In nine days he reached Winchelsea, walking by night and hiding by day, for this time his clothes were not of the ‘elegant’ style, and the land was full of spy-hunters. He went on to Folkestone, and rested by the garden wall of a villa in the outskirts. As he rested he heard the voice of a woman singing in the garden. At once he recognized it as the voice of a captain’s wife who had been of the merry party at J. P.’s house on the occasion of his last visit to Folkestone, called her by name, and announced his own. He was warmly welcomed, there was a repetition of the old festivities, and in due course he was found a passage for Calais, where he arrived safely. Once more he trod the deck of the famous _Renard_, and was so successful that he saved money enough to buy a cutter on his own account. He soon became one of the most famous Channel _corsaires_; and in addition a popular hero, by his saving many lives at sea, not only of his own countrymen, but of English fishermen, and in one case, of the crew of a British ship of war which had been disabled by foul weather. Then came the Peace of 1814; and when, after Waterloo, friendly relationship was solidly established between the two countries, Tom Souville, only at home on the ocean, obtained command of the cross-channel packet _Iris_, which he retained almost up to the day of his death in 1840, at the age of sixty-four. CHAPTER VIII THE PRISON SYSTEM THE PRISONERS ASHORE. GENERAL During the progress of the Seven Years’ War, from 1756 to 1763, it became absolutely necessary, from the large annual increase in the number of prisoners of war brought to England, that some systematic accommodation for prisoners on land should be provided. Some idea of the increase may be formed when we find that the number of prisoners of war in England at the end of 1756 was 7,261, and that in 1763, the last year of the war, it was 40,000. The poor wretches for whom there was no room in the already overcrowded hulks were herded together wherever space could be found or made for them. They were in borough jails—veritable hells on earth even when filled with native debtors and felons: they were in common prisons such as the Savoy and Wellclose Square in London: they were in hired and adapted strong houses such as the Wool House at Southampton, and the old pottery works in Liverpool, or in adapted country houses such as Sissinghurst in Kent, or in adapted farms like Roscrow and Kergilliack in Cornwall; or in barracks as at Winchester, Tynemouth and Edinburgh. Portchester Castle was but an adaptation, so was Forton, near Gosport, and the only place of confinement built as a prison, and kept exclusively for prisoners of war, was for a long time the Millbay prison at Plymouth.