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Updated: June 16, 2025
Signal guns and flags proving vain, there was nothing for it but to send another vessel in chase of the Kestrel, but it was hours before one could be got off, and meanwhile the swift despatch boat was tearing on towards her destination, with poor Hilary happy in the blind belief that he was doing his best.
"His Majesty's cutter Swordfish, Commander Nettlebones, senior officer of the eastern division after my papa, although a very young man still, carries a swivel-gun and two bow-chasers. His Majesty's cutter Kestrel, commanded by Lieutenant Bowler, is armed with three long-John's, or strap-guns, capable of carrying a pound of shrapnel.
He began by an attack on the position of Lasithe, where were gathered about 5000 insurgents, sufficient if they had had one commander; having many, they were, after temporary successes, scattered and dispersed east and west, Omar following those who went westward. I ran down to Candia, in the Kestrel, to get the earliest news.
There was a momentary silence, during which, as the men stood ready to man the two boats that had been lowered, the lieutenant and his junior tried to make out where the schooner lay, but on every side, as the Kestrel lay softly rolling in the trough of the sea, a thick bank of darkness seemed to be closing them in, and pursuit of the schooner by boats would have been as mad a venture as could have been set upon by the officer of a ship.
Hilary half staggered back in his surprise. "Me? me, sir? Do you mean that I shall be appointed to the command of the Kestrel? I have not passed my examination for lieutenant yet." "No, but you will, Mr Leigh, and I have no doubt with credit. I have been having a chat with my friend the captain here.
Don Quixote, then, went on to say: "With regard to the mode in which thou shouldst govern thy person and thy house, Sancho, the first charge I have to give thee is to be clean, and to cut thy nails, not letting them grow as some do, whose ignorance makes them fancy that long nails are an ornament to their hands, as if those excrescences they neglect to cut were nails, and not the talons of a lizard-catching kestrel a filthy and unnatural abuse.
It was bravely done; and, had they met with a less stout resistance, the Kestrel would have been captured. But, as it was, they had Englishmen to deal with, and Hilary and about ten of the crew met them bravely, Hilary going down, though, from the first blow one from a boarding-pike.
The stranger showed no lights, a suspicious fact which Hilary afterwards recalled, and she came on as the cutter rapidly answered her helm, seeming at first as if she would go right over the little sloop of war, but when the collision came, so well had the Kestrel swerved aside, the stranger's bowsprit went between jib and staysail, and struck the cutter just behind the figurehead.
Then, again, he thought it impossible that it could be the Kestrel, for the smugglers would never have the hardihood to run a cargo just under the very nose of a king's ship; but directly afterwards he was obliged to own that it was by these very acts of daring that they were able to carry on with such success; and the more he gazed out at those lights, the more certain he felt that they belonged to his vessel.
"Well, well, Tom. Don't talk of that now," said Frank. "I just did what every Christian man should do. I put the truth before you, and you believed it. I did not put myself to any inconvenience even to serve Tom, while he risked his life to save mine. That was after the `Rover' had come home and been paid off, and we belonged to the `Kestrel, and were sent out to the Pacific.
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