After an absence of eight days the party returned to Argostoli, and went on board the _Hercules_. The messenger whom Byron had sent to Corfu brought the unwelcome intelligence that Mr. Blaquière had sailed for England, without leaving any letters for Byron's guidance. News also reached him that the Greeks were split up into factions, and more intent on persecuting and calumniating each other than on securing the independence of their country. This was depressing news for a man who had sacrificed so much, and would have damped the enthusiasm of most people in Byron's position; but it neither deceived nor disheartened him. He was, and had always been, prepared for the worst. He made up his mind not to enter personally into the arena of contending factions, but to await further developments at Cephalonia, hoping to acquire an influence which might eventually be employed in settling their internal discords. As he himself remarked, 'I came not here to join a faction, but a nation. I must be circumspect.' Trelawny, in his valuable record of events at this time, is hard on Byron. He mistook Byron's motives, and thought that he was 'shilly-shallying and doing nothing.' But Trelawny, though mistaken, was sincere. He was in every sense of the word a man of action, and full of a wild enthusiasm for the Greek cause. It was not in his nature to await events, but rather to create them, and Byron's wise decision made him restive. He determined to proceed to the Morea, and induced Hamilton Browne to go with him. Byron gave them letters to the Greek Government, if they could find any such authority, expressing his readiness to serve them when they had satisfied him how he could do so. Gamba takes a calmer view of Byron's hesitation. He says that Byron well knew that prudence had never been in the catalogue of his virtues; that he knew the necessity of such a virtue in his present situation, and was determined to attain it. He carefully avoided every appearance of ostentation, and dreaded being suspected of being a mere hunter after adventures. 'By perseverance and discernment,' says Gamba, 'Byron hoped to assist in the liberation of Greece. To know and to be known was consequently, from the outset, his principal object.'