We were sailing with the easterly wind on our beam, and making maybe six knots on it, with the two reefs down.

The full crew of such a ship as this for such a cruise without any warlike ending to it would be about twenty, or perhaps a few less.

She pulled sixteen oars a side, and with a war crew on board would muster ninety-six men--three to an oar--with a few extra hands, as the helmsman and the chiefs, to make a total of a hundred.

Her decks would be crowded, of course, but she would be down to her bearings, being built for war cruises, and in a breeze all her men would be sitting up to windward as shifting ballast, so to speak.

It is not likely, therefore, that we could have done much better had we managed to shake out the reefs, seeing that the ship was light.