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“I can well understand your impatience, Mr. Fryer,” said Bligh; “but we shall take no unnecessary risks. If my recollection serves me, Timor is all of one hundred leagues in extent. I have told you that I am by no means certain that the Dutch have a permanent outpost here. If they have, they may have subjected only a small part of the island to their rule. The inhabitants are, I believe, Malays, well known to be a cruel and treacherous race. We shall place ourselves in their power only as a last resort.”

There was no disputing the wisdom of this decision. What we feared, of course, was that no European settlement existed on the island; but we did not permit ourselves to consider this melancholy possibility, and both Bligh and Nelson recollected that Captain Cook had been informed that the most easterly station of the Dutch was upon Timor.

We bore away again to the W.S.W., keeping close enough to the coast to avoid missing any opening that might exist; but throughout the morning neither cove nor bay did we see, nor any place where a landing might have been effected, because of the great surf breaking all along this windward shore.