CHAPTER VIII. THE BASQUE ROADS. A few days afterwards the lieutenant said, “Now, Stephen, as you have nothing to do this evening I will go on with my yarn. Lord Cochrane had not forgotten me, and on the day that he was appointed to the _Pallas_ he wrote to me saying that he had applied for me as second lieutenant, and that Lord Melville had promised to appoint me. Two days later I got the official appointment with orders to join at once. I found Cochrane in a very bad temper. He said, ‘What do you think, Embleton, that confounded cruise of mine in the _Arab_ has ruined me in the opinion of the sailors. Why, if I had been appointed to a hundred-gun ship on the day when we returned together after the loss of the _Speedy_, I could have got volunteers enough for her in twenty-four hours. Now the dismal tale told by the crew of the _Arab_ of our exile in the North Sea, and the fear, no doubt, that I am going to be sent off to some similar station, has so frightened them that I have not had half a dozen men apply, and I actually shall have to impress a crew.’ “‘I expect, sir,’ I said, ‘that when we get hold of a few prime seamen, and I tell them that they are as sure of prize-money with you as if it was already divided, they will soon spread the news, and we shall not be long before we fill up.’ “So it turned out; luckily, among the first haul that Cochrane made, there were two or three of the _Speedy’s_ old crew. I took them in hand, and told them that so far from being in disgrace any longer, Lord Cochrane had a commission to take a month’s cruise off the Azores before joining the fleet, and that that job alone was likely to fill every man’s pockets. In a very short time we had the pick of the best men in Plymouth, and sailed in the middle of January, 1805, for the Azores. Instead of making straight for the islands, Cochrane ran down the coast of Spain and then worked up towards the Azores, thereby putting us on the track of any Spanish vessels bound from the West Indies to Cadiz. A day or two later we captured a large ship bound from Havana laden with a valuable cargo. Having learned from the prisoners that the ship was part of a large convoy we proceeded on our course, and a week later captured another even more valuable prize, as she contained in addition to the usual cargo some diamonds and ingots of gold and silver.