The captain shortly after quitted the ship, telling the first lieutenant that I had permission to go on shore. I was now left at liberty to make acquaintance with my companions in misery--and nothing conduces to intimacy so much as community of suffering. My resistance to the brutality of our common taskmaster had pleased them; they told me what a tyrant and what a disgrace to the service he was, and how shameful it was that he should be intrusted with the command of so fine a vessel, or of any vessel at all, except it were a convict ship. The stories they told me of him were almost incredible, and nothing but the too-well-founded idea that an officer trying his captain by a court-martial had a black mark against him for ever after, and was never known to rise, could have saved this man from the punishment he so richly deserved: no officer, they said, had been more than three weeks in the ship, and they were all making interest to leave her. In my report of what occurred in this vessel during the time I belonged to her, I must, in justice to the captains and commanders of His Majesty's navy, observe, that the case was unique of its kind: such a character as Captain G--- was rarely met with in the navy then, and, for reasons which I shall give, will be still more rare in future. The first lieutenant told me that I had acted very judiciously in resisting at first his undue exertion of authority; that he was at once a tyrant, a bully, and a coward, and would be careful how he attacked me again. "But be on your guard," said he, "he will never forgive you; and when he is most agreeable there is the most mischief to be dreaded. He will lull you into security, and whenever he can catch you tripping, he will try you by a court-martial. You had better go on shore, and settle all your business, and, if possible, be on board before your leave is out. It is only your threat of writing to the port-admiral that procured you leave of absence. You have nothing to thank him for: he would have kept you on board if he dared. I have never quitted the ship since I joined her; and never has a day passed without a scene similar to what you have this morning witnessed. And yet," continued he, "if it were not for his cruelty to the men, he is the most amusing liar I ever heard. I am often more inclined to laugh than to be angry with him; he has a vein of wit and rich humour that runs through his composition and never quits him. There is drollery even in his malice, and, if we cannot get clear of him, we must take the best of him." I went on shore, collected all my clothes and the other articles of which I stood in need, and was on board my ship again the next morning before eight o'clock. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. He will lie sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool: drunkenness is his best virtue, for he will be swine-drunk, and in his sleep he does little harm. SHAKESPEARE.