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 a man of great landed property near Matavai Bay.

This intelligence, no doubt, weighed with the Captain in giving his orders for the close confinement of the prisoners; and particularly in restricting the visits of the natives; but so far is it from being true that all communication between the mutineers and the natives was cut off, that we are distinctly told by Mr.Hamilton, that 'the prisoners' wives visited the ship daily, and brought their children, who were permitted to be carried to their unhappy fathers.

To see the poor captives in irons,' he says, 'weeping over their tender offspring, was too moving a scene for any feeling heart, Their wives brought them ample supplies of every delicacy that the country afforded, while we lay there, and behaved with the greatest fidelity and affection to them.'[15] Of the fidelity and attachment of these simple-minded creatures an instance is afforded in the affecting story which is told, in the first _Missionary Voyage of the Duff_, of the unfortunate wife of the reputed mutineer Mr.Stewart.It would seem also to exonerate Edwards from some part of the charges which have been brought against him.
'The history of Peggy Stewart marks a tenderness of heart that never will be heard without emotion: she was the daughter of a chief, and taken for his wife by Mr.Stewart, one of the unhappy mutineers.

They had lived with the old chief in the most tender state of endearment; a beautiful little girl had been the fruit of their union, and was at the breast when the _Pandora_ arrived, seized the criminals, and secured them in irons on board the ship.