11. Behind Enemy Lines

We were lying up under some trees in the peace of the evening. It looked as though all our dangers were behind us and in a few moments, when the sun set, we would start out on the last stage of our escape to the farm. There had been a strange quietness about the woods all day, yet I knew that after the audacity of our attack on the mine the night before someone would have to swing for it. Our position was still perilous.

Suddenly a dog howled in the village half a mile beneath us in the valley where, barely seen through the green leaves, were the roofs of farms and clustering outbuildings. Someone said, "Bloodhounds" and we all laughed, but the next moment they all began to bay together and there were sounds of organised activity. I knew we were in for it then. The light was already beginning to fail; under the canopy of trees it had become quite murky and England seemed far away.

When the silence was first broken by the baying of those bloodhounds, I remember vividly how I felt suddenly sick with fear; my limbs seemed paralysed and I did not trust the steadiness of my voice to speak. It had been easy to talk of the attractions of defiance and martyrdom back in England, but now to find oneself surrounded in the woods with night coming down and to be hunted mercilessly by one's fellow men seemed terrifying and inhuman. I realised in that moment how dearly one clings to life in the last struggle—instinctively against all reason.

The bloodhounds had clearly got our scent; otherwise they would not have started to track us at that one spot in all those forests, nor would they have begun as night was encroaching. I knew that escape was now beyond us.

At first we sat and listened to that intermittent howling of the dogs, one minute silent and then the next all speaking together like a pack. They sounded at first as if they were going away from us to the east but then we suddenly heard them again much nearer now in the same part of the woods as we were lurking.

I visualised how any moment men with lanterns following the hounds on the leash would burst into the clearing, and then would follow the last desperate exchange of shots. To be tracked down like criminals and shot in a sweaty suit of clothes was hardly an appealing prospect. I had no wish to flee farther but would have preferred to stand my ground and face our pursuers with what dignity was possible in the sordid circumstances.

But the others were for continuing as long as possible, so I led them off along the forest paths. We made an awful noise on the crackling leaves in our hurry. Once or twice I stopped to listen, for if they were searching the woods for us, they had presumably put a cordon round them.