On Wednesday afternoon, 20th June, they had left Schwarmstedt camp with a fatigue party detailed for tree-felling, disguised as British soldiers. The Germans of course did not realise that two of the party were really officers, but they were naturally bound to find out the deception which had been practised on them on the return of the fatigue party to camp. The fatigue party broke up and scattered about while working at their tree-felling job, and it was not possible for the German escort to keep a watch on all and every soldier at the same time. Accordingly these two, nicely judging their chance, slipped away when the Boches were looking in the other direction. It did not take them long to get some distance away, and that night they approached the river Aller with the object of effecting a crossing. On nearing the railway bridge they had discovered an ambush waiting for them, and consequently cleared away from that area. Striking the river some distance up-stream, they made a rough raft from wooden palings, and putting their food and clothes on it swam it across. It was here that Fox discovered that his companion was far from being a strong swimmer. Therefore Fox, who had not entirely recovered from the injuries he had received in a previous attempt to escape by jumping from a train, had to swim the raft backwards and forwards several times by himself until all the food and clothing had been transported across. The raft was not a large one or very buoyant, which resulted in much of the food being destroyed. Fox also assisted Blank to cross, so had plenty of swimming to do. After crossing this river, they had pushed rapidly on and crossed another by a bridge, without apparently getting into any trouble. They reached their hiding-place during the early hours of Thursday morning and had remained there all day, drying their goods and chattels. CHAPTER VII THE CROSSING OF THE WESER We had decided to begin the night's march at 10 o'clock should it be possible to do so. When we started it was not far off that hour, and in consequence was still fairly light. As there was an old well in the field at the side of which we had been hidden all day, we went to it in hopes of finding water. This we were fortunate enough to get. It was the kind of water that would only be drunk by cattle and escaped prisoners. After filling our water bottles we commenced our march westwards. Very soon we struck a rather wild stretch of country and were startled by the sight of fireworks not far from us. After various rockets and Roman candles had fizzled themselves out, we came to the conclusion that this display constituted no additional risk to us, and pushed ahead. This stretch of rough country began to take a slope, and not long after we began the ascent of this incline we debouched on to an open plain. The weather had begun to look threatening about half an hour previously. Now it was clear to us that we were in for a wetting.