ANOTHER VICTIM.
At last, ninety-three days after her departure from St. Martin de Re, the Loire cast anchor in the Bay of Noumea. The town, perched on the slope of a hill, is quite picturesque with its flat-roofed white houses that are shaded by gigantic cocoanut trees, and half hidden by huge bushes of a kind of scarlet rhododendron of a singular luxuriance and beauty. Owing to the frequence of cyclones and tornadoes no building is more than one-story high, even the church tower having been razed to the ground by a storm which took place a short time before Frederick reached the colony.
The young man, however, had no opportunity of examining the town more closely. For shortly before midday the convicts were placed on barges rowed by naked savages, and conveyed to the barren and desolate Island of Nou, distant about an hour from the city. On landing the convicts were taken to a shed where they were ordered to strip. Their bodies were then plentifully besprinkled with the most nauseating kind of insect powder, after which they were furnished with their new kit, consisting of coarse canvas trousers, jackets and shirts, straw hats, wooden shoes, hammocks and dingy-colored blankets. They were then locked up by batches of sixty in long, low buildings, the small windows of which were heavily barred.
There they were left without either food or water until the following morning. The night was horrible. The most impenetrable darkness prevailed, no lantern or any kind of light having been provided to dispel the gloom. The heat and foul odors due to the want of proper ventilation were indescribable, and the men, driven almost frantic by thirst and hunger, rendered the long, weary hours of the night still more hideous with their yells, oaths, and execrations. At about 2 o'clock in the morning a fearful cry of agony rang through the building:
“Help! Help! They are killing me! Let me go, cowards! Help for the love of God!”
A great silence followed this heart-rending appeal, which was only broken by the sound of a few shuddering gasps. A few minutes later the pandemonium broke loose again with increased violence and continued until morning. When day began to pierce through the grated windows the cause of the awful cries for help which had made the blood of even some of the most hardened criminals run cold became apparent. Stretched on the ground, with his open eyes distended by pain and terror, lay the dead body of the convict who during the voyage out had volunteered to act as the “corrector” on the occasion of the flogging of Frederick and of the three men who attempted to escape with him in the harbor of Santa Cruz. Death had evidently been caused by strangulation, for purple finger-marks were plainly visible on the victim's throat.
At 6 o'clock the doors were thrown open, and the warders ordered the prisoners to file out into the open air. After having been ranged in line, the roll was called. The several numerals by which the respective convicts were known were called forth and responded to by their owners. Suddenly there was a pause caused by the failure of No. 21,265, to answer the summons.
“Where the devil is No. 21,265?” shouted the head warder, in an angry tone of voice.
The convicts remained silent.
Fearing that the missing man had escaped, several of the “gardes-chiourmes” (sub-warders) rushed into the building where the prisoners had spent the night, and reappeared a few moments later bearing the body of the murdered man.