All the orderlies were taken off duty and set to dig up the tunnel. The tin rooms and parcel rooms were closed until further notice. I myself, whose complicity with the plot was highly suspected, was removed from my own room and bundled unceremoniously into one of the large rooms on the top floor of A house. The windows of the cells were barricaded up and made quite dark by day and the lights in them were kept on all night. Every German in the camp personnel was put on to sentry duty and sentries paraded the passages three times in the night. The use of the bath room attendant for this purpose precluded baths. In a word we were “strafed,” and the camp knew once more the open warfare which had prevailed for the first unforgettable month of its existence. [Illustration: Orderlies digging out the tunnel between Kaserne B and the outer wall. ] The inconveniences of such a state of affairs were lightly borne, and even relished, by the large majority. The Tunnellers had scored too heavily for us to mind doing scapegoat for them. It was a pleasant thought that all twenty-nine were still abroad, and that there was a reasonable certainty of a fair proportion of them getting over and putting a stop to Niemeyer’s run of atrocious good luck in the matter of escapes. Apart from the hue and cry which had already been raised through the North German press, the fugitives had everything in their favour. They had had months to deliberate on their route and travelling tactics; their packs had been stocked at leisure so as to combine the maximum of nutrition with the minimum of weight; their civilian disguises were adequate for their purpose. Most of them were going to trust to their legs to carry them over the border and would be only night birds of passage, lying up during the day. But Colonel Rathborne possessed a knowledge of German and a superb civilian suit, over which he had put pyjamas in going through the tunnel, and which would be able to set casual interference blandly at defiance. He was walking due south to Göttingen and was there going to entrain for Aachen _viâ_ Cassel and Frankfurt. If all went well with him and his forged passport passed muster, he would be over the frontier in under three days. And later, when six days had gone by and he had not returned, the camp knew that the spell had been broken and that an Englishman was over from Holzminden. But we said nothing to the Germans.