In order that he should pass muster during the morning count also we had arranged that he should be sitting at my table with his back to the door, shaving, before the sergeant came. If he lathered his face well and turned round only very slightly when the sergeant called my name, the dodge would work all right. W. appointed a proxy in the same way. Two other men saw that we were entered three times a day in the sick list. In payment for this service they shared our rations between them! We also made arrangements for heading off the doctor in case he should appear in the hut and ask for his patients. We reckoned that by these arrangements we should gain half a day, at the most a whole day, before our flight was discovered. But, as we learned later, our comrades played their parts so well that the English did not know of our escape till four days after. And then it was only through an unlucky accident, for which our friends were not responsible. During the day von Spiegel organised for the evening a regular series of 'feint attacks,' which were absolutely necessary if our attempt was to succeed. For each one of the several sentries who guarded the camp, a few officers and men were told off. Their whole duty was, during the time the court was being rolled, to attract the attention of the Tommies in their neighbourhood, so that the latter should forget their duties for a few minutes. Special measures had to be taken in order to distract the attention of the guards nearest to us. In one corner a couple of officers, after an exchange of words, were to start fighting; at another corner an officer was to give a lecture, supplemented by pictures; at the third corner orderlies were to give an acrobatic display, etc. To crown all, our bandmaster arranged to give an open-air concert in the evening, which, if our absence had not been discovered before tattoo, was to end up with the tune, 'Good-bye, friends; to horse! to horse!' CHAPTER XXVII THE ESCAPE When all these details had been arranged I went just before the evening muster--the last which I hoped to attend here--to the commandant and submitted for his approval a sketch which I had made for a theatre curtain. He was quite pleased with it and also with my assurance that my health was now so much improved that I hoped shortly to open our theatre. The good man really believed that the theatre was my only interest. How was he to know that I intended to give that same evening my first and only performance, and that I was wearing the costume for the part under my uniform at that very moment?