5i8 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



best he could say was that, if the weather was always 

 fine, and no accident happened, she might run six months 

 longer. To Flinders it was bitter disappointment. His 

 " leading object " had been to make so accurate an in- 

 vestigation of the shores of Terra Australis that no further 

 voyage to this country should be necessary. And now 

 already he had to plan a return. However, there was 

 a chance that the rotten ship might float six months, 

 if, in an almost unknown sea, the weather were always 

 fine, and accidents never happened. So Flinders .sailed, 

 with studious carefulness, all round the Gulf ; proved that 

 in the North of Terra Australis, as in the South, there was 

 no big channel, that Tasman's map of 1644 was no fairy 

 tale, but roughly the truth ; corrected important details, 

 discovered important islands, sailed to Timor, where 

 he once more met Baudin, and thence made for Port 

 Jackson, with ship so " decayed both in skin and bone," 

 that a severe gale would have crushed her like an egg. 

 Prisoner in At Sydney the Investigator was examined, and Flinders 

 Mauritius. no ti cec j thirteen timbers close together, " through any 

 one of which a cane might have been thrust." Even 

 he had to admit that the ship was " incapable of further 

 service," save as " a store-house hulk." No other ship 

 could be found that could even pretend ability to explore. 

 So he sailed for England, was wrecked a week later on 

 Wreck-Reef Bank, and, leaving eighty seamen on that 

 desolate sand-bank, he, with fourteen comrades, rowed 

 the seven hundred miles to Sydney in an open boat of 

 thirty-two feet. Then he sailed for England in the Cum- 

 berland, a schooner that was " something less than a 

 Gravesend passage boat, being only of twenty-nine tons 

 burden"; and her small size was not her worst defect. 

 But he wished to get home quickly " to commence the 

 outfit of another ship " ; and he also felt " some ambition 

 of being the first to undertake so long a journey in such 

 a small vessel." But the Cumberland could not run 

 the journey. He was forced to call at the Mauritius 

 for inevitable repairs for the ship grew so leaky that 

 the pump had to be worked almost continually, day and 



