t see nobody, nor you won't; nor your nobby relations
won't have the word. Till the Hadmir'lty trile. Charlie says it's
unconstitutional, you ought to see your 'torney, if you've one, or your
father's got one. But Lor', I says, 'Charlie, if they wants it they gets
it. This ain't no _habeas carpis_, give-the-man-a-chance case. It's the
Hadmir'lty. And not a man tried for piracy this thirty year. See what
a show it gives them, what bloody Radicle knows or keeres what the
perceedin's should be? Who's a-goin' t' make a question out of it? Go
away,' says I to Charlie. And that's it straight."

He went towards the door, then turned.

"You should be in the Marshalsea common yard; even I knows that. But
they've the wink there. 'Too full,' says they. Too full be d------d.
I've know'd the time--after the Vansdell smash it were--when they found
room for three hundred more improvident debtors over and above what
they're charted for. Too full! Their common yard! They don't want you to
speak to a soul, an' you won't till this day week, when the Hadmir'lty
Session is in full swing." He went out and locked the door, snorting,
"Too full at the Marshalsea!... Go away!"

"Find out about the _Lion_," I called, as the door closed.

It cleared the air for me, that speech. I understood that they wanted to
hang me, and I wanted not to be hung, desperately, from that moment.
I had not much cared before; I had--call it, moped. I had not really
believed, really sensed it out. It isn't easy to conceive that one is
going to be hanged, I doubt if one does even with the rope round one's
neck. I hadn't much wanted to live, but now I wanted to fight--one good
fight before I went under for good and all, condemned or acquitted.
There wasn't anything left for me to live for, Seraphina could not be
alive. The _Lion_ must have been lost.

But I was going to make a fight for it; curse it, I was going to give
them trouble. My "them" was not so much the Government that meant to
hang me as the unseen powers that suffered such a state of things, that
allowed a number of little meannesses, accidents, fatalities, to hang
me. I began to worry the turnkey. He gave me no help, only shreds of
information that let me see more plainly than ever how set "they" were
on sacrificing me to their exigencies.

The whole West Indian trade in London was in an uproar over the Pirate
Question and over the Slave Question. Jamaica was still squealing for
Separation before the