had not been
aloft more than ten minutes, when one of them fell overboard. Why I
should again have put my life in jeopardy, particularly after the
warning of the last voyage, I know not. I was perhaps vain of what I
could do in the water. I knew my powers; and with the hope of saving
this unfortunate victim to the folly and cruelty of the captain, I
plunged after him into the sea, feeling at the same time, that I was
almost committing an act of suicide. I caught hold of him, and for a
time supported him; and, had the commonest diligence and seamanship
been shewn, I should have saved him. But the captain, it appeared,
when he found I was overboard, was resolved to get rid of me, in order
to save himself: he made use of every difficulty to prevent the boat
coming to me. The poor man was exhausted: I kept myself disengaged
from him, when swimming round him; supported him occasionally whenever
he was sinking; but, finding at last that he was irrecoverably
gone--for though I had a firm hold of him, he was going lower and
lower--and, looking up, perceiving I was so deep that the water was
dark over my head, I clapped my knees on his shoulders, and, giving
myself a little impetus from the resistance, rose to the surface. So
much was I exhausted, that I could not have floated half a minute
more, when the boat came and picked me up.

The delay in heaving the ship to, I attributed to the scene I had
witnessed the night before; and in this, I was confirmed by the
testimony of the officers. Having lost two men by his unseamanlike
conduct, he would have added deliberate murder of a third, to save
himself from the punishment which he knew awaited him. He continued
the same tyrannical conduct, and I had resolved that the moment we
fell in with the admiral to write for a court-martial on this man,
let the consequences be what they might: I thought I should serve my
country and the navy by ridding it of such a monster.

Several of the officers were under arrest, and notwithstanding the
heat of their cabins in that warm climate, were kept constantly
confined to them with a sentinel at the door. In consequence of
this cruel treatment, one of the officers became deranged. We made
Barbadoes, and running round Needham's Point into Carlisle Bay, we saw
to our mortification, that neither the admiral nor any ship of war was
there, consequently our captain was commanding officer in the port.
Upon this, he became remarkably amiable, supposing