Sir Peter Hawkshaw was the next witness. It was plain from the start that he desired to help Giles, and likewise that he knew very little of the affair until it was all over. But he proved a most entertaining, if discursive witness.
Sir Peter evidently thought the witness-box was his own quarter-deck, and he proceeded to harangue the court in his best manner as a flag officer. He talked of everything except the case; he gave a most animated description of the fight between the Ajax on our side and the Indomptable and Xantippe on the other, praising Giles Vernon’s gallantry at every turn. He also aired his views on the subject of the flannel shirts furnished to the navy, alleging that some rascally contractors ought to be hanged at the yard-arm for the quality supplied; and wound up by declaring, with great gusto, that if an officer in his Majesty’s service desired to marry a young lady, it was an act of spirit to carry her off, and for his part, fellows of that sort were the kind he should select to lead a boarding party, while the sneaking, law-abiding fellows should be under the hatches when the ship was cleared for action.
Sir Peter’s rambling but vigorous talk was not without its effect, upon which I think he had shrewdly calculated. In vain counsel for the crown tried to check him; Sir Peter bawled at them to pipe down, and remarked aloud of the senior counsel who had been most active in trying to suppress him,—
“That lawyer fellow is three sheets in the wind!” Page [201]
“That lawyer fellow is three sheets in the wind, with the other one a-flapping!”
The judges, out of respect to him, made no great effort to subdue him, and he had the satisfaction of telling his story his own way. When the prosecution took him in hand, they found, though, that he could very well keep to the subject-matter, and they did not succeed in getting anything of the slightest consequence out of him. When he stepped down, I saw that he had in reality done much more good to Giles’ cause than I had, although he knew little about the facts, and I knew all.
Then came Lady Hawkshaw’s testimony. Sir Peter’s was not a patch on it. Like him, she really had no material evidence to give, but, with a shrewdness equal to his, she made a very good plea for the prisoner. She began with a circumstantial account of her own marriage to Sir Peter, in which the opposition of her family was painted in lurid hues. In vain was she again and again checked; she managed to tell her tale against the vigorous objections of the prosecutors, and the somewhat feeble and perfunctory rebukes from the bench. The jury, however, were plainly so interested in it, that no serious attempt was made to stop her—not that it would have availed anything, for Lady Hawkshaw was not used to stopping for any one.
“No doubt my family could have hounded Sir Peter for marrying me,” she announced in the beginning, “but my family, your honors, is an honorable one, and would not condescend to nasty tricks like—” Here she fixed her great black eyes on Sir Thomas Vernon, who smiled blandly and took snuff.
“And as for a man expecting opposition in a girl he is willing to marry, I ask your honors, does a man exist who can believe, until it is proved to him beyond cavil, that there is a woman alive who would not jump for joy to marry him?”