We raised the ensigns and pendant on each prison; presented to Capt. Shortland, and gentlemen under his command, an address in poetry.
On the seventeenth, we were informed by Capt. Shortland, that he had received orders from the Board of Transport to discharge the prisoners whenever Mr. Beasley was ready to receive them. To the great disappointment of all the prisoners we had received no information from Mr. Beasley for six weeks, and the prisoners now were in the greatest anxiety. They reasonably expected that on the arrival of this ratified treaty, Mr. Beasley would have everything in a state of readiness for their immediate conveyance to the United States, and that he would inform them in what manner they were to proceed there; but not a syllable was received from the agent of our country till the eighteenth, when a very cold and unpleasant letter was received from him, which read as follows:
Fellow-citizens,—
I am informed that great numbers of the prisoners refuse being inoculated with the small-pox, which I hear has been very mortal among you, I therefore acquaint you that it will be impossible for me to send home any prisoners unless they have gone through the same. Yours, &c.,
R. G. BEASLEY.
This strange letter rather increased the great anxiety every man was in, for we expected to have been informed something relative to our speedy departure, and that he had made arrangements to clothe the oldest prisoners, who were so naked that they were unfit to be discharged.
On the nineteenth, an order arrived, informing Capt. Shortland to discharge thirty men, as they had been applied for by American captains, to man ships in France and up the east country; the Transport Board had ordered them to be discharged.
On the twentieth, Capt. Shortland released those three men whom we have mentioned were committed to close confinement in the cachot last August, on suspicion of blowing up the vessel; the other, we have mentioned, made his escape.
These men made as ghastly an appearance as it is possible for human beings to make; they had been eight months confined within a damp stone room, twenty feet square, floored with stone, and no light except a dim ray that gleamed through the top of the gable end. They had lived on two-thirds of a scant allowance till their trembling limbs could scarce support their body.
On the same day, a writ came to remove the insane man who had occasioned the death of Jonathan Paul to Exeter, to have his trial; also one to bring forward about twenty persons as witnesses, in this and the trial of the three men whom we mentioned had been taken there for trial for marking the traitors.