Souville was called forward.
‘Do you recognize the body?’ asked the captain.
‘Yes,’ replied Tom, ‘but it does not matter much. He was a bad fellow who struck his mother.’
The horrible exhibition had been intended as a deterrent lesson to the prisoners in general and to Souville in particular, especially as it was known that he and Dubreuil had been lifelong acquaintances in Calais, but, as far as Tom was concerned, his reply sufficiently proved that it was thrown away on him, whilst among the other prisoners it excited only disgust and indignation.
Tom Souville’s escape was arranged for that same night.
It was quite favourable for his enterprise, dark and so stormy that the hulk rolled heavily. Tilmont made Tom take a good drink of sugar, rum, and coffee; the two men greased themselves all over thoroughly; round Tom’s neck was an eelskin full of guineas, in his hat a map of the Channel, in a ‘boussole’ tinder and steel, a knife in the cord of his hat, and a change of clothes in a little leather bag on his back.
Overboard he slipped (Tilmont’s name is not again mentioned, although he greased himself, so I presume he did not start. There are many instances of poor fellows, after much elaborate preparation, being deterred at the last moment by the darkness, the black depths below, the long swim, and the extreme uncertainty of the result). It was a hard, long struggle in the wild night, and throughout appeared the face of Dubreuil with its empty orbits before the swimmer. However, in two hours and a half he reached land. He rested for a while, cleaned the mud off, changed his clothes and started to walk.
In nine days he reached Winchelsea, walking by night and hiding by day, for this time his clothes were not of the ‘elegant’ style, and the land was full of spy-hunters. He went on to Folkestone, and rested by the garden wall of a villa in the outskirts. As he rested he heard the voice of a woman singing in the garden. At once he recognized it as the voice of a captain’s wife who had been of the merry party at J. P.’s house on the occasion of his last visit to Folkestone, called her by name, and announced his own. He was warmly welcomed, there was a repetition of the old festivities, and in due course he was found a passage for Calais, where he arrived safely. Once more he trod the deck of the famous Renard, and was so successful that he saved money enough to buy a cutter on his own account. He soon became one of the most famous Channel corsaires; and in addition a popular hero, by his saving many lives at sea, not only of his own countrymen, but of English fishermen, and in one case, of the crew of a British ship of war which had been disabled by foul weather.
Then came the Peace of 1814; and when, after Waterloo, friendly relationship was solidly established between the two countries, Tom Souville, only at home on the ocean, obtained command of the cross-channel packet Iris, which he retained almost up to the day of his death in 1840, at the age of sixty-four.