Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2.djvu/479

1807.
October.

in which I have ever been kept has been one of the bitterest ingredients in the cup; I thought it exhausted when you favoured me with the copy of the letter from His Excellency the minister; but the dregs remained, and it seems as if I must swallow them to the last drop.

If the means of my return to England cause any part of the delay, I beg to inform you of my readiness to embrace any means, or any route,—in the Cumberland even, if it will save time, or in any other vessel of any nation. A passage on board the finest ship one month hence, would not indemnify me for one month longer of suffering, such as the last forty-six have been.

I am fully persuaded that no representation of mine can change the arrangements of the captain-general; if therefore the time and manner of my return be absolutely fixed, I have only to request that he will have so much charity as to impart them; or even the time only, when I may expect to see myself out of this fatal island; for the manner, when compared to the time, becomes almost indifferent. To know at what period this waste of the best years of my life was to end, would soften the anguish of my mind; and if you would favour me with the return of my log book, I should have an occupation which would still further tend to diminish it.

I request you to accept the assurances of consideration with which I have the honour to be, &c.

 

The answer received eight days afterward, said not a word of the log book; but simply that "so soon as a convenient opportunity for my departure presented itself, the captain-general would order it to be communicated;" which was evidently no more than an evasion, for vessels had gone to France, and others were at that very time sailing every week, either to India or America, in any one of which a passage might have been obtained. I was now induced to enter into the examination whether, in justice and honour, my parole ought to continue to be a restraint from quitting the island; it had been given to general De Caen as the representative of the French government,—that government had ordered me to be set at liberty,—and nothing was alleged for not putting the order into execution, other than the want of a convenient opportunity; had I