ained of righting the
wrong which had been done at Kilgorman, and so of carrying out my
mother's sacred bequest. Moreover, the thought that Miss Kit would find
so stalwart a protector at the end of her unhappy voyage lifted a heavy
weight from my mind.

And all this relief I owed to the man whom, of all others, I, as a loyal
subject of his Majesty, was bound to consider as my country's most
dangerous enemy! Alack! I was not born to be a good hater. For as I
strode that evening through the streets of Dublin I counted this Lord
Edward as one of the few men for whom I would gladly have given my life.

When in due time I procured a boat to row me out to the _Zebra_, I found
that Captain Swift's forebodings as to the state of the ship were only
too well founded. The _Zebra_ was a second-rate frigate, which for some
years had been out of regular commission, doing duty on coast-guard
service, or cruising under letters of marque. She was not an ill-
looking craft; though, to judge by her looks as she rode at anchor, her
lines were better adapted to fast sailing than hard knocks.

When I reported myself on board, however, I was better able to
understand my captain's misgivings. The first lieutenant in charge was
a coarse, brutal-looking fellow, who, if he spared me some of the abuse
which he measured out to the ordinary seamen, did so because he looked
to me to take some labour off his hands.

"It's high time you came," said he; "and unless you can lick a pack of
wolves into shape, you may as well swing yourself up at the yard-arm at
once. They seem to have emptied all the jails in Dublin to find us men;
and as for stores--well, the less said about these the better."

I was not long in discovering that he had good reasons for his gloomy
opinions. The hands, whom presently I piped on deck, were as ill-
assorted and ill-conditioned a lot as boatswain ever was called upon to
overhaul. Many were raw hands, who did not know one end of a mast from
the other. Others, who knew better, appeared to be the refuse of crews
which had rejected their worst men. And the few old salts of the right
kind were evidently demoralised and dissatisfied, both at their enforced
association with their present messmates and with the abrupt termination
of their leave ashore.

As to the officers, with the exception of the first lieutenant and a few
of the petty officers who took their cue from him, they seemed a decent
and fairly smart set,