On the 25th of July Mr. Carter’s wound was entirely healed, after having had thirteen pieces of the fractured skull taken out.  But this gentleman was fated not long to survive his sufferings.  He remained in perfect health until the 17th of November, when he caught a fever, of which he died on the 10th of December, much regretted by his two friends (for adversity makes friends of those who perhaps, in other situations, would never have shaken hands).

The two survivors waited in anxious expectation for the arrival of the annual trading proa from Banda.  To their great joy she came on the 12th of March 1794.

For Banda they sailed on the 10th of April, and arrived there on the 1st of May following, where they were received with the greatest hospitality by the governor, who supplied them with every thing necessary for people in their situation, and provided them with a passage on board an Indiaman bound to Batavia, where they arrived on the 10th of the following October; adding another to the many instances of escape from the perils which attend on those whose hard fate have driven them to navigate the ocean in an open boat.

Hard indeed was the fate of Captain Hill and Mr. Carter.  They were gentlemen of liberal education, qualified to adorn the circles of life in which their rank in society placed them.  How lamentable thus to perish, the one by the hands and rude weapons of barbarous savages, cut off in the prime of life and most perfect enjoyment of his faculties, lost for ever to a mother and sister whom he tenderly loved, his body mangled, roasted, and devoured by cannibals; the other, after escaping from those cannibals, to perish* in a country where all were strangers to him, except his two companions in misery Shaw and Ascott, to give up all his future prospects in life, never more to meet the cheering eye of friendship or of love, and without having had the melancholy satisfaction of recounting his perils, his escape, and sufferings, to those who would sympathise with him in the tale of his sorrows.

[* It is evident, if this account be true, that Mr. Dell must have been mistaken in his opinion of having carried on board the Shah Hormuzear a hand which, from a certain mark on it, he knew to have belonged to Mr. Carter.]

On the 17th the vessel built by the shipwright Hatherleigh at Dusky Bay arrived, with some of the people left behind by Mr. Bampton.  They were so distressed for provisions, that the person who had the direction of the vessel could not bring away the whole; and it was singularly fortunate that he arrived as he did, for with all the economy that could be used, his small stock of provisions was consumed to the last mouthful the day before he made the land.

This vessel, which the officer who commanded her (Waine, one of the mates of the Endeavour) not unappropriately named the Assistance, was built entirely of the timber of Dusky Bay, but appeared to be miserably constructed.  She was of near sixty tons burden, and was now to be sold* for the benefit of Mr. Bampton.