MURDER AND PIRACY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 159, 5 January 1914, Page 8

MURDER AND PIRACY.

GHASTLY SEA STORY. (Sydney Sun). ".Vow I have got rid of those two devils, and the ship is mine." In a little sailing vessel hound from Callao—the place that tin- great world knows only in sea chanties and the stories of sailormcn—this boast was littered by a murderer, if the tail of his companion wire true. The tale was told in a court of law in Sydney in Jf>l'"l, and the man against whom it was told offered no defence, no palliation. That man lay for n year in Parrajnatta Gaol, where he lies' still, before he s opened his mouth in reply. Then he preferred against his accuser a charge ni fraught with grisly horror as that which 'lie had failed to answer. Sworn oath and circumstance combined to give credence to a story of bloody .sea-tragedy on the wide oceans of the south that Robert Louis Stevenson's Weii'd imaginings have reflected, -but could not excel. Men's minds twisted by the terror" aii.l loneliness of the sea bird into blind hate that loosed their primal passions went to the making of this horrid drama, which ' would be incredible if it had not been I proven true. Cold official records hold the skeleton of the ghastly story. The actors in the tragedy bore name* which would have been chosen 'by n master of fiction. Nicholas Melis was the captain of the Neuvre Tigre, a vessel which would have been insignificant even in the days of Drake. Rorter was the mate. Holder's haltered head and hacked body went to the sea-bed, or into the shark's belly, and nowhere in the world is there any trace of,him, or any epitaph, or any record, of Borter. He win a unit among the hapless crowd of mi known men who sailed Die unknown seas. On the face of the waters beneath a blind sky lie was foully murdered, and that was the life and death of Ilorter. Skerritt and iMortelmans made up the crew of the blood-laden little craft. The Court fixed on one of them , the guilt which ho sought, later, to lay at th'e other's door. Joseph Mortelmans , lias been punished for the crime. • Skerritt has gone—God knows where and he may lie now with the creatures • i of the deep-sea ooze, or he may be tonight in some grimy foc's'le, 'brooding ■ over a bloody chapter in his life, i Interest in the tale he told in the wit- ■ ness-box in Sydney four years ago has - been revived by an official query made ' bv the Fiji Government as to why it ' should pay to the Government of New South Wales a yearly subsidy for the • maintenance of a prisoner. The prir soner ;a Joseph Mortelmans, and changijijj administration in the islands has r 1 apparently lost trace of the tragedy. '] "SAVE ME! SAVE ME!" ' Skcrritt's evidence look up the tale I at a point when the vessel was thrre or ] four days out from Callao. A sudden . howling broke the dreariness of his I cramped life on the little ship that was , like a prison hemmed in by -monotonous _ miles of sea. He turned from a hope--5 less survey of swaying waters to see , the male running up and down the deck. . The male howled dismally, while blood . streamed from a gaping'wound in his head, and a more terrible howl came up I from the cabin below. i Skerritt ran to the captain's cabin in i time to see .Mortelmans aim a savage t ' blow at the captain with a rcd-drippin« chopper. While the captain lav groan- . iug, Skerritt lied again to the deck, and ; Mortelmans, now aii,:ed with a gun, | rushed after him, crying, "If you do not , go down I will shoot yon." Then the mate licgan to plead piti- , fully for his life while Mortlemans covered him with the gun. "Oh, Joseph, .' ' Joseph," he wailed.' ".Save me, save J me! I have got a poor old mother on Bhore." Mortelmans laughed, "and then," said , Skerritt, "he said to me, 'Pick up that ; bar and go chase bin, down." The mate screamed and ran up the rigging. Skerritt, urged by bloody I threats from Mortelmans, followed, but , stopped, sick-hearted, while the mate hung in the ropes above him. Mortcl- , mans, cursing, clambered past. The mate.ltdind with blood, scrambled along , a spar and fell into the sea. Skerritt gulped down awful memories, and went on with his narrative. "There was blood everywhere," he said. "I wanted to throw a plunk into the water to the mate, but '.Mortelmans wouldn't let me." Then the captain's body was heaved overboard, and Mortelmans uttered his dreadful boast. He had got rid of "those two devils," and the ship was his, Skerritt was forced, so his tale ran, to clean up the bloody decks. At the murderer's bidding he threw the ship's papers into the sea. • "I will take her to Australia." said Mortelmans, and with its freight of crime and. nightly shrieking ghosts and daily terror the murder ship sailed on. Nemesis overtook her in n storm, and .she was wrecked on the reefs of Apamama lagoon. OTHER MFRDERS PLANNED. Skerritt and Mortelmans got safely ashore,, and later were brought to Anatralia on the lionise J. Kenny. According to Skerritt's evidence, he was still under the spell of fear wheh Mortelmans had put upon him, and it was not until the murderer had propounded to him another scheme of robbery and killing, with the captain of the Louise J. Kenny as the victim, that he began to give confidences to n steward on that ship. Pit by bit, he told to the steward the whole terrible story. The steward told the captain, who put Mortclmnns in irons, and <»n arrival at Sydney handed him over lo the authorities. When the tale was retold in court the accused man offered no defence, and he was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. He had been more than a year in gaol before he put forward in a statement to the Belgian Consul n new version of the horrors which had stained the decks and the cabins of the Neuvre Tigre. He excused xis delay by the statement that it was agaiiißt his religion to accuse any man of a crime and that he did not wish his assertions to he a charge against Skerritt, except to . prove that the evidence which procured the conviction had been perjured Ho complained that he had been sentenced upon the oath of a single witness, and went on to fell the story which is now published for the first tunc: MORTELMAN'S sSTORY. fighting and bloodshed commenced when the mate struck Skerritt for refusing to work the pumps. Skerritt at- ] tacked the mate with a chopper. Mortelmans took the chopper from him. Then < Skerritt chased Mortelmans and the mate, 'brandishing an iron bar. Borter in a paroxysm of terror, leaped into the $ sea. Mortelmans, with the bloody chop. . per in his hand, ran to the captain's - cabin, and the captain, thinking that I the man was about to attack him, grappled with him and wrested the weapon away. .Skerritt■ rushed into the cabin and struck at the captain with n knife

null the captain, apparently ill the belief that ]»' liml to ileal with open and mill"derous imiliiiy in the little crew, slashed at Moi'lcliiii'in with the chopper, Skerlilt advanced ng.ii-i in i!;e captain, who ran on duck with : "."I ."L in cli«e pursuit. Skeirilt seise, a nn iron bar anil yelled to tin' eaptajn lo got overboard after tliu mate, who was keeping himself afloat near the ship. v | ! ' Tlicn— tlic remarkable a several.ion was made -by Mortclmans—tlie captain, hard-pressed by Skeiritt, tried to MC- •» tape liim by running along the lop of the bulwark*. Skerritt hurled the iron bar at liim. and the captain fell igto the sea beside ihe mate. Mortclmans flung a plank inio the water. The captain and the mate reached and.clung'to It. ■Skerritt ran. Mow and came" on doek 'again, carrying a gun. He tried to sliopt the two men as they clung to the plank. Mortclmans did not wait on deck |[e said that he went below and slept. When he awoke, Skerritt said to liim, "I hiva got the ship and I'm going to tliko her to Australia." Mortclmans triedito steer the t>hip back to Callao. Skerritt shot at him, and threatened to kill lite). Skerritt said, "You will go to prison too, because you -truck at (lie captain." "Skerrilt," said Mortelinans, mado Dl* keep a fal.se lug. After we were wrecked at Apauiaiua lagoon he wanted to rob "" (he native magistrate. I said that I would tell the magip twite, and Skerrilt stabbed me." A ST AH IX TIIK HAI'K. When Skerritt told his story, a year earlier, the only conflrmatlon ol it vrus Mortelnians' silence a confirmation '. that might well influence the hearers. Mortclmans kept his extraordinary version till Skerritt had passed out of sight, hut lie had a knife sear on l\i» buck, anil there, he said, was the proof of his yarn —that was where .Skerritt stabbed him. • Mortlnnias also said that Skerritt had sold the boots and the gold ring of ' Captain Nicholas .Melis, but for tligt yarn there was 110 confirmation at all. Among others of Mortclmans' bqlalefll^~ defences was the claim that hc been convicted of piracy and murder on the high gens, while the crime, if tiler* was crime, had been committed withia territorial limits. Therefore, he should 1 have been acquitted. Further, lie B&id he had been convicted on the evidence of a single witness, in defiance of "the 1 Scriptural law contained In Deuteronomy, chap. 27, That text reada:. ! "Cursed be he that perverse-til the judgment of the stranger, the fatherless and • the widow, and all the people shall lay • Amen." Common law didn't admit ita ' applic. ion to the ease. ; Moru'lpians thought of many things ' during his year of silence in Parramatt* ' Gaol. lie has not yet thought of a way • out of it. He is likely to stay whew ha ■ is, unless the Fijian (lovernment prefers ' housing its own prisoner to paying for the upkeep of a guest whom this Stttta is'not keenly anxious to retain. Awl tk'c «'•<; still people who conJ I denin the wild improbability of Stevenson's romances. 1 1