ful as regards our stomachs, which from crying came to clamour,
and from clamour to painful groanings, and a hollow clapping together of
their empty linings.

Not till nightfall did we dare to move, and very grateful we were that the
night was fine with a glorious show of stars. By them we steered due east,
but still had to keep to the marsh-lands and away from the roads. And now,
from lack of food, our hearts were not so stout, and the going seemed
heavier and more trying. It brought back to me the times we had in the
Everglades of Florida, and I told Le Marchant the story, but it did not
greatly cheer him.

Once that night, in our blind travelling, we stumbled out into a road, and
while we stood doubtful whether we might not dare to use it for the
easement of our bodies, there came along it the tramp of men and the click
of arms, and we were barely in the ditch, with only our noses above water,
when they went noisily past us in the direction of the prison.

We made a better course that night, in the matter of direction at all
events, but our progress was slow, for we were both feeling sorely the lack
of food, and our way across the flats was still full of pitfalls, into
which we fell dully and dragged ourselves out doggedly. We had been thirty
hours without a bite, and suffered severe pains, probably from the marsh
water we had drunk and had to drink.

"Two hundred kegs of fine French cognac we dropped overboard outside Poole
Harbour," groaned Le Marchant one time, "and a mouthful of it now--!" Ay, a
mouthful of it just then would have been new life to us. We stumbled on
like machines because our spirits willed it so, but truly at times the
weariness of the body was like to master the spirit.

"We must come across something in time," I tried to cheer him with--feeling
little cheer myself.

"If it's only the hole they'll find our bodies in," he said down-heartedly.

And a very short while after that, as though to point his words, we fell
together into a slimy ditch, and it seemed to me that Le Marchant lay
unable to rise.

I put my arms under him, and strove to lift him, and felt a shock of horror
as another man's arms round him on the other side touched mine, and I found
another man trying to lift him also.

"Bon Dieu!" I gasped in my fright, and let the body go, as the other jerked
out the same words, and released his hold also, and the body fell between
us.

"Dieu-de-dieu, Carre! But I thought this was yo