intended, however, to leave some provisions for Mr King and his command. Fortunately for the commandant, the plot was revealed to his gardener—a seaman belonging to the Sirius—by a female convict who was living with him.
'Mr King had hitherto, from the peculiarity of his situation—secluded from society, and confined to a small speck in the vast ocean, with but a handful of people—drawn them round him, and treated them with the kind attentions which a good family meets with at the hands of a humane master; but he now saw them in their true colours, and one of his first steps when peace was restored was to clear the ground as far as possible round the settlement, that future villainy might not find a shelter in the woods for its transactions. To this truly providential circumstance, perhaps, many of the colonists afterwards were indebted for their lives.'
In the last days of February, King, whose heart was set on his being able to send Phillip a good report of the place and some supplies as well, had a bitter disappointment. It began to blow early on the morning of the 26th, and by noon 'the gale increased to a hurricane, with torrents of heavy rain. Every instant pines and live oaks of the largest dimensions were borne down by the fury of the blast, which, tearing up roots and rocks with them, left chasms of eight or ten feet depth in the earth. Those pines that were able to resist the wind bent their tops nearly
