I make no port till this ship is full to the combings of her hatchways.

However, you may leave her if you can." And so saying he entered his cabin, like Julius Caesar into his tent.
He may have meant little by it, but that last sentence rung in my ear like a bravado.

It savored of the turnkey's compliments to the prisoner in Newgate, when he shoots to the bolt on him.
"Leave the ship if I can!" Leave the ship when neither sail nor shore was in sight! Ay, my fine captain, stranger things have been done.
For on board that very craft, the old Arcturion, were four tall fellows, whom two years previous our skipper himself had picked up in an open boat, far from the farthest shoal.

To be sure, they spun a long yarn about being the only survivors of an Indiaman burnt down to the water's edge.

But who credited their tale?
Like many others, they were keepers of a secret: had doubtless contracted a disgust for some ugly craft still afloat and hearty, and stolen away from her, off soundings.