that they had gained
the road. "Of course I am quite ready to trust myself to you, Henri,
for you and Jules are sensible sort of chaps, and we know each other
now thoroughly; besides, you've backed me up splendidly in this little
business. But put yourselves in the position of the Camp Commandant
and of his men. A bolt-hole has been discovered in the corner of the
camp, and there's a road near; now put two and two together, and it
isn't very difficult--even a German can do that," he added satirically,
contemptuously, if you like, for, as we have said before, the lusty
Stuart had but the lowest opinion of most Teutons. "What follows?
Just this: prisoners escaping find a road, and, knowing themselves to
be pursued, follow it. First moral, keep off the road; second moral,
find another; better still--make our escape in the very opposite
direction."
It was only solid sense, British sense, horse sense as they term it in
America, and, hearing him speak, Henri realized that fact immediately.
"Splendid!" he exclaimed enthusiastically, for he had a great opinion
of the Englishman; "of course that's the thing to do. Well then, I've
noticed that there's a road which turns away from this one a little
distance ahead, and no doubt there'll be another one breaking away from
that one. Let's sprint. A good fast run after life in a camp will be
no disadvantage."
As a matter of fact, they were not in such soft condition as one might
have anticipated, seeing that they had been confined within the
barbed-wire entanglements about Ruhleben for many months past. The
keenness and energy of youth, the fact that they had many companions,
had helped them to keep their muscles in tolerable order, for games had
been possible and football was quite a favourite. Hence a sprint along
that road was not beyond them, and, doubling their arms and setting off
at a good steady pace, they had soon contrived to put a mile between
them and their late prison; then, slowing down a little till they
discovered the other road, they turned into it and continued to run,
and in a little while were well away from Ruhleben. Half an hour later
they turned sharply to their left again, and, alternately running and
walking, covered some fifteen miles before the morning dawned. Waiting
till they had gained the top of a wooded hill, they plunged into a
thick copse which offered cover, and there, as the light came, they lay
down on its edge, able to survey the country all about them, feeling
tolerably secure, and, let us add, amazingly hungry.