his mouth. Peters
instantly seized it, and began to draw it towards him, making us signs
to assist him, which I obeyed mechanically. After a few tugs, I saw that
at the end of the cable were a dozen small casks, which floated towards
us. I then perceived that the vessel thus contrived to keep sufficiently
far from the shore, not to run a risk of being stranded. In an instant
the casks, smeared over with something that made them waterproof, were
unfastened and placed on horses, which immediately dashed off for the
interior of the country. A second cargo arrived with the same success;
but as we were landing the third, some reports of fire-arms announced
that our outposts were attacked. "There is the beginning of the ball,"
said Peters, calmly; "I must go and see who will dance;" and taking up
his carbine, he joined the outposts, which had by this time joined each
other. The firing became rapid, and we had two men killed, and others
slightly wounded. At the fire of the revenue officers, we soon found
that they exceeded us in number; but alarmed, and fearing an ambuscade,
they dared not to approach, and we effected our retreat without any
attempt on their part to prevent it. From the beginning of the fight
the Squirrel had weighed anchor and stood out to sea, for fear that the
noise of the firing should bring down on her the government cruiser.
I was told that most probably she would unload her cargo in some other
part of the coast, where the owners had numerous agents.

[Vidocq returns to Lille, where he is taken by two gendarmes, and
concerts the following stratagem for escape:--]

This escape, however, was not so very easy a matter as may be surmised,
when I say that our dungeons, seven feet square, had walls six feet
thick, strengthened with planking crossed and rivetted with iron; a
window, two feet by one, closed with three iron gratings placed one
after the other, and the door cased with wrought iron. With such
precautions, a jailor might depend on the safe keeping of his charge,
but yet we overcame it all.

I was in a cell on the second floor with Duhamel. For six francs, a
prisoner, who was also a turnkey, procured us two files, a ripping
chisel, and two turnscrews. We had pewter spoons, and our jailor was
probably ignorant of the use which prisoners could make of them. I knew
the dungeon key; it was the counterpart of all the others on the same
story; and I cut a model of it from a large carrot; then I made a m