No one who has gone through it needs to be told about the misery of sleepiness.  I fought against it—­I pulled open my eyes—­I set my will with all the force I could command, but in spite of all I could do, my eyes would close and I would fall over, and in the fall would awaken and go on, only to fall again.  At last we stopped and lay down, sorry to lose so much of the darkness, but the cold soon awakened us, and, chilled and shivering, with numb fingers, we struggled to our feet and went on.  But when, with the walking, we were warmed again, with the warmth came the sleepiness.

At dawn we crept into a thick bush, but the ground was damp and cold, and our sleepiness had left us.  We ate some of our cold roast potatoes, and tried to sleep, for we dreaded to spend another night like the last one.  In the afternoon the sun came out and warmed the air, so we had a fairly good sleep and started away at nightfall.

The night was clear and starlight, so the peat-bog which we encountered did not bother us so much, for we could see the holes and ridges.  After the bog, we came into a settlement, but the people were in villages and had their cows stabled, so there was no chance for thirsty and hungry travellers.  To the north we could see the huge searchlights above Oldenburg, and we thought of the cells—­and shuddered!  But our hunger was making us cold again, and we determined to go into the next village we came to, to find some apples.

The first one we came to was a large one, and compactly built.  The night was lit by the stars, and therefore not quite so good for our purpose, but we had to have something.  We cautiously entered a garden gate which some one had obligingly left open, but when we got in, we found that the trees were high, and apparently well looked-after, for not an apple could be found!  We were only a few yards from the house, behind whose darkened windows the family slept, not knowing that the alien enemy were so near.

We slipped out of the open gate—­we could see now why it had been left open—­and went into the next garden—­with the same result.  Every apple had been gathered.  We started down the street again, walking cautiously on the grass, and slipping along as quickly as possible.  We carried the sacks, which we had split open, over our shoulders, and as they were of a neutral shade, they were not so easily seen as our dark-blue suits would have been.

Suddenly there was the sound of a door opening, ahead of us, on the other side of the street, and two soldiers came out!  We lay flat on the street where we were, and “froze.”  The sacks which were wrapped about us helped to conceal us, or at least made us look less like men.  The soldiers passed along the middle of the street, chatting and laughing; we could hear their spurs clanking!  Coming out of the light had probably dulled their sight, and they did not see us.  We lay there until their footsteps had died away.  Then we got up, and got out!