After a fortnight, Captain Dillon took his ship to Manicola, where the green mountains towered from the sea. Alas! no aged Frenchmen came down to the beach to greet them, nor could any living survivor be found. Almost forty years had gone since they were cast away, and the last of them had slipped his moorings, with a farewell sigh and a prayer for France. When Captain Dillon’s party went ashore in a flotilla of armed boats, all the chief men of the island were assembled in the council-hall, and the most venerable and influential of them delivered himself of a long oration, the facts of which differed somewhat from the story as the natives of Tucopia had retold it to Martin Bushart and the Lascar. It is probable, however, that the patriarchal chief, speaking at first hand, told the truth when he said to Captain Dillon:
A long time ago the people of this island, upon coming out one morning, saw part of a ship on the reef opposite Paiow where it held together until the middle of the day when it was broken by the sea and fell to pieces so that large parts of it floated on shore along the coast. The ship got on the reef in the night when it blew a tremendous hurricane which broke down great numbers of our fruit trees. We had not seen the ship there the day before. Of those saved from her four men were on the beach at this place; whom we were about to kill, supposing them to be evil spirits, when they made a present to our chief of something and he saved their lives.
These men lived with us for a short time and then joined the rest of their own people on the other island of Paiow. None of these four men was a chief. They were only subordinate men who obeyed orders. The things which we have brought together to show you were procured from the ship wrecked on that reef where, at low water, our people were in the habit of diving and bringing up what they could find. Several pieces of the wreck floated on shore, from which we obtained some things; but nothing more has been found for a long, long time.
We killed none of the ship’s crew at this place, but many dead bodies were cast up on the beach. On the same night another great ship struck a reef near another of our islands, Whanou, and went down. There were many men saved from her, and they built a little ship, and went away five moons after the big one was wrecked. While building it, they had a high fence of logs all around them to keep out the islanders, who were also afraid of them, and therefore there was not much intercourse between them.
The white men often used to look at the sun through something made of wood and brass, but they carried it away with them as being very precious. Two white men remained behind after the rest went away. These I remember, although there were more, no doubt. One of them was a chief and the other a common person, who attended on this other, his master. The white chief died about three years ago. His servant went away to another island with one of our chiefs some time before that. The only white men that the people of these islands have ever seen were those who came ashore from the two wrecked ships and you who stand before me now.
Obedient to orders, the friendly islanders had assembled for Captain Dillon’s inspection everything that had been fished up or handed down to them from the pitiful fragments of La Pérouse’s frigates. There was much iron and copper, broken chinaware, silver plate stamped with the lilies of France, a ship’s bell, several brass cannon, and pewter dishes also bearing the fleur-de-lis. On the bronze bell was the emblem of the holy cross between images of the Saviour and the Virgin Mary, and so the symbols of religion, of faith, of suffering, and of consolation had been preserved for those survivors who grew old and died on these undiscovered islands of the South Seas.
It was evident that the frigates had driven ashore on two different islands of the group, and Captain Dillon visited the scenes of both disasters. Native divers explored the reefs and found cannon embedded in the sand and massive oaken timbers and other memorials which enabled him to fix the position of the ships. Of the stockade and the launching-ways upon which the stout-hearted French seamen had built their little schooner not a trace could be found. During forty years of luxuriant growth the jungle had obliterated man’s handiwork, and the logs had rotted into mold.
The extraordinary fact was noted that the survivors who lingered into old age on these islands had left no written record or message behind them, not a word to indicate who they were. Lacking paper, they might have carved upon boards the brief epitome of their story or lettered it with charcoal on bits of bark, and the kindly chiefs of Manicola would have guarded the record with care. Like ghosts of sailormen, they lived in the memories and the traditions of these South Sea Islanders. Captain Dillon made an interesting discovery while exploring the reefs, and he thus describes it:
Being in want of water, two men from each boat landed with the water kegs and went up to the nearest house. On passing it, one of our people called out in Spanish, “Here is a fleur-de-lis,” which M. Chaigneau and I, who followed and understood him, desired him to point out. He directed our attention to the door of a house where we saw at the bottom of the threshold a decayed piece of fir or pine plank with a fleur-de-lis and other ornamental work upon it. It had probably formed part of a ship’s stern and when complete exhibited the national arms of France. It was placed upon edge to barricade the passage, for the double purpose of keeping the pigs out and the children in the house. This we bought for a hatchet.
It was in Captain Dillon’s mind that one of the survivors had gone to another island, according to the old chief’s story, and so after finishing the investigation of the Manicola group, he sailed to ransack the seas near by. Nothing came of the search, and the natives whom he questioned here and there had never seen or heard of other white men excepting in the legends of the wreck of the two great ships as they had listened to the tales and songs of visitors from Manicola. Captain Dillon returned to Calcutta, where his enterprise and success were highly approved by the British Government of India, which ordered him to proceed to France with the precious relics of the lost expedition of La Pérouse.