In all fourteen.  The other two, which made up the sixteen that had been left on the island, were murdered, as will appear presently.

Captain Edwards will himself explain how he disposed of his prisoners.  ‘I put the pirates,’ he says, ’into a round-house which I built on the after part of the quarter-deck, for their more effectual security in this airy and healthy situation, and to separate them from, and to prevent their having communication with, or to crowd and incommode, the ship’s company.’  Dr. Hamilton calls it the most desirable place in the ship, and adds, that ’orders were given that the prisoners should be victualled, in every respect, the same as the ship’s company, both in meat, liquor, and all the extra indulgences with which they were so liberally supplied, notwithstanding the established laws of the service, which restrict prisoners to two-thirds allowance; but Captain Edwards very humanely commiserated their unhappy and inevitable length of confinement.’  Mr. Morrison, one of the prisoners, gives a very different account of their treatment from that of Edwards or Hamilton.  He says that Captain Edwards put both legs of the two midshipmen in irons, and that he branded them with the opprobrious epithet of ’piratical villains’:  that they, with the rest, being strongly handcuffed, were put into a kind of round-house only eleven feet long, built as a prison, and aptly named ‘Pandora’s Box,’ which was entered by a scuttle in the roof, about eighteen inches square.  This was done in order that they might be kept separate from the crew, and also the more effectually to prevent them from having any communication with the natives; that such of those friendly creatures as ventured to look pitifully towards them were instantly turned out of the ship, and never again allowed to come on board.  But two sentinels were kept constantly upon the roof of the prison, with orders to shoot the first of its inmates who should attempt to address another in the Otaheitan dialect.

That Captain Edwards took every precaution to keep his prisoners in safe custody, and place them in confinement, as by his instructions he was directed to do, may be well imagined,[14] but Mr. Morrison will probably be thought to go somewhat beyond credibility in stating that orders were given ‘to shoot any of the prisoners,’ when confined in irons.  Captain Edwards must have known that such an act would have cost him his commission or something more.  The fact is, that information was given to Edwards, at least he so asserts, by the brother of the King of Otaheite, an intelligent chief, that a conspiracy was formed among the natives to cut the ship’s cables the first strong wind that should blow on the shore, which was considered to be the more probable, as many of the prisoners were said to be married to the most respectable chiefs’ daughters in the district opposite to the anchorage; that the midshipman Stewart, in particular, had married the daughter of