WEECK OF THE PANDORA. 61 
lying his person. Peter Heywood had been 
mistaken for him, and was on the point of being 
destroyed with an axe, when an old chief, who 
knew Peter, interposed, and saved his life. The 
only similarity between these persons must have 
been in their both having been Europeans : for 
Thompson, at the time of the mutiny, was forty 
years old, and of very dark complexion, with 
short black hair ; whilst Peter Heywood is de- 
scribed as but seventeen years of age, with a fair 
complexion, and light brown hair. 
Captain Edwards, after many inquiries, could 
hear nothing of the Bounty, nor of the nine re- 
maining mutineers. But he had on board four- 
teen prisoners, confined in a narrow space, which 
was called, " Pandora's Box." It was built on 
the after part of the quarter-deck, and was only 
eleven feet in length. The voyage homeward 
was very disastrous, the ship being wrecked on 
her return on a coral reef, off the coast of New 
Holland, on the 29th of August, 1791. 
Just before the Pandora went down, Heywood 
and some other prisoners were able to disengage 
their hands and feet from the irons with which 
they had been fastened ; the key of the chains 
having been providentially dropped through the 
scuttle into their prison, which was, at the time, 
fast filling with water. The master-at-arms, 
who, whether by design or accident, had dropped 
the key, was drowned, with thirty of the ship's 
company, and four of the unhappy prisoners. 
These four, Stewart, Sumner, Skinner, and Hill- 
brant, sunk in their irons. 
Young Heywood seized a plank, and was 
