We found nothing remarkable that night and made our way back to bed again, intending to renew our search next night. Night after night we repeated these excursions, and were once within a hair's breadth of being discovered. The 'Visiting Rounds' lit up the chapel inside just as we were about to cover up the opening with the plank. There we stood as stiff as mummies, with our faces turned to the entrance, carrying the whole weight of the heavy oak seat on our heads, for in our hurry we had not had time to replace it in its old position. One of the soldiers actually turned the light on our faces for several seconds. Then the heavy door was slammed and next moment we heard the 'Tommies' continue their rounds. Once again luck had been on our side. Probably the men had just turned out of their bunks and were really half asleep as they stumbled through the camp. By the time they got to our beds we were under the clothes, and we snored loudly when the same lamp was held to our faces which had almost betrayed us a few minutes earlier. After about a fortnight's work we were unwillingly forced to the conclusion that our hopes had been unfounded. There was not the slightest indication that this massive wall contained an entrance to a tunnel. Several determined attempts to loose one of the big stones had to be given up as hopeless for want of necessary tools. In any case we should have had to desist, for a few days later one of our comrades, Naval-Lieutenant Prondczindsky, was caught while attempting to escape, and the guards again became very strict. It was a pity that Prondczindsky's plan did not succeed.[18] He tried to cross the barbed-wire entanglement, which was eight or nine yards deep, by means of a board which he had made. He had spent nearly five months putting together a sort of box-like structure about seven yards long, eight inches wide, and four inches deep, made from the wood of cigar-boxes. Big pieces of timber were unobtainable in the camp, and he had calculated with mathematical precision the carrying capacity of his plank. To increase our difficulties, the guard was now increased by twenty men in consequence of this attempt. As the winter was coming on our chances became still smaller, for now there was nothing in the fields to satisfy one's hunger in case of necessity. The daily camp rations were getting visibly smaller in consequence of the activity of the submarine war, so that it was difficult now to save up even a week's food. Even bribery helped us little, for it often happened that English soldiers, with whom we were for certain reasons on good terms, came to us, who had so little, and begged a piece of bread because their own rations had become so short.