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Dentrecasteaux died while his ships were in the waters to the north of New Guinea. He fell violently ill, raving at first, then subsiding into unconsciousness, a death terrible to read about in the published narrative, where the full extent of his troubles is not revealed. Kermadec, commander of the ESPERANCE, also died at New Caledonia.
J'accuserai les vents et cette mer jalouse Qui retient, qui peut-etre a ravi Laperouse so the poem begins. How strangely the shadow of Tragedy hangs over this ill-starred expedition; Louis XVI the projector, Laperouse and de Langle the commanders, Dentrecasteaux and Kermadec the searchers, Andre Chenier the laureate: the breath of the black-robed Fury was upon them all!
Laperouse was drowned; de Langle was murdered; Dentrecasteaux died miserably at sea; Kermadec, the fourth, had expired shortly before; and Baudin, the fifth, died at Port Louis on the homeward voyage. Nor is even that the last touch of melancholy to the tale of tragedy. There was a young poet who was touched by the fate of Laperouse.
"Just where are we going?" I asked. "You said something about the South Seas, but you've named no special part of them." "We're bound for Penguin Deep. That's a delightful little dimple in the Kermadec Trough, which," Stanley explained, "is north-northeast of New Zealand almost halfway up to the Fiji Islands.
No one knew anything of Jeanne-Marie Kermadec. At last one man remembered that a family of that name had remained less than a year and had gone back to France. Then he had wandered off again, and from the cafés comrades of his called to him to join them, but he strolled on, and suddenly he had seen a hollow-eyed woman enter a drinking-shop, and on her arm she bore a baby.
Gradually we crept south, until one morning we sighted the towering mass of Sunday Island, the principal member of the small Kermadec group, which lies nearly on the prime meridian of one hundred and eighty degrees, and but a short distance north of the extremity of New Zealand.
The second ship was placed under the command of Captain Huon Kermadec. The Huon River in Tasmania, and the Kermadec Islands, N.E. of New Zealand, are named after him.
"Oceanica, Asia, Africa, America, and Europe." "Perfectly so. Now we'll take Oceanica first; where are we at this moment? What are the principal divisions?" "Australia, belonging to the English; New Zealand, belonging to the English; Tasmania, belonging to the English. The islands of Chatham, Auckland, Macquarie, Kermadec, Makin, Maraki, are also belonging to the English."
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