Meantime the Pandora frigate, Captain Edwards, was sent out to search for the mutineers.  At Tahiti she found no Bounty, but two midshipmen, Heywood and Stewart, and twelve petty officers and seamen of the ship.  These people gave themselves up as soon as the Pandora entered Matavai Bay, and they informed Captain Edwards that the Bounty had sailed away with the remainder of the people, no one knew whither.  Two other seamen had been left behind, but one of these had murdered his comrade and a native man and child, and was himself killed by the natives for these crimes.

Stewart and Heywood, master’s mate and midshipman, who were very young—­the latter was fifteen at the time of the mutiny—­declared to the captain of the Pandora that they had been detained on the Bounty against their wishes; but Captain Edwards believed nothing, listened to no defence.  He built a round-house on the quarter deck, and heavily ironing his prisoners locked them up in this.

Stewart while on shore had contracted a native marriage, and after he had left in the Pandora his young wife died broken-hearted, leaving an infant daughter, who was afterwards educated by the missionaries, and lived until quite recent times.

In “Pandora’s Box,” as Captain Edwards’ round-house came to be called, the fourteen prisoners suffered cruel torture, and nothing can justify the manner in which they were treated.  The frigate sailed accompanied by a cutter called the Resolution, which had been built by, and was taken from, the Bounty’s people at Tahiti on May 19th, 1791, and spent till the middle of August in a fruitless search among the islands for the remainder of the mutineers.  The Pandora then stood away for Timor, having lost sight of the Resolution, which Edwards did not see again until he reached Timor.

On August 28th the ship struck a reef, now marked on the chart as Pandora’s Reef, and became a total wreck.  All this time the prisoners had been kept in irons in the round-house.  The ship lasted until the following morning, when the survivors—­for thirty-five of the Pandora’s crew and four of the prisoners (among them the unfortunate Stewart) were drowned—­got into the boats and began another remarkable boat voyage to Timor.  While the vessel was going down, instead of the prisoners being released, by the express order of Captain Edwards eleven of them were actually kept ironed, and if it had not been for the humanity of boatswain’s mate James Moulter, who burst open the prison, they would have all been drowned like rats in a cage.  This is not the one-sided version of the prisoners only, but is so confirmed by the officers of the Pandora that Sir John Barrow in his book says that the “statement of the brutal and unfeeling behaviour of Edwards is but too true.”