"Certainly. You see, these French convalescents may be marched back again, in another month's time and, at present, our plans must be formed upon the supposition that they are ready to help us. It would never do to throw away such an opportunity as that. It would be little short of madness to try and get out, unless we had disguises of some sort. My staff officer's uniform, or your scarlet, would lead to our arrest at the first village we came to. "Besides, before this news one was willing to wait contentedly, for a time, till some good opportunity presented itself. Now that we have such an unexpected offer of assistance, the sooner we get out of the place the better." The next morning they went out into the courtyard of the prison. The soldiers who had been captured with them were walking about in groups; but the sentry who accompanied the two British officers led them through these, and took them up to the top of the wall surrounding the prison. "Messieurs," he said, "when the others are shut up you can go where you please, but my orders are that you are not to communicate with your soldiers." He then fell back some distance, and left them free to wander about on the wall. From this point they had a view over the city. Bayonne was a strongly fortified place, standing on the junction of the Nive and Adour, and on the south side of the latter river, two miles from its mouth. The Nive ran through the town, and its waters supplied the ditches of the encircling wall and bastions. The prison was situated on the Nive, at some three or four hundred yards from the spot where it entered the Adour. "I should say this quite decides it," Terence said, when they had made the circuit of the walls, upon which sentries were placed at short intervals. "Once out of the town the river would be open to us, but it would be next to impossible to pass those semicircles of fortifications on both sides of the town. You can see the masts of the craft lying at the quays and, though I should not like to rob a fisherman of his boat; I should not feel the smallest scruple in taking a ship's boat, which would be, comparatively, a small loss to the owner. The worst of it would be that, directly we were found to be missing, and the owner of the boat reported its loss, they might send out some of their gunboats in search of us, and we should very soon be overtaken." Discipline was not very strict in the French army, except when in an enemy's country; and the sentries, knowing well that there was really no occasion for watchfulness, answered willingly the questions that Terence asked them as to the names of places within sight. "It must be rather tedious work for you, on the wall here," Terence said to one whose post was shielded by a building close by, from observation from below.