After a time the prisoners were taken on board British ships, and learned that their destination was an English prison—perhaps the dreaded hulks! Gille was on board the _Britannia_. Let me tell the effect of the change in his own words, they are so gratifying: ‘Aux traitements cruels des féroces Espagnols succédaient tout à coup les soins compatissants des soldats et matelots anglais; ces braves gens nous témoignaient toutes sortes d’égards. Ils transportèrent à bras plusieurs de nos camarades malades ou amputés. Les effets qui nous appartenaient furent aussi montés par leurs soins, sans qu’ils nous laissaient prendre la peine de rien.’ On board there were cleanliness and space, good food for officers and men alike, and plenty of it, the allowance being the same for six prisoners as for four British. Rum was regularly served out, and Gille lays stress on a pudding the prisoners made, into the composition of which it entered. They duly reached Plymouth; the beautiful scenery impressed Gille, but he was most astonished when the market-boats came alongside to see fish-women clothed in black velvet, with feathers and flowers in their hats! Thence to Portsmouth, where they got a first sight of the hulks, which made Gille shudder, but he was relieved to learn that he and his fellows were destined for a shore prison. On September 28, 1810, they arrived at Portchester. Here they were minutely registered, and clothed in a sleeved vest, waistcoat, and trousers of yellow cloth, and a blue and white striped cotton shirt, and provided with a hammock, a flock mattress of two pounds weight, a coverlet, and tarred cords for hammock lashings. Gille gives much interesting detail about the theatre. The Agent, William Patterson, found it good policy to further any scheme by which the prisoners could be kept wholesomely occupied, and so provided all the wood necessary for the building of the theatre, which was in charge of an ex-chief-machinist of the Théâtre Feydau in Paris, Carré by name. He made a row of boxes and a hall capable of holding 300 people, and thoroughly transformed the base story of the keep, which was unoccupied because prisoners confined there in past times had died in great numbers, and the authorities deemed it unwholesome as a sleeping-place.