Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/178

 Why Thomas Bram ¡Vas Found Guilty. care where you have been or what you have done." Then the steward, who saw more of all the persons aboard than any other one, heard the two mates quarrelling, and the first mate's voice saying, " That d—d sarcastic talk of yours is the only thing I would kill a man for; " and upon the second mate's replying, the first mate's voice said, " Don't you get excited." . The days spent on board by the first mate and the steward seem to have made them somewhat familiar with each other, for the first mate said to the steward one day about the captain : " Here is a man who has a good wife and is not deserving of her." He then spoke of the captain's money : " Some other sport will dash his money up against the wall." " But he didn't explain it that way, but he explained it vulgar," said the steward, as he told the story. In the afternoon of Monday, the thirteenth of July, the steward was down in the main cabin and saw the captain standing before the pantry door drinking; but what, or how much, he did not say. Mrs. Nash was in the chart-room at the time. That evening, about seven o'clock, the captain and his wife walked on deck together. The first mate spoke to them, and upon the captain's say ing something and walking away, the first mate was noticed by the steward to look offended, and heard to say: "That ain't natural." The steward said that when the captain's back was turned, the first mate looked at the captain from head to foot with an angry scowl. The captain and his wife went below. The chart-room was lighted, and the cap tain sat there reading. The lamp in the chart-room did not burn well, and Mrs. Nash brought it into the main cabin to fix it. The steward was there and fixed it for her. He had come down to leave the lunches for the night in the mates' rooms. There was always a lamp in the main cabin in the evening, which lighted the clock that hung there. The clock hung .on the partition

which separated the main cabin from the chart-room, and under it was the dinnertable. The lamp hung over the table from a beam in the ceiling about two feet eleven inches from the clock. The passenger went to bed about eight o'clock. At nine o'clock, the captain came up on deck and spoke to Henry Slice, who was at the wheel, about a rain squall. • While Slice was at the wheel, the captain returned to the chart-room and laid down on his cot after putting out the light there, The only light that shone in the window near the wheel, then, was from the lantern in the main cabin, which was turned down on what the steward graphically called " a half-blaze." The wheel was about two feet eleven inches from the house, and the extreme starboard handle of the wheel was four feet diagonally from the center of the window. The window inside the frame was eleven inches by sixteen inches, including the casing and glass. There were seven iron guards in front of the window, from three-eighths to one-half inch in di ameter and one and five-eighths inches apart. There was a ladder about three feet from the house in front of the window. Slice, with both hands on the wheel, leaned over to the starboard, and saw through the window the captain lying there. Mrs. Nash had gone to her room. The steward went to bed, about half-past nine o'clock, in his bunk next to his galley, in the forward house. At ten o'clock every thing was going along as quietly as usual at night; the first mate was in his room, the second mate was on his watch on deck, Wassen had just relieved Slice at the wheel, and two men were on the lookout, as the custom was, one looking and the other waiting; the rest of the crew were in the fore castle, the only exception being that Charley Brown had brought his bed out of the fore castle because of what he, with unnecessary delicacy, called " insects," and was sleeping on deck under the longboat in the forward part of the vessel.