The Quality of Mercy (25 page)

“Yes, sir, so much is true.”

“So there is no reason to suppose that it was other than accident, that the ship was wrecked in some storm, making it impossible for these people to return home?”

At this point Pike intervened. “Please tell the court the circumstances in which the ship was discovered.”

“Strange circumstances, sir.” On the captain’s face there had come a look almost of incredulity, as if even now he could not fully reconcile himself to the improbability of his account. “I will never forget it,” he said. “Out of sight of the shore she was, tilted over in the bed of a dry creek, in the midst of swamps and lagoons, where no man would ever expect to see a ship. Her name was still there, on the scroll.”

“How did the vessel get there, do you suppose?”

On Stanton’s objecting to the introduction of supposition into the evidence, Pike rephrased the question. “How, in your professional opinion, could the ship have been in that place?”

“There can only be one explanation,” Philips said. “She must have been hauled up the channel by men pulling from the banks on either side.”

“But you have testified that the bed of the creek was dry when you came upon the ship,” Stanton said. He turned and addressed the judges on the bench. “My lords, this witness’s evidence is contradictory and cannot be believed.”

Philips’s face had reddened. “Take care who you call liar, sir,” he said. “That coast is full of creeks and inlets, large and small. I know it better than most. The courses of the water are constantly changing. The creek was broad enough, it could have held deep water at one time.”

“Only one way the ship could have got there,” Pike said, with expressive looks at the jury. “And only one reason for taking it there, so far out of sight of the shore. It is obvious that the aim was to conceal all traces of the vessel. Were these the actions of men who intended to return and yield up the cargo they had stolen?”

In the course of further questioning of the witness, Stanton elicited the fact that the crew alone would not have been able to tow the ship so far. All the men available—and the women too—would have been needed for such heavy and prolonged labor.

“So,” he said, “whether hale or sick, whether black or white, all took equal part in this hauling of the ship. Whatever the purpose—and this we can only speculate about—it is very clear that this cargo, these stolen goods that my learned friend speaks of with such nonchalance, were in fact the people of the ship. They heaved on the ropes along with the others. They outnumbered the crew—they could have taken flight, but they did not. Without their cooperation the enterprise would have been impossible. A strange notion of cargo, my lords, a strange notion of theft.”

Philips stepped down and Kemp was called. He descended
from his place in the gallery and went to stand at the bar and take the oath. He related how Captain Philips, conceiving it to be his duty, had come to his London house and told him of the finding of the vessel in the wilderness of southern Florida, and of the strangeness of the ship’s position, so far from the sea and hidden from sight. The news had come as a shock to him. For twelve years he had thought the ship lost at sea with all aboard her. The loss of the ship had brought ruin to his father, who was hoping to recoup his fortunes by selling the slaves in Jamaica and returning with a cargo of sugar to sell on the Liverpool Exchange. His father’s death had followed soon after the loss of the ship. On the strength of the news brought by Philips, he had thought it probable—indeed, almost certain—that men who had taken such care to cover their tracks must have intended to take refuge in that waste and remain there. And since they could not have gone far on foot in such country, he had felt sure that the survivors would not be very distant from the place where the wreck had been found. He had decided to mount an expedition, track the miscreants down, bring them to justice.

He was aware of only one person in the courtroom as he spoke, and that was Jane Ashton, who was sitting above in the gallery, looking down at him and listening to his words. No one else there mattered much to him. He believed it was just that these remnants of the crew should be hanged for their crimes, and he hoped for a verdict to that effect. But this hope, though held with deepest sincerity, took second place. The important thing was that Jane should understand his motives, appreciate the stern and heroic part he had played.

It was inevitable that this bid for her blessing should bring about certain omissions and distortions in his account of things. He stressed the high and lonely mission of justice that had taken him so far and cost him so much. He made no mention of the hatred of his cousin Matthew that had so impelled him, nor of the urge for action he had felt, the need to escape from the general unhappiness of his life at that time, of which the hatred
had been merely a symptom, as he judged it now. Naturally he did not try to relate, then or in his later accounts to Jane, that he had been responsible for his cousin’s death, that he was still trying to fend off remorse for this, a remorse which he felt should be resisted, as it threatened to nullify the justice of his cause. Nor did he make any reference to the fact that his father had made unwise investments and would still have been bankrupt even if the ship had come safely home. But he was aware of no falsehood as he spoke. It was the truth of himself, purified of obscuring dross, that he was offering up to her.

And she, listening to the conviction that rang in his voice in that hushed courtroom, thought him entirely truthful, also very distinguished in his bearing and altogether splendid in his dark blue velvet suit. Until that moment the proceedings of the court had seemed largely theatrical to her, the judges in their bulky crimson robes and heavy wigs sitting on their high platform, several feet above the common mortality of the court, the opposing counsel with their gestures and glances, as if they were reciting parts. But when Erasmus Kemp started to give his evidence, these actors looked dusty and shoddy beside him. So strong was this impression that she did not pause to ask herself, though she was to do so very soon afterward—with the appearance of the next witness, in fact—quite how the accused men had merited such a relentless pursuit, why they should be required now, after all this time, to render up their lives, and in what way they could be thought to have benefited from their misdeeds. They had spent the years as fugitives in that desolate place.

No doubt was cast on Kemp’s account; the facts were clear and they were not in dispute. He was followed by Barber, the ship’s carpenter, who was brought into court still shackled. And it was the wasted frame of this man and his shuffling gait and the clanking of his fetters, so much in contrast to the fine figure that Erasmus had made, that raised questions in Jane’s mind that should perhaps have come earlier.

Under Stanton’s questioning, Barber confirmed that all the
people of the ship who could keep to their feet had taken part freely in towing the vessel to its last resting place. Some of the blacks had collapsed and died as they toiled, he said, and their bodies had been left there on the banks of the creek or in the water.

“There was no time to bury them—we could not help it,” he said.

“What, you would have buried them?”

“Yes, sir, so we would.”

“But this was cargo, as the court has been told.”

“No, sir, things was different by then, we had sailed with them, sir, we needed the help of them that was able-bodied to bring the ship inshore.”

“Can you describe the relations that existed at this time between the crew and these former slaves?”

Pike interposed here to object to the word “former.” The Africans were still slaves, he said; they had been made property by the fact of purchase. The crew had no right—and no power—to revoke their status.

Stanton did not pursue this argument; he allowed a brief pause, then repeated the question in more simple terms. “What was the feeling between the members of the crew and the negroes at this time?”

“We felt we was companions in misfortune, sir.”

“Companions in misfortune,” Stanton repeated with lingering emphasis. He looked to right and left at the jury on their different sides of the courtroom, allowing his face to show no hint of his pleasure at this fortunate reply; the judges never took to a smiling advocate. “Companions in misfortune,” he said again. “I beg that you will bear that phrase in mind, gentlemen.”

He had decided, after long consultation with a reluctant Ashton, not to press a charge of murder against the crew for the throwing overboard of the sick negroes, as being too unlikely to succeed. Instead he would seek to rebut the charge of piracy on
the grounds that there had been no robbery, and seek an acquittal, which would be almost as great a stroke, if they could bring it off, as it would establish that the Africans had not at any time been merchandise, had never been other than human creatures.

“Pray where was the robbery?” he asked now, addressing the judges. “Can any man say at what point in this series of events, and by what miraculous intervention, these black men and women ceased to be goods and reverted to humanity? Can we say that they were goods while lying chained below decks, goods while being cast overboard still alive, yet not goods shortly afterward when their chains were struck off and their help was asked for? Where is the evidence that these men presently on trial for their lives had intended to realize value on the black people or on the ship? If they did so intend, they took a very strange way of going about it. The fact is that the Africans were never at any time mere cargo, mere property. Their humanity was not stripped from them by the fact of purchase, as the prosecution would have us believe. The people of the crew, though not realizing this at first, came to understand it later through the experience of shared hardship. They know better now. May we not all know better now? Are we to be lesser in humanity than these very men who are being called pirates,
hostes humani generis
, enemies of the human race?”

Pike came forward to claim the right of reply, and this was accorded to him. The court was not on trial, he said, in spite of the endeavors of counsel for the defense to make it seem so. The learned and illustrious judges had not convened this court in order to have the nature of their humanity made subject to question. No hindsight, no shared experience, no subsequent change of heart, could be offered as matters affecting the issue. They must restrict themselves to the actions of the time. A particular morning on the deck of a particular ship. On that morning the master of the ship and all the members of the crew regarded the negroes as cargo, as it might be timber, or sacks of grain. He took leave to remind
the jury that piracy was only a term for sea robbery, meaning robbery within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty. To bring home the charge of piracy, it was not necessary to show what use the defendants intended to make of the stolen goods or to calculate the profit arising from the crime. Piracy
jure gentium
consisted in destroying, attacking or taking a ship, or taking any part of its tackle or cargo from the owners on the high seas, by acts of violence on the part of a body of men acting without the authorization of any state. If the crew of a vessel revolted and sought by armed force to convert the ship or cargo to their own use, this also was piracy.

Stanton expressed his thanks, with some degree of sarcasm, for this clarification, and followed this with the declaration that in point of fact there had been no revolt on the part of the crew at all.

“What?” Pike addressed himself to the jury with real or pretended astonishment. “These men rose against the master of the ship, who was set in lawful authority over them, and they murdered him and they took control of the ship and they sailed away. And yet it is asserted that there was no revolt.” He paused here, glancing round with a pantomime of bewilderment, at one with the jury and everyone in court, good people all and well-intentioned, struggling to understand this perversion of reason. “This is the logic of bedlam,” he said. “This is to turn the world on its head indeed.”

“Your lordships,” Stanton said, “if we can but set aside the connotations of the word ‘murder,’ we will be enabled to see that this was no more than a scuffle, unplanned, unexpected, occurring on the spur of the moment, without thought of consequences. There can have been no intention to kill the captain.”

One of the Admiralty commissioners now spoke for the first time. “Not much comfort for the captain in that.”

Pike nodded with an air of admiration for the shrewdness and penetration of this remark. “Indeed not, my lord.”

Stanton now begged the court’s patience and asked for the first mate of the ship, James Barton, to be called to the dock in
order to elucidate the circumstances in which the killing of the captain took place.

Barton was waiting in the Sessions Yard for such a call. Accompanied by the court attendant who had been sent to fetch him, he passed through the gate into the bail dock, where his former shipmates waited in their fetters for the verdict. This brought him, for the few moments of his passage, close before the men he had betrayed. And Hughes, standing with the others under close guard, the stench of his captivity in his nostrils, saw Barton pass, saw the peering glances, hatefully familiar, as if the mate had caught a whiff of something promising in the air, saw that he was dressed for the hearing in a good coat and a wig of pristine whiteness—no doubt purchased with his reward money—and made in that single moment of the mate’s passing a vow to his dark gods: if it was granted to him to escape death, he would find Barton, wherever he was, and would deliver that death to him, a death by strangulation …

Even had he known of this, Barton would not have been greatly troubled by it, feeling fairly sure that all the men would hang. Standing at the dock, he answered Stanton’s questions with notable assurance. He was becoming, he felt, a highly accomplished witness.

Yes, the intervention of the ship’s doctor, Mr. Matthew Paris, had sparked off the mutiny. Mr. Paris had raised his hand and shouted against it, against the jettisoning of the slaves. Upon this, Captain Thurso had drawn his pistol.