The time so long expected arrived; and at the hour before midnight we met at the appointed spot. How much were we chagrined and vexed to find that not only at this late hour were the sentinels unusually on the alert, but that--what seemed more extraordinary--great numbers of people were passing to and fro. We were obliged to defer our escape to the night following.
I confess I felt the greatest regret at quitting my poor sick relative, our only other comrade, M’Grath; nor could I make him acquainted with the step I was about to take without experiencing an emotion impossible to be described. His feelings at our separation were as acute as my own.
The sea-coast, of course, was the point fixed upon for our destination; and we agreed that about Étaples was the most likely part to procure a boat.
The anxiety and uneasiness which we felt the next day were beyond description. Some of our countrymen who called to see us, _en passant_, threw out such insinuations, and made such remarks upon our conduct of late, that we were under the most serious apprehensions of being shackled, and on the road to Bitche, before the much-desired hour, eleven at night. “The ----,” says Shakespeare, “fears each bush an officer.” We were well aware that there were several Englishmen employed and paid regularly for conveying the most trivial occurrence that might take place amongst the prisoners to the French general. I have frequently known prisoners of war, through malice, to be taken out of their beds in the night, fettered, and conducted, under an escort of _gendarmes_, to the depots of punishment, without ever being informed of the crime or fault of which they had been accused; and merely from some of those miscreants giving false information, in order to be revenged for any private animosity they might have had against the person so treated.
The long-wished-for moment at length arrived: the intermediate time had passed in great excitement. We met. Everything seemed quiet, and favourable to our escape. We were in the spirit to take every advantage of circumstances, or to create circumstances, if creating them were possible. In a few seconds, by the aid of our rope, and by the assistance of a friend, Alexander Donaldson, many years back my shipmate, a master in the navy, and afterwards a prisoner of war,--he was a native of Portsoy, in Banffshire, but is now no more,--we got down these most formidable ramparts of between seventy and eighty feet high. We descended, to our surprise, with little damage, except the loss of some of the skin from my hands. This was caused by the whipcord part of the line, which we were not able to grasp firmly, and it brought my companions altogether on my back and shoulders, in the ditch, before I could move or extricate myself. Happy were we to find ourselves, so far at least, at liberty. Our course was N.W. Each man buckled on his knapsack, arranged his implements and weapons of defence, and, full of the spirit of determined adventure and of resolute suffering, we started upon our course.