The next morning we parted from him, embracing him like any private gentleman, as he wished to keep his incognito absolute; so he took his way into Flanders, and we to Dunkirk, there to join some twenty-five officers, all volunteers for Prince Charles. We found our vessel ready for sea, and before sunset were safely on board, meeting old friends and making new ones.
It was night by the time we ran out of the harbour, and many an anxious hour we had of it, for it was no easy matter to make the run from France to Scotland in the year '46, when every sail was looked upon with suspicion.
I need make no apologies for our anxiety when we were signalled to lay to by the first English ship we met; and the invitation was quickly followed by a puff of smoke and the boom of a gun. A sense of danger is largely quickened by unfamiliarity, and though any of us would have made little of attacking a battery on shore, this sea fighting was a new and uncomfortable outlook. But when we saw what a pair of heels our privateer, fitly named the Swallow, could show, we soon recovered our confidence, and after this it was a mere matter of speculation how long anything we met could stand up to us at all.
Our crew of about fifty was a mixed lot, French and Scotch, but they were thorough at their business, and it was curious to see how true the Captain could judge of the exact room he must give to any suspicious sail—it was a game of hare and hounds all the time, for no sooner were we rid of one than we would fall in with another to take up the running; but none of them served to do more than raise our spirits and take our minds off the discomfort most landsmen find at sea. We encountered various weather, but the worst only brought out the sailing qualities of the Swallow, until at length we made the coast of Scotland, and all eagerly looked to the end of our voyage, which was to be at Inverness; indeed, the Captain counted on making Cromarty Head before night, and to lay there till the morning.
That day at dinner Father O'Rourke gave us another taste of his song-making, which was greatly appreciated on account of the reference to the "White Cockade," always a favorite quickstep with the Jacobite Regiments:
Merrily, merrily blows the wind from off the coasts of France;
The Channel open wide before, God send us now good chance!
Give us the green seas rolling free and but way enough to steer,
And we'll leave the swiftest foe in the wake of the
Swallow Privateer!
Then here's to the Swallow, flying true!
And here's to the Prince and his Bonnets Blue!
And here's to the heart of each wife and maid
That is beating for the Laddie with the White Cockade!
Drearily, drearily sets the wind down from the Northern Seas,
But she dips to the rollers big and black, and her bonnie
breast she frees,
From her tapering mast she flies on the blast her signals
fluttering clear
To the friends that pray for the coming home of the
Swallow Privateer!
Then here's to the Swallow, flying true!
And here's to the Prince and his Bonnets Blue!
And here's to the heart of each wife and maid
That is beating for the Laddie with the White Cockade!
Mightily, mightily booms the wind out of the setting sun;
We will double the great ships like a hare, we will
fight where we cannot run,
Till we win to land, and with sword in hand we will
follow the Chevalier
Who will bless the winds that filled the wings of the
Swallow Privateer!