The “probation” or taking of testimony ended. Sir David Dalrymple, her majesty’s solicitor, rose to “speech the assize” on behalf of the prosecution. “Forgive me,” he blandly began, after complimenting them as persons “so discerning and faithful”, “if, after a sederunt (sitting) of twelve hours ... I detain you a little longer in recapitulating what has passed, with some few observations, I hope not improper, before ye enclose.” Those “few observations”, invariably the preface of the complete bore! For two hours more this fellow rehashed the evidence, in heads and subheads until a mathematician would have endangered his reason keeping count thereof. What a point he made of Captain Thomas Bowrey’s code, found on the seizing of the ship! A regular devil’s document it was. As a matter of fact it was nothing more than a meager little forerunner of the ordinary commercial code of to-day. The whole matter, he asserted, was “as clear as sunshine.” Rather as clear as mud.
Midnight had chimed from the town clock when counsel for the defense took the floor. The candles guttered in their sockets, making jumping blotches of shadow upon the faces of the judges, heavily sunk in their seats, fighting with sleep; in the blackness beneath the bench the macer drooped forward in his chair; Dalrymple left the assize in various postures of exhaustion, some with their heads thrown far back, yawning at the ceiling, others dozing upon their knuckles crooked perspiringly on walking sticks; the panels, or prisoners, hung on doggedly to the bar rail, or squatted defiantly upon the floor, their tropic-tanned faces seamed with the drear sojourn in the Tolbooth,—snared sea birds cruelly caged. In the throng of spectators, nature had triumphantly overcome the curiosity of many and had whisked them away to the realms, somber or sparkling, of dreams; little children lay prone on their mothers’ knees, their locks wet against their fair foreheads, sweet and lovely flowers in this stagnant pool of human passion.
No record has been kept of the speech of the defense; we can easily think, though, from the splendid fight they had maintained, that they did not weaken in this last trench, this so hopeless and shattered barricade.
The trial ended.
The assize was turned loose with orders to come back the next day but one with their verdict, “under pain of three hundred marks.” After wandering all over town for a couple of days, the fifteen good men and true strolled back to court at the time appointed, and gave in the following verdict: “They (the assize), by plurality of votes, find that there is one clear witness as to the piracy, robbery and murder libelled; and that there are accumulative and concurring presumptions proven for the piracy and robbery so libelled; but find that John Reynolds, second mate of the said ship, was ashore at the time libelled.”
So Reynolds would have been “exculpated” after all! What do their honors think of that?
Who could the “one clear witness” have been?
And how shall we salute the anonymous minority who did not subscribe to the verdict?
The quietness which lasted while the verdict was formally sealed was broken by the precise tones of David Forbes, one of the lawyers for the defense. A last blow for his sailors? No. He is telling the court that he is attorney for the Scotch African-Indian company and in their name desires to enter protest against the setting over to the Crown of the ship Worcester and her cargo. Thus one of the little kittens of this narrative jumps from the bag where she has so carefully been kept.
The lawyers for the defense wholly or in part—at any rate considerably—came into the case in the pay of the Scotch African-Indian company!