XI UNDER ESCORT 120 XII THE STADTVOGTEI AND “SOLITARY” 126 XIII CLASSES AND MASSES IN THE STADTVOGTEI 146 XIV PRISON LIFE AND OFFICIALS 154 PART II XV A FRESH ATTEMPT 179 XVI FROM BERLIN TO HALTERN 190 XVII WESTWARD HO! 202 XVIII THE GAME IS UP 218 PART III XIX FOOTING THE BILL 233 XX RUHLEBEN AGAIN 251 XXI THE DAY 265 XXII ORDER OF MARCH 292 XXIII THE ROAD THROUGH THE NIGHT 304 XXIV CROSSING THE EMS 319 XXV THE LAST LAP 333 XXVI FREE AT LAST 348 PART I CHAPTER I THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE The date was April 7, 1916. The fat German warder backed out of my cell, a satisfied smile on his face; the door swung to, the great key clicked in the lock, and I was alone. Prison once more! And only a bare three miles away was the frontier for which I had striven so hard--the ditch and the barbed wire that separated Germany, and all that that word means, from Holland, the Hook, the London boat, and freedom. The game was lost. That was the kernel of the situation as it presented itself to me, sitting on my bed in the narrow, dark cell. Vreden, where I thus found myself in prison, is a little town hardly three miles from the Dutch frontier, in the Prussian province of Westphalia. So near--and indeed a good deal nearer--had I got to liberty! Twenty-four hours before, my first attempt to escape from Germany--which might be described with some justification as my third--had failed, and instead of being a free man in a neutral country, I was still a British civilian prisoner of war. Apart from the overwhelming sense of failure which oppressed me, I was not exactly physically comfortable. To start with, I wanted a change of clothing and a real bath. I had not had my boots off--except during several hours when I was walking in bare feet for the sake of silence--for over eight days, and for almost the same length of time I had not even washed my hands. The change of clothing was out of the question. The bath--One does not feel as if one has had a bath after an ablution in a tin basin holding a pint of water, with a cake of chalky soap the size of a penny-piece, and a towel which, but for texture, would have made a tolerable handkerchief. And no water to be spilled on the floor of the cell, mind you! My prison bed was an old, wooden “civilian” one with a pile of paillasses on it, and the usual two blankets. It was fairly comfortable to lie on, as long as the numerous indigenous population left you alone, which they rarely did.