“I recall being angry at the men—­not much else.  My position was rational enough, however.  It was midsummer, and we had a long voyage before us.”

“I wish to read something else to you.  The witness Leslie testified to sleeping in the storeroom, at the request of Mrs. Johns”. (reading), “’giving as her reason a fear of something going wrong, as there was trouble between Mr. Turner and the captain.’”

Whatever question Mr. Goldstein had been framing, he was not permitted to use this part of the record.  The log was admissible only as a record on the spot, made by a competent person and witnessed by all concerned, of the actual occurrences on the Ella.  My record of Mrs. Johns’s remark was ruled out; Turner was not on trial.

Turner, pale and shaking, left the stand at two o’clock that day, and I was recalled.  My earlier testimony had merely established the finding of the bodies.  I was now to have a bad two hours.  I was an important witness, probably the most important.  I had heard the scream that had revealed the tragedy, and had been in the main cabin of the after house only a moment or so after the murderer.  I had found the bodies, Vail still living, and had been with the accused mate when he saw the captain prostrate at the foot of the forward companion.

All of this, aided by skillful questions, I told as exactly as possible.  I told of the mate’s strange manner on finding the bodies; I related, to a breathless quiet, the placing of the bodies in the jolly-boat; and the reading of the burial service over them; I told of the little boat that followed us, like some avenging spirit, carrying by day a small American flag, union down, and at night a white light.  I told of having to increase the length of the towing-line as the heat grew greater, and of a fear I had that the rope would separate, or that the mysterious hand that was the author of the misfortunes would cut the line.

I told of the long nights without sleep, while, with our few available men, we tried to work the Ella back to land; of guarding the after house; of a hundred false alarms that set our nerves quivering and our hearts leaping.  And I made them feel, I think, the horror of a situation where each man suspected his neighbor, feared and loathed him, and yet stayed close by him because a known danger is better than an unknown horror.

The record of my examination is particularly faulty, McWhirter having allowed personal feeling to interfere with accuracy.  Here and there in the margins of his notebook I find unflattering allusions to the prosecuting attorney; and after one question, an impeachment of my motives, to which Mac took violent exception, no answer at all is recorded, and in a furious scrawl is written:  “The little whippersnapper!  Leslie could smash him between his thumb and finger!”

I found another curious record—­a leaf, torn out of the book, and evidently designed to be sent to me, but failing its destination, was as follows:  “For Heaven’s sake, don’t look at the girl so much!  The newspaper men are on.”