The plan of action was to seize the arm-chest while the officers were at dinner. This was kept upon the quarter-deck, under the charge of sentries. The latter were to be engaged in conversation till the supreme moment arrived, and then, at a signal given, seized. This was to be followed by a general rush on deck of all the convicts from below. Barrington relates that he was standing with the man at the wheel when the mutiny actually broke out. Hearing a scuffle upon the main deck, he was on the point of going forward, when he was stopped by one of the Americans, who made a stroke at his head with a sword taken from a sentry. "Another snapped at me a pistol. I had a handspike, and felled the first to the ground." Meanwhile the man at the wheel ran down and gave the alarm. The captain was below, seeing to the stowage of some wine; but Barrington held the mutineers at bay, at the head of the companion ladder, till the captain came up with a blunderbuss in his hand and fired. This dispersed the enemy, and they thereupon retired. An immediate example was made of the ringleaders in this affair. Two were forthwith hanged at the yard-arm, and a number flogged. To Barrington, the captain and his officers were profuse in thanks, and at the end of the voyage they made him a substantial present. Told in Mr. Barrington's own words, the story of this mutiny tends rather to his own glorification. It is just possible that he may have exaggerated some of the details--his own valiant deeds with the rest. This trusty convict was received into high favour on landing in New South Wales and after holding several subordinate appointments became at length a police officer and gained high rank. But as a rule the efforts made by the convicts to rise against their rulers on shipboard were futile in the extreme. Even Mr. Commissioner Bigge, in 1822, laughs at all notion of the convicts combining to capture the ships. He is commenting on the different practice of different doctors and captains, as to allowing the people upon deck and removing their irons. Some, he says, who are inexperienced and timid, dread the assemblage of even half on the upper deck, and they would not for worlds remove the irons till the voyage is half over. Others do not care if all the people come up together, and they take off all irons before the ship is out of the Channel. But he considers free access to the deck so important in preserving discipline, as well as health, during the voyage, that "no unwarrantable distrust of the convicts" ought to interfere with it, and "no apprehension of any combined attempt to obtain possession of the ship." He thus continues:--