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 guano 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 invite.”
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.
