In September 1824 the arrival of the Minerva in Simon's Bay, across the peninsula from Cape Town, finally offered the possibility of getting rid of William Edwards. Now incarcerated on Robben Island and awaiting transport to a penal colony, he had been at the Cape a scant year, albeit one packed with incident. But as if determined to exact the full measure of drama from the time remaining him, what should have been a routine embarkation went far from smoothly. Edwards first suffered a near-shipwreck on being transferred to the mainland. Next, en route to the transport ship Minerva, he managed to escape from right under the authorities’ nose.

On 17 September 1824 Edwards was loaded onto a cart, accompanied by his wife Elizabeth and her sister. In the charge of Third Under-Sheriff Stillwell and a constable, both on horseback, the party set off for Simon's Bay. At Wynberg dwelt a friend of Edwards, a retired sea captain named John Carnall. There, claiming to be ill and using the ruse of needing the ‘night chair’, Edwards managed to escape from the privy via the back door.

The escape caused a sensation. Hudson noted with delight that ‘Dog Dan’ and ‘the Leviathon his Protector and Lord must feel equaly galled at being so humbled by this blunt man of Law’. The news no sooner reached Cape Town than the fiscal himself rushed out to join the pursuit. Carnall was arrested and imprisoned in the Cape tronk, as was Under-Sheriff Stillwell. Charges flew thick and fast – against Carnall's wife, against a lodger in Carnall's house, against his servants. As the advocate defending Carnall later put it with withering sarcasm, even ‘the horse… on which Edwards made his escape was actually taken into custody’.

The horse's fate is not recorded. As for Carnall, he was kept in ‘solitary confinement’, as he later complained, in a cell 10 by 12 feet, for over three months. The tedium was enlivened by Barry, who, incensed by the escape of the alleged placard conspirator, came to the jail in person to harangue the unfortunate Under-Sheriff Stillwell: