“Aye, aye, sir,” answered the lieutenant.
Then he turned and looked at the crew, who were standing together in the port gangway.
Captain Conyngham was about to speak to him when a man stepped forward. He wore irons on his wrists, and yet attempted to make an awkward salute.
“A word, sir,” he said. “This is a Yankee privateersman, belonging to Yankee traitors and bound to Holland to carry back powder and supplies. Me and me mate here were put on board of her with orders to inform on her to the first British officer who should come on board of us.”
The young lieutenant looked perplexed. Captain Conyngham still smiled.
“A good yarn, Higgins. Sure, you’ve got the imagination of a ballad-monger, but it won’t do, my lad. There’s a good rope’s-end and worse perhaps waiting for you and your mate, and you may make the best of it.”
The English lieutenant, still mystified, looked from the seaman to the captain, and just then McCarthy, who was manacled also, stepped out.
“It’s the truth, sir, you’ve been told,” he said. “I come from the Leonidas. Captain Chisholm put twenty of us ashore in New York under orders to work our way into American vessels. He has the list, sir. We were to get forty pounds apiece, and our discharges.”
“By the powers, that story will stand proving, my lad,” rejoined Captain Conyngham quietly. “And now, Mr. Holden—if I understand that to be your name, sir,” he added politely—“we’ll start for Portsmouth. The course should be, unless I miss my reckoning, south by west half west.”
Before the still mystified lieutenant could say a word, Conyngham began to give hurried orders, and the crew of Americans and Englishmen jumped to obey them.