To his disappointment he found that supper consisted only of tea, cheese and biscuits, a more solid meal of stew and plum-pudding having been issued in the middle of the day. But there was a liberal supply and when he told the Quartermaster who was superintending operations that he had missed his lunch he was given a double portion without argument.
In the gentle light they sat on the grass nibbling their cheese and biscuits. Babforth had fortunately provided himself with several packets of Players on his way down from Hull so they had an ample supply of cigarettes and, having decided that it was useless to attempt anything until darkness had fallen, they lay side by side smoking while they waited for night to come.
Unlike the previous evening, the sky was overcast so they could not actually watch the sun sinking, but by 9.40 the outline of Park Lane to the east had become blurred in semi-darkness; while the colour was rapidly fading from the trees to the west in Kensington Gardens.
Then, almost imperceptibly the sky took on a different hue; a reddish tinge, as though a great fire was burning somewhere in the far distance. The men in the camp began to stir uneasily. At one moment a good two-thirds of them had been lying or sitting on the grass. The next, they were all standing on their feet. Derek felt a strange, unaccountable glow of exultation run through him and he saw that Babforth's eyes had taken on a glassy stare.
As the sky reddened in the west a low murmur went up which gradually increased to an angry roar. The prisoners were all in movement now. Some had started to quarrel over portions of unconsumed rations. Others began to move from all sides, as though by a common impulse, towards the gate.
Derek, too, instinctively turned in that direction and Bab-forth strode along beside him. Soon they were wedged in a struggling, yelling mass and found themselves shouting aloud like the rest.
Fortunately, they had been some distance from the entrance of the compound when the mob began to converge upon it; otherwise they might have been crushed to death. As it was, they could hear the agonised screaming of the men a hundred yards in front who were now being pressed flat against the iron bars of the great gates.
Suddenly, under the enormous pressure, they gave; and the mob surged forward fighting and struggling to get through them, as though they had been trapped in a building where there was a raging fire.
The jam was so great that Derek's damaged ribs suffered severely. He kept his arms pressed down to his sides to give them some protection, but after a few minutes he thought his heart would burst and a scream was forced from him. Then the pressure eased. He caught a glimpse of the barbed-wire entanglements now on his right rear and knew that although he had not even seen the gates he had been carried through them.
Those prisoners who had already succeeded in escaping were racing across the Park in the direction of Park Lane and, despite his pain, Derek felt a thrill of elation at the thought that he, to, was now once more a free man. But next moment the man in front of him tripped over the body of one of the poor wretches who had been crushed in bursting open the gate and Derek pitched forward on top of them.
Stretching out a hand, Babforth grabbed Derek's elbow and for a second he regained his feet; but Babforth was swept on by the swirling stream of prisoners who were still stampeding through the gate, and a violent thrust behind sent Derek spinning to the ground once more. He felt a heavy boot descend in the middle of his back and the mob came surging over him.
Instinctively he threw up his arms to protect his head. It seemed quite certain that he would be trampled to death. For the second time in twenty-four hours he was kicked, bashed, stamped on. As he was far from recovered from his first flailing the second was even more painful, yet now he was at least face down and the blows that rained upon him were not deliberate.
After what seemed an eternity the human herd had passed. He lay still for a moment, half-stunned and breathless. Then h& managed to raise his head again and saw that the red glow in the western sky was fading. Dimly he realised that very soon the troops, whom the comet must also have affected, would regain their senses and start rounding-up such prisoners as they could. He must get away at once or he would be recaptured.
All about him lay the bodies of crushed and trampled men. Some of them were now sitting up groaning over their injuries; others lay still where they had fallen, never to rise again. In the distance a number of the escaped prisoners were still running towards Park Lane.
Aching in every limb he swayed to his feet and set off at a drunken run; several of the fallen, who had not been too badly trampled, were also staggering up and running with him.
When they reached Grosvenor Gate a trickle of escapers was still passing through it but behind them angry shouts to halt told them that the soldiers were already giving chase. The great iron gates of the Park had been burst by the same method as those of the encampment. The bodies of more dead and injured were strewn in the roadway outside. Derek did not pause to look at them but lurched on down Upper Brook Street into Grosvenor Square.
The comet had now set and full night was come. Police whistles were shrilling from both behind and in front as Derek ran. Ahead of him, on the Carlos Place corner of Grosvenor Square, he saw a body of police heading back the escapers, so he turned on his track and ran down South Audley Street.
Except for the prisoners, who had,scattered in all directions, the street was empty. Every shop was in darkness and the blinds of most of the houses were drawn. As he reached the cul-de-sac which ends in Mount Street Gardens he noticed that the windows of the wine-merchant's shop on the corner opposite Grosvenor Chapel had been smashed. At the same moment he saw some police coming round the corner of South Street just ahead of him, so he halted, turned abruptly, and scrambled in through the broken window of the wine-merchant's.
The place had been looted; it was a shambles of broken bottles and spilt liquor. Feeling his way forward in the darkness, he found some offices behind the shop. Entering one, he closed the door behind him, tripped over something, and fell upon the carpet.
For a moment he was so exhausted that he could not move but lay panting where he had fallen. When he got his breath back a little he lit a match from a box that Babsforth had given him. The thing he had tripped over was the dead body of a man.
The match having burnt down to his fingers he did not light another, but remained sitting on the floor with his back propped against a desk. Apparently, the police had not seen him enter the shop or they would have followed him already, so he felt that the best thing he could do was to remain there until the excitement had subsided.
A quarter of an hour later he lit another match and peered round him by its feeble light. Apart from the dead man, there was nothing unusual about the office. The looters had evidently contented themselves with drinking or smashing the bottles on the shelves in the shop outside during their drunken orgy. At one side of the room there was a mahogany cupboard, the top of which formed a tasting table, and, above it, shelves backed by mirrors with glasses upon them.
Crawling to the cupboard, he opened it and found some bottles inside. Picking one up he poured himself a drink without bothering to find out what the bottle contained. On sip-Ping it he found it to be sherry and swallowed a couple of glasses one after the other.
The generous wine restored him a little, so leaving the office, he went out into the shop and peered through the broken windows. As there was no one about he slipped out into the street again and set off, at a walk this time, towards St. James's Square.
He could hardly see from the pain that racked him but he managed to find his way somehow down Curzon Street, through Lansdowne Passage and up Berkeley Street.