showing your dissatisfaction."

Admiral Cornwallis spoke in a more indignant strain. "I am ashamed of
you, lads," he exclaimed; "you call yourselves British seamen, and yet
upset all discipline, and act the part of rascally buccaneers who turn
against their officers the moment they have anything to complain of."

He said a good deal more in the same strain, but the men would scarcely
listen to him. Some of them shouted out together what they wanted, but
even on those points they were not all agreed.

"Are you going to return to your duty, lads!" asked Admiral Bridport at
last.

"No, we are not," shouted several of the men. "We don't return to our
duty until we get our rights."

On this the admirals walked away, and we saw them shortly afterwards,
through the ports, leaving the ship for Portsmouth.

The second night went by much as the first had done. The mutineers,
numbering about two hundred and fifty men, retained possession of the
lower deck, and would allow no one to come down, and none of the
better-disposed men whom they doubted to go up. Hagger and I, with
others, were thus kept prisoners. They had opposed to them the
commissioned, warrant, and petty officers, all the marines except six,
who, silly fellows, had been persuaded to join them, and about thirty
seamen who had managed to escape on deck. They might thus quickly have
been subdued by force, but then the lives of many on both sides must
have been sacrificed; and if once blood had been shed, the mutineers,
knowing that they fought with ropes round their necks, would have
struggled desperately to the last, and would very likely have blown the
ship up when they found all hope had gone. At length the watch off duty
lay down on deck to sleep, for they had used all the hammocks to form a
barricade. Hagger and I followed their example, hoping that next
morning they would come to a better state of mind; but we were mistaken,
and all day they held out, just as they had done before, and so they did
the next and the next.

At last two or three of the petty officers, who were the least
obnoxious, came and asked them to allow water and provisions to be got
up, saying "that if those below were badly off in one way, they
themselves were worse off in another, as neither had come off from the
shore, and they were pretty well starving."

Though some of the ringleaders would have prevented this if they could,
the greater part of the men were ready enough t