March 14, and the thing could be quickly finished. The assize, or jury, was impaneled, made up of fifteen members, whose verdict was sufficient, if found by a plurality of votes. Mr. Fiscal first put on the stand Antonio Ferdinando, cook’s mate. He testified through an interpreter, one captain Yeaman. After asserting that he was twenty-four years of age, single, a Christian and the son of Christian parents, he claimed that he saw the _Worcester_ attack the unnamed ship “upon the coast of Malabar”, practically as set out in the indictment, and that in the engagement he was wounded, in the arm, “which wound he now shows to the view of all.” Sensation in the courtroom! He said it was a running fight and lasted for three days, and occurred between Tellicherry and Calicut. During his testifying it was apparent that he was extremely sick, and from time to time he had to stop and stretch at length on counsel’s table until he could recover his strength to proceed. Next up was Doctor May, who said he was twenty-six years old, and who, being white, enjoyed the presumption of being a Christian. He repeated the statements which he had given for the indictment. He said he heard the firing while he was at Callequilon. If Ferdinando truthfully told that the attack was at Calicut, the doctor must have had unusual powers of hearing, for that place and Callequilon are more than one hundred miles apart. This was a little too much for even this tragic farce, so towards the end the doctor brazenly switched his testimony and said that the firing happened while he was on the ship “going up the coast of Malabar.” Antonio Francesco, the slave, was the third to come on. He had been chained to the forecastle floor during the firing, but was told by Ferdinando that the sloop was attacking a ship. He added the highly significant information that Ferdinando was only employed forty-eight hours before the _Worcester_ left Anjango for Bengal and home! If that were so, he was not on the ship at the time Doctor May was at Callequilon, for that was long before the departure for Bengal. But then, one could amuse one’s self indefinitely picking out this kind of discrepancy among the witnesses. James Wilkie, Will Wood and the whole Seaton circle, of course, washed their faces and came trippingly to court to tell of the important utterances of George Haines, and to impinge their little personalities a moment upon the national retina.