Fern Vale; or, the Queensland Squatter. Volume 2

by Colin Munro

"Your prayers to us," replied his captors, "are of no avail, to-morrow you die; so in the meantime, make your peace with your Maker, if such be possible."

"But why kill me?" screamed the agonized man, "what have I done to deserve death?"

"Wretch! do you want a recital of your sins?" replied his quondam servant; "have they been so insignificant that you cannot call any to present recollection? Are they not rather as numerous as the hairs on your head? does not the black and heinous catalogue rise before you, and darken your very soul? You have asked us why you are to die; I will tell you, and let God judge between us whether your fate is not your just reward; while you, vile reptile that you are, answer if you can, if we have not just cause to require your death to expiate your crimes.

"How have you fulfilled the government requisitions to your assigned servants? How have you fed them and clothed them? Have not their coverings been such, as to be as bad or worse than none? insufficient for any season; causing paralysis in winter, and sun-strokes in summer? Has not their food been unfit for pigs? Have you not tyrannized over them, and submitted them to unheard-of cruelties; simply to gratify your insatiable thirst for witnessing torture? Have you not, when you had a willing servant, who was anxious to conduct himself orderly and give satisfaction, made some paltry excuse to have the man punished; because you feared you would lose his services, by his obtaining his 'ticket of leave,' for good conduct? Have you not done all this? Yes! and more. You have even compelled your men to intoxicate themselves; and then accused them before a magistrate of stealing the spirits, to obtain the cancelling of their tickets. You have by your cruelty driven men mad, to the bush, or to a lingering death; you have crushed the germ of contrition in the breasts of hundreds, and degraded them to the level of beasts; while the only sounds grateful to your ears, have been the yells of anguish of your victims; and the only spectacle pleasing to your sight, the application of the lash. You have done all this, and even more in hundreds or thousands of cases. You have done so to us; you have heaped ignominy upon our heads; and with starvation, exposure, and accumulated toil, you have caused unjustly our backs to be lacerated by the lash, and our spirits to be broken by your barbarity. Life to us has lost its charm; we thirst only for your blood; vengeance is now in our hands, and you shall die."

The yells of the wretched man, that followed this denouncement, sounded through the glen as the shrieks of a demon or a maniac; and his cries might have been heard far into the bush, had there been any one near to help him. But they were lost on the wilderness' air; and he at last sank exhausted in his bonds, while his captors watched alternately at his feet, with his own loaded pistols ready for use in case of emergency.

The morning dawned as brightly as ever; though the stillness of the bush cast a gloom upon everything within its umbrageous influence. The convicts were up and stirring by daylight, and their first task was to arouse their unconscious victim (who seemed to doze in a lethargic indifference), and prepare him for his approaching fate.

He was speedily denuded of his attire, and bound hand and foot; in which condition he was laid over the bed of an ant's nest, and tied by his extremities, in a state of tension, to opposite trees; in such a manner as to keep his body immoveable over the nest. The wretched man soon awoke to the horrors of his situation, and implored, with the earnestness of a dying man, of his murderers to save his life. But he appealed to feelings and sympathies that were dead; that had, in fact, been strangled by himself: it was in vain. After the most desperate resistance he was secured in his place of torture, while the very skies rang with his cries of anguish and despair.

His body was no sooner prostrate on the heap, than the ants in myriads attacked it vigorously; in a few minutes making its surface black with their swarms; penetrating into his very flesh, and making use of the natural channels to affect ingress to his inner system; and travelling in continuous streams in and out of his nostrils, ears, and mouth. The horrors of the picture it is impossible to describe; and the expression of his features it is equally difficult to conceive. The colour of his skin speedily changed to deep blue; the veins and muscles stood out in bold relief; his eyes projected from his head, and rolled, bleared as they were, in sockets of livid flesh; he gnashed his teeth in his unutterable agony, and rent the air with horrible and impious imprecations; while the utterance was almost diabolical by the vermin that choked the passages of his system.

No human being could long bear this excruciating torture; and at last the body perceptibly swelled, the cœliac or cavernous parts becoming horribly distended, and the spirit fled to its heavenly judgment. Not till then, did the two calm spectators leave the spot, where they had witnessed the death of their victim, and where they now left "nature's scavengers" to finish the work they had commenced.

The sufferings of the two convicts from this time must have been fearful; for one shortly succumbed to them, while the other bearing it for some months longer, gave himself up to the authorities, and met his fate on the gallows.