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 It had never been rescinded, and the vessel he commanded was the same!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.