Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞
Project Editor: Liz Smith
Designed by A. Mattson Gallagher
Typeset in Warnock Pro and News Gothic by Westchester Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hastie, Amelie, author.
Title: Columbo : make me a perfect murder / Amelie Hastie.
Other titles: Console-ing passions book series. Spin-offs.
Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2024. | Series: Spin-offs | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023026652 (print)
LCCN 2023026653 (ebook)
ISBN 9781478020677 (hardcover)
ISBN 9781478025450 (paperback)
ISBN 9781478027591 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Falk, Peter, 1927–2011. | Columbo (Television program) | Television broadcasting—History and criticism. | Detective and mystery television programs—History and criticism. | Columbo, Lieutenant (Fictitious character) | BISAC: PERFORMING ARTS / Television / Genres / General | PERFORMING ARTS / Television / History & Criticism
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023026652
LC ebook record available at https://lccn loc gov/2023026653
Cover art: Columbo, “Make Me a Perfect Murder,” 7:3; Feb. 25, 1978. Image: Photofest.
this one’s for me
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Contents
acknowledgments ix
prologue: humble origins and dogged returns xv
Introduction: Murder by the Book 1
1 Mapping the Detective: Falk’s Early Drives 24
2 Best-Selling Mystery Team: Columbo and Televisual Collaboration 38
3 “I’m Fascinated by Money”: Rank, File, and Gumshoe Detection 72
4 Special Guest Stars: Hollywood Icons and Repeat Offenders 95
5 Between Columbo and Cassavetes: A Familial Pack 119
6 An “Obsessive Preoccupation with Gadgetry”: Columbo’s Investigation of Media Technologies 144
7 Columbo’s Reign: Of Life and Death and Detection 172 Epilogue: Loving and Leaving Columbo 197
notes 201 bibliography 219 index 225
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Acknowledgments
In one of our conversations about Columbo over the years, cocreator of the series William Link asked me to please not title this book Just One More Thing. I promised him I wasn’t even considering it, though I will inevitably turn to Peter Falk’s catchphrase throughout the volume, and I can’t avoid it in these acknowledgments, as every time I’ve imagined thanking those who have supported, inspired, and informed me throughout the long process of research and writing, there is always one more name to add to a very long list.
But let me begin, first and foremost, with Mr. Link, who spoke to me on several occasions by telephone and in person to offer background, share stories, answer my questions, and just plain motivate me. He and his ever glamorous wife, Margery Nelson, welcomed me into their home more than once; humbled by their kindness and worried I might be a pest, I perhaps did not take as much advantage of their graciousness as I might have, but the hours I spent talking with Mr. Link were some of the most delightful moments I spent while writing this book—which is saying something, given the ongoing pleasure of writing about a series that I have long loved. I regret that he did not live to see the final project, and I hope that I have been able to do his and Richard Levinson’s great minds and great compassion justice here.
My love of the series began when I was a child, watching it with my parents (Claudette and Frank) and my two brothers (Matt and Bowman), all of whom have enthusiastically supported my work over time. Along with my mom, both my stepdad John Beahrs and my niece Katie have also been some of the most ardent and industrial familial supporters
of my research over time. I am grateful to have a family who (mostly) takes my work seriously, especially my mom, who cheered me on over the years as I attended to my favorite detective.
My research and writing have taken place across two academic institutions—among beloved colleagues and friends at the University of California–Santa Cruz (ucsc) and then at Amherst College, where my students and further institutional support have together allowed this work to flourish. I have benefited from grants from the ucsc Institute for Humanities, the ucsc Arts Research Institute, the Amherst College Faculty Research Award Program, the Amherst College English Department, and the Gregory Call Academic Intern program. Four Amherst students in particular went above and beyond as my academic interns, and I would like to thank them for not only their research assistance but also their collaboration at key junctures of my work. To the inimitable Alison Fornell, who amassed materials on technologies and television over the summer of 2012, who developed an acute understanding of my work, and who raised the bar for what a student and a research assistant could potentially be; to Maeve McNamara who mastered an extraordinary research method that no one else has ever been able to fully reproduce and who cheerfully (and productively!) accompanied me to Los Angeles for a review of scripts at the Writers Guild Foundation in 2018; to Kiera Alventosa who worked carefully with me on the final chapter of the book, applying her interdisciplinary approach to research, and whose entire family supported her own work on Columbo; and to Sam Hood, who was the first person to read the entire manuscript over his winter break in 2019–20, who continued to read with me as I revised, and who offered insights and suggestions beyond his years. With additional thanks to academic interns Grace Kanija, Max Suechting, and, most especially, Sabrina Lin, as well as an extra shout-out to Kiera, Maeve, and Sabrina, who made up the glorious “Team Columbo” in 2018–19! And, finally, a special thanks to Carolina Cordon for her timely assistance with images.
I would like to thank various friends and colleagues across my primary institutions and well beyond: Aline Akelis (my Columbo viewing partner in Brooklyn), Miranda Banks, Rebecca Barden, Caetlin BensonAllott, Barb Bull and Bruce McGough, Nicole Cooley, David Crane,
Niki Cunningham, Barbara Epler, Irene Gustafson, Barbara Hall, Arlo Hastie, Chris Holmlund, Sally Hood, Deborah Jaramillo, Sheila Jaswal, Lynne Joyrich, Jonathan Kahana, Bette Kanner, Ben Lieber, Kate Lilley, Karen Lury, Anna McCarthy, Kathleen McHugh, Pat Mellencamp, Marti Noxon, Jan Olsson, Gretchen Papazian, Lisa Parks, Dana Polan, Pooja Rangan, Matt Roberson, Marta Rudolf, Geoff Sanborn, Jeff Sconce, Sarah Sharpe, Shawn Shimpach, Randall Smith, Donovan Smith, Jackie Stacey, Claudia Steinberg, Linda Tropp, Wendy West, and Mark Williams. With extra thanks and many hugs to Tara McPherson for her long friendship and for her generous offerings of food and housing during my various trips to Los Angeles. And special thanks, too, to Patty White for her remote writing companionship as I completed the book. I am also grateful to the anonymous readers for Duke who read my proposal, my complete manuscript, and my revision with careful attention and who therefore helped me shape a better book.
Various archivists and industry professionals have shared their knowledge and expertise with me over the years. With thanks to David Black, Robert Butler, Nancy Meyer, Alexandra Seros, and especially Chris Levinson; a myriad of amazing staff at the Paley Center for Media in New York (where I began my research in earnest) and Martin Gostanian at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles; Hilary Swett of the Writers Guild Foundation and Barbara Hall for the initial discovery of Columbo scripts there; Mike Pepin at the library of the American Film Institute; Shannon Kelley and Mark Quigley of the ucla Film and Television Archive; and Nancy Robinson and Melissa Byers of the Television Academy.
At Amherst College, I would like to thank a few key friends and colleagues: the wonderful Betsy Cannon-Smith, who, at our very first meeting when I came to the college, asked what she could do for me and, when I told her about my work on Columbo, proceeded to connect me with television writer and producer David Black, who in turn connected me with Mr. Link; Kathy Whittemore for her profile on “Team Columbo” (and Jiayi Liu for the great photos!); Kim Roeder for the invitation to speak about Columbo at the college’s 2019 Family Weekend; Darryl Harper for his warmth and welcoming as the Director of the Center for Humanistic Inquiry; Dave Moran and John Kunhardt for
their kindhearted interest in my work (and Dave for endlessly digitizing episodes of the series); Christian Rogowski for his collegiality, signature kindness, and friendship, which have sustained me since coming to the college to develop the Film and Media Studies Program; Joe Trapani for musical camaraderie and good cheer; and, most of all, Pete Marvin, a fellow Columbo aficionado who never failed to inquire about my work on this book over the years and who cheered me on to the end, whether he knew it or not.
A number of speaking engagements propelled my work at various points throughout my research and writing. For extending invitations to me, many thanks to Lynn Spigel to speak at Northwestern University for the Medium to Medium symposium; to Mary Desjardins to speak to her class at Dartmouth College; to Mark Williams to speak to his seminar at New York University; and to Mark Quigley for hosting our conversation after “Chevy Mystery Show: ‘Enough Rope,’ ” as part of the ucla Film and Television Archive screening series. A very special thanks to the bright star Kristi McKim for her invitation to be a Murphy Fellow at Hendrix College and for hosting my visit with such care, and an extra hats off to the amazing staff at Hendrix who won a national award for their design of the reception and dinner surrounding my talk. And finally let me thank Melissa Hardie, whose reading of my first book has forever buoyed me and whose organization of a series of talks at the University of Sydney, including a public conversation with her about Columbo, helped me complete the book; Melissa is as kind as she is brilliant (and that is saying something!), which made my visit equally an honor and a pleasure.
There are several stars behind this book, who swooped in at key moments or who continuously supported and propelled my work. First and foremost, I must thank my editor, Ken Wissoker, who invited me to pitch the project to Duke and who then let me write the book I wanted to write, who read drafts in progress, and who simply offered patience, kindness, care, and enthusiastic support throughout these long years. I also want to offer my appreciation to Chon Noriega, who read two chapters in progress and who lent attention to detail as well as a keen understanding of the broader project of the work, as he continuously encouraged the development of my voice therein. My profound thanks
go to Mary Desjardins, who has long been a key mentor to me. I am grateful for her deep insights into television studies and television history, but even more than that I am grateful for her truly life-sustaining friendship. She also read a chapter in progress, and she and Michael DeAngelis invited me to submit an essay on Columbo for a special issue of Celebrity Studies, which became chapter 5 of this book. Were it not for Jenny Horne, I don’t think I could have finished this book. I found myself at a crossroads in the spring and summer of 2015, when I knew I had to finally fish or cut bait. After a visit in Santa Cruz, Jenny and I wrote together remotely for weeks that summer, which was one of the happiest periods of writing that I have ever experienced. As icing on the cake, she and her partner, the beloved Jonathan Kahana, watched episodes of the series both so that they had a sense of what my work was about and also to enable Jenny to chime in with ideas and insights during our writing days. Even with hundreds of miles between us, rarely have I felt such companionship in my work. Thank you, dear Jenny, for those halcyon days. Among this embarrassment of riches, however, there is still one person whom I will forever think of as the central hero behind this book: Mark Quigley. As the John H. Mitchell Television Archivist at ucla, he led me to sources that shaped many of my analytic methods and most certainly my understanding of the history undergirding this series. He brought me to the made-for-television movies by Richard Levinson and William Link, archived at ucla, as well as another phenomenal television series they produced in the 1970s, Tenafly. He introduced me to the great television director Robert Butler, he happily talked with me about John Cassavetes and Peter Falk, and he answered all the major and minor questions I put to him. Every visit to the ucla archives was a delight, both because I could revel in all things Columbo and because I had access to Mark’s great mind and his astounding encyclopedic knowledge of television. I wish I had the words to adequately thank him here.
If I have forgotten anyone, please imagine me scratching my head and rummaging around in my pockets for a pen, and forgive me.
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Prologue
HUMBLE ORIGINS AND DOGGED RETURNS
If there’s one thing worse than a television lady who thinks she knows everything, it’s a television lady who knows everything. —The “Technical Director” in “Make Me a Perfect Murder”
Columbo essentially premiered on television three times. Given the eponymous detective’s signature line, “just one more thing,” these repeated returns seem oddly appropriate. Its first iteration was a 1960 “live” teleplay written by Richard Levinson and William Link entitled “Enough Rope,” which appeared as part of The Chevy Mystery Show (July 31, 1960).1 It starred Burt Freed as the detective Lt. Columbo, a New York City working-class police officer up against a wealthy psychologist who has killed his wife. The plot goes as follows: Dr. Roy Flemming (Richard Carlson) and his wife, Claire (played to shrill effect by Barbara Stuart), are preparing to embark on a vacation to Canada, but the doctor strangles his wife and stages a robbery to cover his crime. He enlists one of his patients, who is also his paramour, to play the role of his wife at the airport and on the plane; they stage a fight before the flight takes off, and she leaves in a huff, to ensure that the “wife” is witnessed as having returned home when the husband is already on his way to Canada. Thus, the alibi and timing of the wife’s murder appear to be established, and the doctor disposes of the “stolen” property from their New York apartment while away in order to maintain the ruse. When
he returns home, Lt. Columbo is on the scene, and the episode proceeds as the detective attempts to prove how the psychiatrist covered his crime. This structure— whereby the crime is committed at the beginning, and the detective needs only to prove what we, the audience, and seemingly he already know—is the model that (nearly) all future iterations will follow.
Levinson and Link rewrote “Enough Rope” to become a theatrical play called Prescription: Murder. It premiered in San Francisco on January 20, 1962, with Joseph Cotten as the murderer, Agnes Moorehead as his victim, and Thomas Mitchell as Lieutenant Columbo. After a successful run, Levinson and Link adapted the play in turn as a made-for- television movie on nbc in 1968 now starring Peter Falk in the lead role and with the same title as the play. In this iteration, Prescription: Murder (0:0; Feb. 20, 1968), the setting had moved to Los Angeles, with the vacation/ alibi now pertaining to Mexico.2 Aside from the change in locales, the plot was basically the same as the original teleplay, but the character of the detective himself was further developed in both the play and the subsequent adaptation into a made-for- television movie. Indeed, the context of the murderer’s profession—psychiatry—enables this development, as both the detective and the murderer comment on his personality, fleshing him out into the character we will come to know over the run of the series.3
After the successful airing of Prescription: Murder, nbc invited creators Levinson and Link to produce a regular television series, but, at the time, Peter Falk was uninterested in headlining another tv show; he not only had recently played the titular character in Trials of O’Brien for a single season in 1965–66, but also had begun a collaborative relationship with John Cassavetes after working with him in the film Husbands (released in 1970). nbc thus developed a “wheel” series to accommodate the creators and the actor, as it was a format that rotated between different regular programs, each appearing for varying numbers of episodes. The network based the format on similar successes such as The Name of the Game (running from 1968 to 1971, it rotated between characters who all worked in the same publishing house), The Bold Ones (running from 1969 to 1973, it had four subseries in rotation, each focused on a different occupation), and Four in One
(running from 1970 to 1971, it was even more varied than its precursors by occupation and genre). The network’s new incarnation was The nbc Mystery Movie, which aired Sunday nights and included the additional mystery series McMillan & Wife and McCloud (the latter of which had previously been part of Four in One) and later expanded to another iteration on Wednesday nights.
Columbo thus premiered, yet again, in March 1971 with the nowpilot episode “Ransom for a Dead Man” (0:1; March 1, 1971; written and produced by Dean Hargrove); it then began its regular season as part of The nbc Mystery Movie in September of the same year with the episode “Murder by the Book” (1:1; Sept. 15, 1971). It ran as part of the nbc lineup for seven seasons. The most successful of all the series in rotation, it regularly made the no. 1 spot in ratings, earning Falk three Emmy Awards (in 1972, 1975, and 1976) and the writing team one (for “Death Lends a Hand” [1:2; Oct. 6, 1971]).4 It also won a series of other Emmy Awards for cinematography, editing, and guest appearances, as well as the award for Outstanding Limited Series in 1974, and it received a regular slew of nominations for its entire original run. The series won a Golden Globe for Best Drama in 1973, and Falk won the Golden Globe for Best tv Actor the same year.5 During this highly successful run, between three and eight original episodes were broadcast each year of its seven seasons, with a total of forty-four episodes overall.
During the first few years on the air, the series helped to launch and foster the careers of a number of significant television writers and directors. Before going on to create his own successful crime and legal series like Hill Street Blues, LA Law, Murder One, and nypd Blue, Steven Bochco penned seven episodes, including “Murder by the Book,” which was directed by Steven Spielberg, a Universal regular at the time; Bochco was also employed as the story editor for the first season. Stephen J. Cannell worked on the series early on before he created his own series (The Rockford Files, featuring another charming 1970s detective), as did Dean Hargrove (the showrunner for several seasons, who later created US cozies like Father Dowling Mysteries and Matlock), Roland Kibbee (who executive- produced alongside Hargrove for most of seasons 3 and 4), and Peter S. Fischer (who cocreated Murder, She Wrote with Levinson and Link and went on to executive- produce the Angela Lans-
Origins and Dogged Returns
bury series).6 Some of the writers were already television veterans, such as Hargrove, Kibbee, and Jackson Gillis, the latter of whom was also a longtime writer of Perry Mason. Many of the formative writers of the first several years had moved on to various other projects by the final two seasons, though the series did showcase the directorial work of semiregular Patrick McGoohan in the fifth season and future filmmaker Jonathan Demme in the last season.7 These final two seasons demonstrate, then, both another beginning and its multiple endings. In fact, the chaotic “Last Salute to the Commodore” (5:6; May 2, 1976), directed by McGoohan in the fifth season, was originally slated to be the last episode, concluding with the lieutenant in a small boat in the Los Angeles harbor, rowing away from the scene of both the crime and his solution. The actual final episode of its original run, “The Conspirators” (7:5; May 13, 1978), reorients that previous ending in grander scope: here the detective remains on land while hailing a ship through the Coast Guard before it can disappear with the murder weapon on board.
Complicating its beginnings and its endings, Columbo and “Columbo” have reappeared in various forms since the original series. In 1989 Columbo was back on television, this time on abc, as an ongoing but irregular two-hour movie series; between its first showing in 1989 and 2003, twenty-four new episodes ran, with Falk as a primary producer. Richard Levinson had passed away in 1987, and William Link was a supervising producer only for nine episodes, until 1990, when Falk largely took the reins. While five episodes of this reboot were penned by original writers for the series, overall the production team of the original was not intact; therefore, while it followed the basic formula, it was largely driven by the character rather than the narrative and visual style, with much of the authority on set coming from Falk himself. Two final reappearances of the detective as a crime solver followed: in 2010, Link published a collection of stories of new mysteries for the detective at the same time that the original play, Prescription: Murder, enjoyed a revival. And in countless other television series— such as Monk, when a character played by Gena Rowlands compares Adrian Monk to the lieutenant, or Hallmark’s Flower Shop Mysteries, when the
amateur sleuth Abby Knight (Brooke Shields) makes a brief distinction between bingeing Columbo and Murder, She Wrote (two series that regularly reran on the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Channel, after all)— the character is invoked time and time again. In 2023, the series Pokerface was introduced, and was widely recognized as an homage to Columbo and other 1970s series. And Columbo’s influence has spread beyond television: the “Columbo technique” became a mode of police and psychiatric training.8
Given the local networks that have broadcast it over time, in syndication both in the United States and throughout the globe, the series has appeared on more channels than one can count. It was the first US series to air in China after an embargo on importation of American television was lifted, and it was said to be Queen Elizabeth’s favorite series in the 1970s. Since the 1990s, it has also been a staple of cable channels such as a&e, Bravo, cozi, the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Channel, me, and Sundance. In the twenty-first century, it has appeared on various streaming platforms from Netflix to imdb/Amazon/Freevee to YouTube to nbc’s Peacock channel. Attesting to the series’ and the star’s international popularity, upon Peter Falk’s death in 2011, obituaries were printed all over the world.9 In 2021, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the first full season, Columbo appeared again in the news in the form of tributes and nostalgic references.10
The very nature of Columbo’s run between 1960 and 2003 signals not just its popularity but also its tenacity; through its repeated returns to television, the series itself operated not unlike its own lead. As the detective invariably uttered “just one more thing” to the murderers at the precise moment they thought they were rid of him, this phrase could also describe the series’ unwillingness to go away. But not that we would want it to: the rumpled detective and the easygoing narrative format—revealing to the audience the killer from the start, so that our own work is mainly to watch, reveling in the solution that we already know is coming—offer us a level of both comfort and satisfaction as viewers. In fact, essentially knowing the outcome from the beginning enables one to watch each episode over and again, as we are never just watching for the “whodunit.” The series, like its lead character, makes
Origins and Dogged Returns
for easy company, and opportunities to view it across cable television and streaming platforms make for easy access.
More than perhaps any other television series in my life—and, believe me, there have been many—Columbo has proved to be my most steadfast companion. When I was a young kid in the 1970s, my family regularly watched three television series as a unit: The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show on Saturday nights and, on Sundays, The nbc Mystery Movie. As with the majority of American viewers of the program, Columbo was my favorite. Taking a page from the detective himself, I am dogged in my returns to the series. As a viewer over decades, my experience with the series is a means of telling my own history (where I lived, with whom, and even what couch I owned), and it’s also a means of telling a history of changing televisual access and technological forms. Thus, when I moved to New York City after college, my roommate and I happily discovered it in syndication on Sunday after noons on the local wwor station. As a graduate student in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I watched it regularly on the a&e cable network, sometimes daily. When I moved to Santa Cruz, California, I would look for it on Bravo and the Hallmark Channel in the first decade of the twentieth century. And when I went east to Massachusetts ten years later, I found it on the streaming platforms Netflix, YouTube, imd b, and Peacock. Even more specific instances and devices—old and new—are linked to this series for me. The episode entitled “A Stitch in Crime” (2:6; Feb. 11, 1973) was one of the first two recordings I made when I got TiVo in November 2004. I bought my first video iPod principally to transfer episodes of the series to take with me to Paris in 2008 (where I also found dvds of its various seasons at the Les Halles media library in 2009). Driving across the country in the summer of 2013, I landed in a motel in Columbia, Missouri: after a particularly arduous day, I found an episode waiting for me on the me network when I flipped on the television. The persistent appearance of a series like Columbo across both new and old media is itself suggestive of the ways in which the medium has and hasn’t entirely transformed, even if, increasingly, new devices and new means of viewing enable viewers to deny that they are, in fact, watching “television.”
Inevitably, when I first learned about the opportunity to write an academic book on the series, I was eager to put all of my own viewing
history to work. But “Columbo and work” also seems a funny sort of combination, given the love I’ve had for the show since I was so very young. At the same time, I am the first to insist that we write about those things that move us— those things that we care deeply about— while also maintaining an investigatory eye. Not uncoincidentally, for me the very ability to analyze the series and television as an intertextual system comes from Columbo itself. And this is, perhaps, partly why I love it.
Humble Origins and Dogged Returns
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Introduction
MURDER BY THE BOOK
I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and would somehow involve the stars.
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths”
Reading Columbo
In “Make Me a Perfect Murder” (7:3; Feb. 25, 1978), our eponymous hero is investigating the murder of a television network executive. His work brings him to the production facilities, where he is trained in, among other instruments, the technical director’s console. When he sits down at the board with the technician to discuss the production of live television, the techie first asks after the neck brace that he is wearing at the time; that conversational strategy—not getting directly to the point, rather like the spinning of a wheel—is a specialty of the lieutenant’s, of course, and he responds in kind, detailing what a number of medical professionals have suggested is the cause of his neck problem. Then, looking at the series of monitors in front of him, he asks, “All these screens—for just one show?” Turning on one screen, the technician announces, “That’s a line monitor; that’s what’s going on the air.” He turns on another: “The preview monitor is what the director wants up next.” And, as he turns on the four screens below at once, he says, “And those are what the four cameras see.”
The detective marvels at what he sees: “All these beautiful machines, all these buttons to push. I know it costs millions and I know everybody works very hard. But . . . to me it looks like fun.” The technician confesses that it is fun and then, in response to Columbo’s question, confirms that Miss Freestone (the killer and Columbo’s primary suspect) does indeed understand the technology. At that, the technician leaves Columbo alone at the board, and thus begins a two-minute sequence in which the detective plays with the machines. Rather than working with the images available from the four cameras, however, he plays abstract shapes that dance to musical accompaniment—starting with a simple rendition of his signature tune “This Old Man,” which becomes increasingly symphonic. Like the discussion of the neck brace, this is another tangent, if a purely audiovisual one. It’s a scene, too, that demonstrates the detective’s attention and delight. And it invokes attention and delight in the viewer: patience in light of a visual tangent which becomes another sort of amusement, a multiplied focus on simultaneous elements, and an affection for the detective’s own simple pleasure.
This scene, with its multiple screens that the detective looks across, its demand for patient attention, and its invitation to delight in what we see as well, also functions for me as a model for reading the series itself and television overall. As a kind of microcosm of this interpretative method, the original format of Columbo is itself indicative of the ways in which the series—and television as a whole, whether in the heyday of the broadcast era or in the increasingly digital universe of exhibition and reception— pre sents plentitude and possibility, logic and serendipity as part of its structural design. Those multiple screens before Columbo’s very eyes might stand in for a series of texts (a range of episodes of Columbo itself; or perhaps Columbo alongside other series during its original airing on Sunday nights; or maybe the Sunday night schedule on nbc : what’s on now and what’s coming up next; or, five decades later, a subheading of suggestions on a subscription platform). Set alongside one another, they invite intertextual analysis. And as representative of a practice of interpreting the series itself, I’d argue that Columbo, too, invites us to read between various texts: various episodes of the series, this and other series, the series and various films, the series and memoirs or board games or tie-in novels, and so on. At
“All these buttons to push” (“Make Me a Perfect Murder,” 7:3; Feb. 25, 1978)
I.1.
I.2. This is what the camera sees (“Make Me a Perfect Murder,” 7:3; Feb. 25, 1978)
the same time, while the detective sits in the director’s chair, learning about the production of live broadcast television, I’d suggest that this sequence invites us to recognize that an intertextual reading is also a contextual reading— that is, it enables us to understand Columbo within the historical moment during which it was made, across a range of contexts that informs its production.
And, in fact, the multiple monitors, or squares, of the scene in “Make Me a Perfect Murder” visually mark a form of reading that is also part of the design of the original broadcast context of the series as a whole, as part of its weekly mystery “wheel series,” a mode of programming that rotates between regular series within the same time slot. The wheel itself is a neat mechanism. Individual spokes are connected to a larger whole: spin it, and you’ll likely land in a different place time after time. Such a process enables us to find serendipitous connections between things. In fact, it’s not unlike watching television in real time: “change the channel” at any time of day, and it’s like a spin of a wheel. Hence, as one turns a dial, hits a button, or scans a touchscreen, almost instantaneously a viewer can make connections across series, networks, even historical periods: one instance, or one television text, inevitably informs another. For me, watching Columbo is always an invitation to look across many screens at once: even as I attend to this singular text, I am making a series of connections to others, much like the lieutenant’s own process of detection. Circles and squares. Serendipity and logic. Their coexistence is possible in the plentitude of television itself and the complex mode of viewing that it demands.
Reading Television, Intertextually
The premise of this book might seem quite simple: the television series Columbo trains us as detectives of television. However, as Umberto Eco, himself a fan of Columbo, claims, “If you want to use television for teaching somebody something, you have first to teach somebody how to use television.”1 After all, television itself is not that simple, and to learn either about it or from it, “detecting” television requires a particular kind of attention.2 Such attentiveness is born out of what we might also understand as distraction, for one’s attention to television is always
an attention to more than one thing at once: for instance, we multiply rather than divide our attention to both form and content together, but we are also always exposed, and perhaps even predisposed, to the range of simultaneous possibilities that television offers, whether from the multitude of viewing options at any one moment to the movement between different kinds of successive segments from moment to moment. Though one could claim that US commercial broadcast or cable television—of which the series was and still is a part—can be easily broken down into its central modus operandi to sell, I’d like here to imagine television also as a form that is full of narrative, epistemological, and temporal possibilities through its literal simultaneous play of texts at any and every hour and its accumulation of content (as well as form) over several decades. It offers, in effect, a complex technology of reading for its viewers and its analysts: that is, television—no matter what sort of screen or platform we use to watch it today—provides a mechanism for continuously reading across and between the variety of content that we see before us. Imagine for a moment turning on the television set and a “set-top box” such as Roku or AppleTV: what we see is an amalgam of series and films we have watched across channels and streaming platforms, alongside others that are recommended to us based on prior viewing habits. Here, then, algorithms read viewers themselves, reaffirming and expanding the reach of an intertextual system.3
Much foundational work in television studies in the 1970s and 1980s sought to define television as an ideological and textual system. Based on analyses of commercial broadcast television— the dominant delivery system of this period in the United States—critical work emerging at this time considered the complex textual rhythms of television and its economic, psychic, and ideological effects on its viewers. Structurally, critics focused both on the ubiquitous “flow” of television, which integrated disparate segments over blocks of time (narrative or news programs, ads, network announcements, and so on), and on the very segmentation of television textuality.4 For instance, published alongside one another in the same pages of the Summer 1984 issue of Quarterly Review of Film Studies, key contributions to the field by Nick Browne and Beverle Houston centered, respectively, on the demarcation of television textuality and its promise of plentitude—two sides of the same
coin. In “The Political Economy of the Television (Super) Text,” Browne defines three elements of televisual textuality: the text, supertext, and megatext. The text is a singular entity, such as a program like Columbo. The supertext “consists of the particular program and all the introductory and interstitial materials—chiefly announcements and ads—considered in its specific position in the schedule.”5 The megatext, then, “consists of every thing that has appeared on television.”6 Houston’s “Viewing Television: The Metapsychology of Endless Consumption” is a psychoanalytically grounded investigation of television’s basic contradiction: the promise of endless textual flow, blocked by interruptions that leave viewers in a state of endless desire and an endless lack of satisfaction. Describing these complex rhythms of desire, Houston writes, “Of television we say: I always want it as I have never had it.”7 Columbo himself and Columbo fans might identify this desire as that for “just one more thing.”
My study of Columbo is in great part grounded in its “supertext” and “megatext,” yet rather than connecting it to “everything that has appeared on television,” I’m interested in tracing a constellation of textual relations with the series at the center. This approach links my work to critics like Browne, Houston, and many others who employed intertextual methods of analysis that were at once capacious and focused as they drew on the plentitude of both television’s supertext and megatext. As Mimi White argues in “Crossing Wavelengths: The Diegetic and Referential Imaginary of American Commercial Television,” televisual structure demands such an interpretive method. Her essay thus begins: “The continuity and multiplicity of texts that comprise the medium of American television present the critic-analyst with a complex, multiform body of material. To analyze requires an operation of segmentation, fragmentation isolating a discrete sequence from the course of the flow of television programming according to a critical principle of pertinence.”8 Homing in on particular sequences of flow, such as an hour of morning or prime-time television, critics delineated this concept through examples gathered from television “supertext” sequences— themselves indicative of the tension between “flow” and “segment”—in order to explore the effects of television’s intertextuality.9 In her book-length study of children’s media, Playing with Power
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After I had announced the vote, I saw that Sanderson and Baxter were very busy among the men; and on the third ballot I was not a little astonished to find that Phil Farringford had twelve of the sixteen votes, and was therefore chosen. I positively declined to serve, where-upon Baxter withdrew his name once more; but Sanderson did the same. I distributed the votes a fourth time, and did a little electioneering for my man, Sanderson. This time he had ten votes, and was therefore elected. He began to decline, but Baxter and several others assured him it was his duty to serve, and he finally consented.
"Now, my lads," said the master, "neither the captain nor the mate you have chosen is a navigator; and the second mate ought to be the only one on board who can take an observation and lay down the ship's position on the chart. Those who are in favor of Phil Farringford for second mate will say, Ay."
"Ay!" shouted the whole crew.
"Those opposed say, No."
The crew were silent, and I was declared to be the choice of all hands. I did not feel equal to the position, and began to decline; but I was silenced, and with the best grace I could command, I accepted. The watches were then rearranged, so as to make them as nearly equal as possible, both in regard to numbers and seamanship.
CHAPTER XXII.
IN WHICH PHIL LAYS DOWN THE LAW, AND IS AFTERWARDS MUCH ALARMED.
"Now, my lads, we are in ship-shape and working order," said Captain York, after all the arrangements had been completed. "We have the bark; but what shall we do with her?"
"That's the question," replied Baxter. "I suppose we must lose our time and go on shore as poor as we came on board. But I would rather land in New York with only a shirt on my back than go a slaving."
"I say so too; but it is rather a hard case," added the new mate. "We have got our advance, and I suppose that's all we shall make out of this cruise."
"Perhaps not," I interposed.
"No matter whether it is so or not; I am satisfied," said Sanderson. "I wouldn't help take a cargo of niggers over to Cuba for all the money there is in New York. Their howls would haunt me to my dying day."
"It's always the safest way to do one's duty, without regard to consequences," I continued.
"I suppose it is," said the captain; "but it's a hard case for the men."
"Perhaps not; we will look at that matter by and by," I answered, holding up one of the books I had brought on deck. "Where shall we go? That's the first question."
"If we stand towards the coast, we may be able to find a man-of-war; perhaps the steamer that chased us yesterday," added Captain York. "I have no doubt she intends to cut off the bark somewhere on the coast."
"What do you say, Phil?" asked Sanderson.
"I say, return to New York."
"Why so?"
"We can get out of the scrape sooner and better in that way than in any other," I replied. "If we fall in with a man-of-war, the bark will be her prize; she is ours now."
"But we have too many prisoners on board to make a run of three or four weeks, perhaps five or six," suggested the captain.
"I think we can take care of the prisoners well enough. We have all the arms, and we can do everything in our own way."
"But why not hand them over to a man-of-war, if we can find one?" continued Captain York.
"Because the bark would be her prize then; now she is ours. I will read you the law, if you like."
"What law?"
"The law relating to vessels fitted out for the slave trade."
"Read on, Phil."
All hands gathered around me, deeply interested in the subject, and I read from "The Shipmaster's Assistant," in order that they might know how they stood, as follows:—
"Citizens of the United States, voluntarily serving on board of a foreign or American vessel engaged in the slave trade, were formerly subject to a fine and imprisonment; but now they are regarded as pirates, and suffer death."
"That's the idea!" exclaimed Baxter. "That's what's the matter; if we had voluntarily gone down to the coast of Africa and taken in a cargo of slaves—suffer death."
"And we must either resist or go voluntarily," added Sanderson. "But some of us are not citizens of the United States," said Welsh.
"There are a great many other laws; and I don't think it makes any difference what country you belong to, if you are caught in the business. Some of you think it is a hard case to lose your wages. I will read you from another law, which goes on to say, that no person or persons shall build, fit, equip, load, or otherwise prepare a vessel to be engaged in the slave trade. Now hear. 'And if any ship or vessel shall be so built, fitted out, equipped, laden, or otherwise prepared for the purpose aforesaid, every said ship or vessel, her tackle, apparel, furniture, and lading shall be forfeited, one moiety to the use of the United States, and the other to the use of the person or persons who shall sue for said forfeiture, and prosecute the same to effect,' &c."
"What's the English of that, Phil?" asked Walker, scratching his head, and then hitching up his trousers.
"It means that the vessel and all that she contains shall be forfeited," I replied.
"What's that maw—"
"Moiety? It means one half."
"Do you mean to say that half the value of the bark will go into our pockets?"
"I am no lawyer, but that's what I think it means. In my opinion, shipmates, you will make more money by taking the vessel back to New York than you would by accepting the thousand dollars the mate offered you for the cruise."
"That's good news, but it's only a fair thing," said Baxter
"The men who fit out a slaver are liable to a fine of from one to five thousand dollars besides, and half of that goes to the informers. We shall be the informers in this case."
"I don't care anything about that," added Sanderson. "I don't like that word. I believe in minding my own business; but it's a different thing when men are carried off as we were, and called mutineers, when we object to go slaving."
The men agreed with the new mate, and the reading of the law transformed them all into a very cheerful crew. As the result of the conference, the course of the bark was changed to the north-west, and the joyful cry of homeward bound rang through the vessel. For my own part, while I had strongly advised this plan, it caused me much regret to abandon my mission in Europe for the present. We had the north-east trades, and the wind was fresh and fair; but we could not expect to reach New York in less than three weeks.
We were over four weeks from port, and by this time the Bayard, with the Gracewoods on board, was on her way home. But I might hope to meet them in New York or in St. Louis, and this was a sufficient consolation. I should be obliged to ascertain in Chicago where my mother was, and do all I had done over again. I should be able to visit Europe during the summer, if my mother and her brother did not decide to come home before that time.
At noon I took the observations, and carefully calculated the position of the bark. I pricked the chart to indicate the place of the vessel, which was about a hundred and ten miles south-west of the Cape Verd Islands. I examined the nature of the currents, after I had made out the course with the parallel ruler. Being a new hand, I went over my figures and allowances three times before I gave out the course to the helmsman; but when I had done so, I was satisfied it was correct. I spent all my time, when off watch, in studying the "Navigator," the chart, and the currents. I found that the hard work I had done over algebra and geometry, on the Upper Missouri and in Chicago, had prepared me for the duty I was now called upon to perform. I needed more experience in practical seamanship; but I felt competent, so far as the navigation was concerned, to sail a ship all over the world.
"Mr Waterford says he wants to see me," said Captain York to me in the afternoon. "Would you see him?"
"I should; we ought to listen to what he has to say."
"Come with me, Mr. Farringford."
I followed him into the steerage. Waterford was the picture of despair.
"York, are you in command?" groaned the sufferer
"I am, for the want of a better master."
"Will you order one of your hands to shoot me?"
"No, I will not."
"I would rather die than be kept here. If you mean to murder me, do it at once, and don't kill me by inches."
"What can we do for you?"
"I am in pain and misery. Shoot me!"
"What can we do with him, Mr. Farringford?" said the captain, turning to me.
"Tell him to shoot me, Phil."
"No, I shall not. You are wanted in St. Louis to answer to the charge of forgery; but I am in favor of doing what I can to make you more comfortable."
"Loose me, then."
"I am afraid we might have to shoot you, then. Mr. Waterford, we are going to take the bark back to New York, and we intend to land you there. We have no desire to make you suffer, but we mean to keep you safely."
"I will give you my word that I will be perfectly quiet, if you will give me liberty to walk about the vessel."
"Give him an hour on deck, Captain York, if you please, with a hand to watch him; I don't believe in running any risks."
"I am willing," replied the new master.
I untied Waterford's feet, and released him from the stanchion. As a change of position for his arms, I tied his wrists in front of him, and then led him on deck. He could hardly walk at first, but he soon recovered the use of his limbs, and I led him up and down the deck
for an hour He felt better then, and became sullen and silent. I conducted him back to the steerage. Baxter and Sanderson then led the two Spanish passengers up for their exercise, and Palmer and myself put Waterford into one of their berths.
"Do you feel better, Waterford?" I asked.
"Yes; but you haven't seen the end of this thing yet," he growled, so naturally that I was sure his condition was very much improved.
"I think I shall be more willing to see the end of it than you will," I replied. "We wish to make you as comfortable as the circumstances will admit."
He was disposed to talk with me, after the ebullition of ill-nature had subsided; but I left him to assist in giving others of the prisoners the air and exercise which they so much needed, and which it was inhuman to deny them. The seamen among them begged for mercy, and promised to serve their new masters faithfully if they were set at liberty. We decided to let Pedro and Sylvio, the least vicious of them, return to their duty, for we were rather short-handed, and were likely to have heavy weather as we made more northing. We were obliged to keep a sentinel in the steerage all the time, which made one less for duty on deck.
We went along very well for a week, having the steady trade-wind fair all the time. Then we had calms and blows by turns. One gale lasted two days; and when the men were somewhat worn down,—for we were obliged to keep all hands on deck,—we released the rest of the seamen in the steerage on their promise to be obedient. The situation of the prisoners was far from agreeable, while the vessel pitched and rolled in the heavy sea, and the Spanish and Portuguese sailors were glad to escape on any terms.
I kept a revolver in my belt all the time, and the other officers did the same; but the pirates behaved well, and gave us no trouble. When the gale subsided, we allowed the seamen to remain upon duty, they did so well; but we soon had occasion to repent this indulgence. On the eighth day of our homeward voyage I took the deck at eight bells, in charge of the starboard watch, as usual.
At six bells, Baxter, who had just been released at the wheel, came aft and told me that nearly every man in the watch was drunk. The weather looked squally, and I was alarmed at this discovery. I went below and called the captain. When he came on deck, he ordered the light sails to be taken in, and I called all hands. To my astonishment I found that more than half of the port watch were also so drunk that they could hardly stand, and were not in condition to go aloft. Things looked serious on board just then.
CHAPTER XXIII.
IN WHICH PHIL COUNSELS PRUDENCE, AND RESORTS TO STRATEGY.
As all hands were called, Captain York took the command, and Sanderson went forward among the men. As my station was also in the midst of the crew, I had an opportunity to see who were drunk and who were sober. Martino and Gorro were the drunkest of the crowd, and I had no doubt that it was through their agency that the liquor had been obtained, though in what manner I was unable to see. Sanderson soon proved that he was as good an officer as he was a seaman.
"Lay aloft, Martino, and furl the main top-gallant sail," said he to the leader of the drunken Spaniards.
"When the officers of the bark give me an order, I obey them," said Martino, in substance.
"Do you hear, my hearty? Lay aloft and furl the main top-gallant sail!" repeated the mate, sharply.
"I don't obey you any longer. Mr. Waterford is coming on deck soon."
"You don't obey me?"
"No, I don't."
"Then you will take the consequences," continued Sanderson, as with his iron fist he dealt the Spaniard a blow upon the side of the head which felled him to the deck, where he lay senseless.
S
"What are you about?" shouted Gorro, also maddened by rum, as he rushed to the assistance of his leader.
"Stop!" I called, stepping between him and the mate.
The pirate had a belaying-pin in his hand, with which he struck at me; but he was too much intoxicated to act efficiently, and I easily warded off the blow. Wrenching the pin from his hand, I struck him down with it.
"There is a mutiny here," said Sanderson.
"That's plain enough. We must act promptly."
"I think we have done so; two of the pirates are floored. Where's Baxter?"
P M .
"Here I am," replied the stout seaman, as he appeared with several handcuffs, which we had brought up for use in case of need; and there was a plentiful supply of the articles below, which the slavers had provided for the emergencies of their calling. "What's the row?"
"Mutiny," replied Sanderson. "We have floored Martino and Gorro; and I suppose there are others who need a rap on the side of the head."
"Where are they? Slip the handcuffs on their wrists."
We adopted this prudent suggestion, and pinioned the wrists of the two senseless ruffians behind them, rolling them into the scuppers, where they were out of the way.
"The captain has ordered the light sails to be furled. It is coming on nasty and squally weather," continued Sanderson.
"But the men are too drunk to go aloft," I suggested. "I will take in the royals myself, if you can find four men who are steady enough to handle the top-gallant sails."
Without waiting for this question to be answered, I went up the main rigging, and furled the main royal. Sliding down on the main topgallant stay, I took in the fore royal. By this time four men had come aloft to furl the top-gallant sails. I assisted the two on the fore topgallant yard, and then hastened down to the deck. The flying-jib was taken in, and then the bark went along easily; but the flaws of wind were very heavy, and it was evident that we should be obliged to reef topsails very soon.
"There's a row in the steerage, Phil," said Sanderson, coming aft, when we had taken in the flying-jib.
"Hallo!" I exclaimed. "The fore scuttle has been taken off!"
"Clap it on, and make it fast," replied the mate.
The situation began to be very serious. With nearly all the men drunk, there was a disturbance in the steerage. There was plainly a rising among the prisoners. It was clear enough that the trouble had been caused by the Spanish and Portuguese sailors. Everything had gone along so well for a week, that we had relaxed our vigilance to some
extent, though we went through all the forms established at the commencement of our rule in the vessel.
I secured the fore scuttle so that it could not be opened from below. I began to have an idea of the manner in which the difficulty had been occasioned. The five pirates—as I choose to call those who had knowingly embarked for a slave voyage—whom we had released had done the work for their masters in the steerage. They had brought up the rum, and given it to the crew, in preparation for the strike which was to ensue. But we had disposed of the two worst of the pirates on deck.
"Come, Phil, we must go below," said Sanderson. "Baxter will remain on deck, and see that the fore scuttle or the main hatch is not removed."
"Wait a minute, Mr. Sanderson," I interposed. "The more haste, the worse speed."
"But there's a row in the steerage."
"No matter; we will not put our heads into a trap," I replied, as we walked aft and met Captain York in the waist.
"We are in trouble, Mr. Farringford," said the captain. "I think, from the noise in the steerage, that the pirates there have overpowered the sentinel."
"Who was on guard?" I asked.
"Franklin."
"I'm afraid he's a traitor. Where's Palmer?"
"He has not turned out."
"If either of the pirates attempts to come on deck by the companionway, shoot him, Captain York. We must not mince the matter now. It is life and death with us."
"That's so; and I will not flinch," replied the captain.
"Mr. Sanderson and I will go below, if you and Baxter, who is forward, will ascertain where Grego, Sylvio, and Pedro are. Let us be sure that we have the deck before we do anything below."
"All right, Mr. Farringford."
The captain walked forward, and the mate and myself, with our revolvers ready for use, went down into the cabin. The lantern was burning below the skylight, and we soon satisfied ourselves that the cabin had not yet been invaded by the conspirators. I waked Palmer, who slept on the transom under the stern ports, and had heard nothing yet. There were now three of us, and we were all well armed. All the guns and pistols had been removed from the steerage to the cabin, so that we were not likely to encounter an armed resistance if we made an onslaught upon the pirates.
"Palmer, where is the rum kept?" I asked.
"In the hold; there are two or three barrels of it. There are half a dozen demijohns of liquor here in the cabin."
"But nearly all the men are drunk. Where did they get their liquor?"
"They must have got it in the hold," replied the steward.
"It is a mistake that these casks were not stove before," I replied, as I led the way, pistol in hand, to the steerage.
"Let me go first," said Sanderson. "You are a young man, and have a mother. It is not time for you to die yet, Phil."
He crowded himself ahead of me, and threw open the door which led into the steerage. I followed him closely, for if there was a fight, I intended to do my full share in it. The lantern, which had been suspended from a deck beam overhead, to enable the sentinel to see his prisoners, had been taken down, and the steerage was so dark that we could see nothing.
"Bring the cabin lantern, Palmer," said I, taking Sanderson by the arm, and pulling him back.
"Who's there?" demanded a voice out of the gloom of the apartment, as soon as I spoke.
"Who is it?" asked Sanderson.
"It is I."
"Who?"
"Franklin."
"Where are the pirates?"
"Gone," said he.
"Is that the way you do your duty?"
"I could not help it."
"Couldn't help it!" added the mate, sternly. "Why didn't you fire at the first man that attempted to escape?"
"I couldn't," he answered, as Palmer appeared with the lantern.
The light revealed his situation, and we were not disposed to blame him till we heard more. He was lashed to the stanchion where Waterford had been confined, with his hands tied behind him. The four pirates were not in the berths where we had left them, and the cords that had bound them were scattered about the deck.
"What does this mean?" I demanded of Franklin.
"I don't know; only that I was knocked down, my pistol taken from me, and I was bound to this stanchion," replied the sentinel, sheepishly
"Who knocked you down?"
"Grego was one of them. I couldn't see who the others were."
"Where are they now?"
"They went between decks."
"All right," said Sanderson. "The scuttle and the hatch are fast, so that they can't go on deck."
The mate released the sentinel, for it did not appear that he had wilfully aided the pirates. The fact that he was bound, and left in the steerage, was sufficient evidence that he was not in the plot. This was a great relief to us, for we had doubted the man in the beginning, and we could not afford to lose a single hand from our party in the present emergency. We retreated to the cabin for further consultation; for, while Sanderson was disposed to be rash, and grapple with the pirates without delay, I was in favor of ascertaining precisely how we stood, and then fighting the battle by the aid of strategy rather than by
brute force alone. We closed and locked the door leading from the cabin to the steerage.
"Now let us know how things stand on deck, before we go any farther," said I, as we paused at the foot of the companion ladder.
"I think we might as well shoot down the pirates at once, and make short work of it, Phil," said the new mate.
"They have one pistol at least, and possibly more. One of us may get the first ball through his head; and as we have everything secure on deck, we can afford to wait better than the pirates. They have made a blunder somewhere, and it is our duty to take advantage of it."
"What blunder?" asked Sanderson.
"In my opinion, Martino and Gorro began the row just a little while too soon. If they had not refused to do duty, all the pirates would have been on deck before this time. They drank too much of their own rum, and it became their foe instead of their friend."
"That's so; it was stupid of them."
"Rum always makes men stupid," I replied, ascending the ladder. "Captain York!" I called.
"Ay, ay, Phil."
"How is it on deck?"
"We have overhauled the hands. Grego, Sylvio, and Pedro are not on deck."
"Then they are below. The prisoners are all loose—seven of them— between decks."
"All loose!" exclaimed Captain York.
"Every one of them."
"And hardly half a dozen of the crew are able to stand up, they are so drunk," replied the captain in disgust.
"Keep an eye on the main hatch and the fore scuttle, and we are safe," I added as I returned to the cabin.
CHAPTER XXIV.
IN WHICH PHIL PREPARES FOR A STRUGGLE, AND OPENS THE FORE SCUTTLE.
"Were you asleep, Franklin, when you were overpowered?" I asked.
"No, I was not," he protested, warmly. "I had just been round and looked at the pirates. They were all safe and right, and I sat down on the box near the door which leads between decks. The first thing I knew, the door opened, and Grego had me by the throat. I did the best I could, but against three of them I had no chance."
"What did they do then?" asked Sanderson.
"They let the prisoners loose, and tied me to the stanchion. Then they went between decks, and I suppose they are there now."
We were on the lookout for the conspirators, but we heard nothing of them. I concluded that they were waiting for Martino to open the fore scuttle for them. I thought it was best to let them wait. I had deterred Sanderson from making an onslaught upon the pirates, but I was not yet ready to propose a plan of operations against them. Leaving Sanderson and Palmer at the door of the steerage, I went on deck to consult further with the captain. I was in favor, if possible, of postponing the battle till daylight.
"Phil, you have managed this thing so far, and I think you had better see it through," said Captain York; and there was not a little anxiety manifest in his tones.
"I will do the best I can; but you are the captain of the bark, and if you have any orders to give, I shall obey them, without regard to my own opinions."
"If it were a question of seamanship I could settle it; but you seem to have a talent for this kind of business. I would rather leave it all to
you. I will give such orders to the men as you suggest."
I was certainly very much honored and flattered by his confidence; and no modesty on my part could disprove the fact that I had furnished the plan, and performed a leading part in the capture of the vessel.
"It is not of much use to give any orders to the men just now, for most of them are too drunk to do anything," I replied.
"It's going to blow before morning," added Captain York, looking around him at the black sky and the restless ocean.
"Do you mean that we shall have a gale?"
"That's just what I mean. I thought this morning that we should have heavy weather within twenty-four hours."
"It will be a bad time to settle this business then?"
"Yes; the sooner it is over, the better."
"I wanted to wait till daylight before we did anything decisive."
"We haven't hands enough fit for duty to reef the main topsails."
"Very well; then we will have some more hands."
"What do you mean?"
"I am in favor of making Martino, Gorro, and the rest of those piratical seamen do their share of the work. If they won't take hold, they shall take the consequences. I suppose the men will be sober in a few hours."
"Yes; if their rum is all gone. We had better see about that."
We took a lantern and went into the forecastle. We could find no rum there, nor anywhere else. It was probable that they had drank all they possessed, for it was not like them to leave any. We overhauled the drunkards, and found two or three of them who were able to stand up; but that was all.
"Have you any rum here?" demanded the captain, very sternly.
"Not a drop, captain," replied one of those who still had the use of his limbs.
"Where did you get your liquor?"
"Grego gave it to us, and said the captain sent it."
"I suppose you are all ready to go slaving now."
"No, sir!" shouted the speaker and his companions, with energy.
We plied them with questions till we were satisfied that they had not been tampered with. Grego had visited the hold and brought up the rum, without the knowledge of any of the officers. The conspirators had only intended to make the crew drunk; but Martino and Gorro had doubtless drank more than was laid down in the programme.
"The men will be all right as soon as they are sober," said Captain York. "They haven't joined the pirates."
"No; that's plain enough; but in getting drunk they have done almost as badly."
"Well, what shall we do? We may find it necessary to haul up the courses and reef topsails. The bark has about all she can stagger under now, and we haven't hands enough to watch the pirates and handle the vessel at the same time."
"That's very true," I replied.
"I suppose the pirates are only waiting for us to be busy, when they will make their strike. There are seven of them between decks, you know."
"No matter; we can handle them, if we are careful and prudent. They are only waiting for Martino to open the fore scuttle."
"How do you know?"
"I don't know; but from what we have seen of their plan we can judge of the rest. Martino and Gorro were to remain on deck, while the other three sailors were to release the prisoners. The two on deck have evidently overdone their part, as all drunken men are apt to do. I have only to say that, if they had kept sober, and the other seven
had reached the deck, the nine might have overpowered us, while nearly all our men were helplessly intoxicated."
"That's so; and we have had a narrow escape."
"Everything seemed to be going along so well, that I suppose we were not as sharp as we ought to have been. But, thank God, we are still in a situation to do something; and we must act at once, instead of waiting till daylight, as I wished."
"What are you going to do?" asked the captain.
"I am going to let a part of the pirates come on deck—say three. We can take care of them very well."
I went into the cabin, and stated my plan to Sanderson. Leaving Palmer in the cabin with a pistol in his hand, and with orders to shoot the first pirate that attempted to enter the cabin, I went on deck with Franklin and the mate. I had no fear that a demonstration would be made upon the cabin from between decks until the battle on deck was ended. I told Walker, who was at the helm, to hail us forward if anything happened in the cabin, and we went upon the forecastle, to grapple in earnest with the emergency.
The wind came in fearful gusts, and the bark was laboring heavily under her present canvas. It was time that the courses were hauled up. I thought so when the vessel heeled down to her rail, and a heavy surge swept over the bow, and rolled down through the scuppers as her head lifted.
"This won't do," said the captain. "It's coming heavier and heavier every minute, and before we finish this business, the masts may be taken out of her. There she goes again."
The bow plunged deep down into the sea, and we took the crest of another billow on board. We were obliged to grasp the fiferail to keep from being carried over into the scuppers. Of course we were all drenched to the skin, and so were the drunken sailors, some of whom were tossed very rudely about by the rushing waters. But the effect upon them was decidedly hopeful. Cold salt water was the antidote of the rum they had drank. I agreed with the captain that we must defer the business to take in sail.
