Meanwhile, on October 2nd, the interned Sergeant Dietrich Gratschuss had slipped away from Alcala. His escape, facilitated by the four uninterned officers from the _Goeben_, who provided him with a suit of civilian clothes, thrown over a wall into the prison-garden where he worked daily, was made doubly sure by certain judicious bribes to a sentry, who kept his back turned and eyes averted at the critical moment. Gratschuss slipped into his disguise in a tool-shed, and calmly walked out of the prison-yard--saluted by the unsuspecting man on guard--as though he had been a visitor. His friends were waiting round the corner for him with a hundred horsepower motor-car, in which, with the other uninterned Germans (the naval doctor, the law student, and the two sailors), he was whirled away at sixty miles an hour. The whole of the journey to Vigo was made in this powerful car, which the owners had been able to provide with an amply supply of petrol and food for a long and rapid flight, lasting well into the night. The whole of the machinery of the Vice-Consul of Vigo was now in motion. All the fugitives reached that port in safety and scattered themselves over hotels and lodging-houses. A hue and cry was, of course, set up from Pampeluna and Alcala de Henares; but the Spanish police went off on various wrong tracks before they thought of ordering a watch to be set at all the ports. Even when this tardy step was taken, no one ever suspected--so well had the Vice-Consul and his accomplices laid their plans--that Vigo was the port from which the escape was to be effected. VI--MIDNIGHT--THE FUGITIVES BOARD THE SHIP On October 6th the _Virgen del Socorro_, to allay any suspicion, made a voyage to sea, and, on returning, moored alongside the _Wehrt_. Then, one pitch-black night, the fugitives left their hiding-places. One by one they slipped out into the darkness and, following the narrowest and most deserted streets leading to the harbor, reached the quays unobserved. At such an hour of the night--it was getting on for eleven o'clock--they could be fairly certain of meeting no one, save, perhaps, a drunken sailor or two. These revellers took no more notice of Koch and his companions than they did of their own dim shadows. One by one, under cover of the darkness, the fugitives disappeared down the same iron ladder the Vice-Consul had used so often, into José's boat. By midnight all the fugitives were on board the _Wehrt_, from whose well-replenished store-rooms they immediately began transhipping the provisions to the _Virgen del Socorro_. All through the night and until 2 A.M. this work continued. The _Virgen del Socorro_ was then towed out a little farther into the bay, and on the first signs of daylight appearing her bow was turned north-east. Soon afterwards a fresh early morning wind sprang up from the land, her sails filled, and she set off on her long voyage.