l outfit we were ready, except that we lacked a sufficient
store of food. However, there was no help for that.

The laager was a twelve-foot-high barbed wire enclosure, eighty feet
wide by three hundred long, with the hut occupying the greater part of
the central space. There was sufficient room below the bottom wire to
permit the trained camp dogs to get in and out at us.

They patrolled the four-foot lane that enclosed the laager and
wandered up and down it, their tongues out, always on the alert. They
were as well confined as we were, since the outer wall of wire was
built down close to the ground. They were very savage and seemed
instinctively to regard us as enemies; as all good German dogs should.

The sworn evidence of prisoners exchanged since my escape mentions
that in one case an imbecile Belgian was daily led out to the fields,
wrapped up in several layers of clothes and then set upon by the dogs
under the guidance of their guards; this was for the better
instruction of the dogs.

At each corner of the laager there hung an arc light. The sphere of
light from those at the end did not quite meet and so left a small
shadow in the center of the end fence.

As soon as night came we arranged that six other men should walk to
and fro from the end of the hut to the shadow at the wire, as though
for exercise. Others, ourselves included, clustered round the end of
the hut. I watched my chance, and when the moment seemed favorable,
fell into step beside the promenaders.

We swung boldly out, intent apparently, on nothing. Our arrival at the
inner wire synchronized with that of one of the guards beyond the
outer wire. We turned about without appearing to have seen him. Still
walking briskly, we reached the hut and turned again. The guard's back
was now turned; he was walking away. At his present rate of travel he
should be twenty yards off when we next reached the wire. We dared not
chance suspicion by slackening our gait. My heart stopped.

As we reached the shadow I fell prone and lay motionless. No dogs were
in sight. Niagara pounded in at my ears but no hostile sound indicated
that I had been observed. I dragged myself carefully through and under
the clearance left for the dogs, until my cap brushed the lower wires
of the main and outer fence. My feet still projected beyond the inner
wire into the main enclosure so that on their next trip one of my
comrades inadvertently touched my foot, startling me.

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