128 THE END OF THE STRUGGLE and comforting one another," refusing the wine which the guards offered them, " bidding them to drink lus- tick and drive away the sorrow." Next day, February 27th (English date), the ten Englishmen, 1 nine Japanese, and the Portuguese cap- tain of slaves were led out to execution " in a long procession round the town," through crowds of natives who had been summoned by beat of drum " to behold this triumph over the English." It is not needful, after the fashion of that time, to accept as manifestations of divine Wrath a " great darkness " and hurricane which immediately followed, and drove two Dutch ships from their anchorage; or the pestilence, said to have swept away one thousand people. The innocence of Towerson and his fellow sufferers rests upon no such stories, whether false or true. The improbability of the enterprise, the absence of any evidence except such as was wrung forth under torments, the neglect of the safeguards imposed by the Dutch law on judicial torture, the dying declarations of the victims— suffice to convince any unbiassed mind that the ten Englishmen were unjustly done to death. This, too, without insisting on the circumstance that would place Van Speult's conduct in the darkest light —his being on the outlook for conspiracies; or on the arrival of the English letter during the trial ordering 1 Captain Gabriel Towerson ; Samuel Colson, factor at Hitto ; Emanuel Thomson, assistant at Amboyria; Timothy Johnson, assistant at Amboyna ; John Wetheral, factor at Cambello ; John Clark, assistant at Hitto ; William Griggs, factor at Larica ; John Fardo, steward of the House ; Abel Price (the drunken barber-surgeon) ; Robert Brown, tailor.
