Towards the end the tunnel had become too twisted and hilly to permit any longer of the rope and basin method being used, and it was necessary to fill sacks and drag them back from the face. This method was even more wearisome and exasperating than the other. To wriggle back by oneself was bad enough: to wriggle back, and every yard or so pull a heavy sack after one, was infinitely more so. Nevertheless, all this practice had its advantages: it braced the muscles of the working-party for the great night when each one of them would have to worm his way through the tunnel, pushing a loaded pack in front of him. [Illustration: At the tunnel mouth. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VII REPRISALS The days wore on, lengthening to the advantage of the cause and permitting of longer shifts. The working-party added to its numbers, allotting a few more privileged places without difficulty; for by now the thing was beginning to be known and discreetly talked about, and founders’ shares were at a premium. A few who might have been able to obtain them, but whose turn had come for exchange, were unable to resist the temptation and departed for Holland. The working-party and some others, on being asked their intentions, politely intimated that they preferred to remain in Germany. Had Niemeyer only taken more intelligent stock of the particular quarter from which so many unexpected refusals emanated, it is possible that he might have drawn valuable conclusions. But Niemeyer, astute German though he was, disregarded these and other even more valuable hints which were to be offered him before the scheme was ripe for launching, and which could have told him easily enough in which quarter the wind blew. As an instance of one, there arose in early June a sudden and curious demand on the part of certain individuals for transfer from A to B Kaserne. Three officers, comfortably situated in a small room in the former house (the same room, by the way, as that in which the Letter Boy used to spend so much of his time), overlooking the picturesque suburbs of Holzminden, and blessed with apparently every comfort that a prisoner-of-war could require, asked unashamedly if they might become one of a motley, closely packed crew in one of the big rooms on the ground floor of B Kaserne. Many of the reasons given for the desire to change were ingenious, but if submitted to anybody with a less cast-iron mould of thought than the German camp officers it is unlikely that they would have convinced. However, change they were allowed to, and change they did; and the working-party of twelve were now all lodged in B Kaserne.