The Quality of Mercy (26 page)

As always, in the desire to be on good terms with authority and to establish confidence in his own veracity, Barton went too far. “It is my belief he was hintending to shoot the doctor,” he said.

“We are not interested in your beliefs,” the High Lord of the Admiralty said, with a bad-tempered snap of the jaw. Time was passing, and he had already decided on how he would direct the jury. “Tell the court what happened next.”

“Yes, sir, beggin’ yer pardon. Before he had time to fire, Cavana threw an iron spike and it struck him in the right eye and sent
him staggerin’ back. Then he fired, but he was off balance—he aimed into the midst of the men. The shot hit Tapley in the leg an’ he fell to the deck.”

“Cavana, Tapley—these men are dead now?” Stanton asked.

“Yes, sir. Tapley died aboard ship when his wound got hinfectious, an’ Cavana died later, in Florida.”

“What happened after Tapley fell?”

“The capt’n couldn’t hardly see, sir. There was blood streamin’ down his face. He was fumblin’ with the pistol, tryin’ to reload. I dunno if he reloaded, but he never fired. Rimmer stepped forward and stabbed him to the heart.”

“Rimmer is among the accused,” Stanton said. “You see how it was, gentlemen. A ship blown off course, disease below decks, desperate and driven men, a fortuitous intervention on the doctor’s part. He was not seeking to overthrow the captain’s authority, only to protest at the barbarous crime—yes, I persist in calling it so—that was taking place before his eyes. In the bloody scramble that followed, there was no concerted action on the part of the crew. One of them had been brought to the ground, there was fear among them of the captain’s pistol. They were left in command of the ship, so much is true, but that was never their design.”

Pike had only two questions to put to Barton.

“The captain went armed, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that usual on a merchant vessel?”

“No, sir, it is not, but there was feelin’ agin Capt’n Thurso. He felt hisself to be threatened. I was with the capt’n, sir, hunnerd percent. Barton is always faithful to them that is set above us.”

“Well, it does you credit. Thank you, that will be all.”

When Barton had stepped down, Stanton called his final witness, the ship’s interpreter, James Porter. He had wanted this man’s testimony to follow close upon that of Barton, who had, as anticipated, striven to make the captain appear the victim of premeditated violence.

Having established Porter’s condition as a free man, his
situation aboard the ship as belonging neither to the slaves nor to the crew and the fact that he had been present on deck throughout the events of that distant morning and had witnessed the intervention of the surgeon and the violence that followed upon this, Stanton asked him if his memory of these matters was clear and obtained the assurance that it was.

“And will you tell the court the precise moment at which the captain drew his pistol?”

“It was immediately upon the doctor calling out, sir.”

“And he had raised the pistol and pointed it, he was intending to fire?”

“Yes, sir, it was clear he was intending to fire.”

“Was any move to harm the captain made before he raised the pistol?”

“No, sir, none.”

Stanton asked no further questions, allowing this emphatic negative to resound, as he hoped, in the minds of both judges and jury.

When the witness had stepped down, Pike embarked on the case for the prosecution. The facts were not in dispute. And it was facts they had to deal with, not sentiments, not pious wishes for a better world. There was no doubt whatever that at the time these events took place, both the captain and the crew regarded the negroes as property, as goods, with a precise and ascertainable value, a value determined by the most reliable indicator known to us, what people were willing to pay for them, the price per head they could command at Kingston market. It made no difference whether they were well or sick; while there was the breath of life in them they retained their value. At the moment that these men rose against their captain and took unlawful possession of the cargo, thereby depriving the owners, represented here today by Mr. Erasmus Kemp, whose moving testimony they had heard, at that same moment they became guilty of an act of piracy. In any other light than this it could not be regarded. And the penalty for piracy, when accompanied by violence, was death.

Pike paused on this, looking from side to side at the jury in their narrow enclosures. The decisive moment had arrived. “Honorable members of the jury,” he said, “the defending counsel has sought to portray the murder of the captain as something not intended, as being in the nature of an accident. But it was no accident, gentlemen. You heard the testimony of the first mate, James Barton.
There was a feeling against him
. Those were the words used. He went armed, against all custom and usage. Why did he do so? Because he knew that these men were waiting for an opportunity to rebel against him and do him harm. Let me remind you—and it is not disputed by the defense—that the first wounding, the first act of aggression, was not committed by the captain but by one of the seamen, the man named Cavana, who threw the spike that destroyed the captain’s right eye. Where was the need for the man named Rimmer, at present awaiting sentence, to deliver a death blow with his knife? The captain could have been overpowered and made captive. These were not men urged on by legitimate grievance. This was a mob, gentlemen, driven by hatred of authority, by envy of those fortunate enough to be possessed of property. If you find in favor of the defendants, you will be laying down a precedent of utmost danger—you will be delivering the rule of law into the hands of the mob.”

He ended there and withdrew to his place in the court. Stanton, making the final address for the defense, summarized the arguments of earlier, reverting to the scrambling and haphazard nature of the business, denying that there had been an act of robbery in any sense in which the term could be understood. He made an impassioned plea to the jury, appealing to common humanity, dwelling on the phrase that Barber had used, “companions in misfortune.” He asked them to imagine the state of mind of the crew on that morning, half starved, exhausted after managing the ship through days of bad weather, engaged in a task they knew in their hearts to be hideously wrong, under the orders of a brutal and despotic captain who would visit savage punishment on them at the smallest sign of dissent. Then the
surgeon’s appearance, the cry, the hand raised to heaven. It must have seemed, to these driven men, like a divine intervention.

Stanton paused now to gather himself for the peroration. He could see nothing on the faces of judges or jury that might indicate the nature of their feelings or thoughts, but this, in his experience, was almost invariably the case.

“And then, what did they do then?” he demanded. “Did they attack the captain? No, they did not. All they did was to desist, to pause in their task, no more than that. It is not true that the first act of aggression came from the crew. You have heard the testimony of the ship’s interpreter, James Porter. The first act of aggression was that of the captain, in drawing his pistol. Before this, no harm came to anyone. It is clear that there was no initial intention of harm on the part of the crew. Where is the conspiracy in this, where the concerted uprising? Their only crime was to listen to the dictates of a higher law. I beseech the court to grant true justice to these men, the justice all of us here present would hope for in this world and the next, that which is tempered with mercy.”

On this he fell silent and returned to his place in the court. The High Lord of the Admiralty conferred briefly with his colleagues on the bench, all of whom nodded their heads in agreement. Then he addressed himself to the jury. He pointed out that while it was true that in England the offense of piracy had not been defined in any statute, a great deal of legislation had been enacted dealing with the punishment of robbers at sea. He referred them to the two most recent Piracy Acts, those of 1699 and 1721, which had further defined and amplified the nature of this felony. He would take leave to deliver the essence of the matter shorn of needless complications. If, in any place where the Lords of the Admiralty had jurisdiction, the mariner of any ship should violently dispossess the master and afterward carry away the ship itself or any of the goods aboard her, that was robbery and piracy and carried with it, if proved, a sentence of death. They did not need to concern themselves with the nature of the cargo, or whether there
was intention to return, or with any subsequent relations between the crew members and the negroes. The law was very clear. Was there a mutiny? Was there violent dispossession of the master? Was the vessel carried off? They should decide on their verdict in the light of these questions.

Almost as soon as the presiding judge began his direction of the jury, Ashton knew with intense disappointment that the case was lost. It came as no surprise, though with an increase of bitterness, when the jury, after conferring briefly among themselves, standing together in the body of the court, brought in a verdict of guilty, without reference to mitigating circumstances and with no recommendation to mercy.

The crew members were led in from the bail dock to take their places before the bench. They stood facing the robed figures raised above them, whose faces and great wigs only were visible to them above the nosegays that had been placed on the table to sweeten the air and protect the judges from the stench and foul breath.

The courtroom was silenced by the crier with the time-honored words: “My Lords, the King’s Justices, strictly charge and command all manner of persons to keep silence while sentence of death is passing on the prisoners at the bar.”

However, there was still a surprise to come, and it was contained in the manner of the sentencing. The Lord Admiral did not rise immediately but remained seated and spoke to the court as a whole. “We, through the powers vested in us by the grace of His Royal Highness, King George the Third, do represent the power of the law but do also represent the mercy of the law, and in this blend lies the majesty of the law and also its mystery, as not lying within the common prediction. We hereby acquit and pardon the men Morgan and Hughes, who were for different reasons not present on deck at the time of the mutiny and therefore took no direct part in it. These men may walk free from the court.”

The two were immediately led away to have their fetters struck off by the turnkeys in the Yard. The Justice waited for some
moments until quiet was restored, then got to his feet. He laid the black cloth over the crown of his wig and observed an impressive pause before speaking directly to the men standing below him, who waited dumbly for the words they knew would signal their death. In this shared knowledge they stood side by side, enfeebled by the weeks in prison, exhausted by the weight of their shackles, convicted of a crime too distant for them to recognize. Only Rimmer and Barber made the effort to raise their eyes to the figure standing above them; the others kept their heads bowed. And in the contrast made by this wretchedness with the solemn ritual of the court, the august judges in their scarlet apparel, the rhetoric of the advocates, the silver mace, emblem of authority, lying among the nosegays on the table, the Lord High Admiral’s remarks about the majesty and mystery of the law were given abundant illustration.

The law is that ye shall return from hence to the place whence ye came, and from thence to the place of execution, where ye shall hang by the neck till the body be dead, dead, dead. And the Lord have mercy on your souls
.

Bitterly disappointed as he was, and enraged by the verdict, Ashton lost no time in quitting the courtroom, and Jane was obliged to hasten away with him. He was not sufficiently in possession of himself to stay for any words with Stanton, a discourtesy he afterward regretted; his friend had made a good case, the blame was not his but that of the world at large, as represented by the judges and the jury. This hasty retreat of brother and sister left Kemp feeling obscurely cheated, though of what he could not easily have said; there could have been no exchange of words with Jane, not at such a time, not when her brother had suffered such a defeat and he himself was dressed in victory.

The judges had left the bench and mounted to the upper floor to be disrobed, but Pike was still in the courtroom, and Kemp made his way toward the lawyer with the intention of expressing his pleasure at the verdict and his congratulations on the way the case had been conducted. He had never taken much to Pike, while admitting his quality as an advocate. But now, as he approached, it came to him that the suitable thing was to suggest sharing a bottle together and drinking to their success.

Pike showed every sign of pleasure at the suggestion. “There is the George, just round the corner, in Ludgate Street,” he said. “It is a tolerable place. I have used it before.”

It was only when the two of them were seated together over a bottle of Madeira that Kemp began to express his thanks and congratulations. “I must say, you chose your words extremely well,” he said. “And not only the words but the right time to utter them.”

“Long practice, sir.” Pike smiled, clearly pleased at the compliment.

“I was sorry, though, to see Hughes and Morgan get off scot-free. It is the merest quibble to suggest that they were not part of the mutiny.”

“We may owe that to Mr. Stanton’s final plea, though not in the way he intended it.”

An expression had appeared on the lawyer’s face as he spoke that Kemp had seen there not infrequently before and did not much care for, a look that went with the tone of his voice: amused, sardonic, in a way regretful.

“How do you mean?” he asked, with a certain coldness.

“Well, you will remember that he urged the court to show mercy as they themselves would wish for mercy? Perhaps you did not glance at the Lord High Admiral’s face as these words were uttered.”

“No, as a matter of fact I did not.”

“He was not pleased, sir, he was not pleased at all. He did not care to be included in that way, lumped together with common mortals. He sits in judgment, you see, he delivers the sentence. While he is up there on the bench in his robes of office he is not in need of mercy. It is those below him who are in need of that—in sore need, often enough. No, I think Stanton made a mistake there. It is one often made by zealous reformers—they are too set on benefiting the human race, they forget to make allowance for divergent views of what is beneficial.”