THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
“probably a laborer. One of us must go to him and see whether he cannot help us. I should be glad to go myself, but I would have to clamber over you [Neustädter lay nearest to the opening in the board wall], and that might make a noise. You are, anyhow, the lightest of us. Will you try?”
“Yes.”
I had a little money, for immediately before the capitulation we had received our soldiers' pay.
“Take my purse,” I whispered, “and give to the man who lives in the little house ten florins, or as much as he asks. Tell him to bring us some bread and wine, or water, and to inform himself as soon as possible whether or not the Prussian guard posts are still standing outside of the fortress. If those posts have been drawn in, we can try to-morrow night again to get through the sewer. Now go and bring us a piece of bread if you can.”
“Good,” said Neustädter.
In a minute, lightly and softly like a cat, he had slipped through the hole in the board wall. My heart beat fast while he was gone. A false step, an accidental noise, would betray him. But in less than half an hour he came back just as lightly and softly as before, and lay down by my side.
“It is all right,” he whispered; “here is a piece of bread, all he had in the house, and also an apple that in passing by I picked from a tree, but I am afraid it is still green.”
The bread and the apple were soon divided among us, and devoured with avidity; and then Neustädter reported with his mouth to my ear, that he found in the little house a man and his wife. The man, to whom he had given the ten gulden, had promised to bring us some food, and also the desired information about the condition of things outside of the fortress.
[ 228 ]
