“Let it stand,” replied Conyngham. “I desire no more than is customary for an officer in the regular service—two twentieths—and will wait for my accounting until the business is finished. By the Powers, I only ask to be at sea again.”
“The very person to help us out is Signor Lazzonere,” exclaimed Ross. “Although a Frenchman, he has strong connections here in Spain, and there is neither a Stormont nor a de Vergennes to be dealt with. Money can do a great deal when backed with a little influence.”
The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of the merchant himself, and all then adjourned to Signor Lazzonere’s inner office.
In a few minutes Conyngham came out, a smile on his lips and a light of satisfaction dancing in his eyes.
That very night the Revenge was warped in with a small kedge and moored alongside a large bark that lay close inshore. Under cover of darkness there was transferred to the cruiser the very thing that her captain most wished for—a long twelve-pounder. It was hidden beneath a canvas covering in such a way that its shape took on the innocent appearance of a pile of wine casks, and the following evening work was again resumed and eight six-pounders and ten short swivels—what the French called demi-cannon—were put on board. By the fourth day the Revenge’s armament was practically complete. In fact, she was, if anything, in better fighting trim than ever before, and her crew was again recruited to its full strength. The Spanish authorities had paid not the least attention to the goings on, and no attempt was made to prevent her sailing, although by this time her character must have been known to every longshoreman in the port. Many Englishmen in Corunna were in high dudgeon, and as usual would have prevented her sailing if they could. But on the tenth day after her arrival, at noon of a Sunday, she made sail and put out into the rolling waters of the Bay of Biscay. The crew, all of whom had been paid part of their prize-money, looked to their young captain to bring them safely through any adventure that might be in store. Before the cruiser was out of the bay she had taken two prizes, and almost at the very spot where she had made her sensational escape she took a third. But it was in the Irish Channel that her run of luck began. No less than twelve richly laden craft were despatched to Spanish ports, and of them but two were recaptured. Nearly all of the merchantmen surrendered without making any resistance, either completely taken by surprise or, not being prepared for fighting, concluding that it would be wiser to give in at the very first summons.
But this rather inglorious method of warfare did not altogether suit Captain Conyngham’s adventurous spirit, and time and again he wished for a brush with one of the king’s cutters before his crew and his stores were depleted by the manning of so many prizes. As yet he had found no occasion to use the long twelve-pounder. But the opportunity was soon to come, and the way it happened was this:
The Revenge was running short of water, and owing to the necessity of dividing her stores with some of the coasters that were provisioned for voyages of only one or two days’ duration, the crew was at last forced to accept half rations, and sailors will grumble quicker at this than at any form of dangerous hardship.
Once, forced by a hard blow, Conyngham had boldly made into the mouth of the English harbor of Ravenglass, in Lancashire, where of course he dared not go ashore, and owing to the presence of a British thirty-four-gun frigate he could not cut out any of the numerous fleet of merchant vessels by which he was surrounded. When the storm was over he sailed out of the harbor as boldly as he had entered it, and none of the English fleet imagined that the natty little craft that dropped anchor among them was the dreaded Yankee “pirate.”
But now to the adventure: The supply of water was growing less and less. It became an absolute necessity to fill the casks in some fashion, and also to procure some fresh provisions, for scurvy, the dreaded enemy of sailors of that day, had begun to appear—at least there were signs of it, and the crew were grumbling louder than ever. So Conyngham bethought him of his promise to pay a visit to the land of his birth; and after skirting the Isle of Man in a fruitless search for a safe landing-place or a well-provisioned prize, he crossed the Channel and entered the harbor of a little Irish fishing port (the name of which he fails to record in his log) about twenty miles or so to the north of the town and harbor of Wicklow.
