REMARKABLE ESCAPE.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1486, 9 May 1873, Page 3

REMARKABLE ESCAPE.

A narrative of the escape of six Communist prisoners from the fortress of Port Louis in Brittany gives us a most extraordinary example of perseverance and contrivances—of ingenuity, and patient determination. Three hundred Communist prisonere were sent to this fortress, where they were confined in large dormitories. One party finding that the boarded floor of their dormitory had a hollow of some depth beneath it, congpived the idea 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 13ft, in order to make the tunnel of sufficient depth to bear the weight the road and its traffic above it. The warders of the prison visited them morning and evening ; they removed the boards of the 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 xnolesfcatfon for the day— being pp}it}cal 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 barrier 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 wood 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 the 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 ves«el-and'arrived in England.

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