A/N- Oh my God, this was so hard to write! I just have to say that I tried researching galleys and the like, but I couldn't find much, so I apologize in advance for any factual errors. Practically all the material here is based on the book, so I am warning you that some other information may be wrong.
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Four years had passed. Four years of labour, cruelty, discomfort and hardness. Whatever blessings one may have been even slightly grateful for in the outside world did not exist here. The galleys lacked mercy, kindness, sympathy and love. Here, no-one had a family and no-one had friends. The closest things to friends anyone could find were other creatures, condemned like them, and the only thing that bound these together were the chains.
Life such as this, one deprived of everything anyone would value, could only cultivate darkness. Whoever found themselves in this place was treated with no compassion, and so hardness and hatred grew within them, keeping them alive but at the same time, devouring them. Jean Valjean had lived in this way for four years now. No exception to any others here, he had fallen prey to this fate. Four years he had spent suffering, and vaguely he remembered that he had but one year to go. To anyone who had not suffered the galleys, it would seem logical to wait just a little longer, and then he would be free of this torment. But to Jean Valjean, one year more was too much.
Every once in a while, a chance came about when one had the opportunity to escape. Even the convicts knew that no more than one of them had even the slightest chance. So they took turns, in some way keeping track of who had tried and failed. With the knowledge that eventually time would give them their opportunity to escape; each convict assisted one another in this feat. Now it was Jean Valjean's turn. He had the choice of waiting one more year to be freed legally, or risking everything to capture his freedom now. He chose now.
Each night the convicts were given a few hours of rest before they again were sent out to work. A small cell could house up to ten convicts, and most took this precious time to gain some illusion of rest. This night however, harsh voiced whispers could be heard through the thin walls. Not able to hear what they were saying, the guards posted simply ignored them. If the convicts wanted to exhaust themselves by staying awake all night, then so be it. The work would be no less the next day. This was how the convicts managed in shoving Jean Valjean, already released from his chain, through a small window in the cabin of the ship. Jean Valjean had used his strength the wrench free the old, rusty bars that blocked the way and now he scrambled through the hole that was left. Fortunately for them, the luxury of glass in the windows was not given to the convicts. And so Jean Valjean was saved the trouble of breaking it, which would have created noise and alerted the guards to their plot. For indeed, if there had in fact been glass, the memory of how this was the very thing that had given him away the first time might have dissuaded him.
Now however, he scrambled silently in the shadows. The ship had stopped at the harbour today to replenish supplies and such. Now there was a clear path from the ship to the land, a possibility of escape. Jean Valjean aptly gripped the side of the ship, ignoring the waves crashing below him and scaled along it. Once a guard strode past, right above him, but the convict simply melted into the shadows (a simple thing, as convicts become part of darkness anyway) and then continued. With silence that one would not have presumed possible for a man such as himself, he hauled himself along the rope and finally clambered onto the dock.
He was starved, exhausted and infused with the bitterness that comes from the galleys, but now only one thought assailed him. He was free! This notion alone kept him going through the night, until finally, he collapsed amongst a small copse of trees.
He didn't know how long he lay there, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not find sleep. So long had he spent his sleeping hours on a course pallet that could hardly be called a bed, that he now found it unnerving to sleep with the knowledge that he was free. Besides, any second, guards could find him and re-capture him. To Jean Valjean, freedom had no opportunities; after all, he had no legal identity. There was no life for him beyond these fields. Freedom was merely an exhilarating feeling, one to savour, and just knowing that at this moment he was free, was enough.
In a monotonous daze, he trudged on, without a destination and without thought. Once, he came across a small town, and the sight of people frightened him more than the chains of the galleys. He caught sight of smoke rising from the chimneys, and imagined it was rising from the hot blaze on a ship. He heard the clock strike midday, and he shuddered as if it was the signal for the convicts to change post. Any living being he passed on the road, he shied away from, glaring at it in such away that whoever ventured to look at him would have been haunted by the smouldering hate in his eyes. The man that strolled towards and eventually passed him became a guard out to capture him, and the dog that trotted beside him, the trained animal used to track the scent. When he heard the thump of a horseman on the road, he desperately hid behind the trees for fear that it was another guard.
Late in the second day, he was pressing himself against a tree, his vision dazed and blurred with the terror of his plight and the exhaustion of having not eaten or slept since he escaped. Footsteps could be heard treading along the road. Jean Valjean, half delirious as he was, believed himself hidden and for once assumed it was some random person passing by. However it was when the course, hardened faces of the guards from the galleys finally focused in his vision that he realised, and by then it was too late.
He did not fight them; he knew well enough that it was no use. Only when he was back in the dreaded place and thrust before the officer did he lower his head in shame. It was three more years in this place. Two days of freedom had cost him three years, which made a total of eight years in the galleys by the end of it. But Jean Valjean could not envisage an end.