The court met in the admiral’s spacious day cabin, set out in its full panoply – dark polished mahogany on all sides, flag-draped side tables and the scarlet of marine sentries rigidly to attention. A long table set athwart dominated the scene.
In dignified silence, the captains filed in one by one and sat in order of seniority, the president of the court occupying the largest chair in the centre. On either side were tables for the prosecution and the defence, the clerkly judge-advocate decorously apart from both. The massed dark blue and gold of full-dress uniforms filled the space with a powerful impression of the awful majesty of naval discipline.
‘Are we settled, then, gentlemen?’ Cochrane asked politely, looking right and left. ‘I’m sure you know the rules. We’ll take dinner at two but I’m not expecting a protracted session.’
There were nods and murmurs. Kydd eased his neck-cloth, stealing glances at his neighbours, who, he could see, were adopting suitably grave expressions.
Properly sworn, the court was now in session.
‘Then we shall begin. Bring in the accused.’
There was a shuffling outside and the prisoner appeared, the clink of manacles loud in the silence.
‘Your name and rate?’
‘Dan’l Smythe, able seaman, sir.’
Kydd took in the man: his expression was wary and his eyes darted about the cabin. Wiry and well tanned, he must be in his forties; this was no cringing youngster regretting an impulse. The voice was grog-roughened but steady. If the act had been committed while drunk, it would make no difference to the sentence.
‘Daniel Smythe, you are charged that on the seventeenth day of September last you did …’
Kydd listened grimly. It was much as Pym had said but the twenty-second Article of War was being invoked, a capital charge – and he was sitting in judgment on the man.
‘Do you plead guilty, or not guilty?’
‘Not guilty.’
There was a pathetic nobility in his manner. He had been brought from days’ confinement below in irons to an abrupt appearance before so many senior naval officers, yet he was clearly going to play it through to the end.
The young officer who had been appointed to act in his defence looked nervous. He dropped his pen and, red-faced, fumbled to pick it up.
Opposite, the prosecuting officer waited with a heavy patience, then rose. ‘Sir, this is as clear-cut a case as any I have seen and I do not propose to try the patience of the court with a lengthy submission. I shall be calling but two witnesses, Lieutenant Beale, against whom the offence occurred, and Hannibal’s captain.’
A ripple went about the court: if the captain himself was coming forward as a prosecution witness there could be little hope for the defence.
‘Thank you, Mr Biggs. Lieutenant Hubbard?’
The officer got to his feet and addressed the court. ‘Sir, Able Seaman Smythe denies the charge, saying his actions have been grievously mistaken and-’
‘Just so. Your witnesses?’
Hubbard hesitated. ‘Er, Able Seaman Hogg and Sailmaker’s Mate Martin who were both-’
‘Yes. Are they present?’ Cochrane enquired.
Kydd frowned. If the only testimony Smythe could muster were fore-mast hands, things were looking bleak for him.
‘They are, sir.’
‘Then we’ll proceed. Mr Biggs?’
The essence of the case was laid out in dry, neutral tones. The captain had singled out a man in the crew about the main top bowline bitts as laggardly in his duties and had sent for Lieutenant Beale to hale him aft. There had been sharp words, a scuffle and a belaying pin had been drawn. Smythe had been restrained from actual violence by others in the crew. While being escorted to the quarterdeck, the prisoner had continued to struggle and utter threats until taken below and confined in irons. During this time a sizeable number of Hannibal’s company had shown common cause with Smythe and had assembled in a mutinous manner. The marines were turned out and the men dispersed.
‘Call Lieutenant Beale.’
‘You were the officer on duty at the fore-mast?’ Biggs opened.
‘I was,’ Beale said, with a prim, disapproving air.
‘Tell the court in your own words the events leading up to this unfortunate incident.’
‘Sir. On being desired by the captain to deal with the prisoner, I went to him and remonstrated with him for his conduct, he hanging back when ordered to sweat off on the slablines. He did then swear in a manner derogatory to the name of the Lord at which I said I would inform the captain of this. In reply he damned myself, the captain, and the ship all to Hell, at which I ordered him seized. He drew a pin from the bitts and would have had at me, were he not restrained.’
‘Can you in any way account for this behaviour?’
‘Er, I believe the man was fuddled in liquor at the time, sir.’
Kydd looked down. It was all playing out like some tragic play that could have only one ending, and he was powerless to intervene.
‘Your witness, Lieutenant Hubbard.’
Throwing a nervous glance at the stern features of the admiral, the young man addressed the witness, who lifted his chin disdainfully. ‘Lieutenant, this man is in your division?’
‘He is.’
‘Then you’ll know the prisoner is – how must we say? – famously short-fused. If provoked he may well act in a manner he might later regret.’
‘This is no excuse in a man-o’-war, sir.’
‘And you will also be aware that, two days before, this man had suffered a dozen lashes for insubordination?’
‘Which rather proves the point, wouldn’t you say?’
‘That was not my intent,’ Hubbard said, with a growing intensity. ‘Rather, it is to give reason to the act. Smythe was doing his duty as best he could – with savage wounds healing on his back he was being asked to perform strenuous acts occasioning extreme pain. Is it any cause for wonder that he should react with such feeling to being told he was remiss in his duty?’
‘This is not for me to say,’ Beale said woodenly.
‘No further questions, sir.’
It was as clear to Kydd as if he had seen it happening before him. The proud seaman, wanting to take his stripes like a man, had not reported sick and had done his best – until the prissy Beale had intervened. That his messmates had seen to it that he had rum to ease his suffering had only aggravated the situation and he had gone over the edge. What kind of ship was it that did not have the humanity to make allowances?
‘Mr Biggs?’
‘Call Captain Tyrell!’
At first the name meant nothing. Then into the court came a figure from Kydd’s past. Short but powerfully built, thick eyebrows above deep-set eyes and a restless, dangerous air. Kydd was seeing again the first lieutenant of the ship into which he had been press-ganged so many years before, now post-captain of a ship-of-the-line.
He would never forget those eyes, that pugnacious, challenging bearing – and as well how he had single-handedly faced down a gathering mutiny, the lion-like courage he had shown in the hopeless royalist uprising. And the pitiless discipline that had made him an object of hatred.
‘You are captain of HMS Hannibal, sir.’
‘I am.’ That harsh, flat voice from those days before the mast.
‘Can you tell the court what you witnessed on the day in question, sir?’
‘I saw the prisoner at the slablines with the others and the villain was slacking. Idling, I say. While his party were hauling hearty he was shirking. Not standing for it, I sent L’tenant Beale for’ard to take him in charge and saw there was an argument. I stepped up to see what it was and with my own eyes saw Smythe draw a pin and take a murderous swing at Mr Beale. Then I-’
Hubbard held up a hand tentatively. ‘A – a point of order, Mr President?’
Cochrane frowned. ‘What is it, Mr Hubbard?’
‘Simply a matter of clarification, if you please, sir. We have Mr Beale’s testimony that the prisoner was restrained from making any blow, yet Captain Tyrell here has stated that an attack was made. May we …?’