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There were twenty-seven American citizens on the consular roll of male sex, sound mind, and above twenty-one years of age. Four of them lived far from Apia, and were therefore unavailable. Two more, as known deserters from the United States navy, were considered unworthy of the judgment seat. Forged or suspected naturalization papers threw out another five. This reduced the residuum to sixteen, whose names were written on slips of paper, thrown into a pith helmet, and tumbled together. The first four withdrawn constituted the assessor judges, who were at once warned by messenger to be in attendance at the consulate at ten the next morning, or be punished for contempt.

What a stir was made in the little town as the news went round! Satterlee, the cherished, the entertained, the eagerly sought after–Satterlee, had been discovered to be a pirate! The Southern Belle was no Southern Belle at all, but the James H. Peabody ! He had shipped as supercargo, putting in a thousand dollars of his own to lull Mr. Crawford’s suspicions, and then had marooned the captain and mate on Ebon Island, and levanted with the ship! Heavens! what cackle, what excitement, what a furious flow of beer in every saloon along the beach! It was rumored that the great bargain-day sales might be canceled; that the goods might have to be returned; that not a penny of compensation would be paid to the unlucky purchasers. Then what a rubbing off of marks took place, what a breaking up of tell-tale cases, what a soaking off of tags! The whole eighty tons disappeared like magic, and you could not find a soul who would even confess to a packet of pins!

The trial took place in the large office room of the consulate. The big front doors stood open to the sea, where a mile away the breakers tossed and tumbled on the barrier reef. The back door was kept shut, to keep out the meaner noises of domesticity, but at intervals in the course of the trial you could hear the deliberate grinding of the consular coffee; the chasing of consular chickens; the counting of the consular wash; shrill arguments over the price of fish–a grotesque juxtaposition that seemed to make a mock of the whole proceedings.

The consul, in well-starched white clothes and pipe-clayed shoes, sat on a dais beneath the crossed flags of his country, giving the effect of an elegant and patriotic waxwork. Below him were the four assessors, sunburned, commonish, seafaring men, with enormous hands that they did not know what to do with, who moved uneasily in their chairs, and looked about for places to spit–and then didn’t dare to! One, whose brawny arms far exceeded the shrunken sleeves of his jumper, unbared to view on his hairy skin the tattooed form of a naked mermaid. A table stood in the center of the uncarpeted room, with a lawyer on either side–Purdy, the goaty-haired, messy, elderly man, half-blind, sharp-voiced, rasping out his case; opposite him, Thacher, a slinky, mean-looking young man, who was reputed to have left New Zealand under a cloud. He looked what he was, a cheap lawyer’s clerk, of the pinched, hungry variety one sees in gloomy anterooms. At the head of the table was Dillon, the everlasting dictatee, his dyed black whiskers drooping in the heat, who raised a fat hand from time to time as a brake on outstripping tongues. And there the captain, the cause of all this singular assembly, tilting back in his chair, or occasionally leaning over to whisper into his counsel’s ear–spare, angular, careworn–with his grim mouth and resolute air, as though the soul within him refused to be cowed by such droning tomfoolery.

Beside the front door was a shabby basket-work sofa, where members of the public were entitled to sit. They would tiptoe in, these members of the public, furtively, as though expecting to be shot on sight, the bolder ones perhaps exchanging a whisper, the weaker brethren silent, and trembling if they caught an official eye. Outside, on the steps of the broad veranda, the brothers Scanlon lolled and slumbered, with pewter stars on their sweaty breasts, enjoying the deep contentment that comes with two dollars and fifty cents a day.