As the days and weeks passed, with no occupation save the daily business of collecting food that gradually became more and more nauseous to them, and of straining their eyes across the empty blue of the sea in an anxious search for the returning canoes of Fieschi, the spirits of the castaways sank lower and lower.  Inevitably their discontent became articulate and broke out into murmurings.  The usual remedy for this state of affairs is to keep the men employed at some hard work; but there was no work for them to do, and the spirit of dissatisfaction had ample opportunity to spread.  As usual it soon took the form of hostility to the Admiral.  They seem to have borne him no love or gratitude for his masterly guiding of them through so many dangers; and now when he lay ill and in suffering his treacherous followers must needs fasten upon him the responsibility for their condition.  After a month or two had passed, and it became certain that Fieschi was not coming back, the castaways could only suppose that he and Mendez had either been captured by natives or had perished at sea, and that their fellow-countrymen must still be without news of the Admiral’s predicament.  They began to say also that the Admiral was banished from Spain; that there was no desire or intention on the part of the Sovereigns to send an expedition to his relief; even if they had known of his condition; and that in any case they must long ago have given him up for lost.

When the pot boils the scum rises to the surface, and the first result of these disloyal murmurings and agitations was to bring into prominence the two brothers, Francisco and Diego de Porras, who, it will be remembered, owed their presence with the expedition entirely to the Admiral’s good nature in complying with the request of their brother-in-law Morales, who had apparently wished to find some distant occupation for them.  They had been given honourable posts as officers, in which they had not proved competent; but the Admiral had always treated them with kindness and courtesy, regarding them more as guests than as servants.  Who or what these Porras brothers were, where they came from, who were their father and mother, or what was their training, I do not know; it is enough for us to know that the result of it all had been the production of a couple of very mean scoundrels, who now found an opportunity to exercise their scoundrelism.

When they discovered the nature of the murmuring and discontent among the crew they immediately set them to work it up into open mutiny.  They represented that, as Mendez had undoubtedly perished, there was no hope of relief from Espanola; that the Admiral did not even expect such relief, knowing that the island was forbidden ground to him.  They insinuated that he was as well content to remain in Jamaica as anywhere else, since he had to undergo a period of banishment until his friends at Court could procure his forgiveness.  They were all, said the Porras