 court, for
aught we knew they might have been arguing their own case. At what precise
moment the trial began it would be hard to say. There was no swearing of
witnesses, and no regular jury.35 Now and then somebody leaped up and shouted
out something which might have been evidence; the rest, meanwhile, keeping up an
incessant jabbering. Presently the old judge himself began to get excited; and
springing to his feet, ran in among the crowd, wagging his tongue as hard as
anybody.
    The tumult lasted about twenty minutes; and toward the end of it, Captain
Crash might have been seen, tranquilly regarding, from his Honour's platform,
the judicial uproar, in which his fate was about being decided.
    The result of all this was, that both he and the girl were found guilty. The
latter was adjudged to make six mats for the queen; and the former, in
consideration of his manifold offences, being deemed incorrigible, was sentenced
to eternal banishment from the island. Both these decrees seemed to originate in
the general hubbub. His Honour, however, appeared to have considerable
authority, and it was quite plain that the decision received his approval.
    The above penalties were by no means indiscriminately inflicted. The
missionaries have prepared a sort of penal tariff to facilitate judicial
proceedings. It costs so many days' labour on the Broom Road to indulge in the
pleasures of the calabash; so many fathoms of stone wall to steal a musket; and
so on to the end of the catalogue. The judge being provided with a book, in
which all these matters are cunningly arranged, the thing is vastly convenient.
For instance: a crime is proved - say bigamy; turn to letter B - and there you
have it. Bigamy: - forty days on the Broom Road, and twenty mats for the queen.
Read the passage aloud, and sentence is pronounced.
    After taking part in the first trial, the other delinquents present were put
upon their own; in which, also, the convicted culprits seemed to have quite as
much to say as the rest. A rather strange proceeding; but strictly in accordance
with the glorious English principle, that every man should be tried by his
peers.
    They were all found guilty.
 

                                  Chapter LXXX

                                 Queen Pomaree

It is well to learn something about people before being introduced to them, and
so we will here give some account of Pomaree and her family.
    Every reader of Cook's Voyages must remember Otoo, who, in that navigator's
time, was king of the larger peninsula of Tahiti. Subsequently, assisted
