PAON'S
NARRATIVE.
A short time after you had left Devil's Island, we built, some ten or twelve of us, a boat; she was made ready, sup足 plied with provisions, sails, oars and masts. W e attempted to launch her, but she broke her bottom on the breakers. We held, then, a general meeting, in which we requested the whole of our companions to build a schooner large enough to carry all of us. The motion was unanimously adopted. Love of liberty gave us strength and skillfulness. In a very short time we had built a large and beautiful schooner of 65 feet in length. W e hoped to be saved ; but, alas ! our poor schooner had the same fate as the boat, and her remains would clearly show to our guardians, at daylight, what were our intentions. To prevent this, we used the night to demolish her, and brought the remains, piece by piece, to a secret grotto. We did not lose hopes of escape. W e constructed two small boats, more solid than the first. They were nearly ready made when one of us, a coward, a spy, informed our guardians of our projects. The next day a party of soldiers, accompan足 ied by policeman and sailors, came to our island. Soldiers stole the whole of our provisions ; policemen searched in our chests and took what pleased them; and sailors seized our boats and brought them to Royal Island, where resides the Governor of the three small islands called Salute Islands, of which Devil's Island "is one. W e were unlucky, indeed, but we were not discouraged ; and our betrayer being dead, soon afterwards, we saw in that event a Providential advice to continue our attempts of delivery. To build any more boats was quite impossible. W e had neither boards nor planks, nails nor tools. W e resolved to make rafts, and in that purpose we were looking for materials, when I was kindly invited to go to Royal Island in a dark cell for two months, and in the pillory for fifteen days. " I thought, Payon, that the pillory had been abolished a long time a g o ? " " Y o u are right, Chautard; the late Governor of Guiana had suppressed thick iron rings on our legs, long chains, heavy cannon balls, the horrid pillory, and all these infamous, mon足 strous things : but I have been put, notwithstanding that in the pillory ; and I must describe to you what the pillory is." Paon was interrupted by the arrival of Bivors, who said