Felix Carey, meantime, had been requested by the king to vaccinate the royal children; but he had to return to Calcutta to procure matter for the purpose. He then visited Rangoon on his way back, and prepared to carry up his family, property, and printing-press to Ava, with the hope of forming a fresh station there, under royal patronage; but after ten days' voyage, the vessel was capsized by a sudden storm, and all who could not swim were drowned. Felix tried to rescue his little son of three years old, but, finding himself sinking, he let the child go, and saved himself alone. Everything in the vessel was lost; but the king gave him compensation for the property, and took him into high favour, sending him shortly after, to conduct some negotiations with the British Government. He appeared at Calcutta with the title and gorgeous dress of a Burmese noble, and showed himself in the streets with a train of fifty followers. Old Dr. Carey was seriously grieved at his thus "sinking from a missionary to an ambassador;" and he was by no means successful in this new line; in fact his negotiations turned out so ill, that on his return to Rangoon he was obliged to fly the country. The excitement of his life had made missionary labour distasteful to him, and, after strange wanderings in the wild lands eastward of Bengal, he became prime minister and generalissimo to a barbarous prince; and in that capacity led an army against his old friends, the Burmese, sustained a defeat, and was forced to wander in the jungle. After three years of this strange life, he fell in by chance at Chittagong with Mr. Ward, and was by him persuaded to return to the printing and philology, for which alone, like his father, he really was well qualified. He lived at Serampore till 1822, and then was carried off by the same sickly season that had proved fatal to Krishnu-pal, who had been baptized with him, and to Bishop Middleton.