Maria had air holes drilled into a wooden book chest. She persuaded Hugo to curl up inside the container, which biographer Samuel Butler says was no more than three and a half feet long. Soldiers carried it to a boat, thinking they bore a particularly heavy load of books and accompanied by a maid who may have inhibited them from opening it. At a nearby town, the chest was taken to the home of a friend of Grotius, who set him on the road to freedom.