Thus, In
Polynesia As Elsewhere; - Charge A Man With One Misdemeanour, And All
His Peccadilloes Are Raked Up And Assorted Before Him.
Going to the school-house for the purpose of witnessing the trial, the
din of it assailed our ears a long way off; and upon entering the
building, we were almost stunned.
About five hundred natives were
present; each apparently having something to say and determined to
say it. His Honour - a handsome, benevolent-looking old man - sat
cross-legged on a little platform, seemingly resigned, with all
Christian submission, to the uproar. He was an hereditary chief in
this quarter of the island, and judge for life in the district of
Partoowye.
There were several cases coming on; but the captain and girl were
first tried together. They were mixing freely with the crowd; and as
it afterwards turned out that everyone - no matter who - had a right to
address the court, for aught we knew they might have been arguing
their own case. At what precise moment the trial began it would he
hard to say. There was no swearing of witnesses, and no regular jury.
Now and then somebody leaped up and shouted out something which might
have been evidence; the rest, meanwhile, keeping up an incessant
jabbering. Presently the old judge himself began to get excited; and
springing to his feet, ran in among the crowd, wagging his tongue as
hard as anybody.
The tumult lasted about twenty minutes; and toward the end of it,
Captain Crash might have been seen, tranquilly regarding, from his
Honour's platform, the judicial uproar, in which his fate was about
being decided.
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