A Prince of the Captivity (Unabridged). Buchan John

than ever. Great things seemed to be preparing on the Flanders front.

      In two years he had acquired a routine and a technique. He had taken the advice of Macandrew and thought himself so comprehensively into his part that his instincts and half his thoughts had become those of a Flanders peasant. In a difficulty he could trust himself to behave naturally according to his type. Yet there remained one side of him which was not drugged. He had to keep his mind very bright and clear, quick to catch at gossamer threads of evidence, swift to weave them into the proper deductions, always alert and resourceful and wholly at his command.

      It was this continual intellectual stimulus which made bearable a life as brutish as a farm animal’s. Now and then, to be sure, he had his moments of revolt which were resolutely suppressed. He had long ago conquered any repugnance to his physical environment, the smells, the coarse food, the bestial monotony, the long toil in mud and filth. But there would come times when he listened to the far-off grumbling guns in the west with a drawn face. His friends were there, fighting cleanly in the daylight, while he was ingloriously labouring in the shadows. He had moods when he longed desperately for companionship. British prisoners would pass on their way to Germany, heavy-eyed men, often wounded and always weary, who tried to keep their heads high. He would have given his soul for a word with them. And once he saw in such a batch some men of his own regiment, including an officer who had joined along with him. The mere sound of English speech was torture. In those moods he had no source of comfort save in the bare conviction that he must stick to his duty. At night on his bed he could recapture no healing memories of Eilean Bàn. He was so deep in a hideous rut that he could not see beyond it to his old world.

      He had two experiences which shook his foundations. Once at a midnight rendezvous with an English aeroplane there was a hitch in taking-off, an alarm was given, and soldiers from a German post appeared at the edge of the meadow. Jules knew that with his help the machine could get away, but it would mean a grave risk of discovery. As it was, he obeyed the airman’s hoarse injunction, “For God’s sake clear out—never mind me,” and, crawling down a little brook, found safe hiding in the forest. He saw the airman badly wounded and carried off into captivity, but not before he had reduced the ‘plane to ashes; and he realised that he could have saved him. That was a bitter draught of which the taste long remained. It was no good reminding himself that he had done his duty, when that duty seemed a defiance of every honest human inclination…

      The other experience was worse. There was a girl who had been a prostitute in Lille, and who served in an estaminet on the Brussels road. She was one of his helpers—M 23 on the register of his underworld. Now a certain Bavarian sergeant, who desired to be her lover, but whom she had repulsed, discovered her in some small act of treachery to the authorities which was no part of Jules’s own affair. He exacted his revenge to the full, and Jules happened to enter the estaminet when the sergeant and another soldier were in the act of arresting her. They made a brutal business of it, the sergeant had her arms twisted behind her back, and her face was grey with fear and pain. For an instant Jules forgot his part, the simper left his mouth, his jaw set, and he ran to her aid. But the girl was wiser than he. She flung at him a string of foul names, and the black eyes under the tinted lids blazed a warning. He had to submit to be soundly cuffed by the soldiers, and to see the woman dragged screaming into a covered waggon. After that it took him a long time to recover his peace of mind. The words of the old man in the Northamptonshire village were his chief comfort. “You must be prepared to sacrifice much that you think honourable and of good report if you would fulfil the whole Law.”

      On a certain day in March ‘17 an urchin from the village brought Jules a message which had been left for him by a farmer from the Sambre side— that he had better bestir himself about the summering of the young beasts. It was an agreed password, and it made Jules knit his brows, for it meant that the long chain of intelligence which he supervised was in danger. That night he went on his travels and presently his fears were confirmed. The enemy had discovered one link and might discover the whole, for the interconnection was close, unless his suspicions could be switched on to a different track.

      Three nights later Jules found a British aeroplane at a place agreed on for emergency meetings, meetings appointed by a very delicate and bold method which was only to be used in an hour of crisis. There was a passenger beside the pilot, an officer in a great blanket coat, who sat hunched on the ground and listened with a grim face to Jules’s story.

      “What devil’s own luck!” he said. “At this time of all others! The Arras affair as you know is due in three weeks—and there are others to follow. We simply cannot do without your crowd. Have you anything to suggest?”

      “Yes,” was the answer. “I have thought it all out, and there is one way. The enemy is on the alert and must be soothed down. That can be done only by giving him good ground for his suspicions—but it must not be the right ground. We want a decoy. You follow me, sir?”

      The other nodded. “But what—or rather who?” he asked.

      “Myself. You see, sir, I think I have done my work here. The machine is working well, and I can safely hand over the direction of it to S. S. I have taught him all I know, and he’s a sound fellow. It’s the machine that matters, not me, so my proposal is that to save the machine I draw suspicion on myself. I know the Germans pretty well, and they like to hunt one hare at a time. I can so arrange it that every doubt and suspicion they entertain can be made to fasten on me. I will give them a run for their money, and after that S. S. and his lads will be allowed to function in peace.”

      “Gad, that’s a sporting notion,” said the officer. “But what about yourself? Can you keep out of their hands long enough?”

      “I think so. I know the countryside better than most people, and I have a good many possible lairs. I shall want a clear week to make arrangements, for they are bound to be rather complicated. For one thing I must get Mother Raus to a hole where she cannot be found. Then I press the button and become a fugitive. I think I can count on keeping the hounds in full cry for a week.”

      “Won’t it be hard to pick you up if the pace is hot?”

      “I don’t want to be picked up. I must draw the hunt as far east as possible—away from the front. That will make S. S. and his machine more secure.”

      The other did not reply for a little. “You realise that if you’re caught it’s all up with you?” he said at length.

      “Of course. But that has been true every moment during the past two years. I’m only slightly speeding up the risks. Besides, I don’t think I shall be caught.”

      “You’ll try for Holland?”

      “Holland or Germany. It will probably take some time.”

      The officer stood up and glanced at his luminous wrist-watch. “We should be safe here for the next hour. I want all the details of the new lay- out—S. S. I mean.”

      When this conference was finished he turned to Jules and offered his hand.

      “You are right. It’s the only way, and a big part of the fate of the war hangs on it. I won’t wish you good luck, for that’s too feeble for such an occasion. But I’d like to say this to you, More. I’ve seen many gallant things done in my time, and I’ve met many brave men, but by God! for sheer cold-blooded pluck I never knew the like of you. If you win out, I shall have a good deal to say about that.”

      Two days later the Widow Raus set off for Brussels to visit her relations. She took with her a great basket of eggs and butter, and she got a lift in a German transport waggon to save the railway fare. Thereafter she disappeared, and though her whereabouts were sought by many they were never discovered. She did not emerge into the light again till a certain day in December 1918, when she was one of many women thanked by her King, and was given a red ribbon to wear on her ample bosom.

      Left alone at the farm, Jules went on his travels for two days, during which he had interviews with many people in retired places. Then he returned and showed himself in the Three Parrots. But that night he left the farm, which was occupied next morning by soldiers who were in a hurry. They ransacked every room, slit the mattresses, pulled up the floors,