“The next day I received word she had died. The executive officer was on board and allowed me to go to bury her body.
“I hated this officer, Ensign Lazar, for his cruelty to me and when I saw an opportunity to injure him I was happy. I filed half-way through the hoist wire in his turret. The accident happened, as I knew it must; but unfortunately for me while I was filing the wire rope Mr. Perry came into the turret; he heard me at work and called. In my haste to leave before he could detect me, I turned in the darkness to escape. The locket was in the pocket of my blouse which I had laid on the turret floor. I heard it fall on the metal deck as I grasped my clothes, but there was no time to regain it. Afterward I risked detection in getting it from Mr. Perry’s room, but I soon found that Ensign Lazar had already seen it and recognized the locket I had shown him, and knew at once that I had been guilty of injuring the turret. He told me if I didn’t want to go to jail for a long term of years I must do as he told me. I feared him. He first made me try to injure the ‘Vidette’s’ machinery on the night those arms were captured. Then I was wounded and before I had recovered entirely I was taken ashore with him and forced to sleep in the cellar of the legation. He told me that on a certain night I was to open the boxes, all but one, and that men would come through a tunnel below the cellar and carry the Colt guns away, giving me rocks to put in their places.
“I heard one of the natives who received the arms tell another where they were to be taken, and when Mr. Perry discovered that the boxes were full of rocks and that the arms were gone, I told him what I had done and where they had been taken.
“I didn’t want to desert, but Mr. Lazar told me I had betrayed him and that if I didn’t he would find a way to dispose of me. He made all the arrangements and hid me in the house of a friend of his; then last night they took me on board a steamer, where O’Neil found me.”
The judge advocate was on his feet before the witness’s voice had died into nothingness.
“I object to this testimony,” he cried impetuously, making a last attempt to reinstate himself and prove his case against the accused. “By his own evidence, this man is a criminal; his testimony is malicious and should not be received in evidence. He stands a would-be deserter from the navy.”
The president of the court hesitated. The truth in the judge advocate’s words was impressive.
“Recall Mr. Lazar,” he ordered, after a moment’s thought. “He should be here to hear this evidence and clear up this imputation against his good name in the navy.”
The court orderly was sent to summon Lazar again before the court.
The two midshipmen sat anxiously watching the door for the appearance of their enemy. They knew him to be a clever rogue. This situation had never occurred to them. Would Lazar deny Craig’s testimony and assert that this sick cringing sailor was alone guilty of the crime? Craig’s testimony came as a surprise to the lads; they had not suspected that he was the owner of the locket.