Just at the last minute the fourth man, Edwards’s friend, came to me and said:—­

“Sim, we will never make it.  The guards will see us, and they’ll shoot us—­you know they’ll just be glad to pot us to scare the others.  It is madness to think we can get away from here with these lights shining.”

I told him I thought we had a chance, but did not try to persuade him.  Of course, we all knew we were taking a grave risk, but then, why shouldn’t we?  It was the only way out.

“Don’t go, Sim,” he said earnestly.

I told him we were going, but if he felt as he said, it would be better for him not to come, and already I could see that Edwards, who was in the group of strollers, had dropped on his stomach and was filing the lower wire of the inner fence, and when the wire broke he crawled through to the other fence.

I joined the party of strollers then, and walking toward the fence, could see what Edwards was doing.

With his left hand he held the bottom wire and filed it close to the post, which did much to deaden the sound, but when the wire broke, to my strained ears the crack was loud enough to alarm the guard.  But the sound of our voices must have covered it over, for all went well.

We walked back again leisurely, though to my excited imagination the sound of the filing deadened every other sound.  We were back to the fence again when I heard the whang of the second wire, and at that I dropped to the ground and began to crawl after Edwards.

The light from the arc-lights caught the horseshoes on the heels of Edwards’s boots, and they flashed to my eyes and seemed to me to shine like the headlights of an engine!  It seemed to me as if the guards must see them.

On he went—­on—­and on I followed, and behind me came Bromley.  I could hear him breathe above the beating of my own heart.

Crawling is a slow and terrible way to travel when every instinct cries out to run.  But for about twenty yards we crawled like snakes—­changing then to the easier method of creeping on hands and knees.

Then three shots rang out, and it seemed as if our hearts stopped beating—­but we kept on going!  Our first thought was, of course, that we had been discovered.  But no other sound came to us, and, looking back to the Lager, we could still see the men moving carelessly about.

The bog was traversed by many ditches, and had a flat but uneven surface, with tufts of grass here and there.  It gave us no shelter, but the winter night had fallen, and we were glad of the shelter afforded by the darkness.  We knew the moon would be up before long, and we wanted to be as far away from the camp as possible before that happened.

I had gone out to work for a couple of days, to get a knowledge of the country, and I knew from my map that there was a railway at the edge of the bog, and as this would be the place where they would expect to catch us, we wanted to get past it as soon as possible.  But the ditches, filled with water cold as ice, gave us great trouble.  Generally we could jump them, but sometimes they were too wide and we had to scramble through the best we could.