REMARKABLE ESCAPE.

Evening Star, Issue 3206, 30 May 1873, Page 3

REMARKABLE ESCAPE.

A narrative of the escape of six Communist prisoners from the fortress of Port Louis in Britanny, gives us a most extraordinary example of perseverance and contrivance—of ingenuity, and pntient determination. Three hundred Communist prisoners were sent to this fortress, where tley were cbnfihed in large dormitories. One party, finding that the boarded floor of their dormitory Pad a hollow of some depth beneath it, conceived the ilea of burrowing through the earth to the wall of the fortress, and by getting to the sea shore to effect their escape With no tools but a few nails they excavated a tunnel under a road, sinking a vertical shaft of thirteen feet, in order to make the tunnel < f sufficient depth to bear the weight of the road and its traffic above it. The warders of the prison visited them morning and evening; they removed the boards of tbe floor to descend to their works as soon as the morning inspection was made, and the boards being replaced by their comrades they were thus left without molestation for the day ; being political prisoners they were left without occupation. Having driven their tunnel through a length of forty six feet, they reached the wall of the rampart, where a harrier of sixteen feet of solid masonry threatened to frustrate all their efforts—which had occupied three months. To get a lever they removed one of the bars of their prison window, substituting a bar of

wo<yl blackened to deceive the sentinel. With this they worked through till they got • an opening on the sea-shore. Dropping ten feet on the rocks, tbe six men escaped With what forethought they had anticipated obstacles and how to overcome them, is not the least interesting part of the romance, finally they reached a seaport in Britanny, whence they embarked in an English vessel and arrived in England. * . _ - . _ . . _