g, but if he felt as he said, it would be
better for him not to come, and already I could see that Edwards, who
was in the group of strollers, had dropped on his stomach and was
filing the lower wire of the inner fence, and when the wire broke he
crawled through to the other fence.

I joined the party of strollers then, and walking toward the fence,
could see what Edwards was doing.

With his left hand he held the bottom wire and filed it close to the
post, which did much to deaden the sound, but when the wire broke, to
my strained ears the crack was loud enough to alarm the guard. But
the sound of our voices must have covered it over, for all went well.

We walked back again leisurely, though to my excited imagination the
sound of the filing deadened every other sound. We were back to the
fence again when I heard the whang of the second wire, and at that I
dropped to the ground and began to crawl after Edwards.

The light from the arc-lights caught the horseshoes on the heels of
Edwards's boots, and they flashed to my eyes and seemed to me to
shine like the headlights of an engine! It seemed to me as if the
guards must see them.

On he went--on--and on I followed, and behind me came Bromley. I
could hear him breathe above the beating of my own heart.

Crawling is a slow and terrible way to travel when every instinct
cries out to run. But for about twenty yards we crawled like
snakes--changing then to the easier method of creeping on hands
and knees.

Then three shots rang out, and it seemed as if our hearts stopped
beating--but we kept on going! Our first thought was, of course, that
we had been discovered. But no other sound came to us, and, looking
back to the _Lager_, we could still see the men moving carelessly
about.

The bog was traversed by many ditches, and had a flat but uneven
surface, with tufts of grass here and there. It gave us no shelter,
but the winter night had fallen, and we were glad of the shelter
afforded by the darkness. We knew the moon would be up before long,
and we wanted to be as far away from the camp as possible before that
happened.

I had gone out to work for a couple of days, to get a knowledge of
the country, and I knew from my map that there was a railway at the
edge of the bog, and as this would be the place where they would
expect to catch us, we wanted to get past it as soon as possible. But
the ditches, filled with water cold as ice, gave us great trouble.
Generally we