A quarter of an hour later, a weird cry, something like that of a curlew or peewit, but not exactly either, came to our ears from the north-west near the river. It was repeated from immediately north of us, and then north-east. From there the cry seemed to come from the east, moving southwards, until at a point south-east of us it was repeated time after time for two or three minutes, until taken up again further to the south, eventually ending again at the river, to our south-west. I had heard rumours and talk about a system the Germans are supposed to have for guarding their frontiers from fugitives, while I was in prison. This system had been called a "fan" or "cordon." It now occurred to me that these bird-like cries had been all round us in a ring. It did not take much thinking to connect the Germans we had seen, the imitation cries, and our known presence in this district. The more we thought the more certain we felt that these Germans we had seen hurrying eastwards had been sent out expressly to form a fan-like formation, in which they hoped to hold us against the river till daylight should allow them to search the ground for us. The bird-like calls would be just the thing to indicate to the commander of this formation the exact whereabouts of his men and the continuity of the cordon, without being a suspicious fact to any hapless wretch caught inside, who did not happen to know the real notes of the birds imitated. What was to be done? Should we try and break through the cordon, northwards or eastwards, by striking across country? This plan did not commend itself to us, as we should have had to get through thick hedges and wade through dykes innumerable without making any noise at all, an impossibility on a still moon-lit night such as it was. We decided to wait till 1.30 a.m., to give them time to get sleepy. An hour's sleep in a ditch, and then do something, was our plan. _Monday, 2nd July._ Moving westwards a little, we came to a farm close by, and got the idea of hiding somewhere in a hay-loft and waiting till the next night, when perhaps no cordon would be round us, before attempting to cross the river. The farm was quite deserted, except for the cattle and horses, etc., which we could hear in the buildings. We tried now to open the doors of the barns and sheds, without avail. They had no locks, but open them we could not. We tried everywhere for a long time without the slightest success. At last our combined efforts forced a door open, and we got a nasty fright. A great pig galloped out past us and went off grunting into the darkness of the field. The inside of this building was no good, as it was a piggery and only held bare stalls, nearly all of which were already populated. A cart of the kind used to convey pigs to market next attracted Fox, and he got into it to try it as a hiding place.