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''I, Rene Belbenoit, am a fugitive. . . ." On his most recent break for liberty, incorrigible Rene Belbenoit reached Trinidad with five other starving convicts in a leaky canoe, was equipped with food and a new lifeboat by the sympathetic British and set to sea again. Reaching Colombia finally, he struggled for months across the wet sand and through the jungle toward Panama:
"I have read of the harrowing adventures of men who went into South American jungles well provisioned and armed and with guides. I smile, because I left Cartagena with nothing, not even a pocket knife, and lived in the jungle for almost six months. Five or six big jaguars that I encountered looked at me curiously and then scampered off. They were well fed on deer and pigs, and apparently had no wish to taste a half-starved Frenchman. At first the snakes bothered me, but finally I became accustomed to them. . . .
''When this is published, I hope I shall be safely in the jungles again and free. I say I am free, but actually I am not free, for I am a Frenchman, and I can never return to France.''
*Besides Alfred Dreyfus' famed autobiography, the best known works on Devil's Island arc Condemned to Devil's Island and Free by Mrs. Blair Niles; Hell Beyond the Seas by Age Krarup-Xielsen; Au Bagne by Albert Londres.