put into your hands 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 tatt