Those were the days when smuggling between the Continent and England was considered almost a legitimate venture, and despite the watchfulness of the English coast-guard vessels, from many small ports and coves smuggler pilots ran their contraband cargoes in and out. It was not difficult for Conyngham to secure the services of a French smuggler pilot, and in fact some of the men of the crew, Americans though they were, had been employed, at times, in the same risky business.
A big open yawl was procured without difficulty, and on a misty night she slipped out of Dunkirk harbor heading with a favoring easterly wind for the English coast. For a short time this held true and steady, but fortune after a few hours turned against them. Before daybreak the wind had increased to half a gale, and in the choppy sea the yawl had a bad time of it. It was only by good seamanship and constant bailing that she was kept afloat. The afternoon of the next day they found themselves about three leagues from the English coast, and the wind abating they laid their course for the white cliffs of Dover.
All apparently was going well, and they had passed several vessels without exciting suspicion, for the smallness of their craft was a great point in their favor, and she might have been taken for a coaster or fisherman hailing from any of the small villages that sent out their little fleets during the trawling season.
Late in the afternoon, while they were creeping southward along the coast, a king’s cutter suddenly appeared around a little headland not two miles away. The French pilot who was at the helm was undoubtedly responsible for what followed, for the sudden appearance of the cutter must have caused him to lose his head. Without a word of warning he threw the yawl up into the wind and headed her off shore, plainly in an endeavor to give the cutter a wider berth. The suspicious action had been seen by the Englishman, who at once altered his own course and turned off in pursuit.
Captain Conyngham at the time that the coast-guard was sighted had been resting asleep under a tarpaulin between the thwarts. The exclamations of the men on seeing the cutter’s tactics aroused him, and as soon as he had looked to leeward he saw that it was only a matter of time when the cutter would overhaul his little craft.