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Updated: May 16, 2025
If the pond was a haunt of his, it was too near the young partridges, which were weakly that season. A kestrel is harmless compared to a crow. Surely the translators have wrongly rendered Don Quixote's remark that the English did not kill crows, believing that King Arthur, instead of dying, was by enchantment turned into one, and so fearing to injure the hero.
It is a novelty, I own, but the Kestrel is a very small vessel, and for the present you will have with you a brother officer of riper years, who, pending his own appointment to a ship, will, as it were, share your command, and in cases of emergency give you his advice. Of course all this is to be if I obtain the sanction of the Admiralty, but I think I may tell you this will come."
Sometimes he could distinguish what they carried, whether it was bale or tub, and upon which shoulder it was carried, till by degrees, as he found that he was not discovered, his thoughts began to turn upon what a grand haul the crew of the Kestrel could make in the way of prize-money if he only had the good fortune to escape, and could find his way back to the shore.
There was no beating to quarters, for the little crew were on deck, and every man fell naturally into his place as the lieutenant seemed now to wake up to his work, and glanced at the sails, which were all set, and giving his orders sharply and well, a pull was taken at a sheet here and a pull there, the helm altered, and in spite of the lightness of the breeze the Kestrel began to work along with an increase of speed of quite two knots an hour.
He had got three mussels; a muddy face; muddier feet; nearly an eye pecked out by a mighty, great black-backed gull; three chivyings from herring-gulls; one nip from a crab who ought to have been dead; two winkles under big stones that took half-an-hour to shift; one dead pigmy shrew length two inches with a hole in its skull, no brains, and a horrible smell; nearly his life removed by the swoop of a kestrel falcon and the javelin-stab of a heron's beak; and twenty minutes' hard cleaning to remove the mud-stains that were not properly off to his nice liking yet.
The attack on him and the attempt made by Wickersham and Kestrel to break up his deal had failed, and the deeds and money were passed. Keith was on his way back to his office from his final interview with the representative of the syndicate that had bought the properties.
Pierson effaced his emotion, and said quite calmly: "Shall you wish to be at home, my dear, or to go elsewhere?" Noel had begun to toss her head on her pillow, like a feverish child whose hair gets in its eyes and mouth. "Oh! I don't know; what does it matter?" "Kestrel; would you like to go there? Your aunt I could write to her." Noel stared at him a moment; a struggle seemed going on within her.
Far up on the ledge from which the spire rises a kestrel had found a cosy corner in which to establish himself, and one day when I was there a number of daws took it on themselves to eject him: they gathered near and flew this way and that, and cawed and cawed in anger, and swooped at him, until he could stand their insults no longer, and, suddenly dashing out, he struck and buffeted them right and left and sent them screaming with fear in all directions.
Possibly he might have hit and sunk one of the boats, but the lieutenant did not seem to wish for this, but began giving his orders with unwonted energy, trying to make sail upon the Kestrel, which lay there upon the water, with one of her wings, as it were, so crippled that he found it would take quite half an hour before she could be cleared. "It's of no use, Mr Leigh," he cried excitedly.
It is on account of this peculiar habit of hovering in the air that the kestrel is often called the wind-hover in England. Needless to say, the kestrel affects open tracts rather than forest country. One of these birds is usually to be seen engaged in its craft above the bare slope of the hill on which Mussoorie is built.
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