once he visited his French friends in the neighbourhood to
give them the news and bid them farewell; next day he took an
affectionate leave of the kind family who had been his hosts for four
years and a half; and as soon as possible he departed for Port Louis,
where he stayed with his friend Pitot until he went aboard the cartel. At
the end of the month a dinner was given in his honour by the president of
the Societe D'Emulation, to which a large number of English men and women
were invited. When Flinders arrived in Ile-de-France, more than six years
before, he could speak no French and could only decipher a letter in that
language with the aid of a dictionary; but now, when he found himself
again in the company of his own countrymen, he experienced a difficulty
in speaking English!

On June 13th, Flinders' sword was restored to him. He was required to
sign a parole, wherein he pledged himself not to act in any service which
might be considered as directly or indirectly hostile to France or her
allies during the present war. On the same day the cartel Harriet sailed
for Bengal. Flinders was free: "after a captivity of six years five
months and twenty-seven days I at length had the inexpressible pleasure
of being out of the reach of General Decaen."

Rowley's blockading squadron was cruising outside the port, and the
Harriet communicated with the commodore. It was ascertained that the
sloop Otter was running down to the Cape with despatches on the following
day, and Flinders had no difficulty in securing a passage in her. After
dining with Rowley he was transferred to the Otter. He was delayed for
six weeks at the Cape, but in August embarked in the Olympia, and arrived
in England on the 23rd of October, after an absence of nine years and
three months.

News of his release had preceded him, and his wife had come up from
Lincolnshire to meet him. He speaks in a letter to a friend of the
meeting with the woman whom he had left a bride so many years before:* (*
Flinders' Papers.) "I had the extreme good fortune to find Mrs. Flinders
in London, which I owe to the intelligence of my liberty having preceded
my arrival. I need not describe to you our meeting after an absence of
nearly ten years. Suffice it to say I have been gaining flesh ever
since." John Franklin, then a midshipman on the Bedford, had come up to
London to welcome his old commander, and, much to his disturbance,
witnessed the meeting of Flinders and his wif