A few hours later, German officers came in hot haste to the manufacturer, and, in a frenzy of rage and excitement, made him accompany them to the canal. There a great crowd had gathered about the old foreman, who was under arrest, and threatened with death. He appeared stupidly indifferent to the menaces and curses heaped upon him by the infuriated Teutons, merely repeating over and over: “I could not help it!—An accident!—I did my best!” For some moments my friend, dazed by the reigning confusion, was unable to understand what it was all about, until, led by an officer to the canal bank, he saw the cause of their rage. He was so much affected by amusement mingling with a deeper emotion that a lump rose to his throat, and he could not speak. The old foreman, as though by accident, had managed to let drop the hook of his great iron crane just as a boat, carrying a vast German war-cargo, was passing by. It caught the boat so firmly by the nose that, in his pretended efforts to free it, he not only overturned the bulky vessel, but dragged down his crane, which, with the boat, sank into the canal, blocking it against all navigation for nearly five weeks! He did this at the risk of his life, and only his able pretence of stupidity, and the manufacturer’s representation that he was in his dotage, won for him a term of imprisonment instead of the extreme penalty. The brave passage of young Belgians over the frontier to join their army caused the barriers of our prison to be more closely guarded. Those who still ventured to cross—and there were many even after the deadly electric wires had been installed!—did so with scarcely a chance for their lives. Boys as young as seventeen ran the gauntlet of that “death-zone,” and many passed it in safety after incredible endurance and suffering. A Belgian woman, whose two sons made a daring attempt to pass, told us their experience, related to her in part by one of their companions, obliged by illness to return; and in part by the German officer who coldly informed her of their fate. After skulking for four days and nights under cover of a wood in the Campine, devoid of food, save what little they carried in their pockets, and exposed to incessant autumn rains, they at last reached a canal lying between them and Dutch territory. Having no other means of crossing, they plunged at night into the black water, and struck out for the opposite shore. The mother, not hearing of their capture, which would have been widely published, concluded, after several days, that they had got over safely. But one morning she was startled by the visit of a German sub-officer who came to announce that one of her sons had been shot while swimming the canal. As she pretended ignorance of his intention to cross, the information was considered sufficient punishment, especially when, several days later, the tidings of her other son’s death in like manner was conveyed to her by the same pitiless messenger.