Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/166

thought appears, in the account (of Collins) that it was "a melancholy although natural reflection that, had not such numbers died both in the passage and since the landing of those who survived the voyage, we should not at this moment have had anything to receive from the public stores; thus strangely did we derive a benefit from the miseries of our fellow-creatures!" The arrival of the Atlantic, however, on the 20th May, with rice and inferior flour, raised the drooping spirits of the colonists; and on the 26th July, the Britannia, with a large supply of beef and pork, flour, and clothing, enabled Phillip to raise the ration until further orders, and to relieve the sufferers at Norfolk Island. Phillip wrote to King (Aug. 1791):^[1] "When the Atlantic arrived we had only thirteen days' flour and forty-five days' of maize in store, at one and a-half pounds flour, and four and a-half pounds maize per man for seven days." A scale of increased ration spread general joy throughout the colony.

In Sept. 1791, Phillip was comforted by the return of his confidential envoy, King, who had conferred with, and brought despatches from, the Secretary of State. Having left Sydney in April 1790, in the Supply, he sailed in a Dutch packet from Batavia in August. The master and all but four of the crew were struck down by fever, and King, compelling the convalescent to sleep on deck, navigated the vessel to the Mauritius.

Only four of the twenty-six who left Batavia were able to leave the Mauritius. Touching at the Cape of Good Hope, King was able in December, off Beachy Head, to make signals for "a boat, which came off, and demanded forty guineas for setting me on shore, which was reduced to seventeen, for which I was put on shore with great difficulty at Dungeness lighthouse 19th December, and on the 21st I arrived in London and delivered the despatches" (King to Nepean). Phillip's conduct was highly commended. King was specially appointed Lt.-Governor of Norfolk Island,^[2]