There was no sound or sign of wardership.  It seemed as though what I had hardly dared to hope had come to pass,—­as though, in a word, that urgent call to the other side of the enclosure, to forestall an escape or assist at the fire, had bared this side of guards.

We crouched there among the sharp points, listening intently; then, taking our lives in our hands, we dropped the hammock on the outside of the palisade and slipped gently down.

My heart was beating a tattoo as loud as that in the soldiers’ quarters, as we sped across the black space which had baffled us so long, and not another sound did we hear save the splashing of the rain.

My hammock helped us over the outer palisade in the same way as the other, and we stood for a moment in the rain and darkness, panting and shaking,—­free men.

We made for the void in front, with no thought but of placing the greatest possible distance between ourselves and the prison in the shortest possible time.  We plunged into bogs and scrambled through to the farther side, eager bundles of dripping slime, and sped on and on through the rain and darkness—­free men, and where we went we knew not, only that it was from prison.

For a time the flicker of the burning house showed us where the prison lay, and directed us from it.  But this soon died down, and we were left to make our own course, with no guide but the drenching rain.  We had headed into it when we loosed from the palisade, and we continued to breast it.

No smaller prize than freedom, no weaker spur than the prison behind would have carried men through what we underwent that night.  We ran till our breath came sorely, and then we trudged doggedly, with set teeth, and hands clenched, as though by them we clung to desperate hope.  Twice when we plunged into black waters we had to swim, and Le Marchant was not much of a swimmer.  But there I was able to help him, and when we touched ground we scrambled straight up high banks and went on.  And the darkness, if it gave us many a fall, was still our friend.

But my recollections of that night are confused and shadowy.  It was one long plunge through stormy blackness, water above, water below, with tightened breath and shaking limbs, and the one great glowing thought inside that we were free of the cramping prison, and that now everything depended on ourselves.

Scarce one word did we speak, every breath was of consequence.  Hand in hand we went, lest in that blackness of darkness we should lose one another and never come together again.  For the thick streaming blackness of that night was a thing to be felt and not to be forgotten.  Never had I felt so like a lost soul condemned to endless struggle for it knew not what.  For whether we were keeping a straight course, or were wandering round and round, we had no smallest idea, and we had not a single star to guide us.

It was terribly hard travelling.  When we struck on tussocks of the wiry grass we were grateful, but for the most part we were falling with bone-breaking jerks into miry pitfalls, or tumbling into space as we ran, and coming up with a splash and a struggle in some deep pool or wide-flowing ditch.