“Upon my word, captain,” he said at last, “could I have had a prayer answered, you could not have appeared at a more opportune moment. There is the old Harry to pay in France—upon no account must you return there, for——”
“I have no such intention,” was Conyngham’s answer, interrupting. “Sure our friend de Vergennes gave me hint enough for that. I shall, if I can, pick up some scrap iron here and something to throw it with, go back and pay the old country a fleeting visit, and then across the wide sea to America. But how goes it with all our friends?” he added.
“That is what I am about to tell you,” replied Ross. “Poor Hodge is in the Bastile, and my brother and Allan are confined in the prison at Dunkirk.”
“All on my account?” asked Conyngham.
“On our joint account. Charge it to the Revenge,” was the reply. “Hodge and Allan went on your bond, and at the first news that you were cruising de Vergennes remarked that ‘it was a bad matter to lie to a king,’ which he claimed they both had done, and clapped them into prison.”
Conyngham frowned and looked puzzled.
“But, upon my soul, the sheep attacked me first,” he said. “So my Lord Stormont has yet some influence.”
“But never fear,” Ross went on. “Hodge is being treated well; and as for my brother, he dines with the commandant every evening. Good news has come from America, and all things point to an early alliance between our country and France. And now,” he added, “tell me of yourself, and what do you mean by ‘scrap iron’?”
In a few words Conyngham related the story of his narrow escape and the loss of his guns, and the necessary jettisoning of his anchors and armament.
“We will arrange for all that,” was Ross’s comforting comment when he had finished. “There is money in the treasury, and the commissioners are well satisfied. There must be some now to your credit. If you should care for an accounting——”