Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2.djvu/505

Off Mauritius.]

not, the general's pleasure arose from more extended views and a more permanent source. If the island were attacked and he could repulse the English forces, distinction would follow; if unsuccessful, a capitulation would restore him to France and the career of advancement. An attack was therefore desirable; and as the captain-general probably imagined that an officer who had been six years a prisoner, and whose liberty had been so often requested by the different authorities in India, would not only be anxious to forward it with all his might, but that his representations would be attended to, the pretexts before alleged for my imprisonment and the answer from France were waved; and after passing six weeks in the town of Port Louis and five on board a ship in the harbour, from which I had before been debarred, he suffered me to depart in a cartel bound to the place where the attack was publickly said to be in meditation. This is the sole motive which, upon a review of the general's conduct, I can assign for being set at liberty so unexpectedly, and without any restriction upon my communications; and if such a result to an attack upon Mauritius were foreseen by the present count De Caen, captain-general of Catalonia, events have proved that he was no mean calculator. But perhaps this, as well as the preceding conjectures on his motives may be erroneous; if so, possibly the count himself, or some one on the part of the French government may give a more correct statement,—one which may not only reconcile the facts here brought together, but explain many lesser incidents which have been omitted from fear of tiring the patience of the reader.

I thought it a happy concurrence of circumstances, that on the same day we quitted Port Louis in the cartel, the arrival of a frigate from India should require commodore Rowley to despatch the Otter to the Cape of Good Hope. Captain Tomkinson took his departure on the 14th at nine in the evening, from Cape Brabant, with a fresh trade wind and squally weather; at noon next day the island Bourbon was in sight, and the breakers on the south-east end distinguishable from the deck; but thick clouds obscured all the hills. The winds from south-east and north-east carried us to the latitude