ttled. For
my part I think we ought to hear him...."

Lord Stowell said suddenly, "Prisoner at the bar, some gentlemen have
volunteered statements on your behalf. If you wish it, they can be
called."

I didn't answer; I did not understand; I wanted to tell him I did
not care, because the _Lion_ was posted as overdue and Seraphina was
drowned. The Court seemed to be moving slowly up and down in front of me
like the deck of a ship. I thought I was bound again, and on the sofa in
the gorgeous cabin of the _Madre-de-Dios_. Someone seemed to be calling,
"Prisoner at the bar... Prisoner at the bar...." It was as if the
candles had been lit in front of the Madonna with the pink child, only
she had a gilt anchor instead of the spiky gilt glory above her
head. Somebody was saying, "Hello there.... Hold up!... Here, bring a
chair,..." and there were arms around me. Afterwards I sat down. A very
old judge's voice said something rather kindly, I thought. I knew it was
the very old judge, because he was called the star of Cuban law. Someone
would be bending over me soon, with a lanthorn, and I should be wiping
the flour out of my eyes and blinking at the red velvet and gilding of
the cabin ceiling. In a minute Carlos and Castro would come... or was it
O'Brien who would come? No, O'Brien was dead; stabbed, with a knife
in his neck; the blood was still sticky between my first and second
fingers. I could feel it. I ought to have been allowed to wash my hands
before I was tried; or was it before I spoke to the admiral? One would
not speak to a man with hands like that.

A loud, high-pitched voice called from up in the air, "I will give any
of you gentlemen of the robe down there fifty pounds to conduct the
remainder of the case for him. I am the prisoner's father."

My father's voice broke the spell. I was in the court; the candles were
still burning; all the faces, lit up or in the shadow, were bunched
together in little groups; hands waved. The barrister whose face was
like the devil's under his wig held in his hands the paper that had been
handed to Lord Stowell; my father was talking to him from the bench.
The barrister, tall, his robes old and ragged, silhouetted against the
light, glanced down the paper, fluttered it in his hand, nodded to my
father, and began a grotesque, nasal drawl:

"M'luds, I will conduct the case for the prisoner, if your lordships
will bear with me a little. He obviously can't call his own witnesses.