Dillon having been found and engaged, the next procedure was to appoint the assessor judges, of whom the consular instructions insisted on there being four. This weighty matter seemed to require the cooperation of the vice consul, Mr. Beaver, a highly respected quack doctor, whose principal nostrum was faith cure plus hot water. After arguing away your existence, which he always could do with extraordinary fluency, he would plunge you into a boiling bath till your imaginary skin turned a deep imaginary scarlet, and then send you home with some microscopic doses of aconite. The best that could be said of him was that he never really harmed anybody, scalded the poor for nothing, and was willing (and even pressing) to turn over serious cases to the regular practitioner, Dr. Funk.
There were twenty-seven American citizens on the consular roll of male sex, sound mind, and above twenty-one years of age. Four of them lived far from Apia, and were therefore unavailable. Two more, as known deserters from the United States navy, were considered unworthy of the judgment seat. Forged or suspected naturalization papers threw out another five. This reduced the residuum to sixteen, whose names were written on slips of paper, thrown into a pith helmet, and tumbled together. The first four withdrawn constituted the assessor judges, who were at once warned by messenger to be in attendance at the consulate at ten the next morning, or be punished for contempt.
What a stir was made in the little town as the news went round! Satterlee, the cherished, the entertained, the eagerly sought after—Satterlee, had been discovered to be a pirate! The Southern Belle was no Southern Belle at all, but the James H. Peabody! He had shipped as supercargo, putting in a thousand dollars of his own to lull Mr. Crawford's suspicions, and then had marooned the captain and mate on Ebon Island, and levanted with the ship! Heavens! what cackle, what excitement, what a furious flow of beer in every saloon along the beach! It was rumored that the great bargain-day sales might be canceled; that the goods might have to be returned; that not a penny of compensation would be paid to the unlucky purchasers. Then what a rubbing off of marks took place, what a breaking up of tell-tale cases, what a soaking off of tags! The whole eighty tons disappeared like magic, and you could not find a soul who would even confess to a packet of pins!
The trial took place in the large office room of the consulate. The big front doors stood open to the sea, where a mile away the breakers tossed and tumbled on the barrier reef. The back door was kept shut, to keep out the meaner noises of domesticity, but at intervals in the course of the trial you could hear the deliberate grinding of the consular coffee; the chasing of consular chickens; the counting of the consular wash; shrill arguments over the price of fish—a grotesque juxtaposition that seemed to make a mock of the whole proceedings.
The consul, in well-starched white clothes and pipe-clayed shoes, sat on a dais beneath the crossed flags of his country, giving the effect of an elegant and patriotic waxwork. Below him were the four assessors, sunburned, commonish, seafaring men, with enormous hands that they did not know what to do with, who moved uneasily in their chairs, and looked about for places to spit—and then didn't dare to! One, whose brawny arms far exceeded the shrunken sleeves of his jumper, unbared to view on his hairy skin the tattooed form of a naked mermaid. A table stood in the center of the uncarpeted room, with a lawyer on either side—Purdy, the goaty-haired, messy, elderly man, half-blind, sharp-voiced, rasping out his case; opposite him, Thacher, a slinky, mean-looking young man, who was reputed to have left New Zealand under a cloud. He looked what he was, a cheap lawyer's clerk, of the pinched, hungry variety one sees in gloomy anterooms. At the head of the table was Dillon, the everlasting dictatee, his dyed black whiskers drooping in the heat, who raised a fat hand from time to time as a brake on outstripping tongues. And there the captain, the cause of all this singular assembly, tilting back in his chair, or occasionally leaning over to whisper into his counsel's ear—spare, angular, careworn—with his grim mouth and resolute air, as though the soul within him refused to be cowed by such droning tomfoolery.
Beside the front door was a shabby basket-work sofa, where members of the public were entitled to sit. They would tiptoe in, these members of the public, furtively, as though expecting to be shot on sight, the bolder ones perhaps exchanging a whisper, the weaker brethren silent, and trembling if they caught an official eye. Outside, on the steps of the broad veranda, the brothers Scanlon lolled and slumbered, with pewter stars on their sweaty breasts, enjoying the deep contentment that comes with two dollars and fifty cents a day.
The trial lasted two days, but judgment was held over for the third. The case against Satterlee was complete. The San Francisco affidavits, properly made out by competent hands, were confirmed by the confession of Ah Foy, the cook, who (besides Satterlee) was the only present member of the original crew. Satterlee set up the lame defense that he had purchased the vessel from Crawford, and was therefore her actual owner. He was sworn, and gave evidence accordingly, but Purdy's cross-examination left him without a leg to stand on. He cut a pitiful figure as he floundered and lied and contradicted himself under the lash of that relentless tongue, miring himself ever deeper with explanations that did not explain, and agitated references to a "conspiracy" whose object it was to ruin him. No, the only thing to be considered was the degree of punishment that would adequately offset his crime.
On the reassembling of the Court on the morning of the third day, little Skiddy, from the majesty of the dais, summed up the case at length. It covered nine sheets of foolscap, and had cost him hours of agonizing toil. Beginning with a general rhetorical statement about the "policy of nations" and "the security of the high seas," he descended by degrees to the crime of barratry—or, in plainer English, the theft of ships. He looked at barratry from every side, and the more he looked the less he seemed to like it. It was the cradle of piracy; it destroyed the confidence of owners; barratry, if frequently repeated, would shake the whole commercial structure. A person who committed barratry would commit anything. In this manner he went on and on, reviewing the evidence of the case, destroying the whole fabric of the defense, dwelling at length on the enormity of the entire transaction. The James H. Peabody had been deliberately seized. The prisoner had lawlessly converted her, the property of another, to his own base uses. He had broken into the cargo and shamelessly sold it as his own. He could plead neither the extenuation of youth, nor ignorance, nor the urging of others. He had conceived the crime, and had carried it out single-handed. The Court could not accept the contention that Ah Foy, the Chinaman, had been in any sense a confederate or an accomplice. The Court dismissed the charge against Ah Foy. But, after mature deliberation, its unanimous judgment was that John Forster, alias Satterlee, was guilty. The Court sentenced John Forster, alias Satterlee, to ten years' penal servitude.
Purdy popped up with some question as to the scale of court fees. Thacher winked at Dillon, and began to roll up his papers. Skiddy descended from the dais and became an ordinary human being again. The captain, leaning forward in his chair, gazed absently out to sea. The Scanlon brothers appeared, officiously wanting to know what they were to do next. Skiddy was unable to tell them, except that they were to stay by the prisoner until he could consult with the authorities. He put on his hat, lit a cigar, and forthwith departed.
The President was kind, the Chief Justice urbane. The income of the kingdom barely sufficed for their two salaries, and they judged it incumbent (as they could do nothing else) to be as polite as possible to the American consul. But jails? Oh, no, they couldn't oblige Skiddy with a new jail! He was welcome to what they had, but it wasn't in reason that he could expect anything better. Skiddy said it was a hog-pen. The President retorted that the king's allowance was eight months in arrears, and that the western end of the island was still in rebellion. Jails cost money, and they had no money. Skiddy declared it was an outrage, and asked them if they approved of putting a white man into a bare stockade, with none of the commonest conveniences or decencies of life? They were both shocked at the suggestion. The pride of race is very strong in barbarous countries. A white man is still a white man even if he has committed all the crimes in the calendar. The Chief Justice very seriously pointed out that it would disgrace them all to confine Satterlee in the stockade, and force him to mix with the dregs of the native population. Surely Mr. Skiddy could not consider such a thing for a moment. Mr. Skiddy wanted to know, then, what the deuce he was to do? The Chief Justice benignantly shook his head. He had no answer to that question. The President murmured suavely, that perhaps next year, with an increased hut tax, and the suppression of the rebellion, the Government might see its way to——