76 ARRIVAL OF PETER HEYWOOB. 
our situation ten thousand times more insupport- 
able than if time had inured us to your loss." 
A letter from Peter, dated Batavia, Nov. 20, 
1791, at last announced that he was alive, and 
on his return. His account of the painful scene 
on board the Bounty afforded them, as far as he 
was concerned, comparative happiness. " Hap- 
pening to awake," said he, "just after daylight, 
and looking out of my hammock, I saw a man 
sitting upon the arm-chest in the main-hatch- 
way, with a drawn cutlass in his hand." Being 
confused with the scene presented on deck, and 
having heard two different accounts of the object 
and intent of the chief actors in this deed of 
violence, Heywood remained awhile a silent 
spectator of all that was passing, until, with the 
best judgment which his youth and inexperience 
could supply on such an emergency, he decided 
to remain in the ship. Afterwards, on his trial, 
he expressed a hope that he might be reckoned 
among the friends whom Bligh acknowledged 
he had left on board the Bounty. " Indeed," 
said Heywood, " from his attention to, and very 
kind treatment of me, I should have been a 
monster of depravity to have betrayed him," 
Young Heywood' s arrival (though as a prisoner 
in chains) in England, on the 19th of June, 1792, 
was in itself a relief to his distressed mother and 
friends. He had been conveyed from Batavia to 
the Cape of Good Hope in a Dutch ship, in which 
he had endured much hardship, and had been 
thence removed into the Gorgon, where he was 
treated with kindness, and allowed to walk upon 
deck several hours a day. Two days after his 
