Another Roman Catholic, named John Arden, who was a fellow-prisoner of Gerard’s at this time, was confined in the Cradle Tower, a small tower in the Outer Ward standing on the Ballium wall some 100 feet south of the Salt Tower and facing the Thames. The two prisoners were sufficiently near to see each other from their respective prison windows, the space between the two towers being then occupied by the Privy garden of the Palace. Father Gerard persuaded his gaoler to allow him to pay Arden a visit in his prison, and the two men, laying their heads together, concocted the following plan. By writing to their friends outside the tower in orange juice, which caused the letters to be invisible unless subjected to a treatment known to the initiated, Father Gerard succeeded in getting a thin cord with a leaden weight attached to one end. It was further planned that upon a certain night a boat should be brought to a certain place by the river bank opposite the Cradle Tower. On this particular evening Father Gerard lingered late in Arden’s prison, and when the pre-arranged hour came they slung the lead at the end of the line across the moat. This was caught by their friends in the boat, and a stout rope having been fastened to the line, the two prisoners hauled it over the roof of the Cradle Tower from the boat, and made it fast. Gerard was the first to descend from the roof, swarming along the rope in the darkness; and he reached the boat in safety. For three weeks after the torture of the gauntlets, his hands were paralysed, and it was five months before the sense of touch returned to them.