“No, no,” answered Foster, “I am not so bad as all that Come below and have a glass of grog.”
At daylight one morning some weeks later two ships appeared in sight off Sydney Heads. Those who were on the look-out were alarmed, for it was seen that both vessels were armed, and it was conjectured that the ships must be part of an enemy's squadron which had determined to make an attack upon the settlement of Port Jackson.
In a very short time an excited crowd gathered together along the line of cliffs of the outer South Head, each one asking his fellow what was to be done. Horsemen carried the news into Sydney, and every moment fresh numbers arrived to swell the crowd of spectators on the cliffs. A strange sight they must have presented, comprising, as they did, all sorts and conditions of men--settlers, naval and military officers, soldiers of the New South Wales Regiment, and a number of the better class of convicts.
Of course the Deputy Acting Assistant Commissary-General was among the officers anxiously watching the ships from the heights that overlooked the harbour, and with him were Dolly and her mother.
Presently Dolly, catching sight of her father's anxious face, began to cry, and turned to her mother. “Ah!” she said “it has all come true, and he has come to destroy the settlement!”
“What has come true, and who is going to destroy the settlement?” said her father sharply. And then Dolly, feeling very frightened and miserable, told him of Portveldt's letter, the receipt of which she had concealed from every one but Foster. The D.A.A.C.G. laughed at first, but then added, “but all the same, though 'twas but empty bluster, I had better tell his Excellency about it; it is just possible that the Dutch have planned an expedition against us.”
At half-past ten, in response to a signal made from the look-out at South Head by the officer in charge there, his Excellency Governor King sent Lieutenant Houston, of his Majesty's ship _Investigator,_ then anchored in Sydney Cove, to the naval officer in command at South Head.
The _Investigator_ was Flinders' ship, the gallant old tub of 334 tons which surveyed a great part of the northern coast, and was at the time of which we write lying rotting in Sydney, condemned after completing her second voyage of discovery in June, 1803.