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Escape of a Princess Pat, The

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<h3>CHAPTER XIX</h3> <h4 class="sc">Holland at Last</h4> <div class="block2">"No Intern"—Real Bread—Tipperary—A Real Time—The Splendid Hollanders—The Hague. </div> The diary summarizes the later events of that day: "September tenth: Fine weather and in Holland. All our troubles are over. We struck a small town called Alboom where the people did everything they could for us. Plenty of food. Slept in a house!" A man smoking a big pipe and wearing baggy breeches and wooden shoes came up and surveyed us with kindly amusement, as Simmons scraped at me with infinite gusto. He was a Hollander; not a "Dutchman." We soon learned that the latter was a term of contempt applied by the former to the Germans. I asked him for some tobacco, which he readily gave to us from a capacious pouch. He waved his pipe at us in friendly fashion and said something which we took to be a question as to our identity. "English," we said, and in desperation turned to our scanty stock of French: "Soldats; prisoniers." "Engelsch!" he boomed. We nodded. He simply threw his arms round first one and then the other, so that I wiped the ashes from his pipe out of my eyes. He lumbered off and shortly returned with a counterpart of himself. He talked rapidly to his companion and waved his pipe. We made out the words "Duitsch," "Engelsch," and enough of others to know that he was telling our tale as he imagined it. Our fears coming uppermost, we gave voice to them: "Intern?" "No intern. Engelsch." The other took up the cry: "Engelsch goot! Frient." However our suspicions would not down. The first man pointed out to the canal where a barge lay and made us understand that it was his. He wanted us to work our passage on it down the canal with him. They invited us by signs to go on board the barge for breakfast, an invitation which we joyfully accepted. We rowed out to the barge and sat down in the tiny cabin. The meal was plain. On the centre of the table was a loaf of brown bread, quite good enough it was true, but so reminiscent of the perennial black ration of the Germans that my gorge rose at the sight. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a white loaf on the shelf, the first in fifteen months. I caught Simmons eyeing it. We exchanged guilty looks but were ashamed to ask for it. They offered us the brown loaf and delicious coffee. I thought perhaps that if we exhausted the brown loaf the other might be forthcoming. I kicked Simmons on the shins and fell to on it, and, as opportunity offered, thrust pieces in the pockets of my tunic until, to our relief, they brought out the white bread, which we devoured to the last crumb. It was very good. We filled our pipes in high contentment and went ashore, where a procession of enthusiastic villagers waited to escort us to the village. Men, women and children, wooden shoes and all, there were four hundred of them. The men all shook hands and pressed money on us. The women cried and one white-haired old lady kissed us both. The quaint little roly-poly children ran at our sides, a half dozen of them struggling to hold our fingers in their chubby fists. The procession started off, the burgomaster leading, the two sailors and ourselves coming next. Some one behind dragged out a mouth organ and struck up Tipperary, and men, women and children all joined in. It was glorious. We sang, too, in English, and they in their tongue. The result was so ridiculous a medley that I smiled myself; but it made no difference. The spirit was there; we were happy. Arriving at the village the burgomaster took us to his home and sat us down to a steaming breakfast, while a few of the chosen were invited in to watch us polish it off. The crowd remained outside, choking the road. Some of the bolder of the children crept slyly in the door, others peered shyly at us from the crack of it. And one little chap, braver than his comrades, clumped sturdily up to my knee, where he stood clutching it in round-eyed wonder and saying never a word for the rest of the meal, envied of his mates. Not until we had leaned back, not contented, but ashamed to ask for more, did our hosts give vent to the curiosity that was eating into their vitals. An interpreter was found and they led us out to the road so that all might hear. The crowd flocked around while the officials questioned us. Many were the smothered interjections that went up from the men and exclamations of pity from the women as our tale unfolded. And the warm sympathy of their honest faces warmed our hearts like a good fire. We started off on our triumphal course again. We were repeatedly invited into houses for something to eat. We accepted seven such breakfast invitations during the next two and a half hours and stopped only out of shame. We were still hungry. Every one gave us cigars, immense things, which projected from every pocket and which we carried in bundles under our arms. There was no refusing them. They were the insignia of the entente. And the coffee! The good, honest, Holland coffee with no acorns in it! I doubt if our starving bodies could have carried us many days more on the uncooked roots we had been living on. The motherly housewives, in their Grecian-like helmets of metal and glass that fit closely over their smoothed hair like skull-caps, bustled merrily about, intent only on replenishing our plates and cups, full of a tearful sympathy which was as welcome as their food. Later in the day the officials took us to the police station at ——. We became very much alarmed again. They read our thoughts and a subdued murmur of: "No intern, no intern," swelled up. The local burgomaster came to us. His first words, and in good English, too, were: "Have something to eat." We did. And then more cigars. The police were a splendid lot of men. They loaded us down with gifts and asked perfunctory questions for their records. One of them, H. Letema, of ——, took us to his home, where his comely wife and daughter loaded the table with good things; while he brought out more cigars. He showed us to a bed-room before we understood where he was taking us. We refused, for reasons of a purely personal nature. "Nix," we said, and when he would not accept our refusal we tried it in Niederländer. "No, no." Still he persisted, and his good wife too. So we led him firmly aside and showed him the indescribably verminous condition we were in. That convinced him. They appreciated that little touch and gave us a deep pile of blankets, flung down on three feet of sweet-smelling straw in an outhouse, where we slept as we had not slept for many months. In the morning Letema escorted us down to Aaschen, which was the nearest large town. A Belgian and a Holland lady, hearing of the escaped English prisoners, met us within twenty minutes of our arrival, took us in hand and loaded us down with kindnesses. We ate only five full sized meals that day, not counting the extras we absorbed between them. And there were more cigars. The raw oats and potatoes seemed a long way off. Our day at Aaschen was a repetition of the previous one at Alboom and Borger, but on a grander scale. The ladies took us down to Rotterdam and did not leave us until they had turned us over to the British consul there, whose name I have forgotten but who, with the vice consul, Mr. Mueller, was very kind indeed; in fact, all whom we met, irrespective of their nationality, age or sex placed us under eternal obligations to them. In particular Mr. Neilson, the rector of the English church and in charge of the Sailors' Institute there, seemed to live only for us. Mr. Henken at the American consulate was equally kind. They lodged us at the Seaman's Rest, took our painted rags away and clothed us in blue "civvie" suits which seemed to us the height of sinful luxury. We were shaved, clean and could eat everything in sight, at any time of the day or night. And did so. The meals we used to shift! We were very glad to get rid of our waterproof suits—for that is what they had become, from the paint. Mr. Neilson took us sight seeing every day. Once we went out to Mr. Carnegie's Peace Palace which had been closed on account of the war but which we were permitted to inspect. I had not thought such buildings were done, except in dreams. It made our own bitter past seem unreal. The Italian room, in particular, seemed like a delicate canvas in marble and done in a fashion the memory of which gripped me for days and still haunts me. We spent days thus; supremely happy. We were joined here by Jerry Burke of the 8th Battalion of Winnipeg. He was a nephew of Sir Sam Hughes, the then Canadian Minister of Militia and had just made his escape from some other camp. We were to have left on the fifth with a fleet of boats which sailed then. By the time we had got on board, however, the sailors from the first boat were returning. They had been torpedoed. And that stopped us. We got away on the S.S. Grenadier on the sixteenth, and after hugging the length of the English Coast, arrived safely at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the eighteenth. Here our troubles began! <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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