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.
Then the Governor was told of Dolly's letter, but he was not the man to take fright at the approach of the enemy, although he had no defence force as it is now understood in New South Wales, nor had he a gold-laced staff of officers with elaborate “defence schemes” against possible raids of Japanese or Russians by way of Exmouth Gulf or Port Darwin.
In that year Governer King's force did not take long to be marshalled. The drums beat to arms, and the New South Wales Corps and the Loyal Association immediately formed into line on the shores of the Cove.
At eleven o'clock a trooper arrived at Government House with intelligence that one of the vessels appeared under British colours, and the other was flying a Union Jack triumphant over a Dutch Jack. Following this message there soon came another, bringing the certain intelligence that one of the ships was an English whaler bringing into port her Batavian prize. So on receipt of this news, and just as the word to march was about to be given, the officer in command ordered his force to return to barracks.
At two in the afternoon, with the whole of the settlement agog with excitement, the two vessels sailed slowly up the harbour before a light northeast breeze, and came to anchor in Sydney Cove, close to the Investigator, on board of which ship the Governor and a number of naval officers awaited their arrival. For once discipline was relaxed, and Captain King had good-naturedly permitted the townspeople to throng on board to learn all the news about the Policy's prize. As Captain Foster made his way to the quarter-deck, he saw that behind the Governor and his staff were Dolly and her parents and several ladies.