for defrauding the State. This I knew to be no
idle threat, such means having been taken in
other cases to coerce entrapped foreigners. I
knew many instances of men defrauded of their
liberty being sent to work on the fortifications,
for having under similar circumstances
" defrauded" the State. Knowing all this, however,
I deliberately took the dollars ; for I was fully
resolved to make my escape, or die.

One day, while wandering round the camp, I
saw in a dust-hole, behind an officer's tent, an old
and ragged pair of trousers. These, with some
difficulty, I managed to secure under my overcoat,
and watching an opportunity when the tent
was empty, I put them on under my uniform. I
had also obtained an old red flannel shirt, and
these would enable me to throw off the
regimentals when necessary, and appear in some
sort as a civilian.

My first step was to sham a violently sprained
ankle. Having deceived the surgeon, who was
a very incompetent man, I was relieved from
duty. Limping about the camp for a day or two,
I occasionally heard it said that I was " foxing,"
which was not far wrong. Then, when I had
made the few possible arrangements, I chose for
my great venture a fine day about two hours
before dark, when most of the officers would be
on parade with their regiments, and when I knew
that men of my own company were on guard at
the spot where I hoped to break the lines.
Having supplied myself with a bottle of whisky
and some cigars, I made towards the spot I had
chosen, and found, to my agreeable surprise, that
one of the men of my own company there on
guard was a Scotchman, who had felt as little at
home as I did in such a camp. We were on
friendly terms; indeed, we had often discussed
our chances of escape. The whisky was
produced, and so were the cigars, which the
soldiers on guard shared, of course secretly, and
without attracting the attention of the officers;
for speaking to the sentinels on duty was an
offence very severely punished. I was convinced
that none of the guard had the least suspicion
of my purpose, and it must have been much to
their surprise that when I had passed one of
them, as if to carry the whisky- bottle to
another, I suddenly dropped it, and ran for the
wood, right through their lines. Indeed, they
were so much taken by surprise, that I was
already half way to the cover when they called to
me to halt. Four or five shots were fired after
me; but although I heard the whistle of the
balls, none of them passed very near me; in
fact, I don't think the men had any wish to hit
me. In a few bounds I reached the wood, and,
dashing through the bush up a short hill, found
myself, on reaching the top, almost face to face
with the lieutenant-colonel of my own regiment.
He stood a little below me, revolver in hand, but
I had come so suddenly upon him, that before
he had time to cock a single barrel, and while he
was fumbling to do so, I, by a sudden spring as
I rushed down hill, by throwing my whole weight
upon him, dashed him headlong to the ground.
Rolling several yards down the hill beyond him,
I sprang to my feet, and was out of sight in the
thick bushes before he recovered himself.

Taking, as I judged, the direction from the
camp, I ran as well as I could through the bush
for some twenty minutes, or half an hour, and
believed that I was a mile or two from the camp,
when unexpectedly hearing a cry of Halt! I
turned sharp off to my right, and found myself
on the edge of an open space of the wood next
to the camp, in full view of, and close to, a
company of the guard, with an officer, who, on seeing
me, at once gave orders to fire. But the range
was long, and although the balls cut branches
of trees near me, and some passed very close,
with an unpleasant hiss, none touched me. All
this time I was running through thick reedy
grass, and making for the dense brush on the
other side of the small clearing, when, just as I
had almost reached it, General Corcoran and his
staff, who had heard the firing, galloped up, and
a smart fusillade was opened upon me from their
revolvers. But they were on horseback, and at
some distance: so at first none of their shots
took effect on me, except that one of them
knocked off my cap. I was beginning, therefore,
to congratulate myself on still keeping a
whole skin, and was on the point of entering
the thick bush, when General Corcoran, enraged
at the possibility of my getting off untouched,
leaped his horse over the fence which stood
between us, and rode to within fifteen or twenty
yards of me. I, on hearing him, almost
involuntarily turned round and faced him just as
he took deliberate aim at me. I thought it was
all over with me then, for at that distance he
could not well miss. He fired, and I fell as
if some one had knocked my legs from under me
with a big stick. I did not exactly think that
I had been hit; I did not know what it was. I
had been standing, when he fired, up to my
waist in thick grass, and when I fell I rolled
completely out of sight, into a dry watercourse
which ran from the wood. I heard the general
remark that he had " settled that coon, anyhow,"
and he ordered his aide-de-camp to go and see
whether I was dead, or only wounded. While
he spoke, I was scrambling as rapidly as I could
up the dry watercourse, and before they had
dismounted and come to the spot I had crept some
fifty yards into the thick underwood, and was
again off as fast as I could run in the direction
that I thought would take me from the camp.
I ran for some time. From the top of a little
knoll I heard the drums: they were distant, and
my escape so far was effected.

Then, hastily, I threw off my uniform, and
stood, dressed in an old ragged and dirty pair
of what once had been black pantaloons, and an
old red shirt; civilian dress, it is true, but of a
sort to make me look like a suspicious character,
who could not get off the island without
giving a very clear account of himself. Still I
had now a better chance than I could possibly