leaves the convicts discover that it is fake. They encounter a local trapper (John Quade) who has killed the bounty hunters that were waiting for them; he guides the three to a nearby leper colony, where they obtain supplies and a seaworthy boat. The trio eventually land in Honduras and are accosted by a group of soldiers, who open fire and wound Maturette. He is captured along with Dega, while Papillon is forced to flee. Papillon evades the soldiers and lives for a long period with a native tribe; he awakens one morning to find them gone, leaving him with a small sack of pearls. Papillon pays a nun to take him to her convent where he asks the Mother Superior for refuge, but she instead turns him over to the authorities. Papillon is brought back to French Guiana and sentenced to another five years of solitary confinement. He emerges a graying old man along with Maturette, whom he sees just before the latter dies. Papillon is then moved to the remote Devil's Island where he reunites with Dega, who has long given up all hope of being released. From a high cliff, Papillon observes a small cove where he discovers that the waves are powerful enough to carry a man out to sea and to the nearby mainland. Papillon urges Dega to join him in another escape, and the men make two floats out of bagged up coconuts. As they stand on the cliff side, Dega decides not to escape and begs Papillon not to either. Papillon embraces Dega a final time, and then leaps from the cliff. Grasping his float, he is successfully carried out to sea. A narrator states that Papillon made it to freedom, and lived the rest of his life a free man, while the prison was eventually closed. Cast Production After the publication of Papillon in 1969, a bidding war started between Avco-Embassy Pictures, Continental Distributing, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and numerous French film companies for the film rights. Continental Distributing won the rights for $500,000 with the intent to hire Roman Polanski as director and Warren Beatty as lead actor, but the studio's funding fell through. It sold the rights to producer Robert Dorfmann, who initially intended to hire Terence Young as director and Charles Bronson as star before turning to Franklin J. Schaffner and Steve McQueen. The film's first screenplay by William Goldman, which was