The captain was highly provoked at this rudeness, as indeed he had reason, it being a double affront to him as it was done in the view of the merchants who were come on board to him, to do him an honour at parting.  However, he restrained his passion, and gave them not the least angry word, only that if they were aggrieved they had no more to do but to let him have know of it; that if they were ill-used it was not by his order that he would enquire into it and if anything was amiss it should be rectified, with which the seamen withdrew, seemingly well satisfied with his answer.

About five the same evening they unmoored the ship and hove short upon their best bower anchor, awaiting the land breeze (as is usual on that coast) to carry them out to sea; but instead of that, it fell stark calm, and the captain fearing the ship would fall foul of her own anchor, ordered the mizen top-sail to be furled.  Peterson, one of the malcontent seamen, being the nearest man at hand seemed to go about it, but moved so carelessly and heavily that it appeared plainly he did not care whether it was done or no, and particularly as if he had a mind the captain should see it and take notice of it.  Which the captain did, for perceiving how awkwardly he went about it, he spoke a little tartly to him, and asked him what was the reason he did not stir a little and furl the sail.  Peterson, as if he had waited for the question, answered in a surly tone, and with a kind of disdain, So as we eat, so shall we work. This he spoke aloud, so that he might be sure the captain heard him and the rest of the men also, and it was evident that as he spoke in plural numbers, We, so he spoke their minds as well as his own, and words which they all agreed to before.

The captain, however, though he heard plain enough what he said, took not the least notice of it, or gave him the least reason to believe he had heard him, being not willing to begin a quarrel with the men and knowing that if he took any notice at all of it, he must resent it and punish it too.

Soon after this, the calm went off, and the land breeze sprang up, and they immediately weighed and stood out to sea; but the captain having had these two bustles with his men just at their putting to sea, was very uneasy in his mind, as indeed he had reason to be; and the same evening, soon after they were under sail, the mate being walking on the quarter deck, he went, and taking two or three turns with him, told him how he had been used by the men, particularly how they affronted him before the merchants, and what an answer Peterson had given him on the quarter deck, when he ordered him to furl the mizen top sail.  The mate was as surprised at these things as the captain, and after some other discourse about it, in which it was their unhappiness not to be so private as they ought to have been in a case of such importance, the captain told him he thought it was absolutely necessary to