Neil Hanson - The Custom of the Sea

Huddleston swept his hand across the bench in front of him, brushing away that possibility. ‘The other course is a Special Verdict, whereby the jury find all the facts of the case and refer to the court to say what offence in law was committed. It is not very familiar in modern days but is one which I find repeatedly in the old books, and it is the course that I feel inclined to adopt.’

Collins rose to his feet at once. ‘My Lord, I am powerless to consent to this.’

‘I do not ask you to,’ Huddleston said. ‘I shall take it upon myself to do it.’ He turned to the jurors and bared his teeth in a smile. ‘Members of the jury, the facts of this case are not in dispute, but as you have seen, there is a difference of opinion on the points of law arising from it. I would like to offer you a way to spare yourselves the pain of hearing again the awful sentence of death pronounced.’

He paused, giving them time to recollect the previous day’s events. ‘It is within your rights to return a Special Verdict instead, in which you, the jury, establish the facts of the case and then leave it to a judge or judges to rule on the points of law and thereby determine the guilt or innocence of the defendants. These men’s best chance of having the legal opinion of their eminent counsel considered is to follow the course I have just outlined.’

Neither he nor, surprisingly, Collins told them that they were quite at liberty to reject the idea. Having effectively dismissed the defence case from consideration, Huddleston then allowed the prosecution to begin presenting its evidence. Brooks was the first to take the stand. His answer to Charles’s first question to him provoked Huddleston to a deep, theatrical sigh.

‘Are you thirty-nine years old?’

‘No, thirty-eight last May. That was a mistake of mine.’

Charles began to lead Brooks through his testimony but Huddleston repeatedly intervened. As Brooks was recounting the events following the sinking of the Mignonette , Huddleston interjected, ‘How far do you suppose you were from shore at the time of the sinking?’

Brooks looked blank. ‘I could not say, I am no navigator.’

‘But you knew where you were?’

‘The Captain and mate did, I did not.’

The judge lapsed into silence, shaking his head.

The courtroom was still as Brooks told the rest of his by-now well-polished tale, culminating in the death and dismemberment of the boy.

Collins rose to cross-examine. Brooks watched him approach the witness box with the same enthusiasm he had shown when the shark was circling the dinghy.

‘Now, by the eighteenth or nineteenth day,’ Collins said, ‘you have told us you were ravenous for food, or rather for liquid. The thirst was worse than the hunger, was it not?’

‘Much worse. A great many days we were compelled to drink our own water. The effect was very bad. Our lips blackened and our tongues were parched up like stones.’

‘You were all very bad, I suppose. You must have been in a fearful state at that time, all of you?’

‘Yes, we were all very bad.’

‘I do not know whether you were quite as bad as those two men.’

As Brooks hesitated, Huddleston intervened, ‘He has already said he was better than them.’

‘I’m grateful to Your Lordship.’ Collins turned back to Brooks. ‘And for some days they could not lie down or stand up?’

‘No, they could not rest, they had such aches and pains. We had sores all over our bodies and Dudley and Stephens’s legs were swollen dreadfully as far as the knees. I had boots but they had none, and they suffered more than I did.’

Collins nodded. ‘Now you said, what I have no doubt is true, “Except for the death of the boy I think we should have died of hunger and thirst.”’

‘Yes.’

Huddleston again interrupted, the edge in his voice betraying his testiness. ‘No, you said except for the sustenance you had from the boy, “Except for the body of the boy, we would not have survived to be picked up.”’

Collins once more bowed to his lordship. ‘I see you have also said when sworn before the magistrates that Captain Dudley was a good skipper and you found him a kind and good captain.’

‘Yes.’

Huddleston was now drumming his fingers on the bench.

‘You told us that you yourself dissented from the casting of lots,’ Collins said.

‘Yes, I could not agree to it. My heart would not let me. I said, “Let us all die together. I should not like anyone to kill me, and I should not like to kill anyone else”.’ The numerous repetitions of his story for freak-show customers had greatly improved Brooks’ delivery, which was now much more fluent than it had been in the Falmouth courtroom.

‘Did the boy consent to it, or was he asked?’

‘I am sure I could not say now.’

‘But there were no lots drawn?’

‘No.’

‘The boy had been at the bottom of the boat some hours, I believe. Did he appear to be dying?’

‘He was very bad. He was very quiet in the boat, he did not say anything at all scarcely.’

‘You said before the magistrates — and I suppose it is true — that to the best of your judgement he appeared to be dying. He was lying with his face on his arm, I believe, not speaking or taking any notice of anything for a great many hours. Did it appear to you that the boy was likely to die sooner than any of you other three?’

‘He seemed weakest. I could not say.’

‘When you saw the captain putting the knife into the boy, I take it for granted there was no sail in sight?’

‘No, there was not.’

Collins paused and raised an eyebrow. Brooks had not argued with his assertion that he had seen Tom put the knife into the boy, but the lawyer did not pursue the point. It was a strange omission; if he could have shown that Brooks was as complicit as Stephens in the act, one of the pillars of the prosecution case would have fallen.

‘You could not resist the sight of the blood,’ Collins said. ‘I believe you asked for some, you were in such a state?’

‘I could not, I was obliged to ask for some.’

‘Horrible as it was, you were obliged to have some?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you were reduced to feeding upon the heart and the liver of the boy. And for those four days was life kept in you by this unfortunate boy’s body?’

‘Yes, no doubt it was, sir. I believe so.’

Huddleston had been growing increasingly restive at Collins’s tone and line of questioning, and his patience was now exhausted. He interrupted again: ‘Mr Collins, we have covered this ground already in ample detail. Can we now move on?’

Collins lips tightened, but he kept his voice even. ‘As Your Lordship pleases.’ He bowed and resumed his seat.

After Brooks had left the witness box, one of the sailors from the Moctezuma was called to give his evidence. Their ship had received orders and sailed for Hamburg two weeks previously but Julius Wiese and Christopher Drewe, the two crewmen who had examined the dinghy after it was brought on board, were required as Crown witnesses and had been left behind.

‘I saw in the dinghy some small pieces of flesh and one little piece of a rib,’ Wiese said. ‘I could not tell what sort of flesh or bone it was. We were ordered by Captain Simonsen to throw everything overboard.’

Huddleston curtailed Wiese’s evidence and Christopher Drewe was not called at all. The Falmouth pilot, Gustavus Lowry, then began to testify to what Dudley had told him on board the Moctezuma . ‘I asked him who had killed the boy, Dudley said, “I did”, and before he did it he offered up a prayer to the Lord to forgive him if he did any rash act. I asked how he killed him. He said by putting the knife under the ear. They had about a quart of blood. He and a mate had the first drink then he looked around and saw the other man coming for his share. They cut the boy’s clothes off and opened him, took out and ate his heart and liver, and lived on him until they were picked up.’