It was a dull season at the time for the Australian papers; they had not had a fight in their Parliaments, or a sensational murder for some time. Here was a chance of selling their rags! Never mind sacrificing a good man, on the unsubstantial hearsay statement of an individual whose living greatly depended upon his power of romancing. The Press fairly howled for the head of Robinson, as did also certain Australian members of Parliament; according to them, he was a man to whom the Emperor Nero or Captain Kidd were as angels in comparison; while happy comparisons were drawn between the Merrie England and the “blood-drenched Carl, brig,” a notorious and particularly infamous early Australian “black birder.” The Administration in Australia bowed to the storm, votes might be at stake, and the announcement was made that a Royal Commission would be appointed to inquire into the matter, and that though Robinson would not in the meantime be suspended, he would be summoned to Sydney, while an Administrator would at once be sent to succeed him. Practically the attitude of the authorities amounted to this: “We intend to offer up Robinson as a sacrifice, but we must give him some form of trial before we judge and immolate him; in the meantime we will fill his job, in case there should be any doubt as to our intentions.”
Sir George Le Hunte was then asked to suggest the name of an officer, then in the Service, suitable as an Administrator; and his Excellency replied, “Captain Barton.” This was rubbing it into Judge Robinson with a vengeance; Captain Barton was a junior magistrate, under Robinson in both his judicial and administrative capacities, and he was now to regard Barton as his chief. Jewell was transferred to Captain Barton as private secretary. Robinson had fallen, unheard and untried, from the highest position in the country to that of a man looked at with eyes askance by those by whom he had formerly been regarded with awe, and who now were afraid that they might possibly become involved in his downfall.
Now, to Robinson there only appeared to be one course left, and he took it. Every vessel brought fresh gusts of execration against him from Australia; Bruce alone in Port Moresby sympathized with him; Moreton and myself, the only two men he could call friends in the Service, were hundreds of miles away, ignorant of his plight, and in any case powerless to help; the very native servants at Government House knew that he was a disgraced man, and that on the morrow the Jack on the flagstaff would fly in honour of another, while he went in humiliation to trial and possible dishonour. Whilst all the house was plunged in sleep, Robinson sat late at night writing an account of his views and actions, and the troubles of his Administratorship, and concluded by fully accepting all responsibility for the action taken at Goaribari, and exonerating all others concerned. He then took his revolver, and walking out under the flagstaff, there blew out his brains. So died Christopher Stansfield Robinson, first Australian Administrator of New Guinea, murdered as clearly as ever a man was murdered, by the lying sensation-mongers who had hounded him to a suicide’s grave.
The Royal Commission was held, and the officer concerned exonerated from blame; Robinson had gone to answer for his act and alleged misdeed at the Highest Court of all, the Court before which his traducers will some day stand and be judged. The surprised man was the Rev. Charles Abel; he was proceeding south to give evidence, when he suddenly heard that the Judge, by whom the Royal Commission was conducted, held the—to him—extraordinary view, that the evidence of a man who had been at the time six hundred miles distant from the scene, and only heard various garbled versions at second, third, fourth and fifth hand, was not admissible. This was hard luck for Abel! He had made himself prominent in the limelight as a principal performer on the stage, and suddenly the stage manager said, “What is that super doing there? Send him back to his own job of selling programmes!” Robinson, however, had gone; nothing now could bring him back.
Apart from the loss to the Service caused by Robinson’s death, a very bad example had been set, and the Service and public had been taught that clamour, abuse and misrepresentation, if sufficiently persisted in, could pull down any officer, however highly placed, even to the King’s Representative; and soon indeed, later, Barton, the Governor; Ballantine, the Treasurer; and Bruce, the Commandant, all went down before the same methods.
CHAPTER XXII
I find that I have wandered too far in advance of my time, and also away from the North-Eastern Division. Some six months after I had opened the new Station at Cape Nelson, the Government Secretary, the Judge and Treasurer, and in addition, my old enemies of the Government Store, all came down upon me for irregularities in making and sending in Court and Gaol returns, copies of the Station Journal, and receipts for stores received: the Treasurer and Government Store-keeper complained bitterly that I was seriously delaying the clerical work of their Department in consequence. I reported that nothing else was to be expected; that I had an enormous new district to bring into order, the work in which necessitated frequent and long absences from my Station, and that when I was away, my Station was solely in charge of a Corporal of Native Constabulary, who could neither read nor write, and I begged that a Malay or Manilla man, like Lario or Basilio, might be sent to me to act as native clerk and overseer. The Governor was away in Australia, and the Judge in the Western Division; accordingly Mr. Musgrave dealt with my request. In due course, a vessel came in bringing a sallow, lank, unwholesome-looking youth of about twenty years of age, a cockney, bearing a letter from Muzzy saying that he was to act for me as clerk and overseer.
“Do you know anything about book-keeping?” I asked him. “No, your worship,” he replied. “Don’t call me that, except in Court, you fat-head; Sir is quite enough,” I said. “Do you understand building? There is much of that going on at present.” “No!” was the reply. “Agriculture, then? We grow most of our food here.” “No!” ”Drill?” “No!” “Can you shoot?” “No!” “What in Heaven’s name can you do?” I asked; “surely something?” “I was a fishmonger’s boy in London; then I got a job as steward on a tramp steamer; I left her at Thursday Island, and learnt billiard marking in a pub there, while I was employed as a waiter; then, hearing that there were some billiard tables in Port Moresby, I went there to try for a job; I could not get employment, and went to the Government Secretary to apply for a free passage out of the country, and he sent me here.” “Holy Moses!” I said to myself, “this is exactly what I expected Muzzy to do; I suppose I am lucky that he did not send me a mid-wife!” “You don’t seem very promising material for me to work upon,” I remarked aloud, “but I will see what we can make of you. First, I will render you able to defend yourself. Sergeant, take away this man and teach him to shoot; then tell off a couple of men to teach him to swim.” “What will the police call me?” he asked; “Sir or Mister?” “Hoity toity!” I said, “this is beginning early! What were you called when you were a waiter?” “Bert.” “Very good. Bert you will be to the constabulary, until we have made something of you; and I shall call you by your surname without any prefix at all.” “Shall I live with you or the constabulary?” he next queried. “I don’t like niggers.” I saw my orderly, who was standing stiffly at attention, watching for an opportunity to tell me something, give a quick glance at the sergeant, who still waited with a motionless face. “With neither,” I replied; “I will send the gaoler into barracks and give you his house, until we have one of your own built. But remember this: the term nigger, as applied to a native of this country, is strictly forbidden; it is an objectionable term of contempt, and especially so when applied to men wearing the King’s uniform. You have already done yourself harm by using it in the presence of men who are at present in the position of your teachers.”
I was at my Station for about a month after that, endeavouring to make the man useful, but he was exceedingly useless for anything except copying letters and keeping check of the stores that had been used. I then went away for a couple of weeks, and on my return found that a blackguard, beach-combing trader, whom I had once gaoled for four months and whom Sir Francis Winter had also incarcerated for another period, had called at the Station and fraternized with the agreeable “Bert”; the pair of them had then scandalized the whole Station by going on a wild drunk for three days and nights, during which period, the constabulary told me, a large whaler had passed the Cape, filled, they believed, with runaway carriers from the gold-fields. The police had not cared to leave the Station while the drunken riot was going on, for fear that the drunks should do some damage either to themselves or the Station, therefore the whaler passed unchallenged. I was exceedingly annoyed; the more so, that recently I had been keeping a strict watch on large and strange canoes or boats passing, on account of a habit miners’ carriers had developed of stealing their employers’ fire-arms and goods, and making a bolt for their homes in either stolen boats or canoes. They then, in some instances, added to their crimes by shooting stray natives or plundering the gardens of small, weak, outlying villages; on one occasion the offenders had had impudence enough to refuse to produce or surrender their stolen fire-arms, when they were overhauled by my whaleboat, under command of my corporal; and it was not until the corporal had ordered the police to load their rifles, and had clearly shown that he meant fight, that they yielded to the superior force. “Bert” begged hard to be let off this time, and swore that he would be good in future; he wailed that he had been lonely and miserable when the trader arrived, and, in his joy at having a white man to talk to, had lost his head.