Ingenuity and boldness of plan of escape were often equalled by the limitless patience with which it was pursued. More than once a long passage was tunnelled underground, leading to liberty beyond the Arsenal walls, and this in spite of surveillance and the galling inconvenience of carrying chains. In one case a space had been contrived at the end, large enough to contain the disguises, into which the fugitives were to change when the moment arrived, and to store the food saved up for the journey. The paving stones were taken up, and places of concealment contrived beneath to hide the intending fugitive until pursuit had passed on. Once a man got within a heap of stones, and presently more stones were brought outside to add to the heap. He narrowly escaped being built in alive. By desperate efforts he broke through and gained the boundary wall, which he escaladed, and fell into the arms of a couple of fishermen on the far side, who seized him and took him back to the _bagne_. The promised reward was generally too strong a temptation to working men to let a fugitive go free. There were convicts with no sense of loyalty to their comrades, always ready to betray an intended escape, eager to gain the reward. Others, again, had invented a strange business, that of giving assistance to a comrade, resolved to attempt an escape, by helping him in the work of excavation, or of standing sentinel to prevent surprise by the guard. On the arrival of any convict, known to be well furnished with funds, he was approached by these friends with proposals. Sometimes the kindly convict made a double coup,--for when he had started to escape he betrayed the plot and was paid the authorised reward by the other side. The guards sometimes encouraged an attempt to escape, and then turned on the would-be fugitive after he had gone so far from the prison to be worth the full sum of a hundred francs. Great cleverness in preparing, and promptitude in assuming, a disguise was frequently shown. One convict manufactured the whole of an officer’s uniform out of paper, which he painted and completed so as to escape detection. Petit, who has been mentioned already, whose escapes were almost miraculous, got away once from the court at Amiens, after being recaptured, by entering the dressing-room of the advocates, where he stole a robe and wig, in which he walked out into the street. A convict named Fichon, at Toulon, disappeared so effectually that it was concluded he had left for good. But he was still on hand, although the most minute searches were fruitless. He had hidden under water in the great basin of the dockyard, and had arranged a leather duct to bring him air from the surface. At night he emerged from his moist asylum, landed, ate his food, placed for him by his friends, and at daybreak took to the water again.