It is a scene of huckstering and violence on the very quarter-deck of the flagship. Yet though Ley died soon afterwards, perhaps from the effect of the blow, Norris was never called to account, and lived to be the most distinguished officer of the reign of George I. and the early years of George II.
The same Journal, under an earlier date, makes mention of one Captain William Moses of the =Milford= who accused his lieutenant and one of his midshipmen of attempting to murder him. It turned out on inquiry that he had wounded himself, in order to bolster up charges which he was bringing against these officers. They were brought to a court martial, the lieutenant was acquitted, and the midshipman let off with a mild rebuke. The story of this latter, whose name was Cæsar Brookes, is worth quoting from the minutes of the court martial.
The witnesses, who disagree in many details, are at one in saying that in the middle watch of a certain night, when the ship was on the coast of Africa, the captain, one Mr. Mite a passenger, and various officers, were sitting together on the quarter-deck drinking wine. Here the agreement ceases. Mr. Cæsar Brookes joined the party, and then, according to the captain, he voluntarily, without provocation, and out of pure native arrogance, advanced the proposition that he could fight any two men—nay, he swore he could. For this he was rebuked by the captain, who told him he might perchance meet one who was a better man than himself. To this Mr. Brookes, flaming into outrageous disrespect, answered, “Well, damme, you’re not,” and was thereupon justly confined for his mutinous behaviour. Brookes gives a very different version of the affair. According to him, he was only arguing that in defending narrow passages one man, if conveniently placed, could fight two—a scientific question of shock tactics, in fact, very proper for an officer to discuss. For this he was first abused and then put under arrest, though his carriage throughout was of the most respectful kind. The witnesses do not, with two suspicious exceptions, support the captain’s version of what took place. The exceptions are sailors who tell the same tale like parrots. One of them had been let out of irons by the captain, although he had beaten the gunner, after the quarter-deck scene be it observed. If the court martial thought that Captain Moses had been attempting subornation of perjury, it was not without excuse. Now follows a scene in the captain’s cabin, in which, _teste_ Captain Moses, he was bearded by his extra midshipman; but Mr. Brookes says it was otherwise, and that he was assaulted. Certain it is that the midshipman remained in confinement for six mortal months in the sweltering heat of the Guinea Coast. At Cape Coast Castle, Captain Moses had reason to believe that his life was threatened by the implacable and unbridled Brookes. It seems that Mr. Donnidge the surgeon went to have a conversation with the imprisoned midshipman, and by way of telling him something really worth hearing, let him know that the captain had taken medicine and that it had done no good. Mr. Brookes, on hearing that physicians had so far been in vain, remarked that if he could meet the captain on shore he would give him two pills that should move him. Hereupon Mr. Donnidge rushed out, and finding the captain’s boat manned alongside, warned the crew to keep a good watch, for he believed that their commander’s life was threatened. Something of Mackshane the toady surgeon in Smollett’s _Roderick Random_ seems to hang about Mr. Donnidge. Then there is another story of an anonymous letter found in the captain’s cabin, warning him that the lieutenant and the midshipman were plotting to raise a mutiny and run away with the ship. The letter was either an impudent practical joke or another device of this remarkable naval captain’s, much on a level with the wound on his leg. The notes are but brief, and many clues were not followed up; but one ends with the conviction that the court martial came to a sound and humane decision. It told Mr. Brookes that he had plainly been too free with his tongue, but that six months’ arrest on the coast of Africa was quite punishment enough, and it dismissed the captain’s rigmarole story of conspiracy to murder and mutiny as frivolous and vexatious.