John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish

"Am I to have no privacy at all?" demanded the Governor irritably as
the orderly again tapped at the open door and announced another visitor.
"Who is he and what does he want?"

"Mr. John Corwell, your Excellency, master of the cutter _Ceres_, from
the South Seas."

The Governor's brows relaxed somewhat. "Let him come in in ten minutes,
Cleary, but tell him at the same time that I am very tired--too tired to
listen unless he has something of importance to say."

The day had indeed been a most tiring one to the worthy Governor of the
colony of New South Wales, just then struggling weakly in its infancy,
and only emerging from the horrors of actual starvation, caused by the
utter neglect of the Home authorities to send out further supplies of
provisions. Prisoners of both sexes came in plenty, but brought nothing
to eat with them; the military officers who should have helped him in
his arduous labours were secretly plotting against him, and their
spare time--and they had plenty--was devoted to writing letters home
to highly-placed personages imploring them to induce the Government
to break up the settlement and not "waste the health and lives of even
these abandoned convicts in trying to found a colony in the most awful
and hideous desert the eye of man had ever seen, a place which can never
be useful to man and is accursed by God." But the Governor took no heed.
Mutiny and discontent he had fought in his silent, determined way as
he fought grim famine, sparing himself nothing, toiling from dawn till
dark, listening to complaints, remedying abuses, punishing with swift
severity those who deserved it, and yet always preserving the same cold,
unbending dignity of manner which covered a highly-sensitive and deeply
sympathetic nature.