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The Green Bag.
scrubbed the deck, and spoke but little English. The prosecution offered to prove, by a man named Nicklass of Baltimore, that the last sailing voyage which Bram took be fore he went upon the " Herbert Fuller," was on the schooner "White Wings"; that Nicklass was first mate, and Bram was second mate; that Bram proposed to Nicklass that they should kill the captain of the "White Wings," and sail her off and dispose of the cargo; that Nicklass laughed at the pro posal; that then Bram said, " If you don't want to kill this particular captain, let us go on board a Norwegian vessel, where they have fewer men before the mast, where they don't talk our language, and where they are bound with coffee, which is a better cargo than lumber," — the cargo of the "White Wings " was lumber, — " and, she going round Cape Town, we can give the crew knockout drops, so that they will not know anything about it, and then kill the captain, and the crew of the vessel will obey our or ders; " that Bram then stated how he had already succeeded in sinking a vessel, and pretending that freight money, which he kept, had gone down in her, and in sell ing a cargo of cocoanuts from another vessel at a profit, and pretending that he got only a price for a damaged lot; that all these vessels were in the South American trade, and that Bram was em ployed on each. The district attorney claimed, in a learned and interesting argu ment, that these acts were all a part of a piratical business and tended to show the state of mind of the prisoner, and were ad missible to prove his motive. But the court excluded the evidence as not connected with or bearing upon the issue in this case, under the principle that one crime, or the offer to commit one crime, does not tend to prove another crime. The offer, argument and ruling on this subject were made out of the presence of the jury, so that the)' should not be influenced thereby. Bram was of average height, and had a
habit of standing erect with his shoulders thrown far back. He was very alert. His naturally dark complexion was darkened by exposure. When his face was quiet it had a solid, businesslike look — quite calculating. But when he spoke, a strange mixture of qualities was disclosed. His voice was re sounding. Everyone could hear him every where. When speaking to a friend, his black eyes would shine and sparkle, he would show his white teeth under his thick lips, and would put his hand in a persuasive manner on the person to whom he was talking. But when he was under cross-examination, his eye became steadily fixed and hard to a startling degree, his mouth grew confidently firm, and he carried his head in a way that brought into prominence a very long under jaw. His manner when questioned about the murders was that of doing a piece of business that he must attend to very care fully and which was wearying everybody except himself. He testified with the air of quite willingly delivering a lecture upon a subject about which no one knew anything but himself, and he knew everything. He was very patient with his hearers and was effusively apologetic to his cross-examiner. His nerve, coolness, and power of endurance made him apparently the freshest man in the court-room at the end of day after day. And his presence and conciliatory habit were so effective that many spectators who believed him guilty were sure that twelve men would not find such a smooth talker guilty of such a crime as murder. But there were times during that long trial when more than one observer thought his expression remorseless. Bram did not claim to have been drunk or asleep at the time of the murders. He testified that he had had only one drink at midnight and one drink an hour afterwards, both of whiskey. He swore that he saw Charley at the mizxcn-peak jig, where there was no light, and that he could not see whether he was at the wheel or not, because there was a bell in front of the wheel that he