rings when the pirates were threatening her in the cabin. The
other door opened, another man said:

"Now, then, in with that carrion. D'you want to keep the judges
waiting?"

I stepped through the door straight down into the dock; there was a row
of spikes in the front of it. I wasn't afraid; three men in enormous
wigs and ermine robes faced me; four in short wigs had their heads
together like parrots on a branch. A fat man, bareheaded, with a gilt
chain round his neck, slipped from behind into a seat beside the highest
placed judge. He was wiping his mouth and munching with his jaws. On
each side of the judges, beyond the short-wigged assessors, were chairs
full of ladies and gentlemen. They all had their eyes upon me. I saw it
all very plainly. I was going to see everything, to keep my eyes open,
not to let any chance escape. I wondered why a young girl with blue eyes
and pink cheeks tittered and shrugged her shoulders. I did not know what
was amusing. What astonished me was the smallness, the dirt, the want of
dignity of the room itself. I thought they must be trying a case of my
importance there by mistake.

Presently I noticed a great gilt anchor above the judges' heads. I
wondered why it was there, until I remembered it was an Admiralty Court.
I thought suddenly, "Ah! if I had thought to tell my father to go and
see if the _Lion_ had come in in the night!"

A man was bawling out a number of names.... "Peter Plimley, gent., any
challenge.... Lazarus Cohen, merchant, any challenge...."

The turnkey beside me leant with his back against the spikes. He was
talking to the man who had called us in.

"Lazarus Cohen, West Indian merchant.... Lord, well, I'd challenge...."

The other man said, "S--sh."

"His old dad give me five shiners to put him up to a thing if I could,"
the turnkey said again.

I didn't catch his meaning until an old man with a very ragged gown
was handing up a book to a row of others in a box so near that I could
almost have touched them. Then I realized that the turnkey had been
winking to me to challenge the jury. I called out at the highest of the
judges:

"I protest against that jury. It is packed. Half of them, at least, are
West Indian merchants."

There was a stir all over the court. I realized then that what had
seemed only a mass of stuffs of some sort were human beings all looking
at me. The judge I had called to opened a pair of dim eyes upon me,
clasped and unclasped his hand