That night they decided to lie in the jungle till it was light, and to start off at dawn. At dawn two went off on a brief Recce, and on their return, to their horror, heard excited Nip voices near them. They retreated, but on returning later to their rendezvous found their comrades gone. Guessing that this meant bad news, they managed to re-cross the Strait and entered Changi unknown to the Nips once more.

Of the other two whom a Nip section had accidentally bumped into, one was never seen again. The two of them were led by a Nip officer with some troops to a nearby beach. As they marched along, the man behind noticed how the hands of the man in front were bound, and managed to loosen his own almost completely. Arrived on the shore, the Nip officer drew his sword and ordered them to kneel down. He then started to rant at them, waving his sword, and working himself up into an hysteria. Certain now that they were about to be executed, the second man, who had loosened his ropes, made a desperate run for it. His hands were free, and as he plunged for the sea, the officer swiped at him with his sword and cut him deeply above the shoulder. The Englishman managed to swim and drift to a sort of shallow mangrove swamp, where he was washed up on the mud nearly dead. The Nips then shot casually at him, missed him, but finally gave him up for dead.

Thirty six hours later that incredible man, having drifted and floated back across the strait, found himself near Changi Goal. He gave himself up to the guard. He said he had been out on one of the Official Bathing Parties and had been carried out to sea. He had been bitten in the shoulder by a small shark, but managed to make his way to a sandbank, and thus escaped. The Nips swallowed the story and sent him at once to our hospital, where he was operated on for a frightful wound which had miraculously not severed any vital artery or vein. After a week or two of hovering between life and death, he lived to tell the tale.

It will be observed, though, that the escape didn’t get further than the opposite bank of the Strait; and one man was killed and the other only escaped by being a very remarkably astute and brave man.

Our small mess garden by this time was beginning to grow. Sweet potatoes, planted in small ridges, were making quite a lot of green tops, and the tapioca cuttings were flourishing. The papaya trees, up to nine feet high when transplanted, had all survived, and some were already flowering again; and we also found that the pineapple plants we had transplanted with fruit on them up to the size of a cricket ball and pink in colour, after a few weeks hesitation and gathering of their forces, started to swell and grow.