He begins, p. 60: where he says, as we advanced to the southward, the men’s stomachs increased with the sharpness of the air. Here he says I grew a champion for the officers, and wanted a greater allowance at his table: which is intirely a false insinuation, for no one was better pleased with the allowance, and so were the people: and having served as an officer several years in the navy, I must needs know that any man, in such an expedition, guilty of what _Shelvocke_ lays to my charge, well deserved to be shot through the head. Afterwards he aggravates this story, by saying _Betagh_ had a voracious appetite, and eat more than came to his share. I need not wonder at any thing _Shelvocke_ says on this head; for he being a very small eater himself, fancied all other people gluttons: I verily believe he never eat above two ounces in a day, as long as _hipsy_ lasted; but was a great drinker all the voyage; whereas I never loved drinking: so that the difference between us is only this, I eat more than he, and he drank more than I: and when I am to tell the story, the reflection is turned: He appears a drunkard, and I a moderate man. Now this is such mean pitiful scandal for an author who sets out with the noble title of a voyage round the world, that it must convince mankind how trifling his observations have been, how ill grounded his malice is to me, and how far fetched his revenge. ’Tis a poor reflection upon a man, who in his appetite is as moderate as most are, and hardly deserves the answer I have given it. ’Tis in the same page, where he says I had the insolence to tell him publickly, that the _voyage_ should be _short_ with him. I frankly own I said the words, and scorn to deny it: but said them not in that order he has maliciously put them. For to avoid his brow-beating me, I often used to sit cross the spitsail-yard arm in fine weather, with a book, or the fishgigg to strike the fish; and one time coming down pretty thirsty, I found them all drinking hugger mugger in the cabin, upon which I said, Faith, now I find I must drink in spight; which _Shelvocke_ furiously resented, as an argument that I would drink in spight of him, whether he would or no: upon which I thus addrest him, and said, since we are past the _Cape_, the most dangerous and fatiguing part of our navigation, and are so near the enemy, I beg of you, Sir, to let us live as easy as possible; for now I hope in God the _voyage_ will be _short_ with us. These were infallibly my very words: but according to his way of perverting them, what must the reader imagine, but that I designed to throw my captain over-board, or murder him? As _Shelvocke_ has turn’d it, it can bear no better meaning. This I think a very cruel mischievous way of perverting a man’s words, and not unlike the Devil’s method of quoting scripture.