the rain
by an overhanging rock. I might perhaps have done better, but I was
too tired to bother. I just dropped peacefully down where I stood, and
in spite of my bruises and my soaked clothes I don't think I had been
two minutes on the ground before I was fast asleep.

* * * * *

Tommy Morrison always used to say that only unintelligent people
woke up feeling really well. If he was right I must have been in a
singularly brilliant mood when I again opened my eyes.

It was still fairly dark, with the raw, sour darkness of an early
March morning, and all round me the invisible drip of the trees was as
persistent as ever. Very slowly and shakily I scrambled to my feet. My
head ached savagely, I was chilled to the core, and every part of
my body felt as if it had been trampled on by a powerful and rather
ill-tempered mule.

I was hungry too--Lord, how hungry I was! Breakfast in the prison is
not exactly an appetizing meal, but at that moment the memory of its
thin gruel and greasy cocoa and bread seemed to me beautiful beyond
words.

I looked round rather forlornly. As an unpromising field for foraging
in, a Dartmoor wood on a dark March morning takes a lot of beating.
It is true that there was plenty of water--the whole ground and air
reeked with it--but water, even in unlimited quantities, is a poor
basis for prolonged exertion.

There was nothing else to be got, however, so I had to make the best
of it. I lay down full length beside a small spring which gurgled
along the ground at my feet, and with the aid of my hands lapped up
about a pint and a half. When I had finished, apart from the ache in
my limbs I felt distinctly better.

The question was what to do next. Hungry or not, it would be madness
to leave the shelter of the woods until evening, for not only would
the warders be all over the place, but by this time everyone who lived
in the neighbourhood would have been warned of my escape. My best
chance seemed to lie in stopping where I was as long as daylight
lasted, and then staking everything on a successful burglary.

It was not a cheerful prospect, and before the morning was much older
it seemed less cheerful still. If you can imagine what it feels
like to spend hour after hour crouching in the heart of a wood in a
pitiless drizzle of rain, you will be able to get some idea of what I
went through. If I had only had a pipe and some baccy, things would
have been more toler