“Didn’t the miners object?”
“Yes, they did, but only a few men were about, the rest being at work. Those whites about the place showed the inspector that the natives he’d collared were working in the township at the time of the murder, but it was no good. Unfortunately, the local J.P., who was the owner of the batteries and mines in the vicinity, and had made himself objectionable to the police of the district by doing his best to preserve the natives of the place, was absent, and no one liked to take the responsibility of making a stand against the law in the matter. So the niggers were hauled off. This was bad enough, sure, but the bitter part was to follow. I must stop for a moment to go on to tell you that it’s a divil of a bother to bring home a conviction of murder against an aboriginal, through some of the judges having decided that it is illegal to try a man in a language of which he doesn’t know a single decent word, barring a few swear words he’s heard used by bullockies, and drovers, and the like. So, finding this lion in the path of justice, the artful protectors of the public have hit upon another plan for arriving at the same desired end.”
“What is that?” asks Claude.
“Sure the idea is ‘just grand,’ as my Scotch gardener says, and as easy to carry out as falling off a greasy log, and that’s as nate as it’s convanient. The plan is to let the prisoner have a chance of escaping when taking him to gaol, and promptly perforate him with bullets if he takes it or not.”
“But that wouldn’t work long. Too many witnesses, doctor. Sure to leak out some day.”
“Not at all, me boy. The gentleman in charge, who is so anxious to save the Crown the expense of the trial, it’s just himself that knows what he’s about. His squad of ‘boys’ is composed of black fellows from various parts of Australia, who belong to different tribes, or factions, to tip it a rale Irish simile. On the top of a downright lovely, natural animosity for each other, which is only restrained by discipline, these savages wearing the Government livery have been trained to commit every sort of atrocity at a word from their ‘Marmie,’ as they call the ‘boss.’ Should a ‘boy’ misbehave himself, turn rusty because he receives a flogging, or otherwise fail to please his master, that gentleman doesn’t trouble to rason wid him; he has only to wink, as you may say, and it’s a case of ‘off wid his head,’ for his black comrades are only too glad to be allowed to steal behind the bocaun of a boy and leave him pulseless, all alone wid himself behind a bush. These ‘boys’ are the only witnesses. But to come home to me story. The prisoners were marched off in an iligent line, or tied to a line, it don’t much matter, and three miles outside the town they were neatly despatched, and left to amuse the crows and ants.”
“But what did the townsfolk do?”
“Oh, they waited till the boss of the place came back, the J.P. I’ve been telling of, and that was the same afternoon. They told him all about it. Holy poker! there was the divil to pay, an’ no mistake. ‘Dripping mother!’ he cried, ‘I’ve never had a single instance of throuble wid the darkies of the place.’ And then he went on to say, and he was telling the truth, mind ye, that he had been there, off and on, ever since he came, the first white man, to the district. And he told the miners how he feared the retaliation of the friends of the murthered creatures, and the consequent vendetta warfare that would ensue. And then the whole township, headed by the J.P., went out together by themselves, and found the place where the murtherers had left their victims; but divil a bit of them did they diskiver, barring their bodies stuffed so full of bullets, I’ve bin told, that you couldn’t see them but for the wounds outside.
“Well, a message was presently despatched to the resident magistrate of the nearest town.”
“And with what result?” asks Claude.