When at length they were taken ashore, Captain Cheap showed one of his fitful flashes of resolution by sallying from his tent and knocking the insolent boatswain down with a loaded cane and putting a cocked pistol to his ear. This took the wind out of the sails of the other mutineers, and they tamely submitted to being stripped of their arms, which made them harmless for the moment. So bleak was the coast that the only food obtainable was shell-fish, while from the wreck almost no stores were saved. The most urgent business was to knock huts together of the drift-wood and canvas, and effect some sort of organization. A fortnight passed before Captain Cheap had the provisions properly guarded and the rations dealt out in a systematic manner, while in the meantime the sailors were stealing the stuff right and left, and the battle was to the strongest. It was ascertained that they were marooned on what appeared to be an island near the coast and about three hundred miles to the northward of the Strait of Magellan. Three canoes of Patagonian Indians happened to discover the camp, and they were friendly enough to barter for two dogs and three sheep, which were no more than a meal for the hungry crew of the _Wager_. The Indians vanished, and the agony of famine took hold of these miserable people. Instead of pluckily working together to master the situation like true British seamen, they split into hostile factions, and insubordination was rampant. There were rough and desperate men among them, it is true, but a leader of courage and resource whom they respected would have stamped out much of this disorder. They wandered off in sullen groups, ten of them straying away into the woods until starvation drove them back, another party building a punt and sailing away in it, never to be heard of again. These latter fellows were not regretted, according to the narrative of one of the survivors, who declares that there was great reason to believe that James Mitchell, one of them, had perpetrated no less than two murders, the first on a sailor found strangled on board and the second on the body of a man who was discovered among some bushes, stabbed in a shocking manner. On the day of their desertion, they plotted blowing up the captain in his hut, along with the surgeon and Lieutenant Hamilton of the marines; they were with difficulty dissuaded from it by one less wicked than the rest; and half a barrel of powder, together with the train, were found actually laid.