King left Norfolk Island to go to England with despatches from Phillip. He
sailed from Port Jackson in April, 1790, in the _Supply_ for Batavia. The
brig returned to the colony with such food as she could obtain, and King
chartered a small Dutch vessel to convey him to the Cape of Good Hope.

The voyage home was one of the most remarkable ever made. Five days after
leaving Batavia the crew, including the master of the vessel and the
surgeon, fell ill from the usual cause: "the putrid fever of Batavia."
Only four well men were left. King took command of them, put up a tent on
deck to escape the contagion, ministered to the sick, buried the seventeen
who died, was compelled to go below with his respiratory organs masked by
a sponge soaked in vinegar, and through all this navigated the vessel to
the Mauritius in a fortnight.

At Port Louis he was offered a passage to France in a French warship, but,
fearful that war might have broken out by the time he reached the Channel,
and he might thus be delayed in his mission, he refused the offer, and
having cleaned and fumigated his ship, he shipped a new crew and sailed
for the Cape, which he reached eighteen days later.

At the Cape he found Riou with the wreck of the _Guardian_, he who fell at
Copenhagen, and whose epitaph is written in Nelson's despatch, telling how
"the good and gallant Captain Riou" fought the _Amazon_. The _Guardian_,
loaded with stores for Port Jackson, had struck an iceberg, and her wreck
had been navigated in heroic fashion by Riou to the Cape. To the colony
her loss was a great misfortune, and King realized that there was so much
the greater need for hurry, and two months later he reached England. This
was on the 20th of December, eight months from Port Jackson!

At home his superiors quickly recognized that King was a good officer, and