Speaking for a Danish deserter from the Foreign Legion, Krarup-Nielsen retells his story of personal experiences as a convict in the French Penal Settlement in Guiana -- tall tales of successive attempts to escape, by sea, by air, and paints a graphic -- too graphic -- picture of the bestiality, the corruption, the filth of Devil's Island and the rest of the colony. Not wholly convincing, but first rate thriller -- exciting reading.