Page:Admiral Phillip.djvu/180

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154
BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN

to the boat's crew. A few minutes completed our wishes, and we found ourselves on board the Lady Juliana transport, with two hundred and twenty-five of our countrywomen, whom crime or misfortune had condemned to exile. We learned that they had been almost eleven months on their passage, having left Plymouth, into which port they had put, in July 1789. We continued to ask a thousand questions in a breath. Stimulated by curiosity, they inquired in turn; but the right of being first answered, we thought, lay on our side. "Letters! letters!" was the cry. They were produced, and torn open in trembling agitation. News burst upon us like meridian splendor on a blind man. We were overwhelmed with it; public, private, general and particular. Nor was it until some days had elapsed that we were able to methodize it, or reduce it into form. We now heard for the first time of our Sovereign's illness, and his happy restoration to health. The French Revolution of 1789, with all the attendant circumstances of that wonderful and unexpected event, succeeded to amaze us. Now, too, the disaster which had befallen the Guardian' (wrecked on her way out), *and the liberal and enlarged plan on which she had been stored and fitted out by Government for our use, was promulged. It served also in some measure to account why we had not sooner heard from England.

'For had not the Guardian struck on an island of ice, she would probably have reached us three months