‘What about boats?’
‘The davits at the stern were empty. I could not tell whether a boat had been launched from them or not. There was no indication, as far as I could see, whether there was accommodation for another boat on deck. I certainly saw no block and tackle to indicate that one had been launched from the deck.’
The Attorney-General began to prepare his final question, then paused, looking to the lawyers’ benches. They had been strangely quiet today; perhaps confronted by the blatant inconsistencies in their clients’ evidence they had at last accepted the futility of objections. He decided to rephrase the point he was about to make to the witness, anxious not to blur what he regarded as an excellent cross-examination by any belated, irritating interruption.
‘You sailed from New York in the Dei Gratia on November 15?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And encountered the Mary Celeste on December 5?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And arrived here in Gibraltar on December 12?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Tell me, during those twenty-seven days did you at any time witness, or were you at any time involved in, any violent activity?’
Pisani at last stirred, about to rise, but before he could do so the seaman’s anger broke.
‘No!’ he shouted across the enquiry chamber. ‘I did nothing to harm anyone aboard the Mary Celeste.’
‘You weren’t asked if you had,’ said Flood contentedly. ‘But thank you for so openly expressing a thought which I am sure has occurred to many during the evidence we have heard so far.’
He sat quickly, still in advance of Pisani’s intervention, leaving the crew’s lawyer half out of his chair. Sir James Cochrane looked curiously towards him, but Pisani shook his head, lowering himself into his seat again.
Flood leaned forward over his bench, apparently concentrating upon his note-taking, as Charles Lund, a seaman who had been one of Deveau’s salvage crew from the Azores to Gibraltar, was sworn in and began responding to Pisani’s questions during his evidence-in-chief.
As a trained, practising lawyer, the Attorney-General had to recognise the evidence as circumstantial. But circumstantial or not, it was overwhelmingly that of crime. Either of mutiny and murder, with the connivance of the Dei Gratia crew with whom a high seas rendezvous had been arranged before the New York sailing, for the culprits to be aided by a safe landing somewhere along the coast of Spain. Or straight piracy by Captain Morehouse and his men.
There was something further he had to recognise. As well as being Attorney-General of the colony, he was also Admiralty Proctor, with responsibility to the Board of Trade in London.
And he would be grossly failing in that responsibility if, even in advance of any finding that Cochrane might return, he did not officially communicate his beliefs to London, for the authorities there to take whatever action they considered necessary. Mediterranean embassies and consulates in the area should be alerted for any sighting of the Mary Celeste crew, for instance. And Washington informed of the official view of affairs with far more force than he suspected Consul Sprague was attempting. With his constant pandering to the ship-owner and the Dei Gratia captain, Sprague showed himself too frightened of an adverse report about his personal conduct properly to carry out his duties.
It had been an onerous task, for which he had decided to give the man a bonus, but Flood had insisted upon his clerk’s taking a verbatim transcript of the evidence. He decided that he would enclose copies of that transcript with his account to London, to enable the Board of Trade lawyers to consider the facts as fully as he had and arrive at their own verdict. The advantage of such a procedure would be to obtain the agreement of other legally trained minds.
The Attorney-General suddenly became aware that the court had turned to him and realised that he was being offered the chance to question Lund. Aware that he had not been concentrating upon the man’s evidence, Flood’s clerk pushed across a sheet of hastily written but nevertheless readable notes. For the first time, Flood saw, the crew lawyer had phrased his questions in anticipation of attack, trying to minimise any damaging cross-examination by obtaining denials of accusations before any had been made. The Attorney-General smiled, looking directly at Pisani. So they were becoming worried. And quite rightly so.
‘You formed the second party to board the Mary Celeste… the salvage crew?’
‘Yes.’
‘And were aboard for some seven to eight days?’
‘Yes.’
The Attorney-General looked up from the clerk’s notes, staring directly at the witness.
‘Were you frightened?’
‘Frightened?’
‘Boarding a vessel you had found derelict at sea… laying your head in quarters the last occupants of which had disappeared in such a mysterious way. Had contagion been aboard, for instance, you could have contracted it.’
‘I am not a superstitious man,’ said Lund. ‘And I know of no illness that would have caused a complete abandonment of a vessel. There would have been bodies about.’
‘There would indeed, sir. Unless the contagion was humanly inflicted. With the advantage you had of spending so much time aboard the Mary Celeste, were you able to discover anything which might assist this enquiry to a conclusion about what befell the people aboard?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did you see the sword which Mr Deveau found?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Weren’t you interested?’
‘Not really. Mr Deveau thought nothing of it. The presence of such a souvenir is not unusual aboard ship.’
‘Ah,’ said the Attorney-General, as if suddenly enlightened. ‘Evidence to which we have become so accustomed. You determined it a souvenir, along with all the others?’
‘Yes.’
‘The rigging was in disarray, we have heard?’
‘Yes, sir. Some broken, more lying where the wind had cast it. The peak halyards were broken and gone.’
‘Where the wind had cast them,’ repeated Flood, to emphasise the remark. ‘Did you encounter any evidence that something other than the wind might have caused this damage?’
‘No, sir.’
‘So positive! I must infer from that response that you suspected there might have been something else and that you made a special examination?’
‘No. But we had to repair the rigging, before we could right the vessel and make towards Gibraltar. We were involved with the ropes nearly all of one day. Had they been cut, for instance, I’m sure I would have noticed. The others would, also.’
‘But you didn’t. And neither did they?’
‘No.’
‘How bad was the damage?’
‘Considerable. There were sheets and braces hanging over both sides. As I said, the peak halyards were broken and gone.’
‘I must put to you a question I have put to every witness so far, although I suspect I already know the answer. Having sailed in the Mary Celeste for the period you did and having come upon her in the condition you did, what conclusion did you reach as to the cause of her abandonment?’
‘The weather, sir. It must have been the weather.’
‘A response, Mr Lund, delivered with the spontaneity of a child learning its lessons by rote,’ said the Attorney-General, sitting down.
It had been a good day, he decided. And tomorrow it would be better. Then he could start to introduce his own evidence, to assemble all the suspicions in the testimony of an accredited expert and then call others to support it. It would be interesting to see how Pisani and Cornwell and Stokes took it. And perhaps even more intriguing to witness the reaction of Captain Winchester and the crew of the Dei Gratia.
The Attorney-General rose obediently at the registrar’s demand, allowed the chamber to empty, and then dawdled to his robing room, in expectation of the nightly invitation from Cochrane. He had come to welcome the sessions.
After twenty minutes, he emerged, curious. The building seemed empty and deserted. He found Baumgartner in his office, preparing to leave.