Meantime the old inn at Deal, and indeed the whole town, was thrown into a state of violent commotion by a most shocking discovery. Going about their morning duties at the inn, the maids had come to the bed in which the boatswain and the apprentice had slept, and to their horror found it saturated with blood. Drops of blood, together with marks of blood-stained hands and feet, were further discovered on the floor and the door of the chamber, down the stairs, and along the passage leading to the street, whence they could be distinctly traced to the waterside, not so very far away. Imagination, working upon these ghastly survivals of the hours of darkness, quickly reconstructed the crime which it was evident had been committed. The boatswain was known to have had money on him; but the youth, it was recalled, had begged his bed. It was therefore plain to the meanest understanding that the youth had murdered the boatswain for his money and thrown the body into the sea.
At once that terrible precursor of judgment to come, the hue and cry was raised, and that night the footsore apprentice lay in Sandwich jail, a more than suspected felon, for his speedy capture had supplied what was taken to be conclusive evidence of his guilt. In his pocket they discovered the boatswain's knife, and both it and the lad's clothing were stained with blood. Asked whose blood it was, and how it came there, he made no answer. Asked was it the boatswain's knife, he answered, "Yes, it was," and therewith held his peace. In face of such evidence, and such an admission, he stood prejudged. His trial at the Assizes was a mere formality. The jury quickly found him guilty, and sentence of death was passed upon him.
The day of execution came. Up to this point Fate had set her face steadfastly against our apprentice lad; but now, in the very hour and article of death, she suddenly relented and smiled upon him. The dislocating "drop" was in those days unknown. When you were hanged, you were hanged from a cart, which was suddenly whisked from under you, leaving you dangling in mid-air like a kind of death-fruit nearly, but not quite, ready to fall. Much depended on the executioner, and that grim functionary was in this case a raw hand, unused to his work, who bungled the job. The knot was ill-adjusted, the rope too long, the convict tall and lank. This last circumstance was no fault of the executioner's, but it helped. When they turned him off, the lad's feet swept the ground, and his friends, gathering round him like guardian angels, bore him up. Cut down at the end of a tense half-hour, he was hurried away to a surgeon's and there copiously bled. And being young and virile, he revived.