of the fellow made me hope that it might be
a very long time before he recovered his senses. I gagged him,
therefore, and bound him with strips of blanket to the bed, so that in
his weakened condition there was good reason to think that, in any case,
he might not get free before the next visit of the warder. But now again
I was faced with new difficulties, for you will remember that I had
relied upon his height to help me over the walls. I could have sat down
and shed tears of despair had not the thought of my mother and of the
Emperor come to sustain me. 'Courage!' said I. 'If it were anyone but
Etienne Gerard he would be in a bad fix now; that is a young man who is
not so easily caught.'

I set to work therefore upon Beaumont's sheet as well as my own, and by
tearing them into strips and then plaiting them together, I made a very
excellent rope. This I tied securely to the centre of my iron bar, which
was a little over a foot in length. Then I slipped out into the yard,
where the rain was pouring and the wind screaming louder than ever. I
kept in the shadow of the prison wall, but it was as black as the ace of
spades, and I could not see my own hand in front of me. Unless I walked
into the sentinel I felt that I had nothing to fear from him. When I had
come under the wall I threw up my bar, and to my joy it stuck the very
first time between the spikes at the top. I climbed up my rope, pulled
it after me, and dropped down on the other side. Then I scaled the
second wall, and was sitting astride among the spikes upon the top, when
I saw something twinkle in the darkness beneath me. It was the bayonet
of the sentinel below, and so close was it (the second wall being rather
lower than the first) that I could easily, by leaning over, have
unscrewed it from its socket. There he was, humming a tune to himself,
and cuddling up against the wall to keep himself warm, little thinking
that a desperate man within a few feet of him was within an ace of
stabbing him to the heart with his own weapon. I was already bracing
myself for the spring when the fellow, with an oath, shouldered his
musket, and I heard his steps squelching through the mud as he resumed
his beat. I slipped down my rope, and, leaving it hanging, I ran at the
top of my speed across the moor.

Heavens, how I ran! The wind buffeted my face and buzzed in my nostrils.
The rain pringled upon my skin and hissed past my ears. I stumbled into
holes. I tripped over bushe