The Irish merchant skipper found that he had become a distinguished personage. His Most Christian Majesty, Charles X of France, was pleased to make him a chevalier of the Legion of Honor, with an annuity of four thousand francs. Chevalier Dillon relates:
I was now taken to the French court and presented to the king who received me very graciously and conversed with me upon the subject of my voyage. He was well acquainted with the history of La Pérouse’s expedition and addressed several judicious questions to me respecting the loss of that celebrated navigator, and inquired what was my opinion as to the probability of any of the crew being yet alive on the Solomon Islands.
While in Paris I met several times with the Viscount Sesseps who is the only person of La Pérouse’s expedition now known to be alive. He was attached to it twenty-six months and was landed at Kamchatka to convey dispatches and the charts and journals to France. He is now sixty-five years of age and in good health. He accompanied me one day to the Ministry of Marine for the purpose of viewing the relics procured at Manicola which he examined minutely. The piece of board with the fleur-de-lis on it, he observed, had most probably once formed a part of the ornamental work of the Boussole’s stern on which the national arms of France were represented. The silver sword handle he also examined and said that such swords were worn by the officers of the expedition. With regard to the brass guns, having looked at them attentively, he observed that the four largest were such as stood on the quarter-deck of both ships, and that the smallest gun was such as they had mounted in the long-boats when going on shore among the savages. On noticing a small mill-stone, he turned around suddenly and expressed his surprise, exclaiming, “That is the best thing you have got! We had some of them mounted on the quarter-deck to grind our grain.”
Savants and naval officers weighed all the evidence, and were of the opinion that at least two of the survivors had been alive as late as 1824, or thirty-six years after the shipwreck, and that one of them was possibly La Pérouse. The theory was advanced that after his great adventure had been eclipsed by a misfortune so enormous, he might have been unwilling to return to France, fancying himself disgraced, and that he perhaps chose to maroon himself at Manicola when his comrades sailed away in their tiny schooner. Be that as it may, their fate was no less tragic, for the sea conquered them and left no sign or token. Long after Captain Dillon had made his famous voyage of discovery, the belief still persisted in France that La Pérouse and some of his officers and men were existing somewhere in the South Seas and awaiting the rescue that never came.
Soon after Captain Dillon visited Manicola, a French ship arrived there on a similar mission. Having satisfied himself as to the location of the wreck of the flag-ship, L’Astrolabe, the captain sent his crew ashore to erect an enduring monument of stone, upon which was carved the words:
“To the Memory of La Pérouse and his Companions.”
CHAPTER IX
WHEN H. M. S. PHOENIX DROVE ASHORE
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,