deeper into the
woods till I found a track which--as I judged from the sky which I saw
in a clearing--took me nearly due west. That wasn't the direction I
wanted, so I bore off at right angles, and presently struck another
road which I crossed in a hurry. After that I got entangled in some
confounded kind of enclosure and had to climb paling after paling of
rough stakes plaited with osiers. Then came a rise in the ground and I
was on a low hill of pines which seemed to last for miles. All the
time I was going at a good pace, and before I stopped to rest I
calculated I had put six miles between me and the sandpit.

My mind was getting a little more active now; for the first part of the
journey I had simply staggered from impulse to impulse. These impulses
had been uncommon lucky, but I couldn't go on like that for ever. _Ek
sal 'n plan maak_, says the old Boer when he gets into trouble, and it
was up to me now to make a plan.

As soon as I began to think I saw the desperate business I was in for.
Here was I, with nothing except what I stood up in--including a coat
and cap that weren't mine--alone in mid-winter in the heart of South
Germany. There was a man behind me looking for my blood, and soon
there would be a hue-and-cry for me up and down the land. I had heard
that the German police were pretty efficient, and I couldn't see that I
stood the slimmest chance. If they caught me they would shoot me
beyond doubt. I asked myself on what charge, and answered, 'For
knocking about a German officer.' They couldn't have me up for
espionage, for as far as I knew they had no evidence. I was simply a
Dutchman that had got riled and had run amok. But if they cut down a
cobbler for laughing at a second lieutenant--which is what happened at
Zabern--I calculated that hanging would be too good for a man that had
broken a colonel's jaw.

To make things worse my job was not to escape--though that would have
been hard enough--but to get to Constantinople, more than a thousand
miles off, and I reckoned I couldn't get there as a tramp. I had to be
sent there, and now I had flung away my chance. If I had been a
Catholic I would have said a prayer to St Teresa, for she would have
understood my troubles.

My mother used to say that when you felt down on your luck it was a
good cure to count your mercies. So I set about counting mine. The
first was that I was well started on my journey, for I couldn't be
above two score miles