The Courtyard of a Disciplinary Camp, Ile Nou. Inspection at 5 a.m. after breakfast, and before hard labour. To the right is a Kanaka “Policeman.” The average physique of the Criminals may be seen by comparison with myself, standing in front of the Kanaka.
They have poorer food and harder work, no “gratifications” in the way of wine or tobacco, or other little luxuries. They sleep on plank-beds with their feet in anklets, and, if they don’t behave themselves, they are promptly clapped into a cell for so many days’ solitary confinement on bread and water. For graver offences they are, of course, sent back to the central prison as hopeless cases, after which their own case is usually hopeless for life.
I found several of the men in this camp working in chains. This was another subject about which the sentimentalists made a good deal of fuss in France, but when I saw what the alleged chains really were, I laughed, and said to my friend the Chef:
“So that is what you call chains in New Caledonia, is it? May I have a look at one?”
He beckoned to one of the men to come up, and this is what I found: There was an iron band riveted round his right ankle, and to this was attached a chain which, as nearly as I could calculate with my hands, weighed about six pounds. It was as absolutely no inconvenience to its wearer, when he was either sitting or lying down. When he was walking or working he tucked the end in under his belt, and, as far as I could see, it didn’t make any difference to his walk, save a little dragging of the foot. In fact, when I asked him whether it was any trouble to him, he said:
“No, not after a few days. One gets accustomed to it.”
“Very likely!” I said. “If you got the chains in an English prison, you would have them on both legs and arms, and you wouldn’t be able to take more than a half-stride.”
“Ah, they are brutal, those English!” said the scoundrel, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he tucked the end of his chain round his belt and sauntered away.
The chain is usually a punishment for gross insubordination or attempted escape. This man, the Chef told me, had tried three times with the chain on, and once had used the loose end to hammer a warder with, for which he got twelve months’ Cachot Noir and the chain for life—and a little more, since he would be buried in it.[2]