ler ones. The _Times_ said
it was a great victory for the Germans. The last we doubted and the
first we knew to be untrue, since some of the ships they claimed to
have sunk had been destroyed previous to our capture, nine months
before. It was in the _Times_, too, that we first heard of Kitchener's
end. We could not believe it, and for a month laughed at the guard's
insistence on the story, until one day a post card arrived from
England, saying: "K. of K. is gone." That was a terrible blow to us,
for to the British soldier; Kitchener was the tangible expression of
the might of his Empire.

Some of our party of eleven British had been prisoners since Mons and
they were in a very bad way. The poor food, the lack of the
fundamental necessities of the human frame, the terrible monotony of
the continual barbed wire, the same faces round them, mostly
unfriendly, all combined to have a most depressing effect, not only
upon their bodies, but upon their minds. Many of them will never be of
any use again. Compared to Ladysmith, when that place was besieged in
the South African War, the latter, terrible though it was, was far and
away better than this, even if we did live on horse meat at the last
in Ladysmith.

There was a certain amount of vice here, induced by the life. A kilted
Highlander was accused of having fathered a child in a German family,
where he had been employed. We did not learn the facts of the case;
but such, at least, was camp gossip and it served to detract
materially from the habitual despondency of our lot.

CHAPTER XVI

THE THIRD ESCAPE

Saving Up for the Day--A Special Brand--Watchful Waiting--Off
Again--Why the Man in the Moon Laughed--A German Idyll--The
Narrow Escapes.

Simmons and I had been planning on another escape ever since our
recapture. So we kept on our good behaviour, while we saved up food
for _Der Tag_. We had hitherto refused to work, as had the remaining
Britishers, but in order to keep ourselves fit; we finally volunteered
to carry the noon ration of soup out to the Russians who worked on the
moor. Our job consisted of carrying an immense can of soup, swung high
on a pole from our shoulders, out to the workers, under guard of
course. Starting at eleven each day and, by permission of the guard,
occasionally resting, we were usually back by one o'clock. Each day we
saved a portion of our food. We wanted twenty days' rations each,
estimating that it would take us that l