It was necessary, as our informant said, that "someone with a name" should go over and concert with the Irishmen in Scotland the mode and time of action, and I was the only person at hand willing for that service. For my encouragement, Meagher assured me I would be "as famous as Paul Jones" if I got the men out of the Clyde, and Mr. Dillon suggested as a landing-place "the old ground, Killala."
That afternoon I left Dublin, and on Tuesday morning I was in Scotland.
I cannot give the exact particulars of my movements while there. All who were in my confidence are still in Scotland, with the exception of Mr. Peter M'Cabe of Glasgow, now in the United States. I will only say that I visited and consulted our friends in four of the principal towns--Edinburgh included. I attended meetings of the clubs and in each instance instituted committees. I obtained in a few days a list of nearly 400 men, pretty well equipped, ready for the risk. A sub-committee surveyed the Broomielaw and the Clyde, and although their report was unfavourable to the attempt of getting out in one body, a gentleman, now in America, gained over the crew and officers of an Irish steamer to take us as passengers from Greenock where the tides in a few days would answer for departure about ten o'clock at night. The arms were to be previously shipped as merchandise or luggage, and the destination was to be Sligo.
These arrangements occupied from Tuesday till Friday of the last week of July. In the meanwhile, the London Journals arrived with news that O'Brien and his friends had been received with open arms in the south, and great excitement and suspicion of strangers arose in Scotland. In the Reading Room at Paisley I read myself in _The Hue and Cry_. One paper stated I was in Waterford, another said I was "revelling among the clubs in the Co. Dublin." The _Times_ did me the honour to couple me with Meagher, calling us "the two most dangerous men now abroad." No one suspected my real locality.
On Friday I was in Edinburgh intending to return to Glasgow, when Mr. ----, accompanied by a friend suddenly joined me. I saw they were a good deal agitated. They told me a Scotch mechanic who had been formerly in Dublin had seen me in the streets of Glasgow opposite Wellington statue, and that the news was "all round town." They added that the magistrates were in secret sitting, and as the writ of Habeas Corpus is unknown to the law of Scotland, I would be certainly arrested and summarily imprisoned if I returned. They were instructed to advise me to go to Ireland through the north of England, to prepare our friends in and about Sligo, and that they would complete the project which they had begun, and which was now in promising forwardness. I complied and Mr. ---- handed me a purse, as a personal gift from the Committee. This purse contained twelve or thirteen sovereigns, the only public money I received in this enterprise. After purposely driving to the West of Scotland depot [railway terminus] we returned to the North British, and my friends saw me off a station or two on the way to Newcastle-on-Tyne. I slept that night in Newcastle.
