490 
A VOYAGE TO 
[Off Mauritius. 
1810 , 
June, 
proposed granting my liberty and the restitution of the Cumber- 
land ; and he must have expected by every vessel to receive orders 
to that effect ; but punishment had not yet produced a sufficient de- 
gree of humiliation to make him execute such an order willingly. 
When the exchange was made with commodore Osborn in the fol- 
lowing August, it became convenient to let me quit the Garden Pri- 
son, in order to take away the sentinels ; captain Bergeret also, who 
as a prisoner in India had been treated with distinction, strongly 
pressed my going into the country ; these circumstances alone might 
possibly have induced the captain-general to take the parole of one 
who had been detained as a spy ; but his subsequent conduct leaves 
a strong suspicion that he proposed to make the portion of liberty, 
thus granted as a favour, subservient to evading the expected order 
from France, should such a measure be then desirable. At length 
the order arrived, and three years and a half of detehtion had not 
produced any very sensible effect on his prisoner ; the execution of 
it was therefore suspended, until another reference should be made 
to the government and an answer returned. What was the subject 
of this reference could not be known, but there existed in the island 
only one conjecture ; that from having had such a degree of liberty 
during near two years, I had acquired a knowledge of the colony 
which made it unsafe to permit my departure. 
Extensive wars were at this time carrying on in Europe, the 
French arms were victorious, and general De Caen saw his former 
companions becoming counts, dukes, and marshals of the empire, 
whilst he remained an untitled general of division ; he and his 
officers, as one of them told me, then felt themselves little better 
circumstanced than myself, — than prisoners in an almost forgotten 
speck of the globe, with their promotion suspended. Rumours of a 
premeditated attack at length reached the island, which it was said 
the captain-general heard with pleasure ; and it was attributed to the 
prospect of making military levies on the inhabitants, and increasing 
his authority by the proclamation of martial law ; but if I mistake 
