the
food upon which she sustained life itself. Taking her lonely place in
the cabin, after the conversation just referred to, she again hid her
face in her hands, and remained with her head bowed in her lap for a
long, long while, half dreaming, half waking. Poor, untutored,
uncivilized child of nature! she was very, very unhappy now.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE TRIAL.

AT the immediate time of which we now write, there had been some very
aggravated instances of open resistance to the English and American
cruisers on the African station by the slavers who thronged the coast,
and the home government had sent out orders embracing extraordinary
powers, in order that the first cases that might thenceforth come under
the cognizance of the court might lead to such summary treatment of the
offenders, as to act as an example for the rest, and thus have a most
salutary effect upon the people thus engaged. It was under these
circumstances that Captain Will Ratlin found himself arraigned before
the maritime commission at Sierra Leone, with a pretty hard case made
out against him at the outset of affairs.

The truth was, he had not been taken resisting the attack of Captain
Bramble and his men, but his accusers did not hesitate to represent that
he was thus guilty, and several were prepared, Maud among the rest, to
swear to this charge. Indeed, Captain Bramble found that he had people
about him who would swear to anything, and he had little doubt in
proving so strong a case as to jeopardize even the life of his prisoner,
since many of his crew had died outright in the attack upon the "Sea
Witch," to say nothing of the seriously wounded. All that could
prejudice the court against the prisoner was duly paraded before the
eyes and ears of the individual members ere yet the case was brought
legally before them, and at last when Captain Ratlin was formally
brought into court, he was little less than condemned already in the
minds of nine-tenths of the marine court.

He was rather amazed to see and to hear the free way in which evidence
was given against him, corroborating statements which amounted to the
most unmitigated falsehoods, but above all to find Maud unblushingly
declare that she saw him in the fight, and that he shot with a pistol
one of the men whose name had been returned as among the dead, and that
he had wounded another. The girl avoided his eyes while she uttered her
well-fabricated story, but had she met the eyes o