“The mode of escape,” said the governor in his journal, “was most ingenious, daring, and masterly, though the prisoner is only eighteen years of age. There was a combination of sagacity, courage, and ready resource, indicating extraordinary powers, both mental and bodily.”
He had got, unknown to his officer, an iron pin used for turning the handle of the ventilator of the stove. The stove not being in use the handle was not missed. The prisoner was let out of his cell by himself, being kept apart from other prisoners in consequence of frequent insubordination and the mischievous tendency of his example. With this pin he had made a hole in the brick arch which formed the roof of his cell large enough to admit his body. The iron pin, stuck into one of the slits for ventilation in the wall, served as a hook, to which he had probably suspended a small ladder, ingeniously constructed of shreds of cotton and coarse thread (it was found in the roof); and with such assistance to his own activity and strength he had got through the ceiling and into the roof, along the interior of which he had proceeded some distance, till he was able at length to break a hole in the slates. But the battens to which the slates were fastened were too narrow to let him through, so he travelled on till he found others wider apart, and here, making a second hole, he contrived to get out on to the roof. The descent was his next difficulty, but he had provided for this by carrying with him a number of suitable articles to assist him in his purpose. It must be mentioned that he had chosen his time well: not only were the officers later coming in on Sunday mornings, but on Saturday evenings the prisoners receive their clean clothes (their dirty ones were not returned till next morning), so that Smith had in his cell two sets of clothes—two shirts, two pairs of long stockings, and two handkerchiefs. He had washed his feet also on Saturday night, and had been given a round towel to dry them. Having torn his blankets and rugs into strips, he had sewn them together by lengths, making each, like the round towel, a link in a chain to which his neckerchiefs and pocket-handkerchiefs, similarly prepared, added further lengths. With all of these, and attired in his clean shirt, he had ascended as already described to the roof, where he must have found his chain too short, for he had added his shirt to the apparatus. This rope he fastened to one of the rafters of the roof, and then slung himself down to where he judged the attic window was to be found, and he judged accurately. The sill of the window formed the first stage, and to its bars he fastened part of his chain, thus economizing its length, instead of having one long rope from the roof downwards. Descending in like manner to the second window, he repeated the process, and again to the third (or first floor), after which he reached the ground in safety. His next difficulty was to scale the boundary wall. Much work happened to be going on in the rebuilding of parts destroyed by fire, and a quantity of masons’ and carpenters’ materials were lying about. First he contrived to remove a long and prodigiously heavy ladder (which two men ordinarily could not carry), from against the scaffolding, and this he dragged to the iron fence of the burial ground, against which he rested it, but he could not rear it the whole height of the boundary wall. Next he got two planks, and lashing them firmly together with a rope he picked up, he thus made an inclined plane long enough to allow of his walking up it to the top of the wall. Weighting one end with a heavy stone, he easily got the planking on to the wall and thus got over.