It was found that, without any negligence on the part of his keepers,
he had got out in a scarcely imaginable manner, in his shirt only. He
had taken the whole of the circular window of his prison with its frame
out. By means of a sharp holdfast, with which the frame of the window
had been secured, he had broken the two new and good locks of the chain
with which he was chained crossways; taken off the chains; torn up his
bedclothes, and twisted them into a rope-ladder, from ten to twelve
feet long, and had slipped through the wonderfully narrow opening of
the strong window-shutters, which, by proof made there and then, would
admit the passage of no other head. When he had reached the bottom of
his rope he had still nine or ten feet to drop to the earth; and the
shot, which was instantly fired at him, passed close to him.
Immediately on his escape be sprung into the neighbouring Neckar, and
concealed himself under the floor of a swimming-school, which was
erected on a boat, where he continued many hours up to the mouth in
water. He saw the pursuers on both banks of the Neckar, and in the
swimming-school itself. It was not till after midnight that he
attempted to wade through the Neckar, which, luckily for him, was then
very low; but he had not reached the other bank of the river when he
became aware of the watchers placed there also. He continued yet for a
long time sitting on a rock in the middle of the flood. Finally, he
made another attempt, reached the bank, sprang up it, and by a rapid
and breathless flight succeeded in reaching, in spite of all the
straining efforts of his pursuers, the hills and the woods.
In order to make his appearance in the wood the less striking to people
that he might happen to meet, he slipped his legs through the sleeves
of the shirt, and held the lower part of the shirt about his neck with
his hands. He thus ran on to a great distance. He met two Bauers in the
woods, to whom he feigned himself crazed and dumb, and begged of them
by signs, and was so lucky as not only not to be seized, but to obtain
an alms from them, with the pity of the givers. With this alms he
purchased some bread at a solitary mill in the mountain. The people
inquired the cause of his singular dress, or rather want of it; and he
invented a lie which answered his purpose. He fled still farther; till,
at evening, he was arrested by some Bauers of less easy faith, and who
had already became apprised of his flight, and the reward offered for
his recapture. He was brought back to his prison, and soon afterwards
delivered over to the Hessians, and confined in a high tower. But even
from this he effected his escape in the most ingenious manner possible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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