After a month of weary, drenching hardship off the China coast,
this crew of cutthroats mutinied. With a loyal handful, including
the black cook, Cleveland locked up the provisions, mounted two
four-pounders on the quarterdeck, rammed them full of grape-shot,
and fetched up the flint-lock muskets and pistols from the cabin.
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. Finding none in port,
he loaded seven thousand bags of coffee in a ship for Copenhagen