It was always a puzzle to us afterwards how we could have passed through that time so light-heartedly. We saw our comrades, suddenly stricken with the disease, stagger off to hospital, a day or two afterwards we saw their corpses flung on to the sledge and hurried away to be buried with less ceremony than a dog. Or, if they came back, it was as broken and crippled men, shadows of their former selves. We knew that any moment the same thing might happen to us. And yet we were outwardly as merry as the day was long, and we were never without a song or a jest on our lips. That peculiar numbness of prison life, which I mentioned in my last chapter, kept us from feeling our position too acutely. But when everything was over, a strange horror of it all took possession of us, and we could not bear to look back. One incident stands out especially in my memory. It was months after the epidemic had finished. We had just been celebrating Christmas; the dinner had been excellent, probably far better than any of our families at home had been able to procure, and we were in that warm and comfortable frame of mind which a good Christmas dinner usually brings about. Suddenly some one observed, “Why, of all us ten, Price is the only one who didn’t get fleck-typhus.” Our talk and laughter instantly stopped, and our evening’s amusement was killed. Once more the grave seemed lo open at our feet, and Death to take his place beside us, a familiar guest. CHAPTER VIII CAMOUFLAGE [SN: TEACHING ENGLISH] A strange turn of Fortune’s wheel delivered me from the worst of the epidemic. There was at Stretensk an officers’ camp, jealously guarded, to which ordinary prisoners were not allowed access. The Hungarian officers, when they heard of me, petitioned the colonel in command that I might be allowed to go and give them lessons in English. The colonel refused even to consider it. Then one day a Hungarian officer came to me with the following proposal: We will transfer you to our camp by putting you down on the list of officers’ servants; once you are with us, however, you will live as an officer and be treated quite as one of ourselves. I lost no time in accepting, was immediately transferred, and became for the Russians an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. At that time no letters had arrived from home, the Red Cross work was still unorganized, and very few prisoners knew of the existence of Frau von Hanneken’s organization, so that there was a great dearth of amusements, and people were only too eager to learn English. I soon had five classes a day. I had no grammars and no books of any sort to teach from and had to make up every lesson out of my own head. But the hard work was an undisguised blessing, it enabled me to forget where I was, and the days began to pass more quickly.