Boulogne was reached at the end of the second day’s march. Jack was taken to a commissary of the forces. He did not learn till some time afterward what story the skipper told. It was to the effect that his lugger, while making for Boulogne from St. Malo, had been becalmed off Barfleur, within sight of an English frigate which lay about two miles astern. A boat had been sent from the frigate to capture the lugger. Attempting to board, the English crew had been driven back with severe loss, and this young officer, who had been foremost of the boarding party, had been left in the Frenchmen’s hands. Whether the commissary believed the story Jack never knew. Certainly it was acted upon. He was handed over to the keeper of the town prison, and lodged in the cells below the old belfry tower. Next day, however, he was removed and conveyed under a guard a few miles westward toward Etaples. As he left the belfry with other prisoners amid an escort of gendarmes, he saw riding up the hill towards Wimereux a group of horsemen, led by a stout little soldier in brilliant uniform. The gendarmes saluted; the little man gave a curt and careless acknowledgment, and cantered on. It was Bonaparte himself, riding to review the army he was collecting for the invasion of England. Jack recognized him by his likeness to the caricatures he had seen at home. "’Tis something to have seen the wonderful Boney!" he thought. Not far from Etaples he was placed with a number of other prisoners, all English seamen, in an old château about a mile from the sea. It had evidently been at one time a pleasant country-house, but from its partly dilapidated condition Jack inferred that it had suffered during the revolutionary riots thirteen or fourteen years before. It was now used as an overflow prison, the regular prisons of the town being filled. The English prisoners in France always outnumbered the French prisoners in England, owing to the greater enterprise of English seamen, which often led them to attempt impossible feats and threw them into the power of the enemy. The prisoners were kept on the top floor of the château, several rooms having been knocked into one. The windows were barred; there were two stories beneath; outside, the walled park all round the house was regularly patrolled by sentries; and there was a guard constantly at the gate. The wall bordering the grounds was about nine feet high and spiked at the top. These facts were at once noted by Jack, for the instant he was shut up he began to think of escape; but the outlook was not promising.