Dishonour Among Thieves

exercised his ingenious mind over a period of months: some foods would keep, if you could find a container and a hiding place. Sugar was one of them: sugar helps to maintain body temperature and energy and a cold hungry man yearns for it. Fats of some sort kept wholesome over a long period in the right conditions: lard and dripping were both edible weeks after you had “salted them down” if you had a cool hole to hide them in. Bread and suchlike would have to be secreted shortly before you made your break. Rory had a store of matches and he collected some wood chips and kept them dry. An escaper could not make a fire by day, the smoke would betray him, but Rory and his fellow P.O.W.s had developed a technique for kindling a fire at night in a hole in the ground: the first revealing flicker of kindling had to be concealed by crouching over the hole: then grass and leaves and damp twigs were added with infinite care until a hot nucleus of ash developed which showed no flame or sparkle; just a smouldering mass of peat-like embers, hot enough to raise the temperature of a can of water and provide the sweetened drink which put fresh life into a chilled body, and from which warmth still seeped out to comfort half-frozen fingers. Rory Macshane was an adept at making a fire which showed no telltale flame at night: smoke didn’t matter, provided you chose a place where no one was within range to smell it.

3

Thoughts of the skills he had once developed as an escaper kept Rory’s mind from the dreary present and kept alive the zest in life without which no escaper can succeed. Despair is a deadening quality: stifling to the will and lowering to a man’s vitality. All through those months when he made his plans, when he hid the oddest and seemingly most useless little bits of gear, Rory Macshane behaved as a very reasonable prisoner; neither too humble and co-operative nor yet too self-willed and truculent. There were occasions when he gave a hand to a warder in difficulties, but not often enough to brand him as a blackleg among his fellow convicts. He helped the latter, too: helped them with his fund of escaper’s experience.

Eventually Rory got the reputation of “a good prisoner,” a man who gave no trouble and was a good worker, given a chance to work. He worked cheerfully: any workshop, from sewing mailbags to repairing clothes and boots, offered materials which were treasure trove to an escaper: needle and thread, bits of fabric or leather, nails and suchlike. The thing to do was to have patience, never to take anything but the smallest and least traceable items, and not to take even these too often.

Eventually Rory was rewarded for his patience and good behaviour: he was drafted into one of the field gangs who worked in the open under the eyes of armed warders.

The chaplain was one of the first who said to the Prison Governor: “Macshane has some quality in him which I like: I wish I could get him to talk, I think there’s something worth while in him if one could only get at it.”

The governor replied: “He’s tough. He’s got a bad record of thieving and he was sentenced to this stretch for a very brutal crime.”

The prison visitor who came to talk to Rory said: “I like the chap. He’s a countryman: he’s worked on the land and he’s got a natural feeling for beasts and birds. I know that from the way he listens and the very occasional comment he makes when I talk about my own farm. I wish I could get him to open up: there’s some good in him if one only gets on to terms with him.” And the warder to whom the prison visitor spoke replied:

“He’s tough. He’s behaving well because it suits him, he likes working outside and he’s a good worker. But if ever we get another bout of real trouble here, Macshane’s one of the men I shall watch. There’s nothing reformed about him: he behaves while he finds it convenient to behave.”

Rory Macshane certainly liked working outside: he had been brought up on a farm in Northern Ireland and as a lad he had worked as a hired man on a farm in Westmorland. He was a skilled hedger and ditcher and he repaired stone walls and fences as though his heart were in the job. His heart was in the job of getting fit: hardening his muscles, gone soft in imprisonment, hardening his feet in preparation for a long walk (but not so long as the walk he once took to the Swiss border). Working outside gave him much more scope for hiding things: he had collected some empty tins and some sacks: sacks which had been made for potatoes, for calf food, for fertiliser. Sacks were very useful to an escaper on Dartmoor, and no one had ever suspected him of “lifting things.” He was always working with a will, a model prisoner, and he knew very well that a warder can’t keep his eyes on one man for too long when he is jointly responsible for a number of men. Rory had got some of his gear beyond the enclosures and he could pick up his cache in a matter of seconds when he was ready for it.

From the recaptured escapers, the men who had given themselves up, news seeped through about the lie of the land immediately beyond the purlieus of the prison. Rory Macshane was interested in running water. The warders had police dogs to track fugitives and Rory had good reason to believe that a man who takes to the bed of a stream leaves no scent which dogs can follow. Under the very eyes and ears of the warders, Rory Macshane memorised the mumbled details of the