50. CHAPTER L.
THESE murder and jury statistics remind me of a certain very
extraordinary trial and execution of twenty years ago; it is a scrap
of history familiar to all old Californians, and worthy to be known
by other peoples of the earth that love simple, straightforward
justice unencumbered with nonsense. I would apologize for this
digression but for the fact that the information I am about to offer
is apology enough in itself. And since I digress constantly anyhow,
perhaps it is as well to eschew apologies altogether and thus
prevent their growing irksome.
Capt. Ned Blakely—that name will answer as well as any other
fictitious one (for he was still with the living at last accounts, and
may not desire to be famous)—sailed ships out of the harbor of San
Francisco for many years. He was a stalwart, warm-hearted,
eagle-eyed veteran, who had been a sailor nearly fifty years—a
sailor from early boyhood. He was a rough, honest creature, full of
pluck, and just as full of hard-headed simplicity, too. He hated
trifling conventionalities—"business" was the word, with him. He
had all a sailor's vindictiveness against the quips and quirks of the
law, and steadfastly believed that the first and last aim and object
of the law and lawyers was to defeat justice.
He sailed for the Chincha Islands in command of a gnano ship.
He had a fine crew, but his negro mate was his pet—on him he had
for years lavished his admiration and esteem. It was Capt. Ned's
first voyage to the Chinchas, but his fame had gone before
him—the fame of being a man who would
fight at the dropping of a handkerchief, when imposed upon, and
would stand no nonsense. It was a fame well earned. Arrived in
the islands, he found that the staple of conversation was the
exploits of one Bill Noakes, a bully, the mate of a trading ship.
This man had created a small reign of terror there. At nine o'clock
at night, Capt. Ned, all alone, was pacing his deck in the starlight.
A form ascended the side, and approached him. Capt. Ned
said:
"Who goes there?"
"I'm Bill Noakes, the best man in the islands."
"What do you want aboard this ship?"
"I've heard of Capt. Ned Blakely, and one of us is a better man
than 'tother—I'll know which, before I go ashore."
"You've come to the right shop—I'm your man. I'll learn you to
come aboard this ship without an in
vite."
He seized Noakes, backed him against the mainmast, pounded
his face to a pulp, and then threw him overboard.
Noakes was not convinced. He returned the next night, got the
pulp renewed, and went overboard head first, as before. He was
satisfied.
A week after this, while Noakes was carousing with a sailor
crowd on shore, at noonday, Capt. Ned's colored mate came along,
and Noakes tried to pick a quarrel with him. The negro evaded the
trap, and tried to get away. Noakes followed him up; the negro
began to run; Noakes fired on him with a revolver and killed him.
Half a dozen sea-captains witnessed the whole affair. Noakes
retreated to the small after-cabin of his ship, with two other
bullies, and gave out that death would be the portion of any man
that intruded there. There was no attempt made to follow the
villains; there was no disposition to do it, and indeed very little
thought of such an enterprise. There were no courts and no
officers; there was no government; the islands belonged to Peru,
and Peru was far away; she had no official representative on the
ground; and neither had any other nation.
However, Capt. Ned was not perplexing his head about such
things. They concerned him not. He was boiling with rage and
furious for justice. At nine o'clock at night he loaded a
double-barreled gun with slugs, fished out a pair of handcuffs, got
a ship's lantern, summoned his quartermaster, and went ashore. He
said:
"Do you see that ship there at the dock?"
"Ay-ay, sir."
"It's the Venus."
"Ay-ay, sir."
"You—you know me."
"Ay-ay, sir."
"Very well, then. Take the lantern. Carry it just under your
chin. I'll walk behind you and rest this gun-barrel on your
shoulder, p'inting forward—so. Keep your lantern well up so's I can
see things ahead of you good. I'm going to march in on
Noakes—and take him—and jug the other chaps. If you
flinch—well, you know me."
"Ay-ay, sir."
In this order they filed aboard softly, arrived at Noakes's den,
the quartermaster pushed the door open, and the lantern revealed
the three desperadoes sitting on the floor. Capt. Ned said:
"I'm Ned Blakely. I've got you under fire. Don't you move
without orders—any of you. You two kneel down in the corner;
faces to the wall—now. Bill Noakes, put these handcuffs on; now
come up close. Quartermaster, fasten 'em. All right. Don't stir,
sir. Quartermaster, put the key in the outside of the door. Now,
men, I'm going to lock you two in; and if you try to burst through
this door—well, you've heard of me.
Bill Noakes, fall in ahead, and march. All set. Quartermaster,
lock the door."
Noakes spent the night on board Blakely's ship, a prisoner
under strict guard. Early in the morning Capt. Ned called in all the
sea-captains in the harbor and invited them, with nautical
ceremony, to be present on board his ship at nine o'clock to
witness the hanging of Noakes at the yard-arm!
"What! The man has not been tried."
"Of course he hasn't. But didn't he kill the nigger?"
"Certainly he did; but you are not thinking of hanging him
without a trial?"
"Trial! What do
I want to try him for, if he killed the nigger?"
"Oh, Capt. Ned, this will never do.
Think how it will sound."
"Sound be hanged! Didn't he kill
the nigger?"
"Certainly, certainly, Capt. Ned,—nobody denies
that,—but—"
"Then I'm going to hang him,
that's all. Everybody I've talked to talks just the same way
you do. Everybody says he killed the nigger, everybody knows he
killed the nigger, and yet every lubber of you wants
him tried for it. I don't understand
such bloody foolishness as that. Tried!
Mind you, I don't object to trying him, if it's got to be done to
give satisfaction; and I'll be there, and chip in and help, too; but
put it off till afternoon—put it off till afternoon, for I'll have my
hands middling full till after the burying—"
"Why, what do you mean? Are you going to hang
him any how—and try him afterward?"
"Didn't I say I was going to hang him?
I never saw such people as you. What's
the difference? You ask a favor, and then you ain't satisfied when
you get it. Before or after's all one—you know
how the trial will go. He killed the nigger. Say—I must be
going. If your mate would like to come to the hanging, fetch him
along. I like him."
There was a stir in the camp. The captains came in a body and
pleaded with Capt. Ned not to do this rash thing. They promised
that they would create a court composed of captains of the best
character; they would empanel a jury; they would conduct
everything in a way becoming the serious nature of the business in
hand, and give the case an impartial hearing and the accused a fair
trial. And they said it would be murder, and punishable by the
American courts if he persisted and hung the accused on his ship.
They pleaded hard. Capt. Ned said:
"Gentlemen, I'm not stubborn and I'm not unreasonable. I'm
always willing to do just as near right as I can. How long will it
take?"
"Probably only a little while."
"And can I take him up the shore and hang him as soon as you
are done?"
"If he is proven guilty he shall be hanged without unnecessary
delay."
"If he's proven guilty.
Great Neptune, ain't he guilty?
This beats my time. Why you all know he's guilty."
But at last they satisfied him that they were projecting nothing
underhanded. Then he said:
"Well, all right. You go on and try him and I'll go down and
overhaul his conscience and prepare him to go—like enough he
needs it, and I don't want to send him off without a show for
hereafter."
This was another obstacle. They finally convinced him that it
was necessary to have the accused in court. Then they said they
would send a guard to bring him.
"No, sir, I prefer to fetch him myself—he don't get out
of my hands. Besides, I've got
to go to the ship to get a rope, anyway."
The court assembled with due ceremony, empaneled a jury,
and presently Capt. Ned entered, leading the prisoner with one
hand and carrying a Bible and a rope in the other. He seated
himself by the side of his captive and told the court to "up anchor
and make sail." Then he turned a searching eye on the jury, and
detected Noakes's friends, the two bullies. He strode over and said
to them confidentially:
"You're here to interfere, you see. Now you vote right, do you
hear?—or else there'll be a double-barreled inquest here when this
trial's off, and your remainders will go home in a couple of
baskets."
The caution was not without fruit. The jury was a unit—the
verdict. "Guilty."
Capt. Ned sprung to his feet and said:
"Come along—you're my
meat now, my lad, anyway.
Gentlemen you've done yourselves proud. I invite you all to come
and see that I do it all straight. Follow me to the canyon, a mile
above here."
The court informed him that a sheriff had been appointed to do
the hanging, and—
Capt. Ned's patience was at an end. His wrath was boundless.
The subject of a sheriff was judiciously dropped.
When the crowd arrived at the canyon, Capt. Ned climbed a
tree and arranged the halter, then came down and noosed his man.
He opened his Bible, and laid aside his hat. Selecting a chapter at
random, he read it through, in a deep bass voice and with sincere
solemnity. Then he said:
"Lad, you are about to go aloft and give an account of yourself;
and the lighter a man's manifest is, as far as sin's concerned, the
better for him. Make a clean breast, man, and carry a log with you
that'll bear inspection. You killed the nigger?"
No reply. A long pause.
The captain read another chapter, pausing, from time to time,
to impress the effect. Then he talked an earnest, persuasive
sermon to him, and ended by repeating the question:
"Did you kill the nigger?"
No reply—other than a malignant scowl. The captain now read
the first and second chapters of Genesis, with deep
feeling—paused a moment, closed the book reverently, and said
with a perceptible savor of satisfaction:
"There. Four chapters. There's few that would have took the
pains with you that I have."
Then he swung up the condemned, and made the rope fast;
stood by and timed him half an hour with his watch, and then
delivered the body to the court. A little after, as he stood
contemplating the motionless figure, a doubt came into his face;
evidently he felt a twinge of conscience—a misgiving—and he said
with a sigh:
"Well, p'raps I ought to burnt him, maybe. But I was trying to
do for the best."
When the history of this affair reached California (it was in the
"early days") it made a deal of talk, but did not diminish the
captain's popularity in any degree. It increased it, indeed.
California had a population then that "inflicted" justice after a
fashion that was simplicity and primitiveness itself, and could
therefore admire appreciatively when the same fashion was
followed elsewhere.