The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-08-02


the following day and reap some of
those wine-red delights whose pictures
had led him forth from the slumbering
''Name7" asked the yoeman, got it,
and reached thin finger down card
index case, drew forth the record, and
looked up, even his experienced, ex-
ecutive face forced to smile.
"Can you go ashore? Well, l guess
not. Why, you, won't be a special
frst-class for six months, not even if
they abolish the brig
So there he was, worse than ever.
The United States was conspiring
against him. First, they walked him
up to scrub decks before breakfast
that he had scrubbed till he ached
only the day before, until he felt like
the old man who committed suicide
because he got "plumb tired of the
everlastin buttonin and unbut-
tonin'.'' Then they put him at the
spit-kits, which only negroes cleaned
at home. They added the humiliation
and the discomfort of the brig. And
now they were going to deprive him
of the only thing he enlisted fora
seeing of the world. Tt was certainly
a hard case that Uncle Sam had against
him that day, rolled up by one young
and not hopeless patriot.
OVER THE SIDE WITH HIS KEEP
SAKES.
Back among the men he began talk
ing about desertion, and he found II
looked like very easy thing, certain
ly not a reprehensible thing. He
found that a lot of good men had done
it before, and he heard more than one
grumbler declare that the life at the
marine prisons was better than that
on any battleship. That night he went
over the side, with the stuff from his
dittvbox carefully twisted in a ban
dana handkerchief that hung about
his neck, and from then on the wa4-
ern influence is spreading into every
continent knew him no more.
But the boy was inexperienced in
desertion, as in most everything else.
He took no pains to conceal his tracks.
He was as frank and open about it as
he had been about the deck-scrubbing,
in the very face of the captain. De-
sertion he did not look upon as a
ming away from school, simply carry
ing the idea to more logical con-
clusion.
He got job driving a water-c cart
for peso a day, and had his first
view of the foreign lands behind lad
ed mule. That was where one of his
mates, who happened to be detailed for
shore police duty, saw him the eleventh
day, and from that job as water ped
Ter he was taken back to the battleship
to answer the charge of desertion.
Now, desertion is very difficult
crime to prove, almost as difficult as
certain other crimes which are commit
ted normally in secret, but which, for
proof, require witnesses. In desertion,
the prosecution has to prove the intent,
and it is not enough to show that the
man left the ship and was gone over
the ten days prescribed by law as con
stituting the crime. They have to
show, in addition to that. some cor
roborative evidence of an indubitable
nature. In fact, the law very largely
favors the enlisted man, being made in
retroactive spirit against the helm
ously cruel desertion laws of two and
three generations ago.
The boy, however, was convicted
with great ease. He stood before the
court martial with the same insolence
he used with his captain, and tried TO
tell them he intended to desert. The
prisoner not being allowed to incrimi
nate himself, they brought in two CT
his mates, who swore he had told them
solemnly of his intention to desert.
Then they produced his ditty-box, from
which were gone all his valuables and
all his keepsakes. Where the sweet
heart s picture goes there goes the man
also, reasoned the prosecution; on top
of the other evidence. the lack of de,
Tense, and the known character of the
desperate criminal at the bar, this
choice bit of legal reasoning got him
sentenced. They sent him to the marine
prison in the Boston Navy Yard for
three years.
Life at the marine prison is not so
bad Each prisoner IS allowed a cot,
with blankets and clean sheet, which
is better than a hammock with no
sheet His food is just as good as he
gets on shipboard. He has no work to
do, and a comparative freedom. All
thai he may not do is to wander past
the iron fence on top of which marine