“He (_i.e._ Wilmot) told me he found I was a little strange to him, and [that he] should be glad we might understand one another better. I told him, I thought if there was any strangeness it was on his side, and as we had both promised His Majesty to maintain an entire confidence, and a friendly correspondence, it should not be my fault if we did not, and so offered, forgetting all that was past, to begin a more sociable agreement from that time, and so we drank to one another again. ‘But,’ says the Captain, ‘our agreement is very necessary on our own accounts, for if it be not our own faults we may both make our fortunes in this voyage, and provide for ourselves as long as we live.’ With all my heart said I, I shall endeavour not to be wanting to myself provided the King’s business be done too. ‘Damn the King’s business,’ says he, ‘we will do the King’s business, and our own too. But I’ll be free, with you,’ says the Captain, ‘I had the misfortune to kill a man (and I think named him) and it has almost ruined me, for it has cost me above a thousand pound, and I am resolved this voyage shall pay for it, and if you will join with me in such measures as I shall propose, this voyage shall make up all our losses.’” Lillingston refused, and Wilmot went off in the sulks, growling:— “Well well” says he “if you don’t think fit to join with me you may let it alone, but I am resolved to make myself amends. I won’t go to the West Indies to learn the language. I’ll take care of myself, let the King’s business go how it will.” When the squadron reached Madeira, Wilmot endeavoured to get rid of the military officers. He seized an opportunity to sail while most of them were ashore buying provisions. A sudden gale was his pretext. Fortunately his ships were scattered in a storm; one of them came back to Madeira, and the officers were picked up. At a council of the officers of both arms, Wilmot had refused to allow Lillingston’s captain-lieutenant to sit, alleging that no officer under the rank of captain had a right to a seat. Now the captain-lieutenant, according to the military customs of the time, commanded what was counted as the colonel’s company and ranked as the senior captain. Wilmot was induced to see reason by the arguments of the commissary Murray; but Lillingston, not unfairly, quotes his conduct as an example of pure arbitrary insolence. He had turned the captain-lieutenant out of the cabin “with a rudeness that I had never seen among gentlemen.” At the Leeward Islands Wilmot was again “pleased to be very drunk,” and went the length of offering to give away commissions in Lillingston’s regiment. The military and naval elements came, in fact, to open quarrel. From the Leeward Islands this jarring expedition went on first to San Domingo, where some Spaniards, then our allies, joined us. There was delay, wrangling, and an incessant conflict between soldier and sailor. Wilmot, says Lillingston,