The weather was intensely hot, and the mutineers manifested no inclination to exert themselves unduly.  It was consequently almost eleven o'clock in the forenoon ere the longboat was in the water alongside, and another quarter of an hour was spent over the making of the final preparations; but at length they tumbled down over the side, one after another, with a good deal of rough horseplay, and a considerable amount of wrangling, and pushed off.  The general and three or four of the other passengers were on the poop, smoking under the awning--which they had been obliged to spread for themselves,--and observing the movements of the men under the cover of a pretence of reading; and when the longboat had disappeared the general came down to apprise me of that fact, and also of another, namely, that the steerage passengers Hales and Cruickshank, and two seamen, armed to the teeth with pistols and cutlasses--the latter at least, in all probability, taken from my men--had been left behind for the obvious purpose of taking care of the ship and keeping us in order during the absence of the others.