I presented my credentials at the douanerie, where my cameras were viewed with considerable suspicion until the all-compelling documents had been read. After that, I suppose, they would have almost let me take a Maxim gun on to the island. Then they were noted and handed back to me with a polite “Très bien, monsieur. The canot will start in a quarter of an hour. If you will give your apparatus to this officer he will see it safe in the boat.”
A polite surveillant stepped up, touched his helmet, and took them from me. Then I lit a pipe and strolled up and down the quay to enjoy my strange surroundings.
I had seen hundreds of convicts in England working both within and without the prison walls; working in grim, joyless silence, surrounded by equally silent, rifle-armed warders, and never a prisoner moving without one of these at his heels. Here it was difficult to believe that I was in Prisonland at all save that the other occupants of the quay were wearing two very different uniforms, and that I was the only one en civile.
The surveillants were dressed in spotless white—the official washing-bill of New Caledonia must be something enormous—their white helmets bore a silver badge, the chief figure in which was a glorified representation of the now forbidden rod, with the letters “A. P.” (Administration Pénitentiare). Their rank was shown by galons, a sort of stripe worn on the cuff of the left sleeve. This was of blue cloth with silver braid—the lines of braid served the same purpose as stripes do with us. For instance, the French equivalent for “two stripes” is “à deux galons.”
The uniform of the others was chiefly conspicuous for its ugliness and utility—a pair of trousers and a jumper of light grey canvas cloth, with a vest underneath, and a very broad-brimmed straw hat, without a ribbon. No convict in Caledonia is allowed a ribbon on his hat. Some had stout, undressed brogues, and some were barefoot. They were without exception extremely ugly and fairly hearty.
A good many of them were smoking, and this rather got on my nerves, for I kept on asking myself what would happen to an English prison official if he saw a convict take out a cigarette and go and ask another one for a light? But here surveillants strolled about puffing their own cigarettes—making me wonder again what would happen to an English warder smoking on duty?—and not worrying particularly over anything.
At the same time, there was no lack of discipline of its kind, though it was not what we should call discipline in England. Still, the convicts worked hard and regularly; harder, indeed, than I have ever seen English convicts work.
Their task was loading the canots and the steam-launch with provisions for the great prison on the other side of the harbour; and they went at it steadily and in excellent order until it was finished, scarcely needing a word of direction from the surveillants.