“And is it really so serious an evil?”
“It caused the death of some eighty white people, indirectly. The rioters were mad with drink—with this hashish—and they rose with a suddenness no one could foresee, because it was unpremeditated on their own part. Let a native get drunk on hashish and he goes out to kill. There were no regular troops here in the time of the Company, only a police force officered by men lent by the War Office, and these gentlemen appear to have been mostly on leave, shooting in Madagascar.”
“But how were the rioters armed?”
“They broke into the houses and armed themselves. The favourite weapon was a razor bound on to a stick, with which they jabbed upwards, but no kind of knife was despised. The most appalling thing was when they made a kind of torch out of the half-worked hemp soaked in oil and set their victims alight—am I frightening you, Mrs. Lewin?”
“No—but I have a very vivid imagination. I can see it all, and it turns me rather sick. Did the Chinamen fight too?”
“A few, though the worst offenders were the half-castes and the Malagasy. The Arab is as great a coward as the pure native, so that part of the population were comparatively harmless. There was a good deal of carnage among the planters and residents before the police got the upper hand, and the consequence was that Government had to step in and take over the island to reduce it to order.”
“Whence followed a Commissioner to make enquiries, and Mr. Gregory to teach them a lesson. Did he teach them, by the way?”
“I believe he did—a slight one,” said Halton briefly. “I arrived on the scene a week or so later.”
“I wonder the Government puts power into his hands, considering that they always seem to have to censure him afterwards,” said Mrs. Lewin musingly.
“It is rather difficult to ignore a successful man,” said Halton, “even the British Government find that. And he has been most uncomfortably successful on several occasions, though his measures may have been drastic.”