Evening star., 1908-01-19

round the vent1ators till he reached massive
block of granite in the wall This in he attacked
with infinite caution and patience, that the day
when he able to drag it into his cell,
leaving a wide aperture. The time for action had
Feverishy tearing up his blankets for ropes,
the man let himself down into the prison yard, and
then began daring switchback up and down rain
pipes till the boundary wall was passed.
Shane Campbells Exploits
CHANG CAMPBELL, one of the most noted bur-
= glars America produced, was likewise famed
prison breaker. He once shut up temporarily
in old Jail with negro, held for murder and one
Baker, local offender The latter stood on Camp
bells shoulders, and with old knife cut
hole in the ceiling large enough for all to squeeze
through delicate and ticklish business. Outside,
all three separated; but informer got to work,
and Campbell was found hiding island He
taken back to Jail and securely fastened to
three hundred pounds of iron, r1veted on his legs.
He had equally bad luck another occasion,
when the deputy governor selected fifteen or twenty
to be searched before marching out to the
works. The men chosen always taken to the
bath house and stripped. One morning Campbell
was among the party, in spite OF all his efforts at
evasion; and great the amazenent of the
officials to find that underneath his convict clothes
he was wearing complete suit-coat, waistcoat,
and trousers-made with marvellous ingenuity out
of the flannel cleaning rags supplied him for wash
ing out his CELL He must have carried the material
back and forth piece by piece, evading detection
hundred times; only to have all his plans ruined
in this way at the supreme moment But for this
mischance Campbell would have thrown off his
prison dress at the right moment and walked off
the works a Tree man, IN rOugh working suit
dstngushable from that of the other free laborers
who came and went as they pleased.
Burrowine Out of Gibraltar
STRANGE to say, foreign prisons record far more
- escapes than own; probably because official
red tape is more easily broken through than Ameri
common sense.
case in point is that of Ambrose Realff, who
undergoing life sentence the towering rock
of Gibraltar for scuttng his ship for the sake of
the insurance money The governor told the story:
hat fp1lO led ifa dar adexyi1 That
obeyed every impulse, good or bad. And yet for
three whole years l found him model prisoner.
At first he was employed as carpenter, and little
later put him on the harbor works. But sud-
denly to this wild nature unquenchable
thirst for freedom. At that time Realff was in
charge of all the laborers' pick handles and wheel
barroWs IN the Rosla quarry where he was installed
in little lean-to shed against hollow in the
mighty cliff. Every report put before me extoled
the mans good behavior.
We'll, every afternoon at four the working party
of convicts would form up and return to the prison.
which you know contains of the toughest
characters of both East and West-and an officer
would go to Realff's shed to unlock him and bring
him along with the rest.
But this afternoon the door was opened in vain
Realff not there And yet twenty minutes
previously he had been through the little win
dow when visited by the chief warder. He had even
answered to his name he stood planning at his
bench in dark recess He was gone how or
where not soul knew. Unquestionably the shed
locked the outside, and the lock had not bee
tampered with And there appeared no other exit
except the door,-nothlng but sol1d rock The little
shanty was ransacked, emptied, but without result.
There was no place of hiding in or among its con-
tents for cat.
Gould the man, / wondered, have discovered
some secret recess? You know the whole rock is
fairly honeycombed with holes, both natural and
artificial, like Gruyere cheese. Alarmed at the
results such an escape would have on the morale
OF my dangerous gangs, had torches brought, and
personally examined every nook and Granny of the
cliff against which the shed built. Then my
best officers went it all with hammer and
crowbar But no; nothing but
solid rock. Now for the floor. 1t
level and fairly smooth; just -
covered in places with little loose ~
Shinp1e. ~