Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/273

 This refreshed our spirits, and, much relieved, we slept alternately until high morning. Now we expected with every moment our rescuer, but one hour after another passed and he did not come. Were we again to be disappointed? At last, about noon, we heard somebody in the compartment immediately below us noisily moving things from one place to another; then a low cough. The next moment a head appeared in the opening of our board wall, and a man climbed up to us. It was our new friend. He brought a basket apparently filled with tools, but out of the depth of which he took two bottles of wine, a couple of sausages and a large loaf of bread.

“This is something for hunger and thirst,” our friend whispered. “I have been also all around the city. The Prussian guard posts are no longer outside. I shall be glad to help you; only tell me what I am to do.”

I now asked him to go to Steinmauern and look for a boat which in the coming night might take us across the Rhine. Then, about midnight, to be in the cornfield near the Steinmauern gate, outside of the fortress, and wait for us. He would hear the signal of a whistle; this he should answer, and then join us in order to take us to the boat. He should ask his wife to have something for us to eat at about eleven o'clock of the night.

I gave him a little more money, and he promised to do all I had asked, and disappeared again as he had come. Now we held a royal feast, during which our good humor made it very difficult for us to preserve the necessary silence. All the longer appeared to us the ensuing hours that were so full of hope and at the same time of anxiety. About two o'clock we heard the rattling of musketry at a distance.

“What is that?” whispered Neustädter. “There, they are killing somebody.”