He would find there, he was told, certain shelter from the monsoon, and might set up a hospital for his sick, that indeed he could procure more plentiful provisions there than in Macassar, from whence they would send him all that he could need. Fearing death by starvation and foundering, it was necessary to overlook these exactions, and Carteret proceeded to the roadstead of Bonthain.
There the sick, installed in a house, found themselves prohibited from going more than thirty roods from their hospital.
They were kept under guard, and could not communicate with the natives. Lastly they were forbidden to buy anything excepting through the agency of the Dutch soldiers, who strangely abused their power, often making more than a thousand per cent. profit. All the complaints of the English were useless. They were forced to submit during their stay, to a surveillance to the last degree humiliating. It was only on the 22nd of May, 1768, on the return of the monsoon, that Captain Carteret was able to leave Bonthain, after a long series of annoyances, vexations, and alarms, which it is impossible to give in detail and which had sorely tried his patience.
"Celebes," he says, "is the key to the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, which are necessarily under the power of the people who are masters of this island. The town of Macassar is built upon a promontory, and is watered by one or two rivers which cross it or flow in its vicinity. The ground is even and beautiful in appearance. There are many plantations and cocoa-nut woods, interspersed with houses, which convey the idea that it is well populated.
"At Bonthain the beef is excellent, but it is difficult to procure enough of it to feed a fleet. Fowls, and as much rice and fruits as can be wished, are procurable. The woods abound with wild pigs, which are to be had cheap, because the natives, being Mohamedans, do not eat them."
These details, however incomplete, had great interest at the time they were collected, and we go so far as to believe, that even now, some hundred years since they were first written, they yet contain a certain amount of truth. No incident marked the voyage to Batavia. After several delays, caused by the desire of the Dutch Company to make Carteret give them a testimonial as to the treatment he had met with from the government of Macassar, and which he steadily refused, Carteret at last obtained permission to repair his vessel.
On the 15th of September, the Swallow, partially refitted, set sail. She was reinforced with a supplementary number of English sailors, without which it would have been impossible to regain Europe. Eighty of her original crew were dead, and eighty more were so reduced that seven of their number died before they reached the Cape.
After a stay in this port, a most salutary one for the crew, which lasted until the 6th of January, 1769, Carteret set out once more, and a little beyond Ascension Island, at which he had touched, he met a French vessel. It was the frigate, La Boudeuse, with which Bougainville had just been round the world.
On the 20th of March the Swallow anchored in Spithead roadstead, after thirty-one months of a voyage as painful as it had been dangerous.
All Carteret's nautical ability, all his sang-froid, all his enthusiasm were needed to save so inefficient a vessel from destruction, and to make important discoveries, under such conditions. If the perils of the voyage, add lustre to his renown, the shame of such a miserable equipment falls upon the English Admiralty, who, despising the representations of an able captain, risked his life and the lives of his crew upon so long a voyage.