Subsequent events appeared to justify this view. Attempts were made, and failed in quick succession. In each case the objective was the same, though aimed at by different methods—the open sea and the Danish island of Bornholm or Danish territory elsewhere. Two officers, yachtsmen born, cut the wire one night, swam out towards Rügen, boarded an empty fishing vessel about 200 yards out and got clean away. They stranded off the north-west corner of Rügen and were recaptured. Three others commandeered a boat which had been left unpadlocked in the channel, rowed to the mainland, and separated. Two were recaptured immediately, the third was at large some days and was eventually arrested some way down the coast. I did not learn his story. Another party of three attempted to paddle over to Rügen on a cattle trough. They selected a stormy night, were upset fifty yards out of the channel, and got back, unobserved, with difficulty, and, as one of them could not swim, rather luckily. So far as the German precautions went, the net upshot of these attempts was that stringent orders were issued about leaving boats in the channel or on the shores of the island unpadlocked. For the rest, the Commandant was satisfied with his second line of defence, the water, which was moreover (it was now mid-September) growing daily colder and more unattractive. Such was the position when the Holzminden trio began to put their heads together. I do not think any of us seriously entertained the idea of an escape by water. We were all hopeless landsmen, and Gilbert at any rate could not swim. A “stunt” by sea necessitated a combination of luck, pluck, opportunism, and, above all, watermanship. Our armament, such as it was, was of a different kind. We all knew German, Gilbert and I indifferently, Ortweiler fluently. We had the wherewithal to bribe. We could lay our hands on a typewriter. We knew the ropes of a land journey by railway. G. and O. had both been “out,” the latter more than once; and I had heard these things much discussed. Moreover, Gilbert, being a Major, had secured a small room which he invited me to share, and Ortweiler was a member of our mess. In a deep-laid scheme privacy is almost an essential. Greatest asset of all, the Germans were not suspicious and they left us alone. Our idea, very much in the rough, crystallised as follows: together or separately—as events might dictate—to bluff the sentry at the main gate, and at the ferry; to get on to the mainland and there travel by train to the Holland frontier; and to have our preparations so thoroughly made that, on paper at least, our plan was bound to be successful.