I waited no longer. Standing up on the bench as if to put the bag on the rack, and taking hold of the rack with my left hand and a strap that hung from the top of the car with my right, I pulled myself up, shoved my feet and legs out of the window, and let go! There was a prayer on my lips as I went out and I expected a bullet between my shoulders, but it was all over in an instant. I landed on my left side and face, burying my face in the rock ballast, cutting it open and closing my left eye, skinning my hands and shins and straining my ankle. For a few moments I was completely knocked out, and if they shot at me through the window, in the first moments after my escape, I had no way of knowing. Of course, if they could have stopped the train right then, they could easily have recaptured me, but at the speed it was going and in the confusion which must have followed my escape, they probably didn't stop within half a mile from the spot where I lay. I came to within a few minutes, and when I examined myself and found no bones broken I didn't stop to worry about my cuts and bruises, but jumped up with the idea of putting as great a distance between me and that track as possible before daylight came. Still being dazed, I forgot all about the barbed-wire fence along the right-of-way and ran full tilt into it. Right there I lost one of my two precious pieces of bread, which fell out of my knapsack, but I could not stop to look for it then. The one thing that was uppermost in my mind was that for the moment I was free and it was up to me now to make the most of my liberty. VII CRAWLING THROUGH GERMANY The exact spot at which I made my desperate leap I don't know. Perhaps, after the war is over, some one on that train will be good enough to tell me, and then I may go back and look for the dent I must have made in the rock ballast. As I have said, I didn't stop very long that morning after I once regained my senses. I was bleeding profusely from the wounds caused by the fall, but I checked it somewhat with handkerchiefs I held to my face and I also held the tail of my coat so as to catch the blood as it fell and not leave telltale traces on the ground. Before I stopped I had gone about a mile. Then I took my course from the stars and found that I had been going just opposite to the direction I should be making, but I could not go back across the track there. Heading west, therefore, I kept this course for about two and a half hours, but as I was very weak from loss of blood I didn't cover very much ground in that time. Just before daylight I came to a canal which I knew I had to cross, and I swam it with everything I had on. This swim, which proved to be the first of a series that I was destined to make, taught me several things.