In the autumn of 1802 Flinders, having completed his survey of the whole south coast of Australia from Cape Leuwin to Sydney, started once more in the _Investigator_ to complete his circumnavigation of the island continent. He made a careful exploration of the Great Barrier Reef, and then proceeded to explore the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria. After a brief rest at the Island of Timor the _Investigator_ sailed round the west and south coasts of Australia and once more reached Port Jackson in 1803. Flinders had thus been the first commander to circumnavigate Australia and to prove that it was an undivided area, and that there were no more surprises or mysteries in its outline. [Illustration: WHALING IN THE SOUTH SEAS] Flinders left Port Jackson again in August, 1803, to proceed to England in H.M.S. _Porpoise_, which was accompanied by a merchant vessel, the _Cato_. But both these vessels struck a coral reef about 800 miles north from Port Jackson and were completely wrecked. The crews managed to land in safety on a small sand-bank only 4 feet at most above high-water mark, and here they were obliged to camp under a blazing sun with all that they could save in the way of provisions and important papers. Flinders, getting into a six-oared boat with a few seamen, actually rowed and sailed 800 miles across the sea back to Port Jackson, obtained a small vessel there, returned to the reef, and brought off safely all the officers and men who had been left there. In this same vessel, the _Cumberland_, a schooner of only 29 tons, he started for England with ten seamen and a collection of papers, charts, and geological specimens. In this little unseaworthy vessel he actually sailed across the stormy Indian Ocean and reached Mauritius, where he put in for rest and refreshment. Mauritius at that time--December, 1803--was still in the possession of the French. Although Flinders had been granted a French passport when he left England in the _Investigator_, the Governor of Mauritius refused to recognize this as he was no longer in that ship. This Governor-General Decaen--on the contrary, put Flinders in prison, charging him with being a spy, and seized all his papers and charts. But although these last were kept from him until the close of 1807, and one of his logbooks was never returned to him, it is now shown that they were not made use of in compiling the atlas for the report of Baudin's expedition. What the French had borrowed from him was due to his friendly communications when the two expeditions met on the south-east coast of Australia.