in a fit of delirium tremens, after being drunk on rum three days and
nights consecutively; that he fell overboard accidentally and was
drowned; that the cook and mate threw him overboard, and then laid
the blame on the innocent seamen; that Blogg swam ashore, and was now
living on an unchartered island; that if he was murdered, his body
had not been found: there could be no murder without a corpse; and
finally, he would respectfully submit to that honourable court, that
the case bristled with ineradicable difficulties."

The seamen would have been sent to the gallows in any case, but
Nicholas' speech made their fate inevitable. The court brushed aside
the legal bristles, and hanged the four seamen on the evidence of the
mate and the cook.

The tragedy of the gallows was followed by a short afterpiece. Jim
Parrish, Ned Tomlins, and every whaler and foremast man in Hobart
Town and on the Tamar, discussed the evidence both drunk and sober,
and the opinion was universal that the cook ought to have sworn an
oath strong enough to go through a three-inch slab of hardwood that
he had seen Captain Blogg carried up to heaven by angels, instead of
swearing away the lives of men who had taken his part when he was
triced up to the mast. The cook was in this manner tried by his
peers and condemned to die, and he knew it. He tried to escape by
shipping on board a schooner bound to Portland Bay with whalers. The
captain took on board a keg of rum, holding fifteen gallons, usually
called a "Big Pup," and invited the mate to share the liquor with
him. The result was that the two officers soon became incapable of
rational navigation. Off King's Island the schooner was hove to in a
gale of wind, and for fourteen days stood off and on--five or six
hours one way, and five or six hours the other--while the master