The ditches and the darkness and our many falls had led us astray.

Instead of going due east we had fetched a compass and bent round to the north; instead of leaving our prison we had circled round it.

And as the shadows lightened on the long dim flats, we saw in the distance the black ring of the stockade on its little elevation.
"Let us get on," said Le Marchant, with a groan at the wasted energies of the night.
"I believe we're safer here.

If they seek us it will be farther away.
They'd never think we'd be such fools as to stop within a couple of miles of the prison." And, indeed, before I had done speaking, we could make out the tiny black figures of patrols setting off along the various roads that led through the swamps, and so we lay still, and watched the black figures disappear to the east and south and north.
So long as we kept hidden I had no great fear of them, for the swamps were honeycombed with hiding-places, and to beat them thoroughly would have required one hundred men to every one they could spare.
"I'm not at all sure it's us they're after," I said, by way of cheer for us both.

"All that turmoil last night and the fire makes me think some of the others in Number Three were on the same job." "Like enough, but I don't see that it helps us much.