ly!

On the day following the examination and the refusal of the invitation,
Flinders was again conducted on board the Cumberland by Colonel Monistrol
and the official interpreter, who "acted throughout with much politeness,
apologising for what they were obliged by their orders to execute." On
this occasion all remaining books and papers, including personal letters,
were collected, locked up in a second trunk, and sealed. The document
noting their deposition and sealing was signed by Flinders,* who was
ordered to be detained in the inn under guard. (* Decaen Papers.) It was,
Decaen reported, the best inn in the island, and orders were given to
furnish the prisoner with all that he could want; but Flinders described
it as an exceedingly dirty place.

On his return to the inn from the ship Flinders wrote a letter to the
Governor, recounting the history of his explorations, and making two
requests: that he might have his printed books ashore, and that his
servant, John Elder, might be permitted to attend him. On the following
day Elder was sent to him. On the 22nd he wrote again, soliciting "that I
may be able to sail as soon as possible after you shall be pleased to
liberate me from my present state of purgatory."* (* Decaen Papers.) On
Christmas Day he sent a letter suffused with indignant remonstrance,
wherein he alleged that "it appears that your Excellency had formed a
determination to stop the Cumberland previously even to seeing me, if a
specious pretext were wanting for it," and reminded Decaen that "on the
first evening of my arrival...you told me impetuously that I was imposing
on you." He continued, in a strain that was bold and not conciliatory: "I
cannot think that an officer of your rank and judgment to act either so
ungentlemanlike or so unguardedly as to make such a declaration without
proof; unless his reason had been blinded by passion, or a previous
determination that it should be so, nolens volens. In your orders of the
21st last it is indeed said that the Captain-General has acquired the
conviction that I am the person I pretend to be, and the same for whom a
passport was obtained by the English Government from the First Consul. It
follows then, as I am willing to explain it, that I AM NOT and WAS NOT an
imposter. This plea was given up when a more plausible one was thought to
be found; but I cannot compliment your Excellency upon this alteration in
your position, for the first, although false, is the