Why Thomas Bram IVas Found Guilty. hand. The passenger said, " The captain has been murdered." The steward in the easy-going speech of the blacks replied, "Oh, I guess not; " but he ran to the after house, looked through the window near the wheel and saw, in the chart-room, lighted by the lamp on the floor of the passenger's room, the dead body of the captain. He was about to go down at once to investigate, but the first mate said that the second mate was forward with the men and that one should not go down into the after house without a revolver. With that he thrust his own revolver into the steward's hand. The steward, however, had served upon many vessels, and had the traditional shrewdness of a ship's cook. So he tried the revolver to find whether it would go off. He snapped it several times in vain until at last it went off, and the first mate jumped. Upon ex amining the breech, the steward found that every shell in it was nicked and had appar ently been tried before. When the first mate handed his revolver to the steward, the first mate turned to Monks and asked him for his revolver. But Monks refused. The steward went down into the after house. He had no sooner got there than he came rushing back, exclaiming, " I saw the second mate lying dead in his bunk! " Thereupon the passenger turned to the first mate and said, " I thought you said that the second mate was forward." The first mate replied, "Well, he was forward." At the trial upon cross-examination the prisoner admitted that he saw the second mate go down to his room at midnight and that he had not seen him come up from there or go forward afterward. From this time on the first mate had two masters, the young passenger and the mu latto steward. Neither of them was afraid of him, and he was afraid of everyone on the ship. He told the drugging story to the steward also. The steward suggested hav ing the vomit analyzed when they got ashore. Immediately the first mate slid down from the rail, where he was sitting,
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into the vomit and wiped it up with the seat of his trousers. The steward exclaimed, "J— С—, you ain't left enough to carry ashore!" Soon afterwards the three were standing near the starboard rail nearly opposite the mainmast, when the first mate pointed diag onally across the deck to a point about thirty feet off, about eight feet forward of the port corner of the after house, and called out, "There is the axe that did it." Both the pas senger and the steward looked, but neither could see the axe. Thereupon they all walked across, and when the passenger was about ten feet from it he saw an axe with its face and part of its handle shoved under a lashingplank which ran across the deckload to keep it down and under which there was room enough to hide part of the axe. The first mate took it up and held it before him and cried and grinned over it in a hysterical way. The head and the handle were stained with blood, and on the handle were finger marks. He said, " Shall we throw it overboard?" The passenger, still influenced by the sug gestion of a mutiny, said, " Yes, for fear the crew might use it against us." But the steward, with a more level head, the result of a hard experience, said, " No." But the first mate cried out something about having an old mother, gave vent to his pent-up feel ings with a yell and tossed the axe into the sea. The steward said, " You should not do that." The first mate stood still a moment, and then said, " But we don't find no axe." The steward burst out upon him with, " What do you take me for? A G— d— fool?" The passenger found blood-spots staining the deckload and the top of the after house. The largest spots were at the companion way, and from there .dotted the top of the house diagonally towards the port side to about opposite the after part of the mizzen rigging, then they turned and went forward to the forward side of the lashing plank, un der which the axe was found. There was a rather broad place stained at the point of
