Food, food, all for food! In its imperious needs hunger drove the unprincipled to brave every danger, and the foolish to excess not less terrible. Collins tells another story of a woman who devoured her whole week's allowance in one night, making up a strange compound of cabbage and flour, of which she ate heartily during the day, "but not being satisfied, she rose again in the night and finished the mess," and died. Throughout these trying times, Governor Phillip maintained a firm front. It is told of him, that seeing a dog run by he ordered it to be killed at once,--as a mouth that was useless, it could not in these days be entitled to food. Then, to ease the mother settlement, a large number of persons were drafted to Norfolk Island, where, thanks to the presence of numbers of wild birds, supplies were more plentiful. In transit, H. M. S. _Sirius_--the only ship left in the colony--was wrecked in full view of the settlement. Relief came at length, but in driblets. At the time of greatest need, more mouths arrived instead of more barrels of pork and flour. In February, as I have said, there were but four months' provisions in the stores; yet on the third day of June, two hundred and twenty-two women arrived--"a cargo," says the chronicler, "unnecessary and unprofitable;" while H. M. S. _Guardian_, which came as convoy and carried all the stores, was lost at sea. Another store ship, the _Justinian_, happily turned up about the 20th of June. Later in this month, eleven sail, composing the "second fleet," came into port. In this second fleet the arrangements made were about as good as in slave ships from the Guinea Coast. The mortality on the voyage out had been absolutely frightful. One thousand six hundred and ninety-five male convicts and sixty-eight females were the numbers embarked, and of these one hundred and ninety-four males and four females had died at sea; while such was the state of debility in which the survivors landed in the colony, that one hundred and sixteen of their number died in the Colonial Hospital before the 5th of December, 1791. It seemed that the masters of transports were paid head-money for each convict embarked,--a lump sum of £17 9s. 6d. each. The more, therefore, that died, and the sooner, the less food was consumed, and the greater the consequent profit. Even to the living, the rations were so much reduced below the allowance stipulated by the governor, that many convicts were actually starved to death. In most of the ships very few were allowed on deck at the same time. Crowded thus continually in a foetid atmosphere below, many peculiar diseases were rapidly engendered among them. Numbers died in irons; and what added to the horror of such a circumstance was that their deaths were concealed, for the purpose of sharing their allowance of provisions, until chance and the offensiveness of a corpse directed the surgeon, or some one who had authority in the ship, to the spot where it lay.