Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/131

Rh the sailors. They were expected to pay for their keep by working as farm-hands. This rubbed the long-suffering tars the wrong way, and as the diary explains it:

Food was refused the striking seamen until they threatened to break into the potato sheds and then burn the settlement. The boatswain and his lash tamed the mutiny after Joseph Fowler had been tied up and his back cut to ribbons with nine dozen  blows of the rope's-end. After this the seamen marched off to another part of the island and fed themselves by fishing and hunting wild goats and pigs. To their simple minds there was no good reason why they should sweat at building stone walls and digging potatoes while Captain Miles and the six assistant surgeons of the Honorable