Part 16 (1/2)
”I was horribly scared--smothered, choked, half-senseless.... Part of the snow and a lot of trees and boulders went over the edge of something with a roar like Niagara.... I don't know how long afterward it was when I came to my senses.
”I was in a very narrow, rocky valley, up to my neck in soft snow, and the sun beating on my face. ... So I crawled out... I wasn't hurt; I was merely lost.
”It took me a long while to place myself geographically. But finally, by map and compa.s.s, I concluded that I was in some one of the innumerable narrow valleys on the northern side of Mount Terrible. Basle seemed to be the nearest proper objective, judging from my map.... Can you form a mental picture of that particular corner of Europe, Miss Erith?”
”No.”
”Well, the German frontier did not seem to be very far northward--at least that was my idea. But there was no telling; the place where I landed was a savage and s.h.a.ggy wilderness of firs and rocks without any sign of habitation or of roads.
”The things that had been strapped on my back naturally remained with me--map, binoculars, compa.s.s, botanising paraphernalia, rations for two days--that sort of thing. So I was not worried. I prowled about, experienced agreeable s.h.i.+vers by looking up at the mountain which had dumped me down into this valley, and finally, after eating, I started northeast by compa.s.s.
”It was a rough scramble. After I had been hiking along for several hours I realised that I was on a shelf high above another valley, and after a long while I came out where I could look down over miles of country. My map indicated that what I beheld must be some part of Alsace. Well, I lay flat on a vast shelf of rock and began to use my field-gla.s.ses.”
He was silent so long that Miss Erith finally looked up questioningly. McKay's face had become white and stern, and in his fixed gaze there was something dreadful.
”Please,” she faltered, ”go on.”
He looked at her absently; the colour came back to his face; he shrugged his shoulders.
”Oh, yes. What was I saying? Yes--about that vast ledge up there under the mountains... I stayed there three days. Partly because I couldn't find any way down. There seemed to be none.
”But I was not bored. Oh, no. Just anxious concerning my situation.
Otherwise I had plenty to look at.”
She waited, pencil poised.
”Plenty to look at,” he repeated absently. ”Plenty of Huns to gaze at. Huns? They were like ants below me, there. They swarmed under the mountain ledge as far as I could see--thousands of busy Boches--busy as ants. There were narrow-gauge railways, too, apparently running right into the mountain; and a deep broad cleft, deep as another valley, and all crawling with Huns.
”A tunnel? n.o.body alive ever dreamed of such a gigantic tunnel, if it was one!... Well, I was up there three days. It was the first of August--thereabouts--and I'd been afield for weeks. And, of course, I'd heard nothing of war--never dreamed of it.
”If I had, perhaps what those thousands of Huns were doing along the mountain wall might have been plainer to me.
”As it was, I couldn't guess. There was no blasting--none that I could hear. But trains were running and some gigantic enterprise was being accomplished--some enterprise that apparently demanded speed and privacy--for not one civilian was to be seen, not one dwelling.
But there were endless mazes of fortifications; and I saw guns being moved everywhere.
”Well, I was becoming hungry up on that fir-clad battlement. I didn't know how to get down into the valley. It began to look as though I'd have to turn back; and that seemed a rather awful prospect.
”Anyway, what happened, eventually, was this: I started east through the forest along that pathless tableland, and on the afternoon of the next day, tired out and almost starved, I stepped across the Swiss boundary line--a wide, rocky, cleared s.p.a.ce crossing a mountain flank like a giant's road.
”No guards were visible anywhere, no sentry-boxes, but, as I stood hesitating in the middle of the frontier--and just why I hesitated I don't know--I saw half a dozen jagers of a German mounted regiment ride up on the German side of the boundary.
”For a second the idea occurred to me that they had ridden parallel to the ledge to intercept me; but the idea seemed absurd, granted even that they had seen me upon the ledge from below, which I never dreamed they had. So when they made me friendly gestures to come across the frontier I returned their cheery 'Gruss Gott!' and plodded thankfully across. ... And their leader, leaning from his saddle to take my offered hand, suddenly struck me in the face, and at the same moment a trooper behind me hit me on the head with the b.u.t.t of a pistol.”
The girl's flying pencil faltered; she lifted her brown eyes, waiting.
”That's about all,” he said--”as far as facts are concerned.... They treated me rather badly.... I faced their firing-squads half-a-dozen times. After that bluff wouldn't work they interned me as an English civilian at Holzminden.... They hid me when, at last, an inspection took place. No chance for me to communicate with our Amba.s.sador or with any of the Commission.”
He turned to her in his boyish, frank way: ”But do you know, Miss Erith, it took me quite a while to a.n.a.lyse the affair and to figure out why they arrested me, lied about me, and treated me so h.e.l.lishly.
”You see, I was kept in solitary confinement and never had a chance to speak to any of the other civilians interned there at Holzminden.