While our people were in this doubtful situation, which lasted about a quarter of an hour, the ship, from which a much greater number of natives were seen than could be discovered on shore, brought her broad side to bear, and entirely dispersed them, by firing a few shot over their heads.

In this skirmish, only two of them were hurt with the small shot, and not a single life was lost; a case which would not have happened if Lieutenant Cook had not restrained his men, who either from fear or the love of mischief, shewed as much impatience to destroy the Indians, as a sportsman to kill his game.
Such was the difference between the disposition of the common seamen and marines, and that of their humane and judicious commander.
On the same day Mr.Cook displayed a very exemplary act of discipline.
Some of the ship's people, who when the natives were to be punished for a fraud, assumed the inexorable justice of a Lycurgus, thought fit to break into one of their plantations, and to dig up a quantity of potatoes.

For this the lieutenant ordered each of them to receive twelve lashes, after which two of them were discharged.

But the third, in a singular strain of morality, insisted upon it, that it was no crime in an Englishman to plunder an Indian plantation.

The method taken by our commander to refute his casuistry, was to send him back to his confinement, and not, permit him to be released, till he had been punished with six lashes more.
The Endeavour, on the 5th of December, was in the most imminent hazard of being wrecked.