The cat was out of the bag, and the slip proved fatal. Haled before the governor, the runaways confessed who they really were. The tale they told was interwoven with a romance. The leader of the party, William Bryant, had been transported to Botany Bay for the crime of smuggling, and with him went his sweetheart, Mary Broad, who was convicted of helping him to escape from Winchester Gaol. They were married by the chaplain of Botany Bay, and Bryant was detailed to catch fish for the table of the governor and other officials of that distressful colony. It was while employed as a fisherman that he was able to steal a boat and plan the escape, and they carried their two children with them. His Excellency, the Dutch governor of Timor, admired their courage, but he could not be turned from his duty, and the runaway convicts were therefore sent to England. During the voyage William Bryant, the two children, and three men of the party died, but the woman lived, and so rapidly regained her bloom and beauty that before the _Gorgon_, East Indiaman, sighted the forelands of England, an officer of the Royal Marines had fallen in love with her. Through his efforts she was granted a full pardon, and they were wedded and lived happily ever after, so far as we know. Many a novel has paraded a heroine less worthy than this smuggler’s sweetheart, Mary Broad of Devonshire and Botany Bay. Of the ten _Bounty_ mutineers who survived the wreck of the _Pandora_, five were acquitted, two received the king’s pardon, and three were hanged from a yard-arm of H. M. S. _Brunswick_ in Portsmouth Harbor on October 29, 1792. Of Fletcher Christian and his companions who had vanished in the _Bounty_ nothing whatever was heard or known, and England forgot all about them. Twenty-five years passed, and they had become almost legendary, one of those mysteries which inspire the conjectures and gossip of idle hours in ship’s forecastles. In 1813 a fleet of British merchantmen sailed for India convoyed by the frigate _Briton_, Captain Sir Thomas Staines. While passing the Marquesas group he discovered a fertile island on which were cultivated fields and a village and people who eagerly paddled out in their canoes to hail the frigate. The captain was trying to shout a few words of the Marquesan language to them when a stalwart youth called out in perfectly good English: “What is the ship’s name? And who is the commander, if you please?” Dumfounded, the bluejackets swarmed to the bulwark to haul the visitors aboard, and while they wondered, the same young man asked of the quarter-deck: “Do you know Captain William Bligh in England, and is he still alive?” The riddle was solved. Captain Staines replied to the courteous, fair-skinned stranger: “Do you know one Fletcher Christian and where is he?” “Yes, sir. He is dead, but there is his son, Friday Fletcher October Christian, just coming aboard from the next boat.”