feat, and,
twisting himself round with furious energy, hastened back to warn his
comrades.

"There's a fellow at the bottom of the pit already, and no doubt he'll
be coming into the tunnel," he told them in a whisper. "He's got an
electric torch, and that will be far worse than the light outside, for
it'll show us up directly. Shove on into the open. Push your way
through. Hang the sentries! We'll have to chance their seeing us."

More blows came from Stuart, lusty blows, and the sound of heavy
breathing, then an exclamation, an exclamation of delight, of triumph,
and later the sound of more earth falling. That fresh breath of air
which had swept into the tunnel became almost keen, while intuitively,
for they could not see, Henri and Jules both realized that Stuart had
already clambered from the place into the open.

"Come now," they heard a voice. "Come up, quick, and lie down flat as
soon as you are beside me."

Henri stumbled on till he was right at the end of the tunnel, and,
standing upright, felt a hand stretched down towards him. Gripping it,
digging his toes into the sides of the tunnel, and seizing the edge
above with his other hand, he was half dragged, and half forced his way
upward, then, flinging himself on the ground beside Stuart, he leant
over the ragged hole and helped to extricate his comrade.

They were free! They were in the open! They were beyond the wire
entanglements! And Germany lay before them--Germany, an enemy country,
where every man's hand, aye, and every woman's too, would be against
them. Yet they were free, and what did it matter how many enemies they
had to face, how many difficulties were before them? For freedom,
however much it might be embarrassed, however adventurous it might
become, was freedom after all--a godsend compared with the privations,
the gibes, the cruel treatment they had suffered in their prison. If
anyone had ever a doubt as to this, if, when this ghastly war which is
now in progress is finished, a reader happen to think that there has
been exaggeration in these statements, let him but look to facts, let
him but consult the known history of the treatment of interned aliens
and prisoners of war in the Kaiser's country. Though war itself, and
this one in particular with its long and terrible tale of casualties,
is a ghastly business, the deliberate ill-treatment, the calculated
starvation, and the wilful abandonment to misery and death from
preventa