stood up. It would have caused the witness’s immediate collapse.
‘It was a little after three o’clock in the afternoon when you set out for what you believed to be an abandoned vessel?’ said Flood.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What were the sea conditions?’
‘There was a tolerably heavy sea running.’
‘Describe how you first saw the Mary Celeste ’
Deveau hesitated, composing his recollection. ‘Her head was westward when we first saw her. She was on starboard tack. With her foresail set, she would come up to the wind and fall off again. The wind was north, not much then, though blowing heavily in the morning. With the sails she had when I first saw her, she might come up and fall away a little, but not much. She would always keep those sails full. The sheet was fast on the port side. She was found on the starboard tack.’
‘So from a rowing boat you had to board a vessel under sail in some wind.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Is it easy to do such a thing, unless the crew of the sailed vessel heaves to?’
Deveau frowned. ‘There was no one aboard the Mary Celeste, sir,’ he said, as if he thought the Attorney- General had misunderstood his earlier evidence.
‘Exactly,’ said Flood. ‘So I will repeat the question. Is it not difficult to close to a sailed vessel in a rowing boat and then board?’
‘The wind had slackened, as I said. The Mary Celeste had virtually no way on when we crossed to her.’
‘So by the strength of your arms, you were able to row over and get aboard?’
The disbelief was pitched perfectly in Flood’s voice.
‘Yes, sir.’
Flood said nothing, letting the silence build up as if he expected Deveau to continue.
‘How many of you were there in this rowing boat?’ demanded Flood, when he considered Deveau sufficiently uncomfortable.
Before Deveau could respond, Pisani was on his feet, addressing the judge.
‘Can there be any purpose whatsoever,’ he said, ‘in going point by point over everything that this man has already recounted in great detail and clarity in his evidence-in-chief, protracting this enquiry far beyond the time necessary?’
‘I shall decide the time necessary for the conduct of this hearing, Mr Pisani,’ rebutted Cochrane immediately. ‘What need is there for haste?’
‘I was not urging haste, sir,’ said Pisani, aware he had antagonised the judge by a badly worded protest. ‘I was suggesting that the time of this enquiry is being wilfully wasted.’
‘Mr Attorney-General?’ Cochrane asked.
Flood half-turned, away from Deveau and towards Pisani.
‘My learned friend seems anxious for a conclusion,’ he said, ‘whereas I am anxious for the truth. Fractious for him though the search may be, I can only plead for his patience.’
Pisani refused to be overwhelmed by the sarcasm.
‘Like my learned friend,’ he said, ‘I, too, am anxious that we should arrive at the truth of the matter. And I am equally anxious that it should be the real truth and that it will not be obscured for reasons that some of us present find difficult to comprehend.’
‘I am experiencing no difficulty in comprehending the Attorney-General’s questioning,’ intruded Cochrane.
‘Nor I, sir,’ said Pisani immediately. ‘It’s the point of such questioning that is perhaps a little more difficult to ascertain.’
‘Then I must repeat what I said to my learned friend not five minutes ago,’ said Flood. ‘If he has patience, then it all may become clear.’
‘In which case,’ intervened the judge again, anxious to end the dispute between the two advocates, ‘I think we should continue.’
Flood came back to Deveau, aware that because of his interruption the man had had the opportunity to regain his composure.
‘You were about to tell us the complement of the initial boarding party?’ he reminded the witness.
‘Seaman Johnson held the boat alongside,’ said Deveau. ‘I went aboard with second mate Wright.’
‘What did you find?’
‘There was much disarray,’ said the man. ‘There were lines and rigging over the deck and hanging over the rail. I tested the pumps and found three and a half feet of water. There was also a great deal of water below decks,’
‘Was this the first thing you did?’
‘Sir?’
‘Commence an immediate examination of the condition of the vessel?’ said Flood.
Deveau frowned, aware of a mistake and trying to realise what it was.
‘Yes,’ he said doubtfully.
‘You knew from the moment of stepping over the rail, then, that there was no one aboard. Ill or incarcerated below decks, for instance?’
Colour spread from the man’s neck and then up to his face.
‘We had watched the ship for some hours through the glass,’ he said. ‘There had never been any movement on deck in all that time.’
‘ Below deck, I said, Mr Deveau.’
‘We shouted, of course. Before boarding. Asked permission to board, as is the custom. And then hulloed again, as soon as we were aboard.’
‘Did you, Mr Deveau?’
Again the man hesitated, unable to see the Attorney-General’s point.
‘Or is that something you have just decided to add to your evidence at this moment?’ pursued Flood.
‘No, sir!’ protested Deveau plaintively. ‘It is as I said.’
‘You initially conveyed the impression that you boarded the vessel without any attempt to discover whether there were people on board… as if you knew the situation you were about to find.’
‘That was the whole purpose of boarding, to render any assistance that was necessary. We had shouted from the Dei Gratia for almost an hour.’
Judging that the degree of doubt at the man’s evidence had been sufficiently established, Flood said, ‘Go on with what you found — after shouting loudly, that is.’
‘I went first to the cabins, it being the most obvious place, I thought, to find if anybody were still aboard — ’
‘But there wasn’t?’
‘No, sir. The main cabin, which was slightly raised above the deck, was wet. Its door was open and its skylight raised. The windows on the starboard side were nailed up with planks and canvas and those on the port side shut.’
‘Was the cabin in disarray?’
‘Sir?’
‘You’ve given evidence that there was some confusion and mess upon the deck. Was there anything in the main cabin that surprised you… evidence that might have been produced, for instance, in a struggle?’
‘Not a struggle, sir,’ said Deveau doubtfully.
‘What then?’
‘I gained the impression that everything had been left behind in a great hurry.’
‘A panic?’
‘Great hurry,’ repeated Deveau, refusing the other man’s words.
‘What had been left behind in this great hurry?’
‘In the main cabin, I found charts, books and the slate-log which had been entered up to November 25 and showed that the vessel had made the island of Santa Maria. In some chests I found articles of women’s clothing
