The prisoners were carried off to Plymouth, where they were confined in the Mill Prison. Here the harsh treatment and sufferings they underwent soon prompted them to devise a means of escape. A hole was dug under the wall, the officers and men working upon it with their fingers whenever an opportunity offered, but making slow progress, as they could only hide the dirt from the excavation by carrying it in their pockets when they went out for exercise, and scattering it when the sentry's back was turned. Finally one night, when all was ready, they passed out through the opening and escaped into the country.
But their troubles had only just begun. The hue and cry was raised, and parties were sent in pursuit of the fugitives. Separating into twos and threes, they were barely able to elude pursuit. One night Dale was concealed under the hay in a barn, when the officers entered it in search of him. At last he reached London and took passage in a vessel bound to Dunkirk; but before she had left the Thames she was visited by a press-gang, and poor Dale was seized, and when they found out who he was, sent back to prison. The captain, though, got safely off.
This was now the fourth time that Dale had been a prisoner. To punish him for trying to escape, he was thrown into the black hole—a dungeon that was only used for the worst offenders—and treated with the utmost rigor. After a time he was put on his old footing as a prisoner of war; but he was a reckless youth, and having roused the wrath of the jailers by singing what they called "rebellious songs," he served another term in the black hole. At length by some means, which to his dying day he never would disclose, he obtained the uniform of a British officer, and in this disguise he walked through the gates in plain sight of the sentinel. Rendered more cautious by what had befallen him after his first escape, he laid his plans with care, and at last succeeded in reaching France, after a year and a half of captivity. He came in good time; for it was just as he arrived that Paul Jones was setting out on his great cruise in the "Bon Homme Richard," and Dale was made his first lieutenant. Here we shall leave him for the present.
About the time that the "Lexington" had come out from America, in the spring of 1777, the commissioners at Paris, finding that they could not get more ships in France, because the English made so great an outcry, bethought themselves that they would send a trusty agent across the channel to Dover, to see what he could get there. In this way they purchased secretly a swift English cutter, the "Surprise," and they appointed to command her Gustavus Conyngham, a bold and adventurous officer. He started on a cruise in May from Dunkirk, and in a few days returned with two of the enemy's brigs,—one of them a mail-packet which he had captured off the coast of Holland. The English ambassador again protested, and the French Government told Franklin that, though much against its will, it would be compelled to restore the prizes. It even went so far as to imprison Conyngham and his crew; but this was only a make-believe, for they were shortly afterward released.
HE TOUCHED AT A SMALL TOWN IN IRELAND FOR SUPPLIES.
Unmoved by this event, Franklin immediately procured another cutter, the "Revenge," and giving Conyngham a new commission, he sent him off from Dunkirk in charge of her. The second cruise was even more successful than the first. Conyngham roved about with his little ship as he pleased, keeping carefully away from the enemy's cruisers, which vainly sought to catch him, and capturing prizes on all sides. These he destroyed, or sometimes when he saw his chance sent into seaports on the Continent. Once during his cruise, being hard pushed for supplies, he touched at a small town in Ireland and bought them. At another time when off the English coast, finding his vessel unseaworthy and needing some repair, he took her into one of the smaller ports and refitted there, with the help of the inhabitants, without being discovered. Finally, when so many ships were sent out in pursuit of him that his cruising-ground became too hot, he made for Ferrol, in Spain, and after staying there awhile carried his ship safely to America.
The cruises of Wickes and of Conyngham, with their tiny craft, were the beginning of the great work that was to be taken up on a larger scale in the next two years by Paul Jones. The enterprise and hardihood of these bold captains, who carried the war, as it were, to the very threshold of the enemy's country, were not without results both in England and on the Continent. They showed foreign nations that the rebels in America were making war in truest earnest, and that they would leave no honorable means unused to help them in asserting independence. In England they spread alarm among the merchants, and the insurers of English ships demanded double rates; while London traders, rather than run the risk of losing their goods by shipping them in their own vessels, were induced to employ their foreign rivals to carry cargoes for them,—a thing which before this time had been almost unheard of.