He had been thus employed for some months when Mr. W. Nott, manager of the Manduran station, saw him in a paddock belonging to the station, and recognised him. Believing that he was there with the intention of stealing some of the horses, Mr. Nott hastily collected a party and started in pursuit. The party consisted of Messrs. Nott, Curry, Gadsden, and J. Walsh. They came in sight of their quarry about five miles away, as he was travelling along the Port Curtis Road. He was riding slowly when first seen, but, on observing the pursuers closing upon him, Macpherson let go his packhorse, wheeled off the road, and galloped down the side of a steep range. His pursuers followed. When he reached the level ground at the foot of the range, the Wild Scotchman pulled up, and began to unstrap the double-barrelled gun which he carried across the pommel of his saddle. Before he could succeed, however, Mr. Nott came close up and cried "Put up your hands or I'll fire." The rifle barrel was only a few feet away, and as the other men came up at once with arms ready for use the Wild Scotchman yielded. "All right," he said, "I give up." "I knew you were not policemen," he said later, "by the way you came down that ridge, but you wouldn't have caught me if my horse had not been done up." They took away his arms, and then returned to the station, two of the captors riding with the bushranger between them, while the other two rode close behind. In the pack on the horse which he abandoned was found a beautifully-fitted case of surgical instruments, with lint and other necessaries for treating wounds. He also carried a pocket compass, an American axe, and some other useful articles. The axe was required for cutting fences or for making temporary stockyards to catch horses in.
A warrant had been issued for his arrest for his attack on Sir Frederick Pottinger and the police in New South Wales, and the Wild Scotchman was therefore extradited to stand his trial in New South Wales on a charge of shooting with intent to do grievous bodily harm. His arrival in Sydney was coincident with the resignation of that officer as already related. Sir Frederick, however, was summoned to appear against him, and it was on his journey to Sydney for this purpose that the accident happened which put an end to Sir Frederick's life and the prosecution against the Wild Scotchman at the same time.
The Wild Scotchman was returned to Queensland in charge of the police. He was sent from Brisbane to Port Denison, and was there committed for trial and remanded to Rockhampton, the nearest assize town, for that purpose. He was shipped on board the steamer Diamantina in charge of Constable Maher. He was accommodated with leg irons, his hands being so small that he could easily slip them through any ordinary handcuffs. In fact he boasted freely that the handcuffs to hold him "had not yet been made." When the steamer reached Mackay he was seated reading near the galley, but he had behaved so quietly all through the earlier part of the passage that the constable did not think it necessary to disturb him by taking him below. There was, of course, the usual bustle while the steamer was at the wharf, and Constable Maher appears to have lost sight of his prisoner, and did not miss him until the vessel had been an hour at sea. Then a search was instituted, but no Wild Scotchman could be found, and as the Maryborough Chronicle remarked, "Constable Maher reached Rockhampton minus his prisoner."
How he got ashore and removed his leg-irons was a mystery which was not solved for some time. However, his escape did not profit him much. He went to a paddock on the Kolongo station with the intention of stealing a horse to enable him to stick up the mail coach, and "make a rise." But a party was organised by Mr. Hall, and he was recaptured without attaining his purpose. This time greater care was exercised by the police to whom he was handed over, and he reached Rockhampton, where he was tried on several charges of highway robbery and sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude.
There can be no doubt that young Macpherson, like many other high-spirited young men, was led away by the glamour which gathered round the bushrangers Hall, Gilbert, and their young associates; and which appears to have appealed so strongly to the youth of certain temperaments as to blind them to the enormity of the crimes committed by these bushrangers. The quiet bush life in Australia afforded them no escape valve by which their desire for excitement might be worked off. They did not pause to realise that their fight against society was hopeless from the beginning, and that in taking to the bush they were setting themselves, almost single handed, against the whole force of public opinion in the colony. Had they lived in Europe they might, perhaps, have enlisted in the army and thus been able to do something to satisfy their cravings for notoriety and adventure in a legitimate way. In Australia, however, there was no standing army, and even if there had been there was nothing for it to do in the colonies, and no chance of its ever being employed outside, where hard blows were to be struck and glory won. It may be true that even soldiers do not always find congenial work for them to do, and that many of them have lived very humdrum lives, but there is always the hope that they may be called on to defend their country, or to fight for its aggrandisement, and this hope is sufficient to induce them to enlist, when they are brought under the control of the disciplinarian and kept out of mischief until their boyish enthusiasm subsides and they are old enough to enter into the business of life. However, Queensland's "only bushranger," the Wild Scotchman, was captured after a brief but exciting career of about eighteen months, and the colony has not been troubled by bushrangers since.
Captain Moonlite; The "Reverend Gentleman" Robs the Bank, and Nearly Makes his Escape; He Breaks out of Ballarat Gaol; He Becomes a Reformed Character; He Sticks Up Wantabadgery Station; A Desperate Battle with the Police; Moonlite is Captured; His Young Companions in Crime; Sentenced to Death; The Wild Horse Hunters Turn Bushrangers; An Abortive Attempt to Rob a Bank.
From about June, 1872, to April, 1878, or nearly six years, Australia was free from bushrangers. With the exception of the two or three robberies in the far west of New South Wales, so far west as to be almost out of the colony, the roads were safe; travellers journeyed in all directions without fear of molestation; and the public, as well as the authorities, began to congratulate themselves once more on having at length definitely stamped out the scourge of bushranging. Since the shooting of Thunderbolt and the capture of Power, there had been no sign of a recrudescence of the crime, and bushranging was beginning to be referred to as belonging to a past age. But this peaceful condition of the country was not always to continue. The old leaven of convictism so frequently referred to, had not as yet been so completely eliminated as the public and the authorities hoped and believed. Reports began to spread about in 1878 that robberies had been committed in the neighbourhood where Power had so long set the police at defiance, and shortly afterwards the name of Ned Kelly began to be associated with them. Ned Kelly is still spoken of as the last of the bushrangers, and as his death closes the story, it may be as well to deal with some other bushrangers who finished their careers before "the gentleman of the Strathbogie Ranges." The most remarkable of these was George Scott, alias Captain Moonlite. His story belongs partly to the former era, but I have reserved it in order to make it more complete than would have been possible had it been divided. Scott was born in the North of Ireland, and emigrated to Victoria. He went to the diggings at a time when agents from New Zealand were endeavouring to raise a corps in Victoria for service against the Maoris. He enlisted and fought through the war in 1861-65, being wounded in the leg. On his return to Victoria he showed a strong desire to join the Church, and as he was well educated and a good speaker he was appointed lay reader at Bacchus Marsh, with a view to his being ordained a minister of the Church of England, when the Bishop of Melbourne should consider him worthy of the charge. His duties as lay reader were to travel round the settlement, to read prayers and conduct services, his head quarters being in the town at Mount Egerton. His chief friends here were the manager of the Union Bank and the schoolmaster. He soon came to be respected and liked in the district. One night, however, a masked man walked into the living apartments connected with the bank and ordered the manager, who was alone, to bail up. The manager recognised the voice and asked him whether he thought this a suitable practical joke for a clergyman. Scott replied that he would soon find it was no joke. He threatened to shoot the manager unless he surrendered and did as he was ordered. He then gagged the manager, took him across the street to the school-house, and compelled him to sign the following statement:—"Captain Moonlite has stuck me up and robbed the bank." There was no one at the school-house, Scott having apparently timed his visit when he knew the school would be empty. Leaving the paper on the desk in the school-house, Scott took the manager back to the bank, tied him hand and foot, and then took about £1000 worth in notes and coin from the safe. The schoolmaster found the paper lying on the desk when he went to open the school next morning, and at first did not know what to make of it. He handed it to the police, who, on going to the bank, found the manager gagged and tied. Having heard his story the police considered it absurd, and arrested the manager and schoolmaster as having been jointly concerned in the crime. The idea of charging the minister, as Scott was generally called, appeared to be preposterous, the more especially as Scott was very active in trying to find incriminating evidence against his quondam friends. Being intimately acquainted with the lives led by the two men, he was able to supply the police with several facts, true or false, which were considered strong circumstantial proofs of their guilt. They were committed for trial, Scott being bound over as a witness against them. He did not wait for the trial, however, but went to Sydney, where he put up at one of the leading hotels and spent money lavishly. He represented himself as a wealthy visitor to the colonies travelling for pleasure, and spoke of his intention to visit some of the South Sea Islands. For this purpose he purchased a yacht, for which he paid partly in cash and partly by a cheque for £150. This cheque was returned by the bank on which it was drawn as valueless, and the man who had sold him the yacht immediately communicated with the police. Scott had already set sail, but the police followed him in a steam launch and caught him just outside the Heads. He was brought back and tried for fraud and was sent to gaol for eighteen months.