on shore with the supercargo in the ship’s boat to divert myself; and towards evening was preparing to go on board, when one of the men came to me, and told me he would not have me trouble myself to come down to the boat, for they had orders not to carry me on board any more.  Any one may guess what a surprise I was in at so insolent a message; and I asked the man who bade him deliver that message to me?  He told me the coxswain.

I immediately found out the supercargo, and told him the story, adding that I foresaw there would be a mutiny in the ship; and entreated him to go immediately on board and acquaint the captain of it.  But I might have spared this intelligence, for before I had spoken to him on shore the matter was effected on board.  The boatswain, the gunner, the carpenter, and all the inferior officers, as soon as I was gone off in the boat, came up, and desired to speak with the captain; and then the boatswain, making a long harangue, and repeating all he had said to me, told the captain that as I was now gone peaceably on shore, they were loath to use any violence with me, which, if I had not gone on shore, they would otherwise have done, to oblige me to have gone.  They therefore thought fit to tell him that as they shipped themselves to serve in the ship under his command, they would perform it well and faithfully; but if I would not quit the ship, or the captain oblige me to quit it, they would all leave the ship, and sail no further with him; and at that word all he turned his face towards the main-mast, which was, it seems, a signal agreed on, when the seamen, being got together there, cried out, “One and all!  One and all!”

My nephew, the captain, was a man of spirit, and of great presence of mind; and though he was surprised, yet he told them calmly that he would consider of the matter, but that he could do nothing in it till he had spoken to me about it.  He used some arguments with them, to show them the unreasonableness and injustice of the thing, but it was all in vain; they swore, and shook hands round before his face, that they would all go on shore unless he would engage to them not to suffer me to come any more on board the ship.

This was a hard article upon him, who knew his obligation to me, and did not know how I might take it.  So he began to talk smartly to them; told them that I was a very considerable owner of the ship, and that if ever they came to England again it would cost them very dear; that the ship was mine, and that he could not put me out of it; and that he would rather lose the ship, and the voyage too, than disoblige me so much:  so they might do as they pleased.  However, he would go on shore and talk with me, and invited the boatswain to go with him, and perhaps they might accommodate the matter with me.  But they all rejected the proposal, and said they would have nothing to do with me any more; and if I came on board they would all go on shore.  “Well,” said the captain, “if you are all of this mind, let me go on shore and talk with him.”  So away he came to me with this account, a little after the message had been brought to me from the coxswain.