for they commenced breaking in the casks of brandy or wine as they came up the hatchway, and several got so intoxicated that they were drowned on board, and lay floating about the decks for several days. The boatswain and some of the men would not leave the ship so long as there was any liquor to be found on her; and Captain Cheap, having got off as many of the crew as would come, about a hundred and forty in number, suffered himself to be helped out of his bed, put into the boat, and carried ashore. After passing a miserable night, almost without shelter, the calls of hunger—most of them having fasted forty-eight hours—obliged them to seek for sustenance. Two or three pounds of biscuit dust, one sea-gull, and some wild celery, were boiled up into a kind of soup, which made all very ill who partook of it. It was at first supposed that the wild herb was the cause, but it was soon discovered that the biscuit dust, the sweepings of the bread-room, had been gathered in a tobacco bag, and that the tobacco dust mingled with it had acted as an emetic. Still a number of the wretched crew remained on board, pilfering all they could find, often whether it could be of use to them or not, and showing a particular desire to provide themselves with arms and ammunition. They averred that the authority of the officers must cease with the loss of the ship; but as they came ashore, the arms were taken from them. When the boatswain came ashore in laced clothes, Captain Cheap knocked him down. “It was scarce possible to refrain from laughter at the whimsical appearance these fellows made, who, having rifled the chests of the officers’ best suits, had put them on over their greasy trousers and dirty checked shirts. They were soon stripped of their finery, as they had before been obliged to resign their arms.” The cutter, turned keel upwards, was now placed on props and covered, so that it made a reasonably comfortable habitation. Shell-fish were found in tolerable abundance, “but this rummaging of the shore,” says Byron, “was now become extremely irksome to those who had any feeling, by the bodies of our drowned people thrown among the rocks, some of which were hideous spectacles, from the mangled condition they were in by the violent surf that drove in upon the coast. These horrors were overcome by the distresses of our people, who were even glad of the occasion of killing the gallinazo (the carrion crow of that country) while preying on these carcases, in order to make a meal of them.”