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Three were acquitted; the rest were found guilty and condemned to 

 death. Two of the latter, however, our old friends Heywood and 

 Morrison, received the Royal pardon ; the others were executed. The 

 pardon of Heywood was mainly due to the unceasing exertions of his 

 sister, Nessy Heywood, a lovely and accomplished girl; but unhappily the 

 strain had been too much for her strength, and she died within a year Of 

 his liberation. The correspondence of the brother and sister, embracing 

 some poetical effusions not devoid of merit, has been published, and 

 forms an interesting part of the " Bounty" literature. After the pardon, 

 Heywood was at once reinstated in the navy, and soon attained the rank 

 of captain, and did good service in the naval wars of that period. He 

 died in 183 1. James Morrison, the author of the diary, also joined the 

 service again, and was chief gunner on board the " Blenheim" when she 

 was lost, with all on board, in 1807. One may imagine with what 

 ''yarns" the brave old gunner would entertain the fo'castle, when one 

 thinks of his powers of description, and that his memory was a store- 

 house of facts more strange and stirring than almost any creations of 

 fiction. 



In September, 1789, we left Fletcher Christian, with eight other 

 mutineers, and a number of natives, on board the "Bounty," and sailing 

 from Otaheite — as Heywood expressed it — "God knows whither." 

 Twenty years passed away without any tidings of the voyagers, and 

 public attention, absorbed in the more terrible drama which was then 

 being enacted across the channel, had long ceased to concern itself with 

 their fate. But suddenly the country was startled by news so passing 

 strange, that at first it was hardly believed ; but it turned out to be as 

 true as strange. The news was that an American vessel which happened 

 by mere chance to touch at Pitcairn's Island, there found an Englishman, 

 called Alexander Smith (he afterwards changed his name to John Adams), 

 who infoiTTied the captain he was the sole survivor of Christian's party 

 of the mutineers, who had sailed from Otaheite twenty years before. 

 There were also on the island thirty-four youths and women and children, 

 who were the wives or offspring of Adams and his late companions. Five 

 or six years later, two English ships of war, cruising in the Pacific, came 



