“Ye to whose sovereign hands the Fates confide
Of this fair land the reins,—
This land for which no pity wrings your breast,—
Why does the stranger’s sword her plains invest,
That her green fields be dyed?”
Petrarch.
"H
ERE’S another snob trying to get us all cashiered! Confound those beastly newspapers,—just my luck!” exclaims an elderly and rather handsome man, who, sitting before his office table, has just opened an important-looking letter, headed with the royal arms printed in red ink.
“Just my confounded luck. Just at this time too, of all others, when my application to be appointed Protector of Aboriginals for the district must just have reached the chief. Now I wonder what Mrs. Bigger will say if I don’t166 get this extra salary as Protector, for I can’t send Jane down south to school, as I promised, if I don’t get more than my present pay, that’s certain.”
The blue-paper letter that has occasioned Inspector Bigger of the N. M. Police so much vexation—for it is this well-known gentleman who now sits nervously rubbing his eyeglass in the little hot office of the barracks—is dated from the bureau of the Superintendent of Police, Brisbane, and runs as follows:—
“June 4th, 1889.
“John Bigger, Esq., Inspector of N. M. Police for Townsend Barracks, Werandowera District.
“The Colonial Secretary having requested the Commissioner of Police to supply him with such information as lies in his power, concerning the truthfulness of an occurrence of which the enclosed newspaper article (which appeared in a recent issue of the ‘Northern Miner’) purports to be an account, I am directed to desire you to communicate immediately with this Office upon the subject.
“I am, sir,
“P. P. Commissioner of Police,
“Harry Stocrat.”
The following is a reprint of the newspaper cutting which flutters to the floor on the letter being opened:—
“ANOTHER N. M. P. ATROCITY.
“Close to Townsend, a reliable correspondent informs, the following lately took place:—
“At a mining camp where nothing had been stolen by the natives for months, three natives ran by a miner’s tent 167 one evening. Going into town next day, the said miner mentioned this, but did not ask for assistance. The neighbouring sergeant of Black Police with four boys, however, appears at the camp in a few days. As night falls the light of a native camp-fire is sparkling away on a mountain range some four miles off. No one knows or cares if these particular natives had committed the crime of running by a miner’s tent. Taking a ‘boy’ by the shoulder, the sergeant points out the fire, and soon after the four troopers steal off into the gloom, armed to the teeth, and naked save for their cartridge-belts. The sergeant remains behind, and in about an hour and a half the sound of nine shots coming rapidly one after another is heard. Presently the ‘boys’ again appear with spears and dilly-bags, and tell, amongst other horrid details, that they have despatched ‘plenty fellow pickaninnie’ with their tomahawks.”
The Inspector’s little office occupies half of a small weather-board erection, which is so crazy from the attacks of white ants (termites) that it can hardly support its hot, galvanised-iron roof. A rough wooden bookcase occupies one wall, standing on a rusty iron tray, which is generally kept supplied with water to defend this article of furniture from the same insect foes that are fast destroying the joints and studs of the building. On its dirty shelves a number of dusty law-books, blue summons papers, and the like, repose in picturesque disorder.
On either side of the single window of the apartment hangs a cat-o’-nine-tails,—one for the use of the refractory “boys” of the corps, and manufactured of plain leather thongs; the other having the narrow lengths of hide decorated with swan-shot artistically fastened to the cruel tongues with whipcord. This more complicated 168 instrument is used for such cases as refractory native witnesses, when a murderer has to be discovered, and has also visited many of the stations round on loan to squatters who are anxious to instil the beauties of civilization into the bosoms (and backs) of those of their native slaves who are desirous of escaping from their bondage. A number of handcuffs and leg-irons, and a few racing pictures, spotted to indistinctness by the last summer’s plague of flies, decorate the walls; and behind Inspector Bigger’s chair is a rack of Snider carbines, whilst a pair of loaded, long-barrelled “Colts” lie on the pigeon-holed letter rack before him on the table, which occupies the centre of the room.
“Now what shall I do about this, I wonder?” ponders the gallant defender of frontier settlers. “I can’t say it was Sergeant Blarney’s fault and call him over the coals, for I have already reported the matter to the Chief as if I had been present. Well,” with a sigh, “it’s another proof of how careful we must be nowadays. Bai Jove! if any of these scribblers had seen some of the little affairs we’ve managed in the old days, between here and Herberton, there would have been some ‘tall writing,’ as the Yankees say, there would so. Bai Jove!” the Inspector adds aloud, rising from his chair and peering out of the open door down the bare barrack yard to where the square, rush-covered huts of the boys stand side by side, “if that isn’t Puttis back again. Wonder if he’s been sent up to replace me? Why, he was only ordered down to Nanga district six weeks ago.”
169
OFFICER AND “BOY” OF BLACK POLICE.
170
The small, military figure of Inspector Puttis, to whom we have already introduced our readers half-a-dozen chapters back, dismounts quickly from the magnificent chestnut which has carried him from Cairns, and, after a few rapid words to his black orderly, who has dismounted also, rapidly marches up the scrupulously neat yard towards the residence of his brother officer. The white sergeant of the local force, and two or three native constables who are standing near, stand “attention” and give the military salute as the dapper little man passes them, which he replies to by lifting his riding cane to his cabbage-tree hat.
Whilst the new-comer is being welcomed by Inspector Bigger, let us glance at the more prominent objects in the scene before us.
Two rows of weather-board iron-roofed buildings, amongst which are the white sergeant’s quarters, stretch down a slight declivity to where they meet at right angles a terrace of brown, single-roomed huts, occupied by the native constables. At the upper end of the fair-sized quadrangle thus formed, the thatched, bungalow-like home of the Chief, covered with creeping plants and standing in a brilliant flower garden, looks down on the rest from the summit of the moderate rise on which the barracks are situated.
The “boy” who arrived with the Inspector, and who, in company with several other natives, is now leading the two horses to the stockyard down by the heavily-timbered water-hole, is in the well-known uniform of the Black Police. This consists of a linen-covered shako, blue-jacket garnished with red braid, and white duck trousers; brown leather gaiters reach to the “boy’s” knees, and he wears an old pair of his master’s enormously long spurs on his “Blucher” 171 boots. As he is “in marching order,” a brass cartridge-belt, containing Snider cartridges, is slung, after the fashion of a sergeant’s scarf, around his body. To complete this somewhat lengthy description of a uniform to be seen only in “up-country” Australia, we may add that a Snider carbine hangs in its “basket” and strap from the “off” side of the “boy’s” saddle.
A few boys in the “undress” of a pair of trousers are sweeping one corner of the yard, and from the doors of the dwellings the brightly turbaned heads of a number of native women, the property of the Chinese cook and white constables, are lolling out for a view of the new arrivals.
But to return to the two officers, who are now seated under the verandah of Inspector Bigger’s home, near a table loaded with the usual “spiritual” signs of Australian hospitality.
“Well, Puttis, so you’re going up to Murdaro again, are you?” begins the host, after the preliminary courtesies of greeting have been gone through between the two friends. “Bai Jove! I wish I had the influence you have, old fellow, with our lords and masters down there at Brisbane. Ah! you sly dog, can I congratulate you yet?” asks the smiling elder man. “There’s not the slightest doubt but Miss Mundella’s the handsomest, eh? and the smartest young lady this side of the Clarence. Did she ever tell you, by-the-bye, old man, that I knew her father?”
“Never,” replies Puttis, with his customary brevity, just letting his jaws open and shut to emit the word, much like a fox-terrier does when it snaps at a troublesome “blue-bottle.”
“Old Mr. Mundella—it was young Mundella then 172—was one of the first to take up-country near where you’ve just come from. And d’you know,” continues the verbose Bigger in a low tone of voice, “d’you know, they used to say at the time that it was our old friend Giles, that’s got Murdaro now, that cleaned him out of his run, and not the ‘pleuro’ (a cattle disease) at all.”
“Humph,” observes Inspector Puttis.
“Yes, that his wife’s brother did it. Well, upon my soul, I would not be surprised at anything I heard of Giles doing. Mundella was grand company, and I don’t think I ever saw a better shot at a running nigger in my life, except yourself.”
“Hah!” snorts the little man in the black, frogged jacket, “that is nothing,” and he bows in acknowledgment of the compliment paid to him by his friend. “Have lived with finger on trigger—night and day—over ten years, may say. You shot well yourself, a few years back.”
“Age making me old and shaky now, me boy,” answers Bigger; and if he had said a life of almost unrestrained licentiousness he would have been nearer to the truth. “But what have you done with your troop, Puttis?”
“Camped down creek. Four miles. Some niggers camped there. Want my ‘boys’ to pick up some information. About man I’m after.”
“Ah! a nigger?”
“Yes; perhaps you can help me.”
“With pleasure, if I can,” replied the elder Inspector, adding, “Especially, my dear fellow, as I sha’n’t feel so diffident about asking your assistance, in that case, in a little affair of my own.”
173
The host has by this time had six “nips” to his guest’s abstemious one, so turning his head towards Puttis he rattles on: “But won’t you alter your mind and have another? Or, if you prefer it, I’ve some real, genuine ‘potheen.’ Queensland make, of course, but just like the real stuff. One of my old constituents on the Barron river, ha! ha! sent it to me.” The two men smile and wink knowingly at each other. “Chinamen never forget a generous action, ha! ha!”
Laughing at the remembrance of how he obtained the “potheen,” and filling his glass from the decanter on the table with a very shaky hand, the jovial inspector continues,—
“In consequence of information received from one of my ‘boys,’ I rode up to the chinky’s little scrub farm one day, two years ago. ‘John,’ said I, ‘how many bushels of corn you get off this piece of ground?’ ‘Welly bad crop, Missie Bigger,’ answered the yellow devil, with a sly look at me to see how I took the lie he’d just uttered. ‘No goody Chinaman makey garden here. Twenty bushels me sell to Missie Brown. That all,’ and the cursed spawn of Confucius kicked some of the rich soil contemptuously over with his sandal. Any one could see there’d been a big crop, perhaps three hundred bushels off the land, by the heaps of husks off the heads of maize lying about the clearing. ‘Well, John,’ said I, leaning over in my saddle so that some friends who were with me shouldn’t hear, ‘well, John, you can send me a little of the ‘real stuff’ you sold MacDuff on Saturday, and then, whether you get twenty or five hundred bushels here, I sha’n’t trouble to ask you what you use 174 it for next time.’ Ha! ha! how Li Ching (that was his name) stared! He grew green, but he never opened his lips. But what’s more to the purpose, he’s sent me a box of potatoes, regularly, every few months since, which I have carried carefully into my bedroom. I’m sure you’d like it. Take a bottle or two with you for Giles. He’s a good judge. What?”
“Thanks, awfully,” replies Inspector Puttis. “Do so with pleasure. But what’s your trouble? Little affair you mentioned?”
The jolly smile that has illuminated Inspector Bigger’s face during his telling of the previous anecdote fades suddenly upon the objectionable subject of the official inquiry being recalled to his memory. He hands the red-sealed epistle and the newspaper cutting to his friend with a sigh, and watches the expressionless face of the little man as he carefully reads both with anxiety.
“Well, Puttis, what had I better do about that?”
“About correct?” inquires the person addressed, pointing to the clipping in his hand.
“Oh, I think so. Of course I wasn’t there. No good my going up those beastly hills in the we............