P. S. The cartel is to sail on Saturday next (31st.)

Being then satisfied of the intention to permit my return to England, though the cause of it was involved in mystery, I visited our immediate, and still almost incredulous neighbours, to take leave of them; and wrote letters to the principal of those more distant inhabitants, whose kindness demanded my gratitude.  Early next morning a red flag with a pendant under it, showing one or more of our ships to be cruising before the port, was hoisted upon the signal hills; this was an unwelcome sight, for it had been an invariable rule to let no cartel or neutral vessel go out, so long as English ships were before the island.  I however took leave of the benevolent and respectable family which had afforded me an asylum during four years and a half; and on arriving at my friend Pitot’s in the town, was met by Messrs. Hope and Ramsden, neither of whom knew any other reason for setting me at liberty than that the captain-general had granted it to Mr. Hope’s solicitations.

[AT MAURITIUS.  PORT LOUIS.]

On waiting upon colonel Monistrol on the 30th, it appeared that nothing had been done relative to the Cumberland, or to returning what had been taken away, particularly the third volume of my log book so often before mentioned; he promised however to take the captain-general’s pleasure upon these subjects, and to repeat my offer of making and signing any extracts from the book which His Excellency might desire to preserve.  In the evening I had the pleasure to meet a large party of my countrymen and women, at a dinner given by M. Foisy, president of the Society of Emulation; and from the difficulty of speaking English after a cessation of four years, I then became convinced of the possibility of a man’s forgetting his own language.

APRIL 1810

There were lying in port two Dutch and one American vessel, with a number of Frenchmen on board, whom marshal Daendels, governor of the remaining Dutch possessions in the East, had engaged to officer some new regiments of Malays; these vessels waited only for the absence of our cruisers to go to Batavia; and that we might not give information of them was the alleged cause for detaining the cartel all the month of April, our squadron keeping so close off the port that they dared not venture out.

MAY 1810

On May 2, captain Willoughby of the Nereide made a descent upon the south side of the island, at Port Jacotet; where he cut out L’Estafette packet boat, spiked the guns of the fort, carried off the officer with two field pieces, and M. Etienne Bolger, commandant of the quarter of La Savanne, the same who had acted so ungraciously on my arrival at the Baye du Cap.  This sullying of the French territory produced a fulminating proclamation from general De Caen, nearly similar in terms to that of the emperor