I Perhaps at this moment you are arrived in England, and I may soon have the dear delight of again beholding you.  My mamma, brothers, and sisters, join with me in every sentiment of love and tenderness.  Write to us immediately, my ever-loved Peter, and may the Almighty preserve you until you bless with your presence your fondly affectionate family, and particularly your unalterably faithful friend and sister,

     (Signed) ’NESSY HEYWOOD.’[12]

The gleam of joy which this unhappy family derived from the circumstance, which had been related to them, of young Heywood’s swimming off to the Pandora, was dissipated by a letter from himself to his mother, soon after his arrival in England, in which he says:—­’The question, my dear mother, in one of your letters, concerning my swimming off to the Pandora, is one falsity among the too many, in which I have often thought of undeceiving you, and as frequently forgot.  The story was this:—­On the morning she arrived, accompanied by two of my friends (natives), I was going up the mountains, and having got about a hundred yards from my own house, another of my friends (for I was an universal favourite among those Indians, and perfectly conversant in their language) came running after me, and informed me there was a ship coming.  I immediately ascended a rising ground, and saw, with indescribable joy, a ship laying-to off Hapiano; it was just after daylight, and thinking Coleman might not be awake, and therefore ignorant of this pleasing news, I sent one of my servants to inform him of it, upon which he immediately went off in a single canoe.  There was a fresh breeze, and the ship working into the bay; he no sooner got alongside than the rippling capsized the canoe, and he being obliged to let go the tow-rope to get her righted, went astern, and was picked up the next tack and taken on board the Pandora, he being the first person.  I, along with my messmate Stewart, was then standing upon the beach with a double canoe, manned with twelve paddles ready for launching; and just as she made her last tack into her berth (for we did not think it requisite to go off sooner), we put off and got alongside just as they streamed the buoy; and being dressed in the country manner, tanned as brown as themselves, and I tattooed like them in the most curious manner, I do not in the least wonder at their taking us for natives.  I was tattooed, not to gratify my own desire, but theirs; for it was my constant endeavour to acquiesce in any little custom which I thought would be agreeable to them, though painful in the process, provided I gained by it their friendship and esteem, which you may suppose is no inconsiderable object in an island where the natives are so numerous.  The more a man or woman there is tattooed, the more they are respected; and a person having none of these marks is looked upon as bearing an unworthy badge of disgrace, and considered as a mere outcast of society.’