“Not that I know of, unless we have the luck to pick up one of your merchantmen, and we might then escort her into port.  But unless we do that we do not touch anywhere, luckily for you; because, after all, it is a good deal pleasanter cruising in the Belle Marie than kicking your heels inside a prison.  I know pretty well, for I was for four years a prisoner in your English town of Dorchester.  That is how I came to speak your language.  It was a weary time of it; though we were not badly treated, not half so bad as I have heard that the men in some other prisons were.  So I owe you English no ill-will on that account, and from what I have heard some of our prisons are worse than any of yours.  I used to knit stockings and wraps for the neck.  My old mother taught me when I was a boy.  And as we were allowed to sell the things we made I got on pretty comfortable.  Beside, what’s the use of making yourself unhappy?  I had neither wife nor children to be fretting about me at home, so I kept up my spirits.”

“How did you get back?” Ralph asked.  “Were you exchanged?”

“No,” Jacques answered.  “I might have waited long enough before that.  I can’t make out myself why the two governments don’t agree to exchange prisoners more quickly.  I suppose they take about an equal number.  Your men-of-war ships capture more prisoners than ours, but we make up for it by the numbers our privateers bring in.  At any rate they might exchange as many as they can, say once in six months.  One would have thought they would be glad to do so so as to save themselves the trouble and expense of looking after and feeding such a number of useless mouths.  Governments always have curious ways.”

“But how did you get away from prison?” Ralph asked.

“It was a woman,” the man replied.  “It is always women who help men out of scrapes.  It was the wife of one of the jailers.  She used to bring her husband’s dinner sometimes when we were exercising in the yard.  When I first went there she had a child in her arms—­a little thing about a year old.  I was always fond of children; for we had a lot at home, brothers and sisters, and I was the eldest.  She saw me look at it one day, and I suppose she guessed it reminded me of home.  So she stopped and let me pat its cheek and talk to it.  Then I knitted it some socks and a little jacket and other things, and that made a sort of friendship between us.  You can always win a woman’s heart by taking notice of her child.  Then she got to letting me carry it about on my shoulder while she took her husband’s dinner in to him, if he did not happen to be in the yard.  And when the little thing was able to totter it would hold on to my finger, and was always content to stay with me while she was away.  So it went on till the child was four years old.