1803.
December.
Saturday 17.
captain-general was at dinner, and we must return in an hour or two; and they took me to a shady place which seemed to be the common lounge for the officers connected with the port. There were some who spoke English, and by way of passing the time, they asked if I had really come from Botany Bay in that little vessel; whether a corvette, sent out the night before to observe my motions, had been seen; and if I had not sent a boat on shore in the night? Others asked questions of monsieur Baudin's conduct at Port Jackson, and of the English colony there; and also concerning the voyage of monsieur Flinedare, of which, to their surprise, I knew nothing, but afterwards found it to be my own name which they so pronounced.
In two hours we again went to the government house, and the officers entered to render their account, leaving me at the door for half an hour longer. At length the interpreter desired me to follow him, and I was shown into a room where two officers were standing at a table; the one a shortish thick man in a laced round jacket, the other a genteel-looking man whose blood seemed to circulate more tranquilly. The first, which was the captain-general De Caen, fixed his eyes sternly upon me, and without salutation or preface demanded my passport, my commission! Having glanced over them, he asked in an impetuous manner, the reason for coming to the Isle of France in a small schooner with a passport for the Investigator? I answered in a few words, that the Investigator having become rotten, the governor of New South Wales had given me the schooner to return to England; and that I had stopped at the island to repair my vessel and procure water and refreshments. He then demanded the order for embarking in the schooner and coming to the Isle of France; to which my answer was, that for coming to the island I had no order, necessity had obliged me to stop in passing;—my order for embarking in the Cumberland was on board. At this answer, the general lost the small share of patience of which he seemed to be possessed, and said with much gesture and an elevated voice—"You are imposing on me, sir! (Vous m'en imposez, monsieur!)