Mr. Wagstaff, travelling on foot through the night, managed, after several narrow escapes, to reach the seashore, along which he proceeded to Scheveningen, sheltering himself among the sandhills which line that coast. Scheveningen, though within two miles of the Hague, where French soldiers already swarmed, proved to be unguarded. The town was then, as it is still in these days, no more than a small fishing village, possessing neither pier nor harbour, but only an open shore, on which the fishing luggers beach themselves on returning from a voyage. Perhaps the French thought the place too insignificant to need a guard; but, however that may be, Mr. Wagstaff found a fisherman willing to take him across the channel, and landed safely in England on May 26th, 1803. It may be that the kidnapping of the unlucky prisoners at Helvoetsluis, and many another town in Holland and France, was a symptom rather than a cause of the peculiar exasperation with which the coming war was fought, but it certainly added vastly to the hatred with which Napoleon was regarded in this country; and when it was found that the release even of the diplomatists could be obtained only with the greatest difficulty, while all the remaining prisoners were reserved for a confinement of indefinite length, the general indignation knew no bounds. A few of the Packets’ men, headed by Captain Flynn, managed to burst out of the Brill prison on the last evening of their sojourn there. They succeeded in reaching the beach, seized an open boat, and after many hours of great danger, were picked up by an English ship. The rest of the prisoners were taken to Verdun, where they appear to have been not ill-treated. Mr. Sevright, the Post-Office agent at Helvoetsluis, retained during the whole period of his captivity, which lasted for nine years, the authority with which he had been invested, keeping up some sort of discipline, and constituting himself the protector of the sailors. He received and distributed the allowance of six sous a day which the English Government granted to each captive sailor; and, being gifted with strong sense and discretion, was able to intervene with good effect whenever his men came into conflict, as restless seamen will, with the Commissary or his subordinates; to secure justice for them, and in many ways to mitigate the hardships of their unfortunate position. Before leaving these men in their dreary captivity, it may not be out of place to refer to the extraordinary courage and endurance shown by some of the prisoners who attempted to escape.