intellectual curiosity. He did not even write a book or an essay about
the work he had done. The whaleboat voyage was tersely recorded in a
diary for the information of the Governor; his other material was handed
over to Collins for the purposes of his History of New South Wales, and
Bass went about his business unrewarded, officially unhonoured.

It is curiously significant of the modesty of this really notable man
that when, in 1801, he again sailed to Australia, he mentioned quite
casually in a letter that he had passed through Bass Strait without any
reference to his own connection with the passage. It was not, to him,
"the strait which I discovered," or "my strait," or "the strait named
after me," but simply Bass Strait, giving it the proper geographical name
scored on the map, just as he might have mentioned the name of any other
part of the globe traversed during the voyage. The natural pride of the
discoverer assuredly would have been no evidence of egotism; but Bass was
singularly free from all semblance of human weakness of that kind. The
difficulties battled with, the effort joyfully made, the discovery
accomplished, he appears hardly to have thought any more about his own
part in it. Not only his essential modesty but his affectionate nature
and the frank charm of his manner are apparent in such of his letters as
have been preserved.

The association of Bass with Flinders was fruitful in achievement, and
their friendship was perfect in its manliness; it is pathetic to realise
that when they parted, within a few weeks after the return of the Norfolk
to Sydney, these two men, still young in years and rich in hope, ability
and enterprise, were never to meet again.

As from this time Bass disappears from the story of his friend's life,
what is known of his later years may be here related. His fate is a
mystery that has never been satisfactorily cleared up, and perhaps never
will be. He returned to England "shortly after" the voyage of the
Norfolk. So wrote Flinders; but "shortly after" means later than April,
1799, for in that month Bass sat on a board of inquiry into the Isaac
Nicholls case, to be mentioned again hereafter.

In England, Bass married Elizabeth Waterhouse, sister of his old shipmate
Henry Waterhouse, the captain of the Reliance. With a wife to maintain,
he was apparently dissatisfied with his pay and prospects as a naval
surgeon. Nor was he quite the kind of man who would, in the full flush of