So far the voyage had been without other disaster than this, but on the way back the Endeavour put into Batavia to refresh, and in a letter to the Secretary of the Admiralty, dated the 9th of May, 1771, Cook wrote:—­

“That uninterrupted state of health we have all along enjoyed was, soon after our arrival at Batavia, succeeded by a general sickness, which delayed us there so much that it was the 20th of December before we were able to leave that place.  We were fortunate enough to loose but few men at Batavia, but on our passage from thence to the Cape of Good Hope we had twenty-four men died, all, or most of them, of the bloody flux.  This fatal disorder reign’d in the ship with such obstinacy that medicines, however skilfully administered, had not the least effect.  I arrived at the Cape on the 14th of March, and quitted it again on the 14th of April, and on the 1st of May arrived at St. Helena, where I joined His Maj.’s ship Portland, which I found ready to sail with the convoy”;

and on the 12th of July he brought up in the Downs, reporting one more death—­that of Lieutenant Hicks.

For his services Cook was promoted a step.  His after-life and death need no mention here, and although in both his second and third voyages he touched at New Zealand and Tasmania, his connection with Australia practically ends with the Endeavour voyage.  But a word or two about the Endeavour’s officers, taken from documents recently obtained by the New South Wales Government, which perhaps contain some things new to many readers.

In the Record Office, London, there are no fewer than ten logs of Cook’s voyage; three of these are anonymous, but six of them are signed by the ship’s officers, and one, from circumstantial evidence, is no doubt by Green, the astronomer.  The signed logs are by Hicks, Cook’s first lieutenant; Forwood, the gunner; and Pickersgill, Clerke, Wilkinson, and Bootie, mates.  Hicks, as we have seen, died on the passage home; Forwood, after the Endeavour’s return, is not heard of again.  Pickersgill was promoted to be master on the death of that officer (Robert Molineux) in April, 1771.  He had previously served as a midshipman under Wallis in 1766-1788, and he served again under Cook in the Resolution as third lieutenant.  On the return of Cook from his second voyage, Pickersgill was appointed commander of the Lion, and sent to survey Baffin’s Bay, but he was relieved of the command early in 1777, and then we lose sight of him.  Wilkinson also had served under Wallis, but he died soon after the return of the Endeavour, and Bootie died on the way home.