CHAPTER XV
THE CAPTURE
Of all the surprised people in Philadelphia, James Nesbit was the most astonished when into his office walked the young seaman who almost four years before had left in command of the Charming Peggy. The fame of his doings of course had reached America, and Mr. Nesbit’s brother had written at some length of Conyngham’s career in the Surprise, his subsequent arrest, and mysterious release; but it was not until he had spent a long afternoon in the coffee-room of the little inn around the corner, and had listened to the captain’s modest and half-humorous account of his doings, that he understood what had happened in France; and he followed with breathless interest the career of the two little vessels that had flown the flag in the Channel.
When Conyngham had finished at last, Mr. Nesbit, who had not allowed himself to interrupt the recital by even so much as a question, propounded his first interrogation.
“And what do you intend to do now, Brother Conyngham?” he said. “Of course you do not mean to rest idle upon either your oars or your laurels.”
“I suppose I shall have to wait orders from the Naval Committee,” was the reply. “As an officer in the regular service, I have already reported my arrival and asked for an audience on the morrow. I hope,” he added, “they will see fit to make use of my services.”
“There is little hope of finding them in a mood to adopt any proposition of an aggressive nature,” returned Mr. Nesbit ponderously, “and there are few commands lying idle. It is as much as Congress can do to keep our army supplied with clothing, food, and ammunition. The fleet under Admiral Hopkins did not meet with any signal success. England is too strong for us on the sea.”
Conyngham shrugged his shoulders. There probably came to his mind the months during which in one little vessel he had dared the strength of the English fleets in their home waters. But he said nothing, and waited for Mr. Nesbit to continue.
“You are perfectly satisfied with the vessel which you have commanded, Captain Conyngham?” the latter asked.
“Perfectly, so far as she goes,” was the reply. “But I have it in my mind that I should like to command a larger. Sure, if you know of any loose seventy-fours wanting a skipper, you might put in a word for me. In case there is nothing better, I mean to apply for the command of the Revenge again.”
“What do you suppose that they will do with her?” asked Mr. Nesbit; and then, as if answering his own question, he went on, “Sell her, I suppose. They are in more need of money than of ships.”
As he finished speaking he leaned forward and placed his hand on Conyngham’s arm.
“If they do,” he said, “I may have a proposition to make to you. Why not let us buy her in? You could sail her under a letter of marque in joint ownership, and you must have a good sum of money to your credit. See what the privateersmen of this port and that of Baltimore have accomplished. They have practically already swept British commerce from the seas.”
“I would much sooner,” replied Conyngham, “accept a regular command; but rather than remain idle,” he concluded, “I would accept your proposition. It depends entirely upon Congress.”
“Your commission would, of course, stand you in good stead,” remarked Mr. Nesbit, “and a letter of marque could easily be obtained in addition.”
As Conyngham had not as yet joined his family, that had moved out to Germantown, he was evidently anxious to be away, and in a few minutes he parted company with Mr. Nesbit, promising to meet him again on the morrow.
It was much to his surprise that he found himself quite a hero among his friends and acquaintances, but, strange to say, Mr. Hewes, of the Naval Committee, to whom he reported, had heard nothing official in regard to him from either Dr. Franklin or Silas Deane, and his name had not as yet been placed on the naval list.
All this, of course, caused him more chagrin than uneasiness. He claimed that the Revenge was subject to the orders of the Naval Committee, and gained a point at last in that they accepted her as public property, and as such she was almost immediately offered for sale at auction. “Conyngham, Nesbit and Company” bought her in, one third being credited to Gustavus, to whom Mr. Nesbit and his cousin advanced the money.
So the further fortunes of the young captain were still bound up in the Revenge. Unfortunately, however, there were some enemies of his at work. Whether it was the tory lawyer whose designs he had thwarted in regard to his first command (by the way, he was now a most pronounced believer in the cause of liberty), or whether it was a discharged surgeon’s mate who had lodged complaints against him, Conyngham never found out. But suffice it, some one was working against him, and the letter of marque – the authority to “cruise, capture, and destroy” – was withheld by the Naval Committee and Congress. Perhaps they were waiting until they could secure some substantiation of his claim in regard to his commission – it may have been that; but, at all events, the delay grew more and more irksome to him and to his partner in the enterprise.
Good seamen were difficult to find idle in American ports; the few ships of the navy had hard work in recruiting their complement; almost every one who followed the sea for a living was already off privateering, and the Revenge was forced to complete her crew out of the riffraff of the docks, supplemented by numerous landsmen who, attracted by the rich rewards offered, dodged service in the army and flocked to the seaports. Out of the crew of one hundred men that Conyngham had hastily gathered together, only twenty-two had seen service on deep water, and more than half of these were men who had served with him in the Channel cruise. Owing to the delay in sailing, the Revenge’s people were almost in a state of mutiny, and for three weeks nothing but the young captain’s presence on board his vessel prevented wholesale desertions. One day there came a notice from Mr. Nesbit – the Revenge was anchored out in the river – informing him that the letter of marque was likely to be refused, and intimating that probably the Naval Committee would require his presence on shore, to be placed on waiting orders.
This was too much for Conyngham’s gallant spirit. The prospect of months of inaction galled him, and he replied that if he left his vessel the greater part of the crew would desert and the whole adventure be a failure.
It was while he was writing this in a note to be taken ashore to his partners that he remembered that the second commission, given him by Mr. Hodge in Dunkirk, was still in his possession. It had never been rescinded, and the vessel he commanded was the same! It was surely authority enough. Without hesitation he added a postscript – “Am sailing with the flood-tide in half an hour” – and sent the note off to Mr. Nesbit. So the deciding die was cast, and at the top of the flood the Revenge made out into the midstream and floated into the lower bay. The green crew, glad to be off, burst into a ragged cheer. Had they known what was before them they would not have felt so much like rejoicing.
It did not take the captain long to find out that his crew of farmhands and dock-rats was vastly different from the able lot of seamen that had contributed so much to the previous success of the Revenge. Before they were half-way to the capes a few had broken into the storeroom and a dozen were too drunk to pull a rope. The captain and the mate had their hands full, and the obstreperous ones were double-ironed and placed in the hold, to get sober at their leisure.
There was time found for one or two drills at the guns before the cruiser was out in the Atlantic, and here, as might have been expected, half of the crew were seasick and almost incapacitated from duty. Off the New Jersey coast, as the Revenge proceeded northward, she ran into thick and stormy weather. On the third day, the 26th of April, while the wind went down the fog increased, and when it cleared away at last the captain found himself some ten miles south of Sandy Hook. Dead ahead were two small square-rigged vessels that had the look of English transports or supply ships, and Conyngham made all sail in chase.
This was the year 1779 – a dreary one for the struggling colonies. New York city was in possession of the English troops under Lord Howe, and the Revenge was in dangerous waters; but the captain was in a reckless mood, and boldness having served his purpose so well at various times, he disdained his old adage about “discretion,” and pressed ahead. Once more the fog closed down, the wind died completely away, and as night came on the Revenge drifted slowly along on the round, oily seas, her prow turning first this way and then that. All night she swung about, when, early in the morning, a slight wind sprang up that Conyngham took advantage of to work off shore. But it held only for an hour or so, and fell calm again. The fog was thicker than ever at daybreak – one of those opaque white mists that the sun finds it impossible to penetrate, and seems to give up trying in despair.
The captain had been on deck all night, and, tired out, was lying on the cabin transom half asleep when suddenly he was awakened by the shrilling of a boatswain’s pipe, so close that it seemed to come from his own forecastle. Then, as if it were the signal for the lifting of the misty shroud, the fog broke and there lay the Revenge under the stern of a huge seventy-four. Under her gallery there could be read plainly the word “Galatea.”
It was all up! Even with the stiffest and most favorable wind, the little cruiser could not have escaped; she would have been blown out of the water before she had gone a cable’s length.
There was nothing to do. In two minutes two boatloads of armed sailors and marines had put off from the big vessel, and soon they clambered unmolested over the Revenge’s bulwarks.
“Who commands this vessel?” asked a red-faced lieutenant.
“I have the honor,” replied Conyngham, giving his name.
The lieutenant whistled.
“Conyngham!” he exclaimed. “Are you the pirate who sailed out of Dunkirk?”
“I am an officer in the navy of the United Colonies,” was Conyngham’s reply, “and will answer further questions to your superior officer.”
“That you will do at once,” sneered the lieutenant, and he gave orders for Conyngham to enter one of the boats. Much elated, he rowed off with his prisoner to the seventy-four.
On his way Conyngham learned that his captor was Captain Jordan, whose commodore was Sir George Collier, and his heart sank, for he knew that the latter had a reputation for being a man of a cruel and vindictive temper. The Galatea was the very vessel from which the Revenge had escaped off Land’s End on that memorable afternoon when the cross-barred flag had appeared in the sky. He felt that he could expect small favors under the circumstances, but his chief concern was for his crew. Poor fellows! Some had not even recovered from their sea-sickness. Now more than ever he longed for his missing regular commission. But one thing rejoiced him – war was now on between France and England. Stormont had packed up his belongings for the last time.
CHAPTER XVI
IMPRISONMENT
It would take another book to describe the immediate and subsequent adventures and misadventures of Captain Conyngham in prison, for the next few months of his life were passed in such close confinement that it seems almost incredible that any human being could have survived it. He kept a diary during this period that is merely a recital of his sufferings, and yet we can not pass them over in silence, but must outline what happened from the day of his capture to the day of his first attempted escape, an escape that led only to recapture and worse treatment, if possible, than before.
But we are anticipating. As soon as Captain Jordan learned who his prisoner was he was much elated, but Conyngham’s own journal gives an account of these trying days in the following picturesque language:
“On first going aboard the ship I was abused by a Mr. Cooper, who acted as first lieutenant and took my commission. He sent every one, without exception, to the hold. After some time a message came for ‘Captain Conyngham,’ and I was introduced in the gun-room to the purser of the ship, Mr. Thomas, surgeon of the ship, and Mr. Murray, master. After some little time Mr. Cooper, the lieutenant, makes his appearance. I find his behavior different from what I had reason to expect, and I am made to understand it is the captain’s orders to be treated well and granted the liberty of his quarter-deck. The officers and men still in the hold. Very disagreeable, so warm. The following day, Mr. Waln, my first lieutenant; Mr. Heyman, second lieutenant; Mr. Lewis, captain of marines; Mr. Downey, master, relieved from the hold and given liberty of the lower decks. Mr. Campbell, a prize-master, ordered into irons.
“Upon our arrival in New York, Mr. Waln was sent on board the flagship to see the Commodore, Sir George Collier. Mr. Waln told me on his return that he was solicited to enter on board the ship. What an honor, to walk his Majesty’s quarter-deck! Mr. Waln declared he would not, that he was a prisoner. The answer was made, ‘You shall go, then, to England with Mr. Conyngham,’ and he was dismissed. I soon learned by Mr. Cooper that my people were to be distributed among the men-of-war. Boats came alongside with officers for the prisoners. One officer in particular, by his appearance a lieutenant, an Irishman, addressed me in these words: ‘So, Mr. Conyngham, you have prospered long and in different stages?’ I answered him, ‘Not so many or so long.’ After some hesitation he walked off.
“The crew and officers were sent on board different men-of-war, as I understood, after many threatenings to get them to enter the English service. Most of them were sent on board the prison ship with the officers. After being in the East River, I was detained on board the Galatea myself, with one leg in irons. I petitioned Captain Read to alter my situation, asking if possible to be put along with other American prisoners. In a short time I was sent to the provost prison with officers and guard of marines. Upon application he conducted me to the condemned room, where was one person that was in on suspicion of being concerned in theft, another supposed to be a spy. It was a dismal prospect. At six in the evening the provost master, a Mr. Cunningham, came to see me. I begged to know the reason of such usage. He said his order was to put me in the strongest room, without the least morsel of bread from the jailer; water I had given to me. The Continental prisoners found a method through the keyhole of the door to convey me some necessaries of life, although a second door obstructed the getting in of very much.
“At the end of the week I was let out of this room and introduced into the Congress room by Mr. Cunningham. I was then given the liberty of the prison.
“On the 17th of June a deputy sergeant, a Mr. Gluby, desired I should get ready to go on board the prison ship. After some little time Mr. Lang came to the door, called to me, and I took my leave of my fellow prisoners. Went down stairs, and was conveyed to another private apartment. There a large heavy iron was brought with two large links, and ring welded on. I was linked to the jail door, and when released found it almost impossible to walk. Got into a cart that was provided for that purpose, and led to waterside by the hangman. Then I was taken in a boat alongside of the Commodore Sir George Collier, his ship being the Raisonable. There I was shown an order to take me on board the packet in irons, signed ‘Jones.’ Up to this time I was made to believe I was going on board the prison ship.”
So it was evident to Conyngham that the English were about to redeem, if possible, their threat of seeing him dance at the yard-arm, and that he was going to be taken to England for trial. On the 20th of June he sailed in the packet under the convoy of the Camilla, and, still in irons and in close confinement, he applied to the captain to have the links taken off his legs and arms. After some time this was done, and he was allowed a half an hour a day on deck to get the air.
On the 7th of July the packet arrived in Falmouth harbor and the prisoners were taken off in the press boats. A Captain Bult came on board and read an order from Sir George Collier, the purport of which was that Conyngham should be put in close confinement in Pendennis Castle until the wishes of the Lords of the Admiralty were known.
On his way to the castle he was gazed upon by the large crowds that had collected, as it had become noised about that “Conyngham the pirate” had been taken.
It was evident that the authorities wished to prove that Conyngham was still a subject of King George, for many times men were brought to see him in an attempt to identify him. On one occasion a woman was admitted to see him, so he records in his diary, who promised that he would be released if he acknowledged that he was her husband. Of course he indignantly repudiated such a trick, and discovered subsequently that her husband was a man who some years before had been accused of murder and had escaped out of the country.
Every night poor Conyngham was put in irons, and his diary is but a record of hardships and suffering. Curious people came in day after day to gaze at the prisoner, and yet there was no prospect of his being brought to trial.
On the 23d of July we find an entry as follows:
“A sailor declared in Falmouth before different people that he could take his oath that I was with Captain Jones when he threatened to set White Haven on fire. This was told me by Sergeant Williams of the guard, and this day the irons on my hands were beat close to my wrists.”
On the 24th of the month Conyngham was moved from the castle to the celebrated Mill prison. For the first time the irons were taken off when he was placed aboard the vessel that was to convey him to Plymouth, where immediately he was transferred to Mill prison. For a few days he was confined in what was known as the “Black Hole,” an underground dungeon without either light or air. It was not until the 7th of August that he was brought out for a preliminary trial, and then he was committed again to the prison by the justices of the peace, on the charge of high treason.
All this time Conyngham was planning to escape. Not an opportunity went by that he did not seize upon to extend his plans. After his being remanded on the high-treason charge, strange to say, his treatment improved and he was allowed the liberty of the jail-yard, and found opportunity on one or two occasions to converse with some of his fellow prisoners. Many of them were Frenchmen, who had been taken in the actions with the French fleet. On one occasion a battle was fought within hearing of Plymouth, and the soldiers and inhabitants, fearing that the French were going to attempt to land, began to throw up earthworks and entrenchments along the water front. Among the prisoners that were brought in was a Frenchman who had served in the capacity of surgeon on one of the captured vessels. He was a man of education, and his clothes were of a better character and texture than those of the other prisoners, who were mostly common seamen. He spoke no English, however, and Conyngham had to talk with him in French. Now it happened that the prison doctor, who made his round of visits every day, was a short, slight man, something of the young captain’s general build and appearance. The clothes he wore were black, and he usually carried a book under his arm in which he kept a record of his patients and their condition. It suggested itself to Conyngham that it might be easy for the Frenchman so to disguise himself that he might be taken for the doctor, and by walking out boldly past the sentries in the evening gain the outside of the prison walls and conceal himself in the town.
“All you need,” Conyngham observed, speaking in French, “is a pair of huge horn spectacles, pull your hat well down over your eyes, and walk out of the door. I’ve studied the doctor’s gait – he walks like this – ”
Suiting the action to the word, Conyngham gave a very good imitation of the English doctor’s mincing step. The Frenchman laughed.
“My faith!” he exclaimed, “it is it to the life! I have observed him. But remember this, my friend; I speak no English and would be helpless; they would discover me at once.”
A day or so later the Frenchman and Conyngham met again in the jail-yard. The latter motioned his friend aside to where one of the stone buttresses hid them from the sight of the sentry who was watching the yard.
“Here,” said the captain; “with this wire I have made a pair of spectacles, and in the evening no one would notice that there is not glass inside the rims.”
As he spoke he placed the wire upon his nose, drew down his upper lip, and the Frenchman looked at him and laughed.
“My faith!” he said again, “it is the doctor to the life.” And then, as if an idea had suddenly dawned upon him, he touched Conyngham on the shoulder. “It is you who should try it,” he said. “You shall have my clothes. I can give them to you piece by piece, and as they have allowed me to keep some others I shall not miss them.”
At first Conyngham demurred, but the Frenchman was insistent, and so the next night and the next transfers were made unobserved in the jail-yard, and the captain secreted the clothing inside the mattress upon which he slept on the floor of his cell. From another prisoner a hat was obtained almost like the heavy three-cornered affair that the visiting doctor wore. A book was procured somewhat resembling the doctor’s.
Saturday evening was set for a trial of the plan. Conyngham was most anxious to get away. He had, by his trick of reading people’s lips, discovered that there was a plot on foot to convict him if possible of the charge that hung over his head. A man had been found who swore that he had known him in Ireland, and another who had positively identified him as his brother. If they could prove the contention that he was a British subject he would have short shrift of it, so it behooved him not to put off long the attempted escape.
Saturday afternoon at about five o’clock the prisoners were released in batches of ten or a dozen for exercise in the courtyard. When the door of Conyngham’s cell was opened he feigned indisposition, and asked only to be allowed to sit in the doorway where he could breathe the fresher air; but no sooner had the turnkey left than he quickly donned the Frenchman’s black small-clothes and the long coat, and putting on the spectacles and the big hat he stepped out into the corridor that opened into the yard. Imitating carefully the doctor’s step and holding the book under his arm, instead of turning to the left he went down the corridor to the right, at the end of which stood the first sentry at the entrance to the guard-room. It was dark in the corridor, and what light there was came from behind him. The sentry hardly looked at him; turning the key and pulling the bolt, he let him pass.
He was now in the room that was occupied by the soldiers whose special duty was to watch the prisoners and to patrol the outer walls, but the room, by luck, was empty except for a sergeant, who, with his coat off and his feet propped against the wall, sat snoring in a chair. At first Conyngham was uncertain which of the two doors, that led out of the apartment, to take. He chose the one to the right again, and opening it came into another room where at the farther end three soldiers were throwing dice. They paused in their game as he entered and looked up at him. At first it appeared as if the one who was holding the dice-box was about to address him, but one of his companions, with an oath, exclaimed, “It’s only the doctor; go on with the game, you blockhead!” and the men proceeded, rattling the dice and then tossing them on to the bench. Conyngham walked past them and opened the door that led out of the prison entrance, and here he had to go through a worse ordeal than ever, for he came into the daylight, and there within twenty feet of him stood the man on guard. He was in full regimentals, with his long red coat and white cross-belts, and propped against him at an attitude of attention was his loaded musket with the bayonet fixed. Conyngham pulled the hat a little farther over his eyes, and opening the imitation note-book he began muttering to himself the way he had seen the doctor do. Closer and closer he came to the sentry. In his imagination he could feel the man’s eyes looking through and through him, and he thought he could detect a shuffling of his feet as if he was stepping to intercept him.
He was past the sentry now, and thought he was over the worst of it when the latter spoke.
“Halt there! The countersign!” the man demanded; but as if deaf Conyngham walked on. “Halt there!” came the second hail.
It would never do to stop. Hastening his mincing steps and as if oblivious of everything but his note-book, the supposed doctor walked on. He even heard the sentry mutter, “Confound the old fool! I’d like to send a ball after him.” He never turned his head.
Now he was free of the shadows of the prison walls. Before him stretched a wide street running down to the town, and to the right was a meadow, upon which were some trees, with benches under them. As he concluded that it would be better not to trust his disguise any further until after dark, he walked over to one of the benches, and, still in the sight of the sentry, sat down and pretended to scribble something in the note-book. In a few minutes the sun had sunk below a bank of clouds in the west, and getting to his feet he walked toward a little lane, intending to follow it until he could turn into the main street some distance below. But here his good fortune deserted him. On the very first corner stood a man with a basket on his arm. It was a huckster who had been allowed the privilege of selling oranges and small cakes in the prison-yard. Maybe the sense of security had caused the captain to forget to imitate the doctor’s step. At all events, as he approached the man with the basket the latter turned and looked at him intently; then, after he had passed, the huckster walked quickly up the lane, and when he had reached the common started at a run for the prison gate.
“That Yankee pirate Conyngham is loose!” he cried. “I just met him yonder at the corner.”
“You’re mad, man!” returned the sentry. “That was the doctor; he just passed out.”
“It was not,” replied the orangeman hastily. “I know him well; it was Conyngham in disguise.”
The sentry was about to call back into the guard-room when an officer appeared. To him the excited orangeman repeated the news.
“We’ll see about this!” was the officer’s reply, and he despatched a messenger at once to Conyngham’s cell. The fellow returned on the run.
“It is true, captain!” he cried. “Conyngham is not in his cell or the yard, and the doctor is calling the sick list in the French division.”
An instant later a drum rolled and a scurrying squad of red-coated soldiers hastened at double-quick down the main street toward the town.
They found the supposed doctor conversing with a merchant, at the door of his shop, from whom he was asking directions and the time of the next coach going to London, for there Conyngham knew of friends who would help him, and the big city was the safest hiding-place, as shall be hereinafter proved. It was useless to offer resistance, and without a word he surrendered and was marched back to the prison gate.
That night, shorn of his good clothes and in double irons, he was placed once more in the “Black Hole.” He dreamed that some one had restored to him the lost commission, and that instead of being confined as a pirate and a man supposed to be guilty of high treason, he had been treated as an officer should be and accorded the privileges of his position; but he awoke cold and stiff, with the knowledge that his captors would now be harder upon him than ever, and, as he wrote in his own diary, it was “a dismal prospect” again.