The mutineers were then informed that if they poked their heads above the hatches he would blow them overboard.

Losing enthusiasm and weakened by hunger, they asked to be set ashore; so the skipper marooned the lot.

For two days the cutter lay offshore while a truce was argued, the upshot being that four of the rascals gave in and the others were left behind.
Fifty days more of it and, washed by icy seas, racked and storm-beaten, the vessel made Norfolk Sound.

So small was the crew, so imminent the danger that the Indians might take her by boarding, that screens of hides were rigged along the bulwarks to hide the deck from view.
Stranded and getting clear, warding off attacks, Captain Richard Cleveland stayed two months on the wilderness coast of Oregon, trading one musket for eight prime sea-otter skins until there was no more room below.

Sixty thousand dollars was the value of the venture when he sailed for China by way of the Sandwich Islands, forty thousand of profit, and he was twenty-five years old with the zest for roving undiminished.
He next appeared in Calcutta, buying a twenty-five-ton pilot boat under the Danish flag for a fling at Mauritius and a speculation in prizes brought in by French privateers.