And hither came also a little party of three from Holzminden Camp in Brunswick, transferred, as I have previously explained, as suspected persons to a camp of really reliable security. Major Gilbert, Lieutenant Ortweiler, and myself had been told one morning that we had an hour and a half in which to pack. We packed and went. Stralsund was like a rest cure. It is indeed a pleasant spot. A channel, narrow at the entrances, broadening to ninety yards in the middle, divides the islands. Standing on the bridge which spans the channel at its narrowest, one looks west to Stralsund town. Whether with the setting sun behind it or with the morning sun full on it, it is beautiful. Venice viewed from the sea could hardly be prettier. The dome of the Marianne Kirche dominates the town, and the bat-coloured sails of the fishing vessels could be just seen, with an occasional motor-boat, moving in the blue Sound. In Greater Danholm the chestnuts are magnificent. There is one avenue of trees which meet each other overhead as in a cathedral nave. And there was one little segregated, fenced-off spot which for no particular reason we called King Henry VIIIth’s Garden—the name seemed to suit. One could take half an hour walking round the camp. But it is not my intention by painting too glowing a picture to alienate my reader’s sympathy. The place was good, but German. The buildings were good, but had held Russians. The air was good, but there were smells. We had been long-time prisoners—veterans, we considered ourselves, in this horde of “eighteeners.” And it would be cold, very cold in winter. We had a fortnight’s holiday, revelling in the unexpected beauty, the much less uncomfortable beds with their extra sheet, the open-air sea bath in the mornings, the freedom and scope of movement, the almost latent wire, the inoffensiveness of the German personnel, the unobtrusiveness of the Commandant, the beer (liquorice, but still beer of a sort), the exchange of news with the new prisoners and the picking up of old threads, the sight of the sea from our landing window, the games on real grass.... And then, in quite a different sense, we began looking round. We learned that the authorities were quietly and politely confident that the place was escape-proof. They expected attempts. Oh! yes. “We know it is your duty. We should do it ourselves.” And conventionalities of the sort that are common when German officers of a decent type—and there were such on this island—find themselves in conversation with Englishmen. “But it cannot be done—no one has ever escaped from here. True, it might be easy to cut the wire and get on to the main part of the island, but we have our dogs. If you swim to the mainland you will be recognised and brought back. Even if you get across to Rügen you have to get off it and you would be missed. We have our seaplane to scour the sea. The ferry is guarded....” and so on.