The first morning the Commandant addressed us, through an interpreter.  He told us he had heard about us.  There was dead silence at that; we were pretty sure we knew what he had heard.  Then he told us that some of us had refused to work and some had tried to escape; he was grieved to hear these things!  He hoped they would not happen again.  It was foolish to act this way, and would meet with punishment (we knew that).  If we would retain his friendship, we must do as we were told.  There was no other way to retain his friendship.  He repeated that.  Some of us felt we could get along without his friendship better than without some other things.  We noticed from the first that he didn’t seem sure of himself.

Then came roll-call!

None of us like the thought of getting out to work in this horrible climate, cold, dark, and rainy, and the roll-call brought out the fact that we had very few able-bodied men.  He had a list of our names, and we were called in groups into an office.  Bromley and I gave our occupations as “farmers,” for we hoped to be sent out to work on a farm and thus have an opportunity of getting away.

Most of the Canadians were “trappers,” though I imagine many of them must have gained their experience from mouse-traps.  Many of the Englishmen were “boxers” and “acrobats.”  There were “musicians,” “cornetists,” and “trombone artists,” “piano-tuners,” “orchestra leaders,” “ventriloquists,” “keepers in asylums,” “corsetiers,” “private secretaries,” “masseurs,” “agents,” “clerks,” “judges of the Supreme Court,” and a fine big fellow, a Canadian who looked as if he might have been able to dig a little, gave his occupation as a “lion-tamer.”

The work which we were wanted to do was to turn over the sod on the peat bogs.  It looked as if they were just trying to keep us busy, and every possible means was tried by us to avoid work.

The “lion-tamer” and three of his companions, fine, vigorous young chaps, stayed in bed for about a week, claiming to be sick.  They got up for a while every afternoon—­to rest.  The doctor came three times a week to look us over, but in the intervening days another man, not a doctor, who was very good-natured, attended to us.

One day nine went on “sick parade”; that is, lined up before the medical examiner and were all exempted from work.  The next day there were ninety of us numbered among the sick, and we had everything from galloping consumption to ingrowing toe-nails, and were prepared to give full particulars regarding the same.  But they were not asked for, for armed guards came in suddenly and we were marched out to work at the point of the bayonet.

Steve Le Blanc, one of the party, who was a splendid actor, spent the morning painfully digging his own grave.  He did it so well, and with such faltering movements and so many evidences of early decay, that he almost deceived our own fellows.  He looked so drawn and pale that I was not sure but what he was really sick, until it was all over.  When he had the grave dug down to the distance of a couple of feet, the guard stopped him and made him fill it in again, which he did, and erected a wooden cross to his own memory, and delivered a touching funeral oration eulogizing the departed.