’On this melancholy occasion Mr. Heywood was the last person but three who escaped from the prison, into which the water had already found its way through the bulk-head scuttles.  Jumping overboard, he seized a plank, and was swimming towards a small sandy quay (key) about three miles distant, when a boat picked him up, and conveyed him thither in a state of nudity.  It is worthy of remark, that James Morrison endeavoured to follow his young companion’s example, and, although handcuffed, managed to keep afloat until a boat came to his assistance.’

This account would appear almost incredible.  It is true men are sometimes found to act the part of inhuman monsters, but then they are generally actuated by some motive or extraordinary excitement; here, however, there was neither; but on the contrary, the condition of the poor prisoners appealed most forcibly to the mercy and humanity of their jailor.  The surgeon of the ship states, in his account of her loss, that as soon as the spars, booms, hen-coops, and other buoyant articles were cut loose, ‘the prisoners were ordered to be let out of irons.’  One would imagine, indeed, that the officers on this dreadful emergency would not be witness to such inhumanity, without remonstrating effectually against keeping these unfortunate men confined a moment beyond the period when it became evident that the ship must sink.  It will be seen, however, presently, from Mr. Heywood’s own statement, that they were so kept, and that the brutal and unfeeling conduct which has been imputed to Captain Edwards is but too true.

It is an awful moment when a ship takes her last heel, just before going down.  When the Pandora sunk, the surgeon says, ’the crew had just time to leap overboard, accompanying it with a most dreadful yell.  The cries of the men drowning in the water was at first awful in the extreme; but as they sunk and became faint, they died away by degrees.’  How accurately has Byron described the whole progress of a shipwreck to the final catastrophe!  He might have been a spectator of the Pandora, at the moment of her foundering, when

     She gave a heel, and then a lurch to port,
     And, going down head foremost—­sunk....

     Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell—­
       Then shriek’d the timid and stood still the brave—­
     Then some leap’d overboard with dreadful yell,
       As eager to anticipate their grave;
     And the sea yawn’d around her like a hell,
       And down she suck’d with her the whirling wave,
     Like one who grapples with his enemy,
     And strives to strangle him before he die.

     And first one universal shriek there rush’d,
       Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash
     Of echoing thunder; and then all was hush’d,
       Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash
     Of billows; but at intervals there gush’d,
       Accompanied with a convulsive splash,
     A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry
     Of some strong swimmer in his agony.