fty miles, but it was such rough work that it's probably
nearer five. But it can't be long to daylight. Then we shall know better."

We struggled to a drier hummock and lay down again. The rain had ceased,
and presently, while we lay watching for the first flicker of dawn in front
or on our left, an exclamation from Le Marchant brought me round with a
jerk, to find the sky softening and lightening right behind us. The ditches
and the darkness and our many falls had led us astray. Instead of going due
east we had fetched a compass and bent round to the north; instead of
leaving our prison we had circled round it. And as the shadows lightened on
the long dim flats, we saw in the distance the black ring of the stockade
on its little elevation.

"Let us get on," said Le Marchant, with a groan at the wasted energies of
the night.

"I believe we're safer here. If they seek us it will be farther away.
They'd never think we'd be such fools as to stop within a couple of miles
of the prison."

And, indeed, before I had done speaking, we could make out the tiny black
figures of patrols setting off along the various roads that led through the
swamps, and so we lay still, and watched the black figures disappear to the
east and south and north.

So long as we kept hidden I had no great fear of them, for the swamps were
honeycombed with hiding-places, and to beat them thoroughly would have
required one hundred men to every one they could spare.

"I'm not at all sure it's us they're after," I said, by way of cheer for us
both. "All that turmoil last night and the fire makes me think some of the
others in Number Three were on the same job."

"Like enough, but I don't see that it helps us much. Can we find anything
to eat?"

But we had come away too hurriedly to make any provision, and we knew too
little of the roots among which we lay to venture any of them. So we lay,
hungry and sodden, in spite of the sun which presently set the flats
steaming, and did not dare to move lest some sharp eye should spy us. We
could only hope for night and stars, and then sooner or later to come
across some place where food could be got, if it was only green grain out
of a field, for our stomachs were calling uneasily.

Twice during the day we heard guns at a distance, and that confirmed my
idea that others besides ourselves had escaped, and by widening the chase
it gave me greater hopes. But it was weary work lying there, and more and
more pain