The man with the reddish hair followed me to the office of the Holland-America Line, where I made application for a reservation on the boat which would sail in a week or ten days.  From there I went to a small restaurant.  He seemed satisfied and left me, whereupon I followed him.  He hurried to the large Cafe Central, stepped straight to a table in the front room, which is level with the street, and seated himself beside a thin, dark German of the intellectual type who appeared to be awaiting him.  From my seat in the shadows of the higher room I watched with amusement the increasingly puzzled expression on the face of the intellectual German while the man with the reddish hair unfolded his tale.  When they parted my curiosity caused me to trail after the thin, dark man.  He went straight to the German Legation.

For two days I nervously paced up and down the sands at Scheveningen looking out upon the North Sea and waiting for the call.  It came one short drizzly afternoon.  The Germans, of course, knew the whereabouts of the vessel on which I should embark for England, though it is highly improbable that they knew the sailing time, and they did not know when I should go on it.

I did everything possible to throw any possible spies off the trail as I made my way in the dark to a lonely wharf on the Maas River where I gave the password to a watchman who stepped out of a black corner near the massive gates which opened to the pier.

I went aboard a little five hundred ton vessel with steam up, and stood near two other men on the narrow deck, where I watched in considerable awe the silent preparations to cast away.

A man stepped out of the cabin.  “I presume, sir, that you are the American journalist,” he said.  He explained that he was the steward.  From the bridge came the voice of the captain, “We can give them only a few minutes more,” he said.

Two minutes of silence, broken only by the gentle throbbing of the engines.  Then from the blackness near the street gate came the sound of hurrying feet.  I could make out three stumbling figures, apparently urged along by a fourth.  “Who are they?” I asked the steward.

“They must be the three Tommies who escaped from Germany.  Brave lads they are.  A couple more days and we’ll have them hack in England.”

“A couple of days?” I exclaimed.  “Why, it’s only eight hours to the Thames estuary, isn’t it?”

“Eight hours in peace time; and eight hours for Dutch boats now—­when the Germany don’t kidnap them away to Zeebrugge.  But the course to the Thames is not our course.  The old fourteen-hour trip to Hull often takes us forty now.  Every passage is different, too.  It isn’t only on the sea that the Germans try to bother us; they also keep after us when we are in port here.  Only yesterday the Dutch inspectors did us a good turn by arresting five spies monkeying around the boat—­three Germans and two Dutchmen.”