This was another obstacle.  They finally convinced him that it was necessary to have the accused in court.  Then they said they would send a guard to bring him.

“No, sir, I prefer to fetch him myself—­he don’t get out of my hands.  Besides, I’ve got to go to the ship to get a rope, anyway.”

The court assembled with due ceremony, empaneled a jury, and presently Capt.  Ned entered, leading the prisoner with one hand and carrying a Bible and a rope in the other.  He seated himself by the side of his captive and told the court to “up anchor and make sail.”  Then he turned a searching eye on the jury, and detected Noakes’s friends, the two bullies.

He strode over and said to them confidentially: 

“You’re here to interfere, you see.  Now you vote right, do you hear?—­or else there’ll be a double-barreled inquest here when this trial’s off, and your remainders will go home in a couple of baskets.”

The caution was not without fruit.  The jury was a unit—­the verdict.  “Guilty.”

Capt.  Ned sprung to his feet and said: 

“Come along—­you’re my meat now, my lad, anyway.  Gentlemen you’ve done yourselves proud.  I invite you all to come and see that I do it all straight.  Follow me to the canyon, a mile above here.”

The court informed him that a sheriff had been appointed to do the hanging, and—­

Capt.  Ned’s patience was at an end.  His wrath was boundless.  The subject of a sheriff was judiciously dropped.

When the crowd arrived at the canyon, Capt.  Ned climbed a tree and arranged the halter, then came down and noosed his man.  He opened his Bible, and laid aside his hat.  Selecting a chapter at random, he read it through, in a deep bass voice and with sincere solemnity.  Then he said: 

“Lad, you are about to go aloft and give an account of yourself; and the lighter a man’s manifest is, as far as sin’s concerned, the better for him.  Make a clean breast, man, and carry a log with you that’ll bear inspection.  You killed the nigger?”

No reply.  A long pause.

The captain read another chapter, pausing, from time to time, to impress the effect.  Then he talked an earnest, persuasive sermon to him, and ended by repeating the question: 

“Did you kill the nigger?”

No reply—­other than a malignant scowl.  The captain now read the first and second chapters of Genesis, with deep feeling—­paused a moment, closed the book reverently, and said with a perceptible savor of satisfaction: 

“There.  Four chapters.  There’s few that would have took the pains with you that I have.”

Then he swung up the condemned, and made the rope fast; stood by and timed him half an hour with his watch, and then delivered the body to the court.  A little after, as he stood contemplating the motionless figure, a doubt came into his face; evidently he felt a twinge of conscience—­a misgiving—­and he said with a sigh: