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Their ships of war were few in number, unseaworthy, ill-found, ill-manned. Two thousand able-bodied seamen could with difficulty be got together in an emergency. The nominal fighting strength of the fleet stood high, but that strength in reality consisted of men "one half of whom had never sailed out of the Gulf of Finland, whilst the other half had never sailed anywhere at all."
They remonstrated with the captain, but they could not alter his determination. The boat was pulled away and was lost to sight in the breakers. Neither the boat nor any member of the crew was ever seen or heard of again. The boat was ill-found and ill-manned. She was undoubtedly caught in the breakers and foundered.
I have the right to call upon some other branch of our country's service to help me. Hence my request. Very plainly he did not like it. 'I must telegraph about it. My instructions are to let no one aboard, not even a man like you. I am sorry, Sir, but I must get authority first before I can fall in with your desire. Besides, my boat is ill-found.
By the way, if you are up in tracts, perhaps you know one called "The Rock of Horeb "? Miss Goold shook her head. 'Ah, well, said the Captain, after appealing to Mary O'Dwyer and Hyacinth, 'it can't be helped, but I must say I should like to meet someone who had read "The Rock of Horeb." I once sailed from Peru in an exceedingly ill-found little barque loaded with guano.
The ordinary perils of the deep were quite enough to keep timid folk at home in those days of clumsy, ill-found sailing ships, which could by no means work to windward, and did not sail remarkably well even with the most favouring breezes; when to this we add that every ship which started on a voyage in the Mediterranean had before her the chance of being captured by the corsairs, it was no wonder that he whose business led him oversea should make his last will and testament and bid a fond farewell to all his relatives.
What would such a man, what would any man think, if the garrison of so strange a fortress should be such, and so feebly commanded, as never to make a sally, and that, contrary to all which has hitherto been seen in war, an infinitely inferior army, with the shattered relics of an almost annihilated navy, ill-found and ill-manned, may with safety besiege this superior garrison, and, without hazarding the life of a man, ruin the place, merely by the menaces and false appearances of an attack?
The usual time for their evening prayers arrived. It seemed to Hannah, even while they were on their knees, that the gale blew with less fury than before. It was, indeed, one of those storms which occasionally, during the equinox, sweep along the coast, and, though brief, cause much damage to vessels caught near the shore, especially to such as are ill-found and ill-manned.
The way it will ride out a storm that makes a liner labour and sinks any ill-found vessel like a stone is little short of marvellous. It has a flattish bottom, sheering up at both ends, which are high in the gunwale.
In fact more than one of the skippers seemed to think so, and as a rule they declined to take us, saying that it would get them into trouble, while in one case, where the captain of a schooner eagerly agreed to take us, merely stipulating to be well paid, the vessel was such a cranky, ill-found affair that I shrank from trusting my aunt and Lilla in such a crazy hull.
His private ambitions he had resigned without a word on the day when he put to sea out of Brest, under order from Paris, to perform a feat he knew to be impossible, with ships ill-found, under-manned, and half- victualled by cheating contractors: and he sailed cheerfully, believing himself sacrificed to some high purpose of his master's.
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