Chapter XXVIII: Conviction

I shall not wear the patience of my reader with the details of the trial that followed. Enough for him to know that we succeeded in securing a conviction, against all four of the accused. They were convicted not only of piracy, but murder, of which we found the proofs, alas too clear!

In dragging the lagoon to strengthen our testimony with the scraps of cotton-bagging I had seen the pirate sinking below the surface, an appalling object was brought up on the prongs of the drag--the body of a negro that had been kept at anchor below by a bag of iron tied around the neck.

His face was disfigured by the slashes of a knife; but not so much as to hinder Walter Woodley from identifying him as one of the four who had been sent to assist in the navigation of the flat.

There was a bullet-hole through his breast, no doubt from the shot I had heard fired when half asleep, followed by that death shriek that so long rung in my ears.

We searched for the other three, dragging the whole lagoon, as well as the strait that led into it. They could not be found. In all likelihood their bodies had been sunk in the deep channel of the river--a safer place of concealment.

Why one had been brought up the lagoon we could not tell, unless it was that he had been killed outside, and allowed to lie upon the flat, for the want of time, while turning out of the current, to dispose of his body by flinging it overboard.

We succeeded in fishing up the bundles of cast bagging, that carried the Woodley mark; and, along with them, two other lots of older date, and bearing a different brand. One set of these was gone to rottenness and rags; on the other could still be deciphered a name and mark that led to its identification. It had covered the cotton of that missing boat belonging to the Arkansas planter, of which Henry Woodley had heard.

How many of these horrid tragedies had been enacted on the Devil's Island it was impossible to say, but certainly one every year. No wonder at planter Bradley becoming rapidly rich! No wonder at the Devil's Island being deemed a haunted spot, inspiring terror among the black-skinned creatures who had occasion to go near it. To many of them, its gloomy lagoon, or the swift current sweeping around it, had proved more destructive than the fancied demon of their superstitious fears.

* * * * *

We had no difficulty in making out the case clear against the pirates; but, although we proved them guilty of the double crime--robbery and murder--to say nothing of the attempt at assassinating myself--the severest sentence that could be obtained was _penitentiary for life_! There was no proof of their having murdered _a white man_!

Bradley did not submit long to his confinement. In less than a year afterward, I heard that he had put an end to his life.

As to Black, Stinger, and Croucher, for what I know to the contrary, all three may be still inside the strong walls of the Louisiana State prison, working out their tedious term of compulsory penitence.

* * * * *

I might turn to other themes, and describe scenes of a more tranquil character. But no doubt, by this time the reader is tired of my narrative. He will not care to listen to the oft-told tale, the old, old story, as it was told to Cornelia Woodley. Suffice it to say, that she listened to, liked it, and said "Yes."

THE END.

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