A
Sea Fog Now Prevented The Boat From Returning Forthwith; But The Sailors
Had Neither Food Nor Water To Give To The Parched And Famished
Unfortunates.
When at last they did reach the ship, they had been for
forty hours without sup or sip; they were prostrate from sheer weakness;
and Peron himself was reduced to the extremity that his leathern tongue
refused to articulate.
The commandant was the only man aboard who had no
pity to spare for their misery. Baudin actually fined the officer in
charge of the boat ten francs for every gun fired, because he had not
obeyed the return signal, and for not "abandoning all three." "Those were
the very words of our chief," wrote Peron; "and yet I had, to save his
life at Timor, given to his physician part of the small stock of
excellent quinine that I had brought for my own use."
This heartless conduct, taken in conjunction with Baudin's abandonment of
Boullanger on the Tasmanian coast, and his strange behaviour to the
Casuarina after the exploration of the gulfs, leaves one in no doubt as
to his singular deficiency in the qualities essential to the commander of
an expedition of discovery. It was his invariable practice, we also read,
to provision boats engaged on any special service for the bare time that
he meant them to be absent; so many ounces of food and so many pints of
water per man per day, and no more, leaving no margin for accidents,
allowing of no excuse for unavoidable delay. A sensible person would not
provide for a picnic on such principles.
The exploration of the west and north-west coasts was continued till the
end of April, when Baudin decided to go once more to Timor. His intention
was, after refreshing his men and taking in supplies at the Dutch
settlement, to spend some time in the Gulf of Carpentaria and along the
southern shores of New Guinea. On May 6, Kupang harbour was entered for
the second time. There it was learnt that Flinders had called at the port
in the Investigator in April, after having concluded his exploration of
the northern gulf. He had been compelled to relinquish his work owing to
the rotten condition of his ship's timbers, and had sailed back to Port
Jackson. As he had reached the Gulf of Carpentaria by sailing up the
eastern side of the continent, and returned through Torres Strait down
the western coast, and through Bass Strait on the south, Flinders was the
first sailor to accomplish the circumnavigation of Australia, as he had
also been the first to circumnavigate Tasmania.* (* Tasman, in 1642,
sailed from Batavia, in Java, thence to Mauritius, Tasmania, New Zealand,
the Friendly Islands, northern New Guinea, and back to Batavia. This was
a wide circumnavigation of the whole of New Holland; but he did not sight
Australia, and as, of course, he did not go near Bass Strait, he did not
circumnavigate the continent proper.)
Le Geographe and the Casuarina remained at Kupang till June
3 - twenty-eight days - enjoying the hospitality of the Dutch.
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