"It's just this," he said, bunging up the port-hole again. "We'd rather take a twelvemonth imprisonment ashore, in the worst jail in England, than work this wessel on the rotten food we're obliged to eat. What we want to know is, will you take charge o' the ship and carry her where we tells yer, if we give you command?" I was too much startled by this question to reply at once. Influenced by the long term of confinement before me, if Captain Coxon remained in control, by my bitter dislike of him and his bully factotum, by the longing to be free, and the hundred excuses I could frame for co-operating with the crew, my first impulse was to say yes. But there came quickly considerations of the danger of mutiny on board ship, of the sure excesses of men made reckless by liberty and freed from the discipline which, though their passions might protest against it, their still stronger instincts admitted and obeyed. "Give us your answer," said the man. "If the chief mate looks over, he'll see me." "I cannot consent," I replied. "I am as sorry for the crew as I am for myself. But things are better as they are." "By----!" exclaimed the man in a violent, hoarse whisper, "we don't mean to let 'em be as they are. We've put up with a bit too much as it is. We'll find a way of making you consent--see to that! And if you peach on us we're still too strong for you--so mind your life!" Saying which he withdrew his head; and after waiting a short time to see if he remained, I closed the port, and shuffled into my bunk again. I tried to think how I should act. If I acquainted the captain with the carpenter's disclosure the men would probably murder me. And though they withheld from bloodshed, my putting the captain on his guard would not save the ship if the men were determined to seize her, because he could not count on more than two men to side with him, and the crew would overpower them immediately. However, I will not seem more virtuous and upright than I was; and I may therefore say, that after giving this matter some half-hour's thinking, I found that it would suit my purpose better if the crew mutinied than if the captain continued in charge, because it might open large opportunities for my future, and relieve me from the disgraceful position in which I was placed by the malice and injustice of my two superiors. The one thing I heartily prayed for was that murder might not be done; but I did not anticipate great violence, as I imagined that the crew had no other object in rebelling than to compel the captain to put into the nearest port to exchange the stores.