He had been pronounced an incurable criminal. The Republic had experimented on him in vain. He was beyond hope, outside the pale. It was only necessary, therefore, to see that he secured no opportunities to commit crime. Like the wild beast in its cage, it was no longer a question of what would happen if he got out.
But Jean Petit, to whom liberty was as much as to the imprisoned tiger, watched and waited.
It is said that everything comes to him who waits, and after many years, in which the morose criminal-lunatic had grown grizzled, hard of flesh, and still harder of heart, time brought him his opportunity.
Petit, watching Fate from the corner of a red eye, saw the road open.
“At the most,” he explained to the three comrades, “we can but die, and be damned into hell. From the hell here to the hell there—it is but a passage.”
The comrades being each desperate criminals like himself, were agreed.
So they succeeded in stealing a whaleboat, and having matured their schemes, they fled one night for liberty, leaving fresh blood-stains behind them.
At sunrise in the morning Jean Petit and his three friends found themselves, with a scanty supply of provisions and water, afloat on the Pacific without either chart or compass.
Petit assumed the leadership without formality of election. He was captain and commander. His word, supported by the sharp knife in his belt, became law.
He sat sullenly at the tiller, and as the sun rose at the sea margin, headed the boat south by west.