me on board. 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 errand to me? He told me, the coxswain. I said
no more to the fellow, but bid him let them know he had delivered his
message, and that I had given him no answer to it.

I immediately went and round out the supercargo, and told him the story,
adding, what I presently foresaw, viz. that there would certainly be a
mutiny in the ship; and entreated him to go immediately on board the
ship in an Indian boat, 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, in a word, all the inferior officers, as soon as I was gone off in
the boat, came up to the quarter-deck, and desired to speak with the
captain; and there the boatswain making a long harangue, (for the fellow
talked very well) and repeating all he had said to me, told the captain
in a few words, 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 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 farther with him; and at that
word All, he turned his face about towards the main-mast, which was, it
seems, the signal agreed on between them, at which all the seamen being
got together, they 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, you may be sure, at the thing, yet he
told them calmly 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 shew 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 go all on shore unless he would engage to them not
to suffer me to come 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 cavalierly to them;
told them that I was a very considerable owner of the ship, and that in
j