to punish me he referred the judgment of my case to the French Government, knowing that I should necessarily be detained twelve months before an answer arrived." Or, as he stated the matter in his published book (II., 489): "My refusal of the intended honour until set at liberty so much exasperated the Captain-General that he determined to make me repent it."
It will be seen presently that the term of detention, originally intended to endure for about a year, was lengthened by circumstances that were beyond Decaen's control; that the punishment which sprang from the hasty ire of a peppery soldier increased, against his own will, into what appeared to all the world, and most of all to the victim, to be a piece of malevolent persecution. The ball kicked off in a fit of spleen rolled on and on beyond recovery.
There was, it must be admitted, quite enough in the facts brought under Decaen's notice to warrant a reference to Paris, if he chose to be awkward. In the first place, Flinders was carrying on board the Cumberland a box of despatches from Governor King for the Secretary of State. As pointed out in Chapter 12, the Admiralty instructions for the Investigator voyage cautioned him "not to take letters or packets other than those such as you may receive from this office or the office of His Majesty's Secretary of State." Governor King was well aware of this injunction. Yet he entrusted to Flinders this box of despatches, containing material relative to military affairs. It is true that a state of war was not known to exist at the time when the Cumberland sailed from Port Jackson in September, 1803, although as a matter of fact it had broken out in the previous May. But it was well known that war was anticipated. It is also true that Flinders knew nothing of the contents of the despatches. But neither, as
