SEEKING DEATH MORE THAN ESCAPE

In another instant the French officer who had been standing next to Dick attempted the same trick.  He had just gained the ground when the German lieutenant, turning his gaze from the corporal’s face, and glancing ahead, broke off in the middle of his instructions to cry out: 

“There’s a prisoner escaping!  Halt him or shoot him!”

Realizing that he was hopelessly caught, and trusting to better luck next time, the Frenchman held up his hands.

“Get back into the car,” ordered the German lieutenant.  “Corporal, take the lantern and see that all the prisoners are in there.”

As the corporal obeyed, the lieutenant looked in and nodded.

“There was no time for any to escape,” he remarked.  “We nipped the first one.  You are scoundrels when you try to disgrace me by escaping.  Just for the attempt of this comrade of yours, gentlemen, you shall have no breakfast in the morning.”

The door was moved quickly into place, the padlock snapped, and then the guard turned to other matters.

Not a French officer in that car but would sooner have died than betray the fact that Dick had slipped out of sight.  Though they themselves were still in the car, they prayed that he might find either safety from the Germans, or that better thing than captivity, death.

As for Captain Prescott, he had slipped into a field beyond.  When he halted to peer about he was perhaps sixty feet from the train.  Moving cautiously he made the distance another hundred feet.  Yet he did not dare to go far at present, nor rapidly.

“I’m out of the car, if nothing more,” Dick reflected, inhaling a deep breath of the foggy air.  “I shall always feel grateful to that German engineer.  His blowing off steam made noise enough so that my jump and my footsteps weren’t heard.”

One of Dick’s feet, moving exploringly, touched a stone.  Bending over and groping, he found three fair-sized stones.

“Good enough!” he thought, picking them up.  “Sooner or later, to-night, wandering around in an American uniform, I’m going to be heard and halted.  I’ll throw these stones at the sentry who tries to halt me, and then he’ll fire.  After he shoots there’ll be no German prison ahead for me!”

This wasn’t exactly a thought in the cheerful class, yet Prescott smiled.  More contented with his prospects he moved softly away.

For the first hundred feet from the embankment his shoes touched grass.  Then he came to the edge of a ploughed field.  Here he felt that he must proceed with even greater caution, for now most of the train noises had ceased and he feared to slip or stumble, and thus make a noise that might be carried on the still night air to the ears of the train guard.

However, he soon struck a smooth path leading through the ploughed ground, and now moved along a little faster.