In the little courtyard three or four white fan-tailed pigeons fluttered about the roofs, like peace birds prematurely arrived from oversea, while on the other side of the barbed wire was a small colony of rabbits and poultry and pigs, the property of the German guard. Then there was Jacob, a ferocious and fearless jackdaw with clipped wings, who was not indisposed to be friendly, however. Certainly we were companions in misfortune, my wings not less thoroughly clipped than his. Ultimately, while I read, or even sketched, he would lie on his back in my hand with his legs in the air, ever and anon opening a drowsy eye. Long before I had seen them, however, he would have greeted several of his own kind, if not his own kin, wheeling round the old tower, and they would return answer.
Sometimes of a morning I would pick Jacob up as I passed to the bath, and, perched upon my finger, he would participate with me in the rigorous joys of the cold douche, the water rattling off his back like rain from an umbrella. Latterly there were two jackdaws, and I have watched a German sentry feeding them with spiders collected in a matchbox, swinging them out on their own thread as an angler would cast a baited line. After the Armistice these two delightful vagabonds suddenly and mysteriously vanished. Rumour had it that they appeared on a German table in a German pie!
Only one officer ever escaped from Beeskow Camp, and he only by the dusty and tenebrous passage of Death. He was a Rumanian, and he actually succeeded in scaling the high wall encircling the _Lager_, but fell off into the dried moat and broke his neck.
Tunnelling under the ancient wall was the method that seemed to hold out most promise of success, and a number of efforts were made in this direction. These were all detected, however, at various stages of the mining operations. One such discovery led to a regular hue and cry and the hunt up for possible “holes.” Three or four _Posten_, one of whom put a facetious finger to the side of his nose, came clattering into the reading-room on this errand, when we all held up our feet to facilitate matters! In explanation of the gaping hole found behind a cupboard in one of the dormitories “rats” were suggested.