CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
THE WRECK OF THE "KESTREL." The crew of the _Kestrel_ consisted of less than fifty men, most of them Irishmen.

While the work of setting sails and making all snug lasted I had little chance of looking about me, but the impression I formed was that the schooner was not at all worthy of the praise her tipsy captain had bestowed upon her.

She was an old craft, with a labouring way of sailing that compared very unfavourably with the _Cigale_ or the _Arrow_.

Her guns, about a dozen in all, were of an antiquated type, and badly mounted, and her timbers were old and faulty.

As long as we had a sharp east wind astern we had not much to concern us, but I had my misgivings how she would behave in dirty weather with a lee-shore on her quarter.
That, however, concerned me less just then than my impatience to get a glimpse of the face of the lieutenant.