As soon as Fletcher gained the deck of the _Helderenberg_ the master sailed for Spain, carrying with him one John Kerridge, a pilot who had been pressed into Monmouth’s service for the purpose of steering the vessel to Bristol. As soon as they reached Bilboa, Fletcher, the master, and this unfortunate Kerridge were all seized and put in prison; and soon afterwards the English Minister at Madrid requested the Spanish Government to send Fletcher to England. If he had been sent to England his fate would not have long remained doubtful; but, by some strange chance, he escaped. The Earl Marischal’s account of what Fletcher told him of his adventures at this period is as follows:-- One morning he was sitting at the window of his prison, when a ‘venerable person’ appeared, and made signs that he had something to tell him. Fletcher somehow found an open door, at which he was met by the ‘venerable person,’ who led him past the sentinels, who, strange to say, were all fast asleep. As soon as he was outside the prison, his deliverer, who was a perfect stranger, disappeared before he had time to thank him. Thereafter, in disguise, he wandered through Spain, where, as soon as he thought himself out of danger, he spent some time in studying in the conventual libraries, and buying rare and curious books. ‘He made,’ says Lord Buchan, ‘several very narrow escapes of being detected and seized in the course of his peregrinations through Spain, particularly in the neighbourhood of a town (the name of which Lord Marshall had forgotten) where he intended to have passed the night; but in the skirts of a wood a few miles distant from thence, upon entering a road to the right, he was warned by a woman of a very respectable appearance to take the left-hand road, as there would be danger in the other direction. Upon his arrival he found the citizens alarmed by the news of a robbery and murder on the road against which he had been cautioned.’