River.]

Our greatest difficulty was when we struck the Lippe River. Our first
plan was to swim across, but we found that we had not the strength left
for this feat. We lost a day as a result. The second night we found a
scow tied up along the bank and got across that way.

[Sidenote: Rapid progress, though starving.]

By this time we were slowly starving on our feet, we were wet through
continuously, and such sleep as we got was broken and fitful. Before we
had been four days out we were reduced to gaunt, tattered, dirty
scarecrows. We staggered as we walked and sometimes one of us would drop
on the road through sheer weakness. Through it all we kept up our frenzy
for speed and it was surprising how much ground we forced ourselves to
cover in a night. And, no matter how much the pangs of hunger gnawed at
us, we conserved our fast dwindling supply of biscuit. Less than two
biscuits a day was our limit!

Finally we reached a point that I recognized from my previous attempt to
escape. It was about four miles from the border. We had two biscuits
left between us. The next day we feasted royally and extravagantly on
those two biscuits. No longer did we need to hoard our supplies, for the
next night would tell the tale.

[Sidenote: Safe past the German sentries.]

By the greatest good fortune night came on dark and cloudy. Not a star
showed in the sky. We crawled cautiously and painfully toward the
border. At every sound we stopped and flattened out. Twice we saw
sentries close at hand, but both times we got by safely. Finally we
reached what we judged must be the last line of sentries. We had crawled
across a ploughed field and reached a road lined on both sides with
trees where sentries were passing up and down.

"It's the border!" we whispered.

When the nearest sentry had reached the far end of his beat we doubled
up like jack-knives and dashed across that road, plunging through the
trees on the other side. Not a sound came from the sentries. We struck
across fields with delirious speed, we reeled along like drunken men,
laughing and gasping and sometimes reaching out for a mutual handshake.

[Sidenote: Across the border in Holland.]

Then we got a final scare. Marching up the road toward us was what
looked like a white sheet. Our nerves were badly shattered, and that
moving thing froze my blood, but it was a scare of brief duration. The
sheet soon resolved itself into two girls in white dresses, walking up
t