He was fortunately foiled in his first attempt, but swore openly he would speedily repeat it.

Adams and Young having no doubt he would follow up his intention, and fearing he might be more successful in the next attempt, came to the resolution that, as their own lives were not safe while he was in existence, they were justified in putting him to death, which they did by felling him, as they would an ox, with a hatchet.
'Such was the melancholy fate of seven of the leading mutineers, who escaped from justice only to add murder to their former crimes'; and such, it may be added, was the polluted source, thus stained with the guilt of mutiny, piracy, and murder, from which the present simple and innocent race of islanders has proceeded; and what is most of all extraordinary, the very man, from whom they have received their moral and religious instruction, is one who was among the first and foremost in the mutiny, and deeply implicated in all the deplorable consequences that were the results of it.

This man and Young were now the sole survivors out of the fifteen males that had landed upon the island.
Young, as has been stated, was a man of some education, and of a serious turn of mind, and, as Beechey says, it would have been wonderful, after the many dreadful scenes at which they had assisted, if the solitude and tranquillity that ensued had not disposed them to repentance.

They had a Bible and a Prayer Book, which were found in the _Bounty_, and they read the Church Service regularly every Sunday.

They now resolved to have morning and evening family prayers, and to instruct the children, who amounted to nineteen, many of them between the ages of seven and nine years.