By advice of the captain, the missionaries left the ship, and went on shore, while the pilot wrote a certificate that no such persons were on board.  The captain being angry at the detention of his vessel, ordered them to take their baggage from it immediately, but at length consented to let it remain on board until he should reach a tavern sixteen miles further down the river.  Mrs. Judson also remained in the ship until it came opposite the tavern, “where,” she says, “the pilot kindly lent me his boat and a servant to go on shore.  I immediately procured a large boat to send to the ship for our baggage.  I entered the tavern a stranger, a female and unprotected.  I called for a room and sat down to reflect on my disconsolate situation.  I had nothing with me but a few rupees.  I did not know that the boat which I had sent after the vessel would overtake it, and if it did, whether it would ever return with our baggage; neither did I know where Mr. Judson was, or when he would come, or with what treatment I should meet at the tavern.  I thought of home and said to myself, These are some of the trials attendant upon a missionary life, and which I have anticipated. In a few hours Mr. J. arrived, and toward night our baggage.”

After two or three days of great perplexity and distress, and when they had given up all hope of being able to proceed to the Isle of France, they unexpectedly received from an unknown friend a magistrate’s pass to go on board the Creole, the vessel they had left.  Their only difficulty now was that she had probably got out to sea, as it was three days since they had left her.  However they hastened down the river seventy miles, to Saugur, where, among many ships at anchor, they had the inexpressible happiness to find the Creole, on which they embarked for the Isle of France, their first destination.

Their dangers on the passage to the Isle of France were great, the vessel being old and leaky; and when they reached there, they found little encouragement to remain.  While on the island, Mrs. J. had a severe attack of illness, as well as much depression of spirits from the uncertainties of their situation.  After much deliberation they determined to establish themselves on an island near Malacca, to reach which they must first go to Madras, and they accordingly sailed for that place.  War having broken out between England and America, the hostility of the East India Directors to American missionaries was of course much increased, so that it would be impossible for them to make any stop at all in Madras, without incurring the danger of being sent back to America.  What, then, was their distress on their arrival there, to find no ship bound for the island they wished to visit!  Their way seemed entirely hedged up, for the only vessel in Madras harbor ready for sea, was destined to Burmah, a country pronounced by all their friends in India, utterly inaccessible.