midshipman whose name was Cozens, who had appeared the foremost in all
the refractory proceedings of the crew. He had involved himself in brawls
with most of the officers who had adhered to the captain's authority, and
had even treated the captain himself with great abuse and insolence. As
his turbulence and brutality grew every day more and more intolerable, it
was not in the least doubted but there were some violent measures in
agitation in which Cozens was engaged as the ringleader, for which reason
the captain and those about him constantly kept themselves on their
guard. But at last the purser having, by the captain's order, stopped the
allowance of a fellow who would not work, Cozens, though the man did not
complain to him, intermeddled in the affair with great eagerness, and
grossly insulting the purser, who was then delivering our provisions just
by the captain's tent, and was himself sufficiently violent, the purser,
enraged by his scurrility, and perhaps piqued by former quarrels, cried
out--"A mutiny!" adding "that the dog had pistols," and then himself
fired a shot at Cozens, which, however, missed him. But the captain, on
this outcry and the report of the pistol, rushed out of his tent, and,
not doubting but it had been fired by Cozens as the commencement of a
mutiny, he immediately shot him in the head without further deliberation,
and though he did not kill him on the spot, yet the wound proved mortal,
and he died about fourteen days after.

This incident, however displeasing to the people, did yet for a
considerable time awe them to their duty, and rendered them more
submissive to the captain's authority. But at last, when towards the
middle of October the long-boat was nearly completed and they were
preparing to put to sea, the additional provocation he gave them by
covertly traversing their project of proceeding through the Straits of
Magellan, and their fears that he might at length engage a party
sufficient to overturn this favourite measure, made them resolve to make