“In the skrimmage that followed, one of the wardens—a man especially disliked by the convicts—was killed, while the overseer himself was carried senseless from the ground.
“The dead warden had been a sailor, and liked his ‘quid.’ He was generally to be seen with his mouth full of tobacco, and this was the case at the time he was killed. I saw the quid taken from his mouth, scarce ten minutes after he had become a corpse, by one of the convicts, who the instant after transferred it to his own!
“The overseer, at the time he got knocked down, was smoking a pipe. Scarce three minutes after, I saw the same pipe in the mouth of one of the men; and from its head was rolling a thick cloud of smoke!
“The fire in the pipe had not been allowed to expire; and the man who was smoking it was one of those afterwards hung for the murder of the warden!”
Volume Three—Chapter Six.
Squatters’ Justice.
The old convict, as if reminded by the queer incidents he had related: that he himself stood in need of a smoke, here took out his pipe. After filling and lighting it, he resumed his narrative.
“Owing to refractory conduct on my part, and a dislike to crawling for the purpose of currying favour with overseers, I did not get a ‘ticket-of-leave’ until five years after landing in the colony.