Escape was the dazzling lure before the eyes of the Gibraltar convicts and more than one ardent spirit strove to compass it. The patience and ingenuity exhibited by one man was really marvellous. He was employed alone in a remote workshop and had discovered that it communicated with one of the hollows or caves with which the great oolitic rock is honeycombed. In this he had constructed and kept concealed a boat built of the nondescript materials that came to his hand--scraps of canvas, disused cement bags and small pieces of timber. It was not unlike a collapsible boat, in three separate compartments for convenience of carriage, which could be made into one tiny dingy or coracle sufficient to keep one man afloat. He expected to be able to launch this fragile craft unobserved, choosing a favourable opportunity, and to commit himself to the waters of the Straits of Gibraltar, a narrow passage ever crowded with shipping, where he hoped to be picked up by some craft. He had laid by a store of provisions saved from his meagre rations, which he carried out daily from the prison. It was his abstraction of food that betrayed him to a jealous comrade, who treacherously gave him away and led to the detection of his undoubtedly clever scheme. The intensity of his disappointment when discovered was quite pathetic. A seemingly much more serious affair was a plot set on foot for a combined attempt to break prison after rising upon the guards. When the matter was reported to me, it had all the aspect of a dangerous conspiracy and it imposed upon me, but I have reason now to think it was all a hoax. Convicts have no loyalty to each other and their best laid plans "gang aft agley," for the secret is rarely kept. Some one usually turns traitor. The scheme is at times a pure invention devised by some astute prisoner seeking to curry favour by his revelations to the authorities. If it has any foundation in fact, there is a race between the traitors, each anxious to be the first in betrayal and thus render himself safe.