The answer was: “Our biscuits are made with a hole in the centre. Each biscuit is the ration for a day. Sometimes twenty are delivered to each soldier, who is given to understand that he has no further claim on the commisariat for those days.”
“But it is impossible for the soldier to carry twenty.”
“We know that very well, but he has no claim; and how he lives in the meanwhile we do not ask. Perhaps he lives on the country.” In other words, he steals!
In the hospital he was attended by a Spanish barber. As he could speak Spanish fluently, they had a good deal of talk. The barber used to tell all he heard and saw of what was passing both inside and outside the fortress. When he learnt that the Colonel was an engineer, he offered to bring him a plan of all the underground drains and of the aqueduct.
The attendant, although a good-natured man, kept a sharp eye on the barber; so it was a difficult matter for him to give anything without being detected.
At last, one morning when preparing to shave him, he succeeded in shoving a plan under the bedclothes. The Colonel seized the earliest opportunity of examining it, and from the knowledge he had before acquired of the place he soon mastered the directions of the drains, etc. From that moment his whole attention was fixed on the means of making his escape.
He knew that the hospital was situated in the principal street, the ends of which terminated upon the fortifications bounding the harbour. If once he could gain the street he had only to turn to the right or left to gain the ramparts, and so make his escape from the town in the best manner he could.
One evening just at dusk, when the medical men took leave of them for the night, one of them left his cocked hat on the bed. As soon as the Colonel noticed this he put it on his head, hurried downstairs, and made direct for the great door; but he found it so completely blocked up by the guard that, unless by pushing them aside, it was not possible to pass undiscovered. He therefore retreated upstairs in despair, and threw the hat down on the bed. Scarcely had he done so when in rushed the doctor, asking for his chapeau.
They were more than once visited by the crews of the boats which arrived nightly from France. The sight of the prisoners seemed to afford the Frenchmen great gratification, but there was nothing in their manner which could in any way offend.
Very unexpectedly one evening the Governor’s aide-de-camp came to the prison and told the officers to prepare immediately to go to France.