well as we could make out our reckoning, with the aid of some lunar
observations Captain Jarvis booked the night before, for we were unable
to see the sun long enough for our purpose, we were about some three or
four hundred miles to the west of Bermuda, when, just as the clouds were
breaking up blue-black against the sky, and the barometer told us in its
plain language that it was coming on to blow harder, and that we would
have worse weather than we had yet had, all the hands, as if with one
accord, struck work--with the exception of the man at the wheel, who
stuck to his post! There was no mistake about it: the watch on deck
refused point-blank to go aloft when the skipper ordered them, for about
the fourth time in the hour, I should think it was, to take in sail;
while the watch below, in spite of the boatswain's hammering away at the
fore-hatch and the capen's swearing, declared that they wouldn't rouse
up, not even if the ship was sinking, and if they were shouted at any
more they would sarve him out. It was a mutiny, there's no denying; a
regular crisis, if ever there was one; and just what I expected, seeing
as how things were going ever since we left Mobile, not three weeks
before."

"Captain Jarvis," he resumed after a brief pause, "no sooner heard the
men refuse to come on deck than he went below. Not to where they were
in the fore-hatch--he knew a thing or two better than that--but to his
cabin, and in a minute he comes up again with a revolver in each of his
fists.

"`Now,' says he in a firm, hard, but quiet voice, not loud--he always
spoke particularly quiet when he was angry, as I've told you; and he was
angry now, if ever a man was! `Now, you skulkers,' he says, addressing
first the hands on deck--`Aloft every man-jack of you! I'll shoot the
last man that's up the shrouds!' They were up in the rigging pretty
smart, you bet, at that, when he had a revolver levelled dead at their
heads. `See that you stow that main-topsail in a brace of shakes! And
you lubbers below, wake up there!' he exclaimed over the fore-hatch,
firing a shot down below as he spoke. `Wake up there and on deck; or,
I'll riddle every mother's son of you before I count ten. You, Black
Harry, I know you've set this pretty little scheme going! Up with you,
or by the Lord Harry, your namesake, I'll put a bullet through your
carcass!'

"With that the watch below, knowing with whom they had to deal, thought
it best to give in; an