nsland a little to the south of Albany Island, where the blacks
first helped him to fill his water breakers, and then attacked him. He
watered again at Horn Island, and then sailed through the passage which
bears Flinders' name owing to the fallacy that he discovered it. After
clearing the sound, he seems to have mistaken Prince of Wales' Island for
Cape York, which he had left many miles behind him.

Favoured by a fair wind and a calm sea, he made the run from Flinders
passage to Timor in eleven days. Like Bligh, he found that the young bore
their privations better than the old, and that the first effect of thirst
and famine is to make men excessively irritable. Hamilton records a
characteristic incident. Edwards had neglected to conduct prayers in his
boat until he was reminded of his duty by one of the mutineers, who was
leading the devotions of the seamen in the bows of the boat. Scandalized
at the impropriety of a "pirate" daring to appeal to the Highest Tribunal
for mercy, as it were, behind the back of the earthly court before which
he was shortly to be arraigned, the captain sternly reproved him, and
conducted prayers himself. A sense of humour was not numbered among
Edwards' endowments.

Timor was sighted on the 13th September, and on the 15th the party landed
at Coupang, where the Dutch authorities received them with every
hospitality. Here they met the survivors of a third boat voyage,
scarcely less adventurous than Bligh's and their own. A party of
convicts, including a woman and two small children, had contrived to
steal a ship's gig and to escape in her from Port Jackson. Sleeping on
shore at nights whenever possible, subsisting on shell-fish and
sea-birds, they ran the entire length of the Queensland coast, threaded
Endeavour Straits, and arrived at Coupang after an exposure lasting ten
weeks without the loss of a single life. Having given themselves out as
the survivors from the wreck of an English ship, they were entertained
with great hospitality until the arrival of Edwards two weeks later, when
they betrayed their story gratuitously. The captain of a Dutch vessel,
who spoke English, on first hearing the news of Edwards' landing, ran to
them with the glad tidings of their captain's arrival, on which one of
them started up in surprise and exclaimed, "What captain? Dam'me! we have
no captain." On hearing this the governor had them arrested, and sent to
the castle, one man and the woman having to be purs