But Official Society Regarded The Lady In
Trousers With A Frigid Stare, So That Henceforth She Deemed It Discreet
To Resume Feminine Garments.
It does not appear that she passed for a
boy when the expedition visited Sydney, and of course no hint of
Madame's presence is given in the official history of the voyage.
We now reach the stage when the veil was lifted and the mystery
explained. In 1813 the East India Company's ship HUNTER, voyaging from
Calcutta to Sydney, called at the Fiji Islands. They discovered that
several Europeans were living on one of the group. Some had been
shipwrecked; some had deserted from vessels; but they had become
accustomed to the life and preferred it. The HUNTER employed a party of
them to collect sandal wood and beche-de-mer, one of her junior
officers, Peter Dillon, being in charge. A quarrel with natives
occurred, and all the Europeans were murdered, except Dillon, a
Prussian named Martin Bushart, and a seaman, William Wilson. After the
affray Bushart would certainly have been slain had he remained, so he
induced the captain of the HUNTER to give him a passage to the first
land reached. Accordingly Bushart, a Fiji woman who was his wife, and a
Lascar companion, were landed on Barwell Island, or Tucopia.
Thirteen years later Peter Dillon was sailing in command of his own
ship, the ST. PATRICK, from Valparaiso to Pondicherry, when he sighted
Tucopia. Curiosity prompted him to stop to enquire whether his old
friend Martin Bushart was still alive.
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