The letter acquainted me, that a design had been formed by the Dutch, in conjunction with the king of Bony, to cut us off:  That the Dutch, however, were not to appear in it:  That the business was to be done by a son of the king of Bony, who was, besides a gratuity from the Dutch, to receive the plunder of the vessel for his reward, and who, with eight hundred men, was then at Bonthain for that purpose:  That the motive was jealousy of our forming a connection with the Buggueses, and other people of the country, who were at enmity with the Dutch and their allies, and driving them out of the island; or at least a suspicion that, if we got back to England, some project of that kind might be founded upon the intelligence we should give, no English man-of-war, as I have already observed, having ever been known to have visited the island before.

This letter was a new subject of surprise and speculation.  It was extremely ill written with respect to the style and manner, yet it did not therefore the less deserve notice.  How far the intelligence which it contained was true or false, I was utterly unable to determine:  It was possible that the writer might be deceived himself; it was also possible that he might have some view in wilfully deceiving me:  The falsehood might procure some little reward for the kindness and zeal which it placed to his account, or it might give him an importance which would at least be a gratification to his vanity.  It behoved me, however, to take the same measures as if I had known it to be true; and I must confess, that I was not perfectly at ease when I recollected the recal of the Secretary and Le Cerf, with the large sloop, and part of the soldiers, who were said to have been sent hither for no other reason than to guard us against the insults of the country people; the assembling an armed force at Macassar, as it was said, for an expedition to Bally; and the little canoe that we had seen rowing round us in the night, not to mention the governor’s enquiry by letter, when we intended to leave the island.  However, whether either our intelligence or conjectures were true or false, we immediately went to work:  We rigged the ship, bent the sails, unmoored, got springs upon our cables, loaded all our guns, and barricadoed the deck.  At night every body slept under arms, and the next day we warped the vessel farther off from the bottom of the bay, towards the eastern shore, that we might have more room, fixed four swivel guns on the forepart of the quarter-deck, and took every other measure that appeared to be necessary for our defence.