Why Thomas Bram Was Found Guilty. him. ... I know that we have to come to the United States port and tell the truth." The men came and talked with him. He said, on cross-examination at the trial : " I tell my shipmates to keep quiet; everything will be all right as soon as we come to port. Never mind me suffer. Never mind me. . . . I told everybody on board that I didn't know nothing about it." But before that day was over he told Andersson that he knew something. Bram, with his fatal facility, was then ready to abandon his original theory that the dead people killed each other. He said to the passenger, " Now we've got the mur derer we had better tear up that paper." But the passenger this time said, " No, we have not got the murderer; we'll keep it." He had learned something from seeing the axe thrown overboard. Bram asked the passenger to write out in the log book an account of Charley's arrest. But the passenger refused, telling Bram that he was the commanding officer, and it was his duty to write it. So Bram wrote : — WEDNESDAY, day of 15 July, 1896. On this day, at 5.30 p. m, the steward of said H. Fuller came to me and told me that the sailors all came and made an open statement to him in reference to one of the sailors (whose name is Charles Brown) conduct of guilt in regard to the murder which took place on board said vessil. I at once got each men's statement; then upon the strength of these statements we concluded to put him in irons at daybreak. At 7 p m all hands was musterd aft and thoroughly searcht. No other wepon was given them but their knives. Each man was then placed a certin distance apart from each other untop of the after house. Myself, the steward and passenger was stationed amidships vell armed, and kept a good lookout untile daybreak. At 5 a m Charles Brown was mancled and put in irons. His actions all night was very suspicious and got himself all ready, as it were, to jump over the side, but he was well guarded by all hands on board. At 1.30 he mad an effort ' rush for the forward part of the 1 " ciesprate " scratched out and above it is written effort.
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ship, but was instantly stop by the steward upon a pointed revolver towards him. Thomas M. Bram, Mate, Jonathan Spencer, Steward, Lester Hawthorne Monks, Frank IxDheac, Folke Wassene, Oscar Andersson, Henry Slice. All on board signed this statement in the log book except Purdok, who was at the wheel when it was signed. After another miserable night, Friday came. The general suspicion and fear were such that most of them were unwilling to do anything of importance alone. The steward had opened Bram's trunk and searched there for the captain's revolver, but it had not yet been found anywhere. It was about this time that the passenger asked the steward and Wassen to go and hunt for it in his room, that having been the captain's cabin. They went, and Wassen found it under the mattress on the bunk. Since it was the middle of July, the heat continued, and after one more night the bodies had become so offensive that on Sat urday they lowered the jolly-boat overboard and towed it astern. Bram occupied himself in making what he called at the trial " duplicates " of those leaves of the log book which belonged to the days from the eighth to the fourteenth of July, inclusive. But these papers were loose leaves which contained different accounts of those days from the accounts given on the fixed leaves. And the condition of the book suggested the question whether the loose leaves were not the original statements which had been cut out and the fixed leaves the subsequent garbled statements. Bram insisted that this was not so and said he found the leaves loose and " I started to make duplicates of the occurrence from the 1 3th, for the vessel may go away with the log book, and we won't have anything to guide by." Bram talked to Wassen and said, " If we
