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"I'll drar 'un off for ee, zur, nex' time the patrols pass. When I holler, yew and the others, yew run. Thirty-one forty-three Sapper Maggs, R.E., from Chewton Mendip ... that's me... maybe yew'll let us have a bit o' writing to the camp." I stretched out my hand in the darkness to stop him. He had gone. I leant forward and whispered to Francis: "When you hear a shout, we make a dash for it!"
He told me his simple story in his soft Somersetshire accent, just the plain tale of the fate that has overtaken thousands of our fellow-countrymen since the war began. His name was Maggs, Sapper Ebenezer Maggs, of the Royal Engineers, and he was captured near Mons in August, 1914, when out laying a line with a party.
Maggs, poor body, she has more mess with that servants' hall first table than with all the big dinners the master gives. "'Mrs.
From time to time I thought I heard a shout, but it sounded far away. We crawled stealthily forward, Francis in front, then Monica, Maggs and I last. In a few minutes we were wet through, and our hands, blue and dead with cold, were scratched and torn. Our progress was interminably slow. Every few yards Francis raised his hand and we stopped.
For twenty-four hours Maggs had waited in vain, then his courage had forsaken him, and he had crept to that hole in his grief. I went and fetched Francis and Monica. Maggs shrunk back as they came in. "I bean't fit cumpany for no lady, zur," he whispered to me, "I be that durty, fair crawling I be ... We couldn't keep clean nohow in that camp!"
With the cinematograph, I grant you, it's mostly the scene that's that in motion while you sit still; but there's also a dodge by which you're in the railway car and flying past the scenery." Tilda nodded. "Maggs 'ad 'old of that trick too. 'E called it A Trip on the Over'ead Railway, New York." "Right; and now you see.
Maggs, who spent all her time in staying with sick people and nursing them, got up and went out, so that the little girl should have her mother all to herself. Ruby cuddled her face down beside her dear mother's face, in the pillow, and it was all the little girl could do to keep from bursting into tears, and begging that she might not be sent away.
"The kitchen maid and the laundress's assistant wait on the first table; but one day when, the maid of one of Miss Ponsonby's friends comin' down over late, she was served with instead o' by them, she gave Mrs. Maggs the 'orriblest settin' down, as not knowin' her business in puttin' a lady's lady with servants' servants, the same which Mrs. Mrs.
All the good soldier's horror of dirt was in his voice. "That's all right, Maggs," I answered soothingly, "she'll understand!" We sat down on the floor in the light of Sapper Maggs' candle, and Francis and I reviewed our situation. The cave we were in ... an old Smuggler's cache ... was where Francis had spent several days during his different attempts to get across the frontier.
"Pretty fair specimen of Prussian cynicism?" laughed Red Tabs. But I held my head ... the game was too deep for me. Every week a hamper of good things is dispatched to 3143 Sapper Ebenezer Maggs, British Prisoner of War, Gefangenen-Lager, Friedrichsfeld bei Wesel. I have been in communication with his people, and since his flight from the camp they have not had a line from him.
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