Under the custom of that day counsel for the criminal defendant could not give his client much help on the facts, but Thoirs went as far as the law would allow him. He disputed the qualifications of the Antonios, claiming that they did not own ten pounds apiece, and therefore could not be heard to testify in a Scottish court. This was easy for the Fiscal. “Oh,” said he, “we calculate that each has wages coming to him from the cruise, which will total more than ten pounds.” And the court declared the witnesses qualified! If Sir David Cunningham knew of this ruling he must have been glad he quit. Evening came on, yet the court sat through. The macers lit the candles, making little pools of yellow light in the mid-March murk of the old courtroom. Green essayed a feeble cross-examination but could make little headway with a weapon which requires the finest skill of the most practiced hand, and which, clumsily used, will certainly cut the examiner’s own fingers. As to any affirmative defense, nothing could be advanced under an indictment of the kind laid against him, for what was there that he could specifically approach and rebut; all he could say was no. One thing he did advance and which carried no weight with the assize, but which is meaningful enough for us, and that was that there was indeed firing upon the coast of Malabar and by the _Worcester’s_ guns, but it was nothing more than the five salutes to the ship _Aureng-zeb_. The “probation” or taking of testimony ended. Sir David Dalrymple, her majesty’s solicitor, rose to “speech the assize” on behalf of the prosecution. “Forgive me,” he blandly began, after complimenting them as persons “so discerning and faithful”, “if, after a _sederunt_ (sitting) of twelve hours ... I detain you a little longer in recapitulating what has passed, with some few observations, I hope not improper, before ye enclose.” Those “few observations”, invariably the preface of the complete bore! For two hours more this fellow rehashed the evidence, in heads and subheads until a mathematician would have endangered his reason keeping count thereof. What a point he made of Captain Thomas Bowrey’s code, found on the seizing of the ship! A regular devil’s document it was. As a matter of fact it was nothing more than a meager little forerunner of the ordinary commercial code of to-day. The whole matter, he asserted, was “as clear as sunshine.” Rather as clear as mud.