Sydney sat down, his eyes flashing, his face pale and anxious. The court was silent for a fraction of a second and then a hum of surprised interrogation spread among its members. All knew of the captured arms and how the rock-filled boxes were found at the legation. “The witness will be allowed to testify,” the president spoke decidedly. “I have no further question to ask,” snapped the judge advocate, betraying in his voice the disappointment at losing his point. The court looked to Sydney; he whispered reassuringly to the unnerved Craig. The terrified sailor’s voice was so low pitched that the seven judges strained their hearing to listen. The silence was profound. “At New York, while we were there for repairs,” he commenced feebly, “I received a telegram that my sister was dying. I went to Mr. Lazar as the senior officer on board at the time and asked for leave to go to her bedside. He refused me permission. I showed him the telegram and her picture in a locket I always carried with me; she was my only living relative and we were everything to each other. I implored with tears in my eyes. He refused again and accused me of deceiving him to get ashore when I was not entitled to liberty. “The next day I received word she had died. The executive officer was on board and allowed me to go to bury her body. “I hated this officer, Ensign Lazar, for his cruelty to me and when I saw an opportunity to injure him I was happy. I filed half-way through the hoist wire in his turret. The accident happened, as I knew it must; but unfortunately for me while I was filing the wire rope Mr. Perry came into the turret; he heard me at work and called. In my haste to leave before he could detect me, I turned in the darkness to escape. The locket was in the pocket of my blouse which I had laid on the turret floor. I heard it fall on the metal deck as I grasped my clothes, but there was no time to regain it. Afterward I risked detection in getting it from Mr. Perry’s room, but I soon found that Ensign Lazar had already seen it and recognized the locket I had shown him, and knew at once that I had been guilty of injuring the turret. He told me if I didn’t want to go to jail for a long term of years I must do as he told me. I feared him. He first made me try to injure the ‘Vidette’s’ machinery on the night those arms were captured. Then I was wounded and before I had recovered entirely I was taken ashore with him and forced to sleep in the cellar of the legation. He told me that on a certain night I was to open the boxes, all but one, and that men would come through a tunnel below the cellar and carry the Colt guns away, giving me rocks to put in their places. “I heard one of the natives who received the arms tell another where they were to be taken, and when Mr. Perry discovered that the boxes were full of rocks and that the arms were gone, I told him what I had done and where they had been taken.