‘Here’s a big ship,’ said the man, in a very fair cultivated accent (he was about six-and-twenty years of age, had held a situation as a clerk and had been sentenced for forgery), ‘and we’re a numerous and powerful company of determined men, needing nothing but the organisation that Captain Butler’s capable of. I propose that we chase small vessels and capture them, send their crews adrift like those yonder, man each captured craft with a number of ourselves, every lot containing a proportion of those who are sailors or who have followed the sea. This would disperse us. Every crew would do as they thought proper with their own craft. I should be for wrecking mine on some safe coast near a town where we could represent ourselves as castaways.’ The convicts listened with close attention. Abram looked at Tom, who made no sign. ‘What d’ye say to it, Butler?’ shouted a fellow. ‘Do what you please,’ answered my sweetheart. ‘Advise us,’ said the hare-lipped man. ‘It’s a landlubber’s fancy,’ said Tom. A number of men talked at once. One of the original crew of the _Childe Harold_ roared out: ‘It’s smothering rot! The capt’n’s laughing at you! Chase! In a craft arter this pattern, with twelve or fourteen hands and a working crew, ne’er a great gun nor a soul saving the capt’n and the mate as ’ud be capable of navigating them small craft after they was boarded and taken!’ He spat hard and turned his back in contempt. ‘My notion’s been this all through the blushen piece,’ said a beetle-browed, flat-nosed, ruffianly looking convict. ‘Sail to an oninhabited hisland and settle him. A hisland where there’s grub agoing in fruit-trees and beastesses of fish what crawls upon the beach, all which there’ll be some here as has heard of. Where water trickles sweet an’ cold, and the weather it ain’t too hot. There, upon that hisland, we can concoct and consart, and them what pleases can be took off by passing vessels. The others will be a-doing as did them mutineers of the _Bounty_ whose capt’n he was named Bligh. We moors this ship and keeps her handy. Females ain’t ever fur to look for. In this ’ere ship wives can be brought from places which ain’t too fur off and where the colour won’t be wrong, the ’igh seas being vide of choice. That’s bin my notion all through the fired piece.’ ‘Who’s next?’ shouted Abram, impatiently. One of the remaining crew of the ship--a sailor with a cast eye and a head of hair so exactly resembling oakum that no convict could look at it without finding something personal and a sort of reflection in it--this man, who sat high-perched above the heads of the throng on the quarter-deck winch, snapped his fingers at the poop and asked leave to address the gents. ‘What d’ye want to say?’ shouted the hare-lipped man, who, I gathered, ranked next to Abram as the principal ringleader.