While arranging for young Bastow being sent out with the first batch of convicts John Thorndyke had been introduced to several of the officials of the Department, and called upon them at intervals to obtain news of the penal colony.

Three years after its establishment a Crown colony had been opened for settlement in its vicinity.

As the climate was said to be very fine and the country fertile, and land could be taken up without payment, the number who went out was considerable, there being the additional attraction that convicts of good character would be allotted to settlers as servants and farm hands.
Six years after Arthur Bastow sailed the Squire learned that there had been a revolt among the convicts; several had been killed, and the mutiny suppressed, but about a dozen had succeeded in getting away.
These had committed several robberies and some murders among the settlers, and a military force and a party of warders from the prison were scouring the country for them.
"Of course, Mr.Thorndyke," the official said, "the Governor in his report does not gives us the names of any of those concerned in the matter; he simply says that although the mutiny was general, it was wholly the work of a small number of the worse class of prisoners.

By worse class he means the most troublesome and refractory out there.
The prisoners are not classified according to their original crimes.
A poacher who has killed a game keeper, or a smuggler who has killed a revenue officer, may in other respects be a quiet and well conducted man, while men sentenced for comparatively minor offenses may give an immense deal of trouble.

I will, however, get a letter written to the Governor, asking him if Arthur Bastow was among those who took part in the revolt, and if so what has become of him." It was more than a year before the reply came, and then the Governor reported that Arthur Bastow, who was believed to have been the leading spirit of the mutiny, was among those who had escaped, and had not yet been recaptured.