Neil Hanson - The Custom of the Sea

Laverty placed his bony finger against the side of his neck. ‘Dudley told me he put the knife in there and the boy never moved,’ he said.

Mr Tilly rose to cross-examine. ‘Have you heard the captain say how long they were in the open boat?’

‘No, sir, I cannot say I did.’

‘Then do you know for a fact that they were in the boat for over twenty days?’

‘I never heard them say that,’ Laverty said. ‘I never had any personal intercourse with them.’

‘They voluntarily went to the collector of customs?’

‘Yes.’

‘And did you hear the collector examining them?’

Laverty paused, as if examining the question for traps. ‘No, sir, all I heard was an ordinary conversation between Dudley and the collector in the Long Room.’

‘I have nothing further to ask,’ Tilly said.

Genn turned to address the bench. ‘The solicitor to the Treasury has been instructed to carry on the prosecution,’ he said. ‘He has applied for a remand in custody.’

Tilly again rose to his feet. ‘May it please the bench,’ he said, mopping his brow, ‘I wish to ask you to allow bail for the prisoners.’

Liddicoat’s face showed his surprise. ‘And are you prepared to produce bail?’

‘I am informed by Captain Dudley that any reasonable bail should be given.’ He paused. ‘The reasons I make the application are on the grounds that what evidence has been adduced has been volunteered by the prisoners themselves. There has been no attempt in any way to conceal the facts of the case. Further, I would point out that these poor fellows had been twenty days in an open boat without food and without water before they did what they did.

‘There is no wish on their part to shirk inquiry. They have been actuated with no other idea than that of having the facts of the case brought before the tribunal of their country. On all these grounds I would ask you to admit them to bail.’

Liddicoat and his fellow magistrates consulted together for some time. As Tom stood there watching them, gripping the rail of the dock, he again felt tears welling up in his eyes. Although he felt foolish and embarrassed at weeping in front of this courtroom full of people, still he could not prevent the tears from rolling down his face.

Liddicoat rapped the bench with his gavel. ‘We have given the point serious consideration, but we regret that the circumstances of the case prevent us from granting the request for bail. The case is adjourned until Thursday of this week.’

There were mutterings from the public section and then a woman shouted, ‘Shame on you, Henry Liddicoat. Have they not suffered enough?’

The cry was taken up by the crowd outside. The mayor flushed and spread his hands, then directed a venomous look at Sergeant Laverty.

Tears still running down his face, Tom and the others were marched back through the streets to the borough lock-up. Tilly accompanied them. ‘If we are not to be allowed bail, Captain Dudley, the least we can do is ensure that your accommodation is rather more comfortable than the stinking cellars of this building.’

He raised his voice. ‘Superintendent Bourne?’

Rolling like a ship on the ocean as he walked, the rotund police superintendent had ambled over from the courtroom just in front of them, deep in conversation with the reporter from the Western Morning News .

‘Mr Tilly?’ His speech was as ponderous as his gait.

‘Superintendent, it is quite intolerable that after all the privations that these men have endured on the high seas, they are now incarcerated in your foul dungeons.’

‘They are charged with murder, Mr Tilly.’

‘That is a mere technicality, Superintendent. Would you throw them in gaol with common criminals?’

The superintendent hesitated. ‘What other accommodation would you propose?’

‘You have an apartment within this building, do you not?’

‘I do, but I hardly see—’

‘Then surely these men can be accommodated in one of the rooms there.’

‘I — I suppose they can.’

‘And the three of them will be accommodated together?’

As the superintendent again hesitated, Sergeant Laverty intervened, his face reddening with anger. ‘I cannot allow that. These men could then concoct whatever story they wished.’

Tom’s fists clenched in anger, but Tilly laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘Really, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘These men have been at sea for almost six weeks since their rescue. If it had been their wish to concoct a story, surely that would have been time enough? Yet even you must admit they have exhibited no desire to do anything other than utter the plain, unvarnished truth.’

He held Laverty’s gaze and eventually the policeman muttered something indistinct and turned away.

Tilly touched the tips of his index fingers together as if ticking off the first point on a list. ‘And then there is the matter of food. These men were starved to the point of death. Look at them now. They are still little more than walking skeletons. They need decent food, not prison slops.’ He turned to Tom. ‘Do you have the means to pay for meals?’

‘I have enough to pay for meals for all three of us.’

‘You have no objection to food being sent in for them, Superintendent? Mr Dudley will pay for it.’

The police chief raised his shoulders in a faint shrug. ‘I have no objection.’

Tilly swung back to face Tom again. ‘I bid you good-day, Captain Dudley. I shall call on you in the morning when we shall begin preparations for your defence.’

‘Thank you for what you have done for us today, Mr Tilly, but God’s truth is the only preparation I need.’

The lawyer smiled. ‘I envy you, Captain Dudley. I shall need considerably more than that. Until the morning, then.’

The superintendent’s apartments were on the first floor of the building. If cramped, the room into which Tom, Brooks and Stephens were ushered was at least dry and airy, but the iron bars on the window were a constant reminder of their plight.

Whatever doubts there had been in Falmouth about the failure of the men to draw lots had now been forgotten. Collections were already being taken in the streets and taverns to pay Tilly’s fees for their defence, and there was only sympathy and support for the three men, coupled with hostility to those responsible for keeping them behind bars. But whatever a seafaring community might have thought, they were soon made aware that metropolitan opinion would be very different.

Along with the meals Tom had ordered, supplied by a neighbouring inn, the turnkey brought them the local newspaper. In addition to reporting their appearance before the bench in minute detail, it also reprinted the editorials on the case in the London papers.

If Tom was surprised that the case of the Mignonette should command national coverage, he was horrified by its nature. The London Standard set the tone.

The mere outlines of the tragedy are so revolting that we might under other circumstances have set it down as the ravings of a brain disordered by hunger and hardship, but we fear that this last comfort is denied us.

The picked bones of the cabin boy were lying by the side of those who had devoured him when the Moctezum a came alongside the boat, and the men have told the story with such circumstantiality that they will find it difficult to modify their cold-blooded narrative in any of its most damning features when they appear in the dock to stand their trial for the murder of Richard Parker.

Evidently they expected no such episode at the end of their voyage and until the law has decided whether three men are justified, in order to save their own lives, in taking that of a fourth, we may forbear to discuss the ethics of a tragedy the callousness of which it is hard to redeem by any casuistry.