Now Tonkin, as has already been said, was a man of enormous strength, and as the pages of this history have shown, of great courage and resolution also. Nor was he lacking in prudence or common-sense; witness his ready surrender of the lugger when refusal would have meant his being blown out of the water. The same common-sense restrained him from struggling against impossible odds, both when he was trussed up, and afterwards when the vessel was manned by fifty or sixty well-armed Frenchmen. But so soon as he felt the lugger lightly graze the jetty, and knew by the rush of hurrying feet on deck that the great majority of his captors had gone ashore, he began to strain at his bonds. The Frenchmen had done their work of trussing capably enough, and, in the case of ninety-nine men out of a hundred, no doubt there would have been no danger of its being undone. But Tonkin’s muscles were hard as iron; he had the strength of a horse. After a few minutes’ straining, the rope about his wrists gave way; to release his legs was then easy. Delarousse having gone through his pockets before trussing him, he was without a knife, and had to loosen with his hands the ropes wherewith his comrades were tied. As soon as the first man was liberated, he set to work on the bonds of another, and within a few minutes after Tonkin had released himself, all the men were free. Until the lugger reached the harbour, a number of the Frenchmen had clustered on the companion, and at its foot. When the time came for them to dash ashore, they scrambled in hot haste through the hatchway on to the deck, not thinking to batten down the hatch. As soon, therefore, as Tonkin was free, he rapidly planned how to escape from the hold with his men, when they had recovered the full use of their partially numbed limbs. He first felt about in the darkness for articles that would serve as effective weapons, and discovered a marlinspike, the hammer he used for driving spigots into the tubs, and several balks of timber that were employed for preventing the tubs from rolling. Each man armed himself. Long experience of smuggling had taught them to move quickly without noise, and, led by Tonkin, whose agility seemed in no wise lessened by his bulk, they swarmed swiftly through the hatchway. The men left in charge of the vessel were leaning over the bulwarks, smoking, and envying their comrades at the inn, who, finding that the villagers showed no disposition to interfere with them, had seized the opportunity to refresh themselves at the expense of the innkeeper. Before the idle spectators on the deck could turn and form up to meet the rush, Tonkin and his men were upon them. A few swift, sharp strokes of the fishers’ nondescript weapons, and the Frenchmen were lying senseless on the deck.