Tranquillity being thus restored, matters went on tolerably well for a year or two longer; but the oppression and ill-treatment which the Otaheitans received, more particularly from Quintal and M’Koy, the most active and determined of the mutineers, drove them to the formation of another plot for the destruction of their oppressors, which but too successfully succeeded.  A day was fixed for attacking and putting to death all the Englishmen while at work in their respective plantations.  Williams was the first man that was shot.  They next proceeded to Christian, who was working at his yam-plot, and shot him.  Mills, confiding in the fidelity of his Otaheitan friend, stood his ground, and was murdered by him and another.  Martin and Brown were separately attacked and slain, one with a maul, the other with a musket.  Adams was wounded in the shoulder, but succeeded in making terms with the Otaheitans; and was conducted by them to Christian’s house, where he was kindly treated.  Young, who was a great favourite of the women, was secreted by them during the attack, and afterwards carried to Christian’s house.  M’Koy and Quintal, the worst of the gang, escaped to the mountains.  ‘Here,’ says Captain Beechey, ’this day of bloodshed ended, leaving only four Englishmen alive out of nine.  It was a day of emancipation to the blacks, who were now masters of the island, and of humiliation and retribution to the whites.’

The men of colour now began to quarrel about choosing the women whose European husbands had been murdered; the result of which was the destruction of the whole of the former, some falling by the hands of the women, and one of them by Young, who it would seem coolly and deliberately shot him.  Adams now proceeded into the mountains to communicate the fatal intelligence to the two Europeans, M’Koy and Quintal, and to solicit their return to the village.  All these events are stated to have happened so early as October, 1793.

From this time to 1798, the remnant of the colonists would appear to have gone on quietly with the exception of some quarrels these four men had with the women, and the latter among themselves; ten of them were still remaining, who lived promiscuously with the men, frequently changing their abode from one house to another.  Young, being a man of some education, kept a kind of journal, but it is a document of very little interest, containing scarcely anything more than the ordinary occupations of the settlers, the loan or exchange of provisions, the dates when the sows farrowed, the number of fish caught, etc., and it begins only at the time when Adams and he were sole masters of the island; and the truth, therefore, of all that has been told rests solely on the degree of credit that is due to Adams.