The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,69
a powerful man and might have been a source of favors. Now he sensed that things were going against him and that the victory he had hoped for was slipping away. The discomfiture enraged him, brought out a strain of fierce antipathy never far below the surface. He had seen Ashton in the courtroom, and now, instead of making a reasoned address to the jury and giving what emphasis he could to the case for the owners, he embarked on a personal attack.
“There is a person in court at this present moment,” he said, at the same time turning and looking directly at Ashton, “who I am told on good authority intends to bring on a criminal prosecution against the persons who took part in this lawful and eminently reasonable jettison, those of them that have survived. That is dangerous folly—more than folly, it amounts to madness. I am sure that I express the sentiments of the members of this court, and every good citizen throughout the land, when I say that the blacks thrown overboard were property and nothing else. They were cargo, as bales of cotton might have been. No charge of murder can be brought against the crew, no charge even of cruelty in any degree whatever, their actions were not in any degree improper—”
He was halted at this point by Justice Blundell, whose scowl, in the passion of this address to the court at large, he had quite failed to see, and who now spoke to him loudly and irascibly. “How can you permit yourself such animadversions in my court, sir?”
The judge had felt his heart begin to beat in his ears, a sure sign of rising blood pressure. This, instead of warning him to remain calm, increased his rage. This presumptuous young fool was reviving the nightmare of Ashton’s petition, raising questions of property and humanity, which had nothing at all to do with the issue before the court. “We are not assembled here to discuss the beliefs or the intentions of any person whatever, whether present at these proceedings or not,” he said. “I am surprised at you, sir. Do you think you are on the hustings, soliciting votes?”
Waters knew better than to attempt an answer, and in fact the pleas of counsel ended here, Price being more than content to wait for a verdict. In somewhat calmer tones Blundell directed the jury’s attention to the fact that they were there to decide whether the throwing overboard of the negroes was a genuinely necessitous act of jettison, in which case the insurers would be liable, or whether it was a fraud on the policy, in which case they could not be required to make any payment. Was there a shortage of water or was there not? How was it that the first mate on the ship, the man Barton, knew with such certainty what no one else knew until the captain informed them? Was not this strange and contradictory? Counsel for the owner had produced no evidence that the ship was foul or leaky. Barton was freed from imprisonment on the surety of the claimant. Did not this taint his evidence and incline greater belief in the declaration of James Porter, the interpreter on the ship, who had nothing to gain by lying, that in point of fact there was no shortage of water at all?
The jury, thus guided, came in a matter of minutes to the conclusion that the claim of lawful jettison had no substance and therefore the insurers were released from all obligation of payment.
18
The following evening, while he was waiting below for his sister to complete her toilet and make herself ready, Ashton had a glass of claret, an unusual thing with him. He had felt a spirit of celebration since the insurance verdict, while knowing that the victory was partial, in some ways hardly a victory at all, since no issue of principle had emerged from it, only a ruling as to insurance liability. With a man like Blundell on the bench, this was hardly surprising; he had reacted with fury to the ill-judged attempt of Kemp’s lawyer to discuss the nature of the cargo. Ashton had hoped for something more but without any great belief. Once the decision to hold separate hearings had been made, he had known that any attempt to enter a plea of murder against the remnants of the crew was unlikely to succeed, though he was no less set on it.