Gregory got slowly to his feet and together they ploughed their way through the thick undergrowth until they reached a shallow pool formed by a little rippling brook beside which Gregory sat down and Charlton helped him to remove his greatcoat. The blood from the wound had dried stiff on his jacket so Freddie had to cut the cloth away with his penknife and the next twenty minutes were exceedingly painful ones for Gregory.
He sat there without uttering a sound while the airman gradually soaked off the pieces of cloth and shirt which had adhered to the wound, bathed it clean with the cool spring-water, bandaged it with the torn-off tail of Gregory’s shirt, got the remains of his jacket on again, his greatcoat over it, and made a rough sling out of his own muffler to carry the arm that was affected. By the time he had done Gregory was grey-faced, sweating profusely and near to fainting, but afterwards he sat quite still for about ten minutes, had a cigarette and then declared himself ready to set off again.
Freddie Charlton was considerably impressed by Gregory’s stoical resistance to the acute agony that he must have suffered. He could not yet make up his mind as to whether he liked him or not, but it was abundantly clear that his lean, cynical companion possessed an ample supply of both mental and physical courage and he could not help realising that he might have been infinitely worse off had he had many other men that he could think of with him in this desperate situation.
Yet it irritated him that Gregory should be taking things so calmly. It was now past eight o’clock so it was quite certain that by this time troops would be on their way from the antiaircraft camp to search for them, if not already in the wood. To remain where they were would expose them to imminent risk of capture and in any case he did not see how they were to avoid it for long without a change of clothes and food. At the thought of food he realised how hungry he was and said:
“I don’t know how you feel but I’m simply starving.”
“Let’s make for that house you mentioned,” replied Gregory, getting to his feet. “November is a poor month to try to live on the land but we might find something edible in the kitchen-garden. Patching up my wound took longer than I bargained for and the search-parties will be after us soon.”
“I’m glad you realise that at last,” said Freddie stiffly.
“Oh, there’ll be time enough to scrounge some sort of breakfast first and to run from the Germans afterwards,” Gregory grinned. parodying Drake and the famous game of bowls, as they set off.
Most of the leaves had already fallen from the trees so they could see a fair way ahead of them when they were standing upright; but the undergrowth was still green and provided excellent cover ready to hand should they encounter anyone. Picking their way between the brambles they moved cautiously forward, keeping their eyes and ears alert for any sound or movement which might indicate the approach of another human being. After half an hour Freddie pointed through the trees to a wooden barn that had just become discernible. With a jerk of his head Gregory indicated that they should incline to the left and they proceeded still more warily until they reached the edge of the wood.
Looking right they could then see a group of buildings which consisted of a small, white, two-storeyed manor-house, probably built in the early part of the last century, and a number of outbuildings. No-one appeared to be about and the whole place lay silent in the cold autumn morning; so Gregory began to lead the way through the fringe of the wood towards it. After a few minutes they came to the back of the nearest barn and, creeping round its side, found that it fronted on a farm-yard. Half a dozen pigs were guzzling in a sty and a troop of long-necked geese were waddling importantly towards a pond. Turning right they passed behind the next barn and found a gate leading into the kitchen-garden. It ran along at the back of the house and was partly orchard so they were able to advance along its far end screened from the windows by the branches of the short fruit-trees.
Gregory gave a grunt of satisfaction on noticing that some late pears still hung among the withered brown leaves and as swiftly as possible they filled their pockets with the fruit. Charlton pulled half a dozen carrots from a near-by bed and Gregory snatched two heads of celery. Suddenly the clatter of a pail being put down somewhere near the house broke the stillness. They started as though electrified and at a quick, almost noiseless run made off into the wood, which ran right up to the end of the garden.
“Pears, celery and raw carrots,” Freddie sniffed, as they eased their pace and drew breath. “Not much of a breakfast, is it?”
“Might be a darned sight worse,” Gregory replied. “Anyhow, before we think of eating we must try to find a good, snug hide-out. The troops must be beating the wood further in by now and if we don’t get to earth soon we’ll be captured. Time’s getting on; we’ve got to hurry.”
For some time they searched, hoping to come upon a shallow cave or bramble-covered gully in which they might conceal themselves; but without success. The wood was curiously and depressingly uniform. By lying flat they could have hidden themselves in the bushes at almost any spot from a casual wayfarer who passed within a dozen yards, but the cover was insufficient to prevent their being seen by deliberate searchers who came nearer.
“The only thing for it is to get up a tree,” said Gregory at last. “That’s not going to be easy with one of my arms out of action but we’ll manage it somehow.”
Swiftly, anxiously, straining their ears for sounds of the beaters, who they felt might advance upon them at any minute now, they examined a number of conifers, since the leaves on the other trees were too few to afford them decent cover, and selected a pine which had three branches coming out from its trunk, all nearly on the same level and about twenty feet from the ground. Climbing it was a muscle-wrenching struggle. But Charlton was six feet one in height and strong; he managed to swing himself up on to a lower branch and to haul Gregory up after him; and by further efforts they succeeded in reaching the higher branches which they had chosen for a roosting-place.
Their perch was far from comfortable and it seemed doubtful if they would be able to maintain their position there for any great length of time, but Gregory insisted that they must do so at least until the search which they felt certain was in progress had passed by them. Having settled themselves in their hiding-place with considerable relief they munched their pears disconsolately and waited in uneasy suspense.
Barely ten minutes later they caught the first sound of the men who had been sent out to hunt them down. Evidently the search had started from the road and was being made with German thoroughness; otherwise it would not have taken so long for the troops to work right through to almost the far extremity of the wood. Occasional calls came floating through the chill silence as the searchers approached and now and then the blast of a whistle by which an officer was evidently directing them; then came the crackling of twigs and the snapping of brambles as the heavy-footed troopers kicked their way through the undergrowth.
Gregory and Charlton remained deadly still, fearful that the faintest movement would draw attention to their hiding-place; since a pine tree, although the best that they could find at that season, does not afford good cover and anyone standing immediately beneath it had only to glance up to see them.
The flat cap of a grey-clad soldier appeared below. He was carrying a rifle with fixed bayonet slung over his shoulder and halted for a moment just under the tree. Suddenly Freddie felt a frantic desire to cough but managed to convert the spasm into a gurgle, which he half-stifled by clapping his hand over his mouth.
With acute anxiety Gregory stared down at the soldier fearing he had heard the noise that Charlton had made. If the man looked up the only possible way of preventing him from giving a triumphant shout, which would bring his comrades running, was to drop right on top of him. The weight of another body falling from twenty feet would smash him to the ground and with luck knock him out. Balancing himself carefully Gregory prepared to make that desperate plunge. His wound was temporarily forgotten in the tenseness of the moment bu
t he was quick to realise that as the soldier’s bayonet was sticking up just beside his head anyone who fell upon him from above must inevitably fall on the point of that too. Nevertheless, his decision had been taken instantly, since he felt that he owed it to Charlton to give him this desperate chance of remaining undiscovered and getting away afterwards.
For nearly a minute the man stood there, directly below them, glancing from side to side; then he moved on again, peering right and left into the near-by bushes as he went. Gregory stifled a sigh of relief and, relaxing, leaned back against the tree-trunk.
Gradually the sounds of the search receded and the two fugitives were able to ease their positions; but soon afterwards the searchers reached the edge of the wood and, turning, began to come back. Once again Gregory and Freddie held their breath as they listened to the thrusting of feet through the undergrowth and the occasional calls of one man to another; but by half-past ten silence had fallen once more and it seemed that they had escaped discovery, at least for the time being.
They were more cheerful now as they argued that the gunners who had brought them down could not know that one of them was wounded; having searched the wood thoroughly would have convinced them that the fugitives were no longer there and, assuming them to have got much further afield, they would not bother to search it again. To be on the safe side the fugitives remained up the tree and as time began to hang interminably they endeavoured to pass it more quickly by swapping reminiscences.
Gregory told Charlton the fantastic story of his adventures during the past two months which had culminated in his enabling the German Army leaders to stage a revolt against the Nazis. Freddie listened with amazed attention, not quite knowing whether to believe it all or not; but as he himself had secretly landed Gregory two months earlier outside Cologne and had picked him up again the previous night outside Berlin he had definite evidence that the lean, sinewy man beside him was not entirely romancing.
The airman’s own adventures in making his secret night-landings in war-time Germany would have thrilled most people but he felt that they were mere child’s-play compared with Gregory’s impersonation of a Gestapo Chief and extraordinary series of escapes; besides which, he was a modest person so he said little of them. Perhaps, however, that was partly because his thoughts were centred about a girl, one Angela Fordyce, to whom he had been engaged to be married before the war.
From his description of her it appeared that Angela was the world’s prize wonder, but Gregory wrote that down by about one hundred per cent. Privately he decided that she was probably quite a pleasant-looking brunette with reasonably good blue eyes and all the nice, clean, healthy instincts that an English girl should have, without any particular brain or wit; and so, admirably suited as a wife to the tall, grey-eyed, fair-haired young man who sat precariously perched upon the branch next to him.
It seemed, however, that Freddie Charlton had bungled the affair badly. Unlike many men of his kind he had not considered the war a good excuse for rushing into marriage. On the contrary; he maintained that it was damnably unfair to any girl to marry her, and probably land her with a baby, if there were a reasonably good prospect of being killed oneself within the year; particularly when the girl had been brought up expensively and one had no private money of one’s own and so could leave her only the pension of a Flight-Lieutenant. In consequence, knowing that she would not agree with him he had taken the quixotic step of writing to her on the outbreak of the war to break off his engagement, without giving any reason.
Not unnaturally, in Gregory’s view, Angela had been annoyed and had demanded an explanation, upon which Freddie had made bad worse by writing to say that he had come to the conclusion that they were not suited to each other. On learning of this his best friend, one Bill Burton, had persuaded him that he had acted like a fool and had been extremely unfair both to the girl and to himself. Burton had then gone to see Angela in the hope of straightening the wretched muddle out, only to find that she had left England the day before and that it was therefore impossible for him to execute his pacific mission.
As Angela’s father was in the Consular Service his being posted, without warning, to Amsterdam, and her sudden departure with him overseas, was not particularly surprising, but it had had the effect of erecting a new barrier; and, Burton’s mission having been sabotaged by fate, Freddie had felt that having made his bed he had better lie on it, so had refrained from writing to her. But he was still sick with the pain he had inflicted on himself and bitterly regretted that he had not written, especially now that it looked likely that he would be interned in Germany for the rest of the war and therefore debarred from any possibility of running into Angela again if she came on a visit to London, when they might perhaps have had an explanation leading to a renewal of their happiness.
Being an eminently practical person, and no mean psychologist, Gregory forbore from voicing the obvious, meaningless platitudes and, instead, suggested that if only they could succeed in escaping over the frontier into Holland Freddie might see his Angela much sooner than if he had remained in London.
This cheered the airman up considerably and, as it was intended to do gave him an additional incentive to use every ounce of his resolution in avoiding capture. He remained unaware that, the Dutch frontier being many hundreds of miles distant, Gregory did not mean to try to get out of Germany that way and, in fact, had no intention whatever of attempting to leave Germany at all until he had found Erika von Epp and could take her with him.
They stuck it out up in the tree as long as they could bear the discomfort but by early afternoon their posteriors were so sore from the nobbly branches that they were forced to abandon their hiding-place and come to ground.
Freddie, who found garden-produce most unsatisfactory fare for a November day spent out in the open, suggested that they should pay another visit to the farm-yard for the purpose of stealing a chicken or a goose, which they might later roast over a wood-fire, but Gregory shook his head.
“It’s quite on the cards that the people who were hunting us this morning have left a certain number of pickets scattered about the wood, for today at all events. If we light a fire the sight of it or the smell of the smoke might give us away; but the idea of roast goose positively makes my mouth water so we’ll see what we can do about that tomorrow.”
“Good God!” Charlton exclaimed. “We shall freeze in this climate if we have to spend another night without anything warm inside us.”
“I’m sorry, old chap, but we’ve got to stick it. My fault entirely but I daren’t move on yet. This shoulder of mine is giving me hell and I’m afraid I’d only pass out on you if I attempted a cross-country march tonight.”
Charlton stared at him with sudden concern. “Yes; you’re looking pretty flushed; I believe you’re running a temperature.”
“I am,” Gregory replied.
“Then—then perhaps we’d better give ourselves up. I can’t possibly look after you properly while we’re in hiding like this and your wound will only get worse if it doesn’t have skilled attention.”
“It’s nothing much, you saw that yourself when you bathed it this morning; only a little round hole through the fleshy part of the shoulder. One of the muscles is torn but it’ll soon heal up providing I don’t exert myself for a day or two. If we can lie doggo in this wood for another forty-eight hours I’ll be all right. Anyhow, I’m damned if I’m going to chuck my hand in. Come on, let’s try to find a new hide-out while daylight lasts.”
About six hundred yards from the house they found a small ravine, which was even more thickly covered with undergrowth than the rest of the wood, where they would be well concealed from anyone who did not walk right on to them, and sitting down in it they made themselves as comfortable as they could. Gregory lay back and closed his eyes in an attempt to sleep but his wound pained him too much and he could only hope that lying still might cause his fever to abate. Charlton sat beside him, miserable and dejected but keeping his ears strain
ed for approaching footsteps so that they should not be caught unawares.
The afternon drifted by and shadows began to fall. No sound disturbed the stillness and Freddie thought that Gregory was asleep until he roused up and suggested that they might as well make their evening meal. They ate a few more of the pears and some celery but having tried the raw carrots threw them aside as too unpalatable. A swig apiece from Gregory’s flask completed the unsatisfactory repast, after which they settled down again into an uneasy silence. The evening seemed interminable as although the November day had drawn to an early close an occasional glance at the luminous dials of their watches showed them that they still had a long time to go before it could be considered night.
Towards nine o’clock Gregory became light-headed and began to mutter to himself in delirium. Freddie was at his wits’ end. There was nothing that he could do to aid his companion or allay the evidently rising fever. With his fellow-fugitive in such a state he felt that there was little chance of maintaining their freedom for any length of time but he knew how determined Gregory was not to give in while there was the least hope of escape, and now that the possibility of reaching Holland had been dangled before his eyes he was doubly reluctant himself to take any step which would definitely land him in a concentration-camp for the rest of the war.
Towards eleven Gregory ceased his incoherent muttering and dropped into a troubled slumber, so Freddie decided to see that night through and take a fresh decision the following morning. If Gregory were better they could rediscuss the situation but if he were worse there would be nothing for it but to seek help by surrender.
Just as Freddie was settling himself down to sleep he heard footsteps approaching, then voices talking in German. Stiffening in immediate alarm he crouched there in the gully, his heart thudding against his ribs. Peering towards the sound he strained his eyes but in the darkness he could see nothing. The footsteps halted about a dozen yards away and there was further talking. His forehead was suddenly damp with sweat.
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