52 THE SEA. 



for they commenced breaking in the casks of brandy or wine as they came up the 

 hatchway, and several got so intoxicated that they were drowned on board, and lay 

 floating about the decks for several days. The boatswain and some of the men would 

 not leave the ship so long as there was any liquor to be found on her; and Captain 

 Cheap, having got off as many of the crew as would come, about a hundred and forty 

 in number, suffered himself to be helped out of his bed, put into the boat, and carried 

 ashore. 



After passing a miserable night, almost without shelter, the calls of hunger most of 

 them having fasted forty-eight hours obliged them to seek for sustenance. Two or three 

 pounds of biscuit dust, one sea-gull, and some wild celery, were boiled up into a kind of 

 soup, which made all very ill who partook of it. It was at first supposed that the wild 

 herb was the cause, but it was soon discovered that the biscuit dust, the sweepings of 

 the bread-room, had been gathered in a tobacco bag, and that the tobacco dust mingled 

 with it had acted as an emetic. 



Still a number of the wretched crew remained on board, pilfering all they could find, 

 often whether it could be of use to them or not, and showing a particular desire to 

 provide themselves with arms and ammunition. They averred that the authority of the 

 officers must cease with the loss of the ship ; but as they came ashore, the arms were 

 taken from them. When the boatswain came ashore in laced clothes, Captain Cheap 

 knocked him down. " It was scarce possible to refrain from laughter at the whimsical 

 appearance these fellows made, who, having rifled the chests of the officers' best suits, 

 had put them on over their greasy trousers and dirty checked shirts. They were soon 

 stripped of their finery, as they had before been obliged to resign their arms." The 

 cutter, turned keel upwards, was now placed on props and covered, so that it made a 

 reasonably comfortable habitation. Shell-fish were found in tolerable abundance, " but 

 this rummaging of the shore," says Byron, " was now become extremely irksome to those 

 who had any feeling, by the bodies of our drowned people thrown among the rocks, some 

 of which were hideous spectacles, from the mangled condition they were in by the violent 

 Burf that drove in upon the coast. These horrors were overcome by the distresses of our 

 people, who were even glad of the occasion of killing the gallinazo (the carrion crow of 

 that country) while preying on these carcases, in order to make a meal of them." 



Such stores as could be landed were placed in a guarded tent, and doled out 

 carefully. A few Indians arrived, and, after some parley, proved friendly, and were 

 presented with sundry trifles. The looking-glasses astonished them ; " the beholder could 

 not conceive it to be his own face that was represented, but that of some other behind it, 

 which he therefore went round to the back of the glass to find out." They left, and in 

 two days returned with three sheep, which astonished the officers, inasmuch as they were 

 far from any of the Spanish settlements. 



And now mutiny and desertion ensued. One section of the men, " a most desperate 

 and abandoned crew," attempted, by placing a barrel of gunpowder close to the captain's 

 hut, with a train to be lighted at a distance, to destroy their commander and his authority 

 by one fell blow, but were dissuaded by one of their number, who had some conscience 

 left. They eventually built a punt, and converted the hull of one of the ship's masts 



