nt the true state of affairs. He chose King for the service.
Every other officer--both naval and military--was ready to go, and would
have eloquently described the miseries of the colonists, and harped on
the necessity for an instant abandonment of the settlement--they were
writing letters to this effect by every chance they could get to forward
them--but this was not what Phillip wanted. He, and he alone, recognised
the future possibilities of New South Wales, writing even at the time
of his deepest distress: "This will be the greatest acquisition Great
Britain has ever made." All he asked was for reasonable help in the way
of food and decent settlers who could work. All he got in answer to
his requests was the further shipment of the scum of the gaols and the
hulks--and some more spades and seeds. King believed in his chief and
cordially worked with him--and King was the silent Phillip's one friend.

So King went home, his voyage thither being one of the most singular
ever made by naval officer. He left Sydney Cove in April, 1790, and
after a tedious passage reached Batavia. Here he engaged a small Dutch
vessel to take him to the Cape of Good Hope, sailing for that port in
August Before the ship had been a week at sea, save four men, the whole
crew, including the master, were stricken with the hideous "putrid
fever"--a common disease in "country" ships at that time. King, a quick
and masterful man, took command, and with his four well men lived on
deck in a tent to escape contagion. The rest of the ship's company,
which included a surgeon, lay below delirious, and one after another of
them dying--seventeen of them died in a fortnight.

King tells how, when handling the bodies to throw them overboard, he and
his men covered their mouths with sponges soaked in vinegar to prevent
contagion. In this short-handed condition he navigated the vessel to the
Mauritius, where, "having heard of the misunderstanding with the French"
the gallant officer refused to take passage in a French frigate; but
procuring a new crew worked his way to the Cape, where he arrived
in September, reaching England in December, after a passage which
altogether occupied eight months--a letter from England to Australia and
a reply to it now occupies about ten weeks.

In England King was well received, being confirmed in his appointment as
Commandant of Norfolk Island, and he succeeded in getting some help for
his fellow-colonists. Upon his return to h