As Souville, when he refused to be put on parole, had openly declared that he would escape at the first opportunity, he was carefully guarded. Thanks to his excellent knowledge of English he made friends among the bluejackets of the guard, and especially with one Will, whom he had helped with money when his mother’s home was threatened to be broken up for debt. So he started the delicate and difficult operation of boring a hole in the ship’s side, large enough to admit the passage of a human body, above the water line, yet not too near the grated platform running round the ship, continually patrolled by guards. He counted on Will’s aid, and confided his scheme to him. The very next morning he was conducted to the Black Hole, and was informed that his design had been betrayed, and he instantly guessed that his supposed friend Will was the betrayer, as he alone was in the secret. Whilst in the _cachot_ he found a mysterious note merely saying that at a certain hour on a certain day the high tide would be over the mud-banks which had proved fatal to so many fugitives from the hulks. In the _cachot_ with him were three men who had successfully shammed madness in order to get sent to France, and who were about to be liberated. One of them, whose form of assumed madness had been to crow day and night like a cock, gave Tom a clue to a hole he had commenced to bore in the event of his sham madness failing. Souville found the hole, finished it, and on the date named in the note slipped out, and started for a three-mile swim towards a light ashore. After much labour, he negotiated the mud-banks, and landed. Exhausted, he fell asleep, and was awakened by a man. He sprang to his feet and prepared to defend himself from arrest; but the man impressed silence, and pointed to a fisher-hut whence a light shone, evidently that to which he had steered at first, but of which he had lost sight during his long struggle in the water. He entered the hut and found Will! The whole affair, the arrest, the _cachot_, and the mysterious note turned out to be Will’s plot, who explained that if he had not divulged the secret of Souville’s first escape-hole when it was known that he had discovered it, he would probably have got a thousand lashes at the triangles, and that to atone for it he had conveyed to the _cachot_ the note which was the means of Tom’s escape.