THE QUEEN VERSUS BILLY
IT was the Sandfly, Captain Toombs, that brought the news to Sydney and intercepted her Majesty’s third-class cruiser Stingaree, as she lay in Man-of-War Cove, with her boats hoisted in and a deck-load of coal as high as her bulwarks, on the eve of a long trip into the western Pacific. It was the same old story—another white man sent to his last account in the inhospitable Solomons, where if the climate does not kill you the black man soon will: “Thomas Hysslop Biggar, commonly known as ‘Captain Tom’; aged forty-six; British subject; occupation, trader in coprah; place of residence, Sunflower Bay, island of Guadalcanar; murdered by the natives in September, 1888, between the 7th and the 24th, and his station looted and burned.” There was trouble in store for Sunflower Bay; they had killed Collins in 1884, and Casseroles the Frenchman in 1887, and had drawn upon themselves an ominous attention by firing into the Meg Merrilies in the course of the same year. Murder was becoming too frequent in Sunflower Bay, and Captain Casement, while policing those sweltering seas, was asked to “conduct an inquiry into the alleged murder of T. H. Biggar, and take what punitive measures he judged to be necessary.”
It was not everybody who would have liked such a task; in dealing with savages the innocent are too often lumped with the guilty, and while you are scattering death and canister among the evil-doers, you are often mangling their wives and children in a way horrible to think of. Captain Casement had seen such things in the course of his eventful service, and though no stickler where his duty was concerned, he was neither a brute nor a coward. He was a simple gentleman of character, parts, and conscience, with refined tastes, and a horror of shedding innocent blood. Under his command were five officers: Facey, acting first lieutenant, Burder, acting second, Assistant Paymaster Pickthorn, Engineer Sennett, Dr. Roche, ten marines, and a crew of eighty-eight men.
After a roundabout cruise through the pleasant groups of Fiji, Tongataboo, and Samoa, with little to occupy him save official dinners, tennis parties, and an occasional dance ashore, Captain Casement headed his ship for the wild western islands and pricked out a course for Sunflower Bay. One hot morning, when the damp, moist air made everything sticky to the touch, and the whole ship sweated like a palm-house from stem to stern, the Stingaree ran past the towering cliffs and roaring breakers of Guadalcanar, and let go her anchor off the blow-hole in Sunflower Bay. It was a melancholy spot to look at, though beautiful in a gloomy and savage fashion, and the only signs of man’s occupancy were the blackened ruin of the trader’s house, a small mountain of coal half covered with creepers, and a flagstaff surmounted by a skull. There was no visible beach, for the mangroves ran to the water’s edge, save where it had been partially cleared away by the man whose murder they had come to avenge; nor did the closest scrutiny with the glass betray any tell-tale smoke or the least sign of habitation. Captain Casement surveyed the place with his keen, practised eyes, and the longer he looked the less he liked it. The desolation jarred upon his nerves, and his heart fell a little as the blow-hole burst hoarsely under the ship’s quarter, and the everlasting breakers on the outer reef droned their note of menace and alarm.
“Goodness gracious!” he said, in his abrupt, impatient fashion, as he stood beside Facey on the bridge and superintended the laying of the kedge. “I don’t half like the look of it, Mr. Facey; it’s a damned nasty-looking place.”
The first lieutenant nodded. He was a burly, inarticulate man, to whom speech was always a serious matter.
“And see here, Facey,” went on the captain. “Guns don’t matter much; none of the devils shoot fit to speak of; but their poisoned arrows are the very deuce—you know that was the way Goodenough was killed—and you must keep your weather eye lifting.”
“Am I to go, sir?” asked the lieutenant.
“Yes,” said Casement. “You must take Pickthorn and twenty-five men in the first cutter. Send Burder in the second, with twenty more, to cover your landing. And for God’s sake, Facey, keep cool, and neither get flustered nor over-friendly! Don’t shoot unless you have to; and always remember they are the most treacherous savages in the world. Be gentle and firm, and do everything with as little fuss and as great a show of confidence as you can.”