of
returning home, and flattered them with the hopes of bringing them once
more to their native country, this circumstance alone rendered them
inattentive to all its inconveniences, and made them adhere to it with
insurmountable obstinacy, so that the captain himself, though he never
changed his opinion, was yet obliged to give way to the torrent, and in
appearance to acquiesce in this resolution, whilst he endeavoured
underhand to give it all the obstruction he could, particularly in the
lengthening of the long-boat, which he contrived should be of such a size
that, though it might serve to carry them to Juan Fernandez, would yet,
he hoped, appear incapable of so long a navigation as that to the coast
of Brazil.

AN UNHAPPY ACCIDENT.

But the captain, by his steady opposition at first to this favourite
project, had much embittered the people against him, to which, likewise,
the following unhappy accident greatly contributed. There was a
midshipman whose name was Cozens, who had appeared the foremost in all
the refractory proceedings of the crew. He had involved himself in brawls
with most of the officers who had adhered to the captain's authority, and
had even treated the captain himself with great abuse and insolence. As
his turbulence and brutality grew every day more and more intolerable, it
was not in the least doubted but there were some violent measures in
agitation in which Cozens was engaged as the ringleader, for which reason
the captain and those about him constantly kept themselves on their
guard. But at last the purser having, by the captain's order, stopped the
allowance of a fellow who would not work, Cozens, though the man did not
complain to him, intermeddled in the affair with great eagerness, and
grossly insulting the purser, who was then delivering our provisions just
by the captain's tent, and was himself sufficiently violent, the purser,
enraged by his scurrility, and perhaps piqued by former quarrels, cried
out--"A mutiny!" adding "that the dog had pistols," and then himself
fired a shot at Cozens, which, however, missed him. But the captain, on
this outcry and the report of the pistol, rushed out of his tent, and,
not doubting but it had been fired by Cozens as the commencement of a
mutiny, he immediately shot him in the head without further deliberation,
and though he did not kill him on the spot, yet the wound proved mortal,
and he died about fourteen days after.

This incident, however disp