ber last; and their manner of conducting themselves at various times
appeared to have been very reprehensible. The liquor which they procured
from the store was the cause of drunkenness, which brought on affrays and
disorders, for which, as soldiers, they were more than once punished. To
these circumstances must be added (what perhaps must be considered as the
root of these evils) a connexion which subsisted between them and some of
the worst of the female convicts, at whose huts, notwithstanding the
internal regulations of their quarters, they found means to enjoy their
ill-acquired plunder.

On the morning of their execution, one of them declared to the clergyman
who attended him, that the like practices had been carried on at the
store at Rose Hill by similar means and with similar success. He named
two soldiers and a convict as the persons concerned; these were
afterwards apprehended, and underwent an examination of several hours by
the lieutenant-governor and the judge-advocate, during which nothing
being drawn from either that could affect the others, they were all
discharged. It was, however, generally believed, that the soldier would
not in his dying moments have falsely accused three men of a crime which
they had never committed; and that nothing but their constancy to each
other had prevented a discovery of their guilt.

While these transactions were passing at Sydney, the little colony at
Norfolk Island had been threatened with an insurrection. The _Supply_
returned from thence the 24th, after an absence of five weeks, and
brought from Lieutenant King, the commandant, information of the
following chimerical scheme. The capture of the island, and the
subsequent escape of the captors, was to commence by the seizure of Mr.
King's person, which was intended to be effected on the first Saturday
after the arrival of any ship in the bay, except the _Sirius_. They had
chosen that particular day in the week, as it had been for some time Mr.
King's custom on Saturdays to go to a farm which he had established at
some little distance from the settlement, and the military generally
chose that day to bring in the cabbage palm from the woods. Mr. King was
to be secured in his way to his farm. A message, in the commandant's
name, was then to be sent to Mr. Jamison, the surgeon, who was to be
seized as soon as he got into the woods; and the sergeant and the party
were to be treated in the same manner. These being all properly