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. [Illustration: HE TOUCHED AT A SMALL TOWN IN IRELAND FOR SUPPLIES.]