Then the jury, weighing all that had been said, put together its twelve heads, while such stillness prevailed in the court that a man could hear his neighbor's breathing. It seemed to those whose lives were at stake that the deliberations took as many hours as in reality they took minutes. There are times when every grain of sand in the glass seems to loiter in falling and to drift through the air like thistledown, as if unwilling to come to rest with its fellows below. Yet the sand is falling as fast as ever, though a man whose life is weighing in the balance can scarcely believe it; so at last the jury made an end of its work, which after all had taken little enough time in consideration of the matter they must decide.
"You have reached with due and faithful care a verdict in this matter?" quoth His Lordship.
"We have, my lord."
"You will then declare your verdict to the Court."
"Of these fourteen prisoners at the bar of justice, my lord, we find one and all guilty of the felonies and piracies that are charged against them, save only one man." In the deathly silence that fell upon the room the name sounded forth like the stroke of a bell. "We acquit, my lord, Philip Marsham."
There and then Philip Marsham parted company with the men of the Rose of Devon. His hands shook when he rose a free man, and when many spoke to him in all friendliness he could find no voice to reply.
Never again did he see their faces, but he heard long afterward of how, a week from the day of their trial, they went down the river to Wapping in wherries, with the bright sun shining on the ships and on the shore where a great throng had assembled to see them march together up the stairs to Execution Dock.
Though they had always made themselves out to appear great and fierce men, yet on that last day they again showed themselves cravens at heart—except Tom Jordan. The Old One, stern, cold, shrewd, smiled at his fellows and said, "It is to be. May God have mercy on me!" And though he stood with the black cap over his eyes and the noose round his neck, he never flinched.
As for Martin Barwick, his face grey with fear, he strove to break away, and cried out in English and in Spanish, and called on the Virgin. Sadly, though, had he fallen from the teachings of the Church, and little did his cries avail him! He came at the last to the end he had feared from the first; and his much talk of hanging was thus revealed to have been in a manner prophecy, although it sprang from no higher oracle than his own cowardly heart.