and to escape in her from Port Jackson. Sleeping on shore at nights whenever possible, subsisting on shell-fish and sea-birds, they ran the entire length of the Queensland coast, threaded Endeavour Straits, and arrived at Coupang after an exposure lasting ten weeks without the loss of a single life. Having given themselves out as the survivors from the wreck of an English ship, they were entertained with great hospitality until the arrival of Edwards two weeks later, when they betrayed their story gratuitously. The captain of a Dutch vessel, who spoke English, on first hearing the news of Edwards' landing, ran to them with the glad tidings of their captain's arrival, on which one of them started up in surprise and exclaimed, "What captain? Dam'me! we have no captain." On hearing this the governor had them arrested, and sent to the castle, one man and the woman having to be pursued into the bush before they were taken. They then confessed that they were escaped convicts.

Apart from their adventurous voyage, there is much romance about their story. William Bryant, the leader, had been transported for smuggling, and his sweetheart, Mary Broad, who was maid to a lady in Salcombe, in Devonshire for connivance in her lover's escape from Winchester Gaol. In due course they were married in Botany Bay, where Bryant was employed as fisherman to the governor, a post that enabled him to plan their successful escape. Bryant and both children died on the voyage home, together with three others, Morton, Cox and Simms, but the woman survived to obtain a full pardon, owing chiefly to the exertions of an officer of marines who went home with her in the Gorgon, and eventually married her.[24-1] Butcher, who was also pardoned, returned to New South Wales and became a thriving settler. The remaining four were sent back to complete their sentences. Their story has been graphically told by Messrs. Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery in "The First Fleet Family."

During the voyage from Coupang to Batavia Edwards narrowly escaped a second shipwreck. The Rembang was dismasted on a lee shore in a cyclone, and, but for the exertions of the English seamen, would assuredly have been stranded, the Dutch sailors, who, says the facetious Hamilton, "would fight the devil should he appear to them in any other shape but that of thunder and lightning," having taken to their hammocks. At Samarang, as already related, Edwards found the tender, which he had long given up for lost, and the price she fetched enabled the crew to purchase decent clothing. Heywood afterwards asserted that no clothing was given to the prisoners but what they could earn by plaiting and selling straw hats. They were miserably housed, when on board the Rembang, and kept in rigid confinement both at Batavia, and on the Vreedemberg, in which they made the voyage to the Cape.

At Batavia Edwards divided his men among three Dutch vessels homeward bound, but at the Cape he removed his own contingent into H.M.S. Gorgon, and arrived at Spithead on June 18th, 1792. Two days later the ten mutineers were transferred to H.M.S. Hector, Captain Montague, and the convicts were sent to Newgate. The court martial, which did not assemble until September 12th, lasted five days, with the result that Norman, Coleman, Mackintosh and Byrne were acquitted, and Heywood, Morrison, Ellison, Burkitt, Millward and Muspratt were condemned to death, the two first being recommended to mercy. On October 24th Heywood and Morrison received the King's pardon, and both re-entered the Navy, Heywood to retire in 1816, when nearly at the head of the list of captains; Morrison to go down in the ill-fated Blenheim in which he was serving as gunner. Muspratt also was pardoned, but the three others were hanged on board the Brunswick in Portsmouth Harbour on October 29th, 1792. Thus ended a voyage that, for adventure and discovery, deserves a high place in the history of maritime enterprise in the Pacific. Voyages take their rank from the scientific attainments and literary ability of the men who record them, and the Pandora, unlucky in her fate as in her ill-omened name, was scarcely less unfortunate in her historian.

B. T.