"So Captain Lewrie did not consider you his personal property?"
"Oh, nossuh!" Rodney firmly replied. "I'z a British sailah in de Royal Navy, sah. I'z a sailah o' King George."
"Captain Lewrie rated you a topman… one of the lads who goes aloft? Yes. Did you want to be one?"
"Oh, yassah. Topmen be kings o' de ship, sah."
"And he trained you, all of you, with pistols, muskets, swords, and boarding pikes?" MacDougall asked, as he had of all the rest, but Mr. Cooke, who was a bit too old and stout for close combat; for he was indeed well-named, and had been Proteus's ship's cook.
"Lemme shoot Frenchmen wid his own Ferguson rifle-musket, me or his ol' Cox'n, Andrews, 'e did, sah," Rodney boasted. "Said de bot' o' us have de good eye."
"Yes, and have you killed a lot of Frenchmen?"
"Yassuh, I sho' have! 'Specially when we fight de French frigates two year ago," Rodney supplied. "Round dozen, right dere."
"You mentioned Coxswain Andrews," MacDougall went on. "Of what race was Coxswain Andrews?"
"He Black, like me, sah, well… fo' he run, I hear tell he wuz a house slave'r body slave," Rodney related, "so he wuz light-skinned. He be Cap'm Lewrie's Cox'n almos' since de 'Merican Revolution. But he got killed in de South Atlantic, two year ago."
"Was he a body servant to Captain Lewrie?" MacDougall shrewdly asked, looking at the jury, not his witness.
"Nossuh, he run de Cap'm's boat when he be called ashore, an' such," Rodney said. "Only fellah dat sees t' th' Cap'm is 'is cook an' cabin steward, Mistah Aspinall, ovah yondah," Rodney said, with a jab of his arm to the sailors behind the Defence table.
"And did Captain Lewrie ever have one of you fellows flogged for disobedience?" MacDougall asked.
"Can't recall dat evah happen, sah," Rodney said, frowning in reverie. "Cap'm Lewrie ain't big on floggin', 'cept fer when a man's been real bad. Didn't even flog Hood, Howe, Whitbread, Groome, and Bass, when dey git wobbly-drunk on Saint Helena, an' borrowed Mistah Wigmore's donkeys f'um de circus, an' raced 'em up de valley. Weren't no zebras, like dat Mistah Wigmore said, just painted up t'look like 'em. Dey git de donkeys drunk, too, at de las' tavern up de valley."
"And Captain Lewrie didn't flog anyone else on Saint Helena?" MacDougall enquired. "Not even when they tore up the island governor's gardens? Stole a magnolia tree, and rose bushes?"
"Cap'm be plenty mad, aye, sah," Rodney tittered with delight, "but 'e didn' flog nobody, just put 'em on bread an' watuh, wid no rum ner 'baccy fer a week. Didn't even flog when me an' Groome run off t'see Africker. Well, Groome died when de Cape Buff'lo trample 'im, an' I got mauled by a she-lion, so I s'pose I wuzn't fit t'flog fo' a spell… it ain't like we wuz desertin', sah, 'cause de circus people hadta come back t'Cape Town wid dey new beasts fo' de shows, but Groome an' me jus' wanted t'see where we come f'um fo' a bit, sah. I'z clawed up and bit on right bad, an' I s'pose de Cap'm think I punished enough."
The spectators could not contain simpers and snickers when the lad named his compatriots, who, at Mr. Winwood's urging, had taken new, freemen's names after their mustering-in baths under the wash-deck pump, as if leaving pagan lives of sin behind and being "washed white as snow" by baptism; new souls with new identities, and not what some capricious slave-master had named them.
Hood, Howe, Rodney, Anson, and Nelson for naval heroes; Groome and Cooke for their old occupations, then Bass and Whitbread for the imported beverages their masters had drunk.
Sir Samuel Whitbread, Member of Parliament, seated in the middle of the courtroom's spectator area that afternoon, perhaps didn't find it quite so amusing, but…
What Rodney described were sailors' antics, the sorts of things that young men of any race might risk when in drink and high spirits; and the adventures! Trampled by Cape Buffalo, mauled and bitten by a lion on a hunting, trapping jaunt into the wilds of mysterious Africa with a circus? Battling pirates in the Caribbean, the French and Spanish, with lashings of prize-money to prove their mettle, and success, why, what English lad didn't wish to run away to sea and have such adventures!
Lewrie peeked at the gentlemen in the jury box and was heartened to see a fair number of them smiling, or shaking their heads in kindly wonder over such doings.
"And you were paid the same as any British sailor in your rate, Seaman Rodney?" MacDougall good-naturedly asked him.
"Ev'ry penny t'th' jot an' tittle, sah," Rodney answered. "Ol' Mistah Coote, de Pursah, an' Cap'm Lewrie'z fair men, sah. An' ev'ry prize we take, I git my share same'z anybody. We whup de Creole pirates two year ago in Looziana, I made t'ree years' wages right dere!"
"And now you're a free man, Seaman Rodney," MacDougall continued in a softer voice, "do you wish to remain a British sailor, and a free man?"
"Best life I evah know, sah. Aye, I ain't nevah let any one make me a slave again," Rodney declared, with some heat. "I learn t'read an' write 'board ship, so nobody gon' trap me makin' my mark on somethin' I don't understand… got cypherin', too, so nobody gon' cheat me outta money, neither. War be ovah, I 'spect I'll ship out on a merchantman, 'less I find me a good girl an' start a fam'ly."
"And, finally, Seaman Rodney… what do you think of Captain Lewrie?" MacDougall asked him.
"He be a fine man, sah," Rodney gushed, "a fightin' man, and a good 'un, an' I just thank God he free me, an' God bless him fo 'evah."
And MacDougall's summation was glorious, of course, focussing not so much on denying the theft of slaves as he did praising it for a courageous Christian act. With the Jamaica trial transcript out, he could not refer to it, except to ask the jury to consider why not one accuser was present in court, even though the Beaumans had pursued the matter with white-hot eagerness, and at the cost of thousands of pounds for several years; did they suddenly fear being taken up themselves for laying a false and vengeful prosecution?
"And lastly, gentlemen," MacDougall declaimed in histrionic fashion, his arms outstretched, "consider that the dozen slaves, not worth three hundred pounds as less-than-human hewers of wood and drawers of water, worked to death in a few short years, then easily replaced with fresh young muscles… the merest pittance of those who yearly perish… the most minute fraction of all those hundreds of thousands yearning to live free!… have shed their blood for you, given their lives for you, who sleep snug at night behind Britain's 'wooden walls'! Go aloft, serve the guns, endure the boredom of blockading, and bravely face all the perils of weather and the wrath of the sea on our men-o'-war all round the world, this very minute, this very hour! Ask how many more would wish to emulate these stalwart young men. Yes, I say men, not dumb beasts, men who feel pain and joy, suffer disappointment and revel in victory… who serve God, King, and Country, in whose breasts burn the fires of patriotism as strongly as yours.
"It would be unconscionable to deny England their services… just as it would be equally unconscionable to return these men to the vengeful cruelty of slavery, to their former master, Mister Hugh Beauman of Jamaica!" MacDougall declared.
"And that, sirs, would be the logical result if the instrument of their new-found freedoms was condemned for a selfless act of liberation," MacDougall told the jury. "Human bondage had been outlawed in our happy isle for nearly fifty years, yet, do you find that Captain Alan Lewrie is guilty of stealing human beings, you reduce these men to chattel status once more, tacitly admit that they were mere property! Property, I say, with as little right to determine their own destinies as a bed-stead, or a dining room table! To even reward Hugh Beauman a single shilling per head as a compromise settlement would be tantamount to calling these eager young volunteers in our Navy no more men than a dozen pair of shoe buckles!