The Book of the Bush - George Dunderdale (life books to read txt) 📗

Arthur? The prisoners had plenty of time to make a forecast of their fate, while the mate engaged a fresh crew and took in a cargo of flax and timber. When he was ready to sail, he reshipped his old crew in irons, returned with them to the Tamar, and delivered them to the police to be dealt with according to law. For a long time the law was in a state of chaos. Major Abbott was sent from England in 1814 as the first judge. The proceedings in his court were conducted in the style of a drum-head court martial, the accusation, sentences, and execution following one another with military precision and rapidity.

He adjudicated in petty sessions as a magistrate, and dealt in a summary manner with capital offences, which were very numerous. To imprison a man who was already a prisoner for life was no punishment; the major's powers were, therefore, limited to the cat and the gallows. And as the first gallows had been built to carry only eight passengers, his daily death sentences were also limited to that number. For twenty years torture was used to extort confession- even women were flogged if they refused to give evidence, and an order of the Governor was held to be equal to law. Major Abbott died in 1832.

In 1835 the court consisted of the judge-advocate and two of the inhabitants selected by the Governor, Colonel Arthur, who came out in the year 1824, and had been for eleven years a terror to evil-doers. His rule was as despotic as he could possibly make it. If any officer appointed by the Home Government disagreed with his policy he suspended him from his office, and left him to seek redress from his friends in England-a tedious process, which lasted for years. Disagreeable common people he suspended also-by the neck. If a farmer, squatter, or merchant was insubordinate, he stopped his supply of convict labour, and cruelly left him to do his own work. He brooked no discussion of his measures by any pestilent editor. He filled all places of profit with his friends, relatives, and dependents. Everything was referred to his royal will and pleasure. His manners were stiff and formal, his tastes moral, his habits on Sundays religious, and his temper vindictive. Next to the articles of war, the thirty-nine Articles claimed his obedience. When his term of office was drawing to a close he went to church on a certain Sunday to receive the Lord's Supper. While studying his prayer book he observed that it was his duty if his brother had anything against him to seek a reconciliation before offering his gift. The ex-Attorney-General, Gellibrand, was present, a brother Christian who had had many things against him for many years. He had other enemies, some living and some dead, but they were absent. To be reconciled to all of them was an impossibility. He could not ask the minister to suspend the service while he went round Hobart Town looking for his enemies, and shaking hands with them. But he did what was possible. He rose from his knees, marched over to Gellibrand, and held out his hand. Gellibrand was puzzled; he looked at the hand and could see nothing in it. By way of explanation Colonel Arthur pointed out the passage in the prayer-book which had troubled his sensitive conscience. Gellibrand read it, and then shook hands. With a soul washed whiter than snow, the colonel approached the table.

Amongst the convicts every grade of society was represented, from King Jorgensen to the beggar. One Governor had a convict private secretary. Officers of the army and navy, merchants, doctors, and clergymen consorted with costermongers, poachers, and pickpockets. The law, it is sad to relate, had even sent out lawyers, who practised their profession under a cloud, and sometimes pleaded by permission of the court. But their ancient pride had been trodden in the dust; the aureole which once encircled their wigs was gone, and they were often snubbed and silenced by ignorant justices. The punishment for being found out is life-long and terrible. Their clients paid the fees partly in small change and partly in rum.

The defence of the seamen accused of murdering Captain Blogg was undertaken by Mr. Nicholas. He had formerly been employed by the firm of eminent solicitors in London who conducted the defence of Queen Caroline, when the "first gentleman in Europe" tried to get rid of her, and he told me that his misfortunes (forgeries) had deprived him of the honour of sharing with Lord Brougham the credit of her acquittal.

Many years had passed since that celebrated trial when I made the acquaintance of Nicholas. He had by this time lost all social distinction. He had grown old and very shabby, and was so mean that even his old friends, the convicts who had crossed the straits, looked down on him with contempt. He came to me for an elector's right, as a vote in our electorate-the Four Counties-was sometimes worth as much as forty shillings, besides unlimited grog. We were Conservatives then, true patriots, and we imitated-feebly, it is true, but earnestly-the time-honoured customs of old England.

Mr. Nicholas had been a man of many employments, and of many religions. He was never troubled with scruples of conscience, but guided his conduct wholly by enlightened self-interest. He was a Broad Churchman, very broad. As tutor in various families, he had instructed his pupils in the tenets of the Church of England, of the Catholics, of the Presbyterians, and of the Baptists. He always professed the religion of his employer for the time being, and he found that four religions were sufficient for his spiritual and temporal wants. There were many other sects, but the labour of learning all their peculiar views would not pay, so he neglected them. The Wesleyans were at one time all-powerful in our road district, and Nicholas, foreseeing a chance of filling an office of profit under the Board, threw away all his sins, and obtained grace and a billet as toll-collector or pikeman. In England the pike-man was always a surly brute, who collected his fees with the help of a bludgeon and a bulldog, but Nicholas performed his duties in the disguise of a saint. He waited for passengers in his little wooden office, sitting at a table, with a huge Bible before him, absorbed in spiritual reading. He wore spectacles on his Roman nose, had a long grey beard, quoted Scripture to chance passengers, and was very earnest for their salvation. He was atoning for the sins of his youth by leading the life of a hermit by praying and cheating. He has had many followers. He made mistakes in his cash, which for a while were overlooked in so good a man, but they became at length so serious that he lost his billet. He had for some time been spoken of by his friends and admirers as "Mr. Nicholas," but after his last mistakes had been discovered, he began to be known merely as "Old Nick the Lawyer," or "Old Nick the Liar," which some ignorant people look upon as convertible terms. I think Lizard Skin, the cannibal, was a better Christian than old Nick the lawyer, as he was brave and honest, and scorned to tell a lie.

The convict counsel for the four seamen defended them at a great expenditure of learning and lies. He argued at great length:- "That there was no evidence that a master mariner named Blogg ever existed; that he was an outlaw, and, as such, every British subject had an inchoate right to kill him at sight, and, therefore, that the seamen, supposing for the sake of argument that they did kill him, acted strictly within their legal rights; that Blogg drowned himself in a fit of delirium tremens, after being drunk on rum three days and nights consecutively; that he fell overboard accidentally and was drowned; that the cook and mate threw him overboard, and then laid the blame on the innocent seamen; that Blogg swam ashore, and was now living on an unchartered island; that if he was murdered, his body had not been found: there could be no murder without a corpse; and finally, he would respectfully submit to that honourable court, that the case bristled with ineradicable difficulties."

The seamen would have been sent to the gallows in any case, but Nicholas' speech made their fate inevitable. The court brushed aside the legal bristles, and hanged the four seamen on the evidence of the mate and the cook.

The tragedy of the gallows was followed by a short afterpiece. Jim Parrish, Ned Tomlins, and every whaler and foremast man in Hobart Town and on the Tamar, discussed the evidence both drunk and sober, and the opinion was universal that the cook ought to have sworn an oath strong enough to go through a three-inch slab of hardwood that he had seen Captain Blogg carried up to heaven by angels, instead of swearing away the lives of men who had taken his part when he was triced up to the mast. The cook was in this manner tried by his peers and condemned to die, and he knew it. He tried to escape by shipping on board a schooner bound to Portland Bay with whalers. The captain took on board a keg of rum, holding fifteen gallons, usually called a "Big Pup," and invited the mate to share the liquor with him. The result was that the two officers soon became incapable of rational navigation. Off King's Island the schooner was hove to in a gale of wind, and for fourteen days stood off and on-five or six hours one way, and five or six hours the other-while the master and mate were down below, "nursing the Big Pup." The seamen were all strangers to the coast, and did not know any cove into which they could run for refuge. The cook was pitched overboard one dark night during that gale off King's Island, and his loss was a piece of ancient history by the time the master and mate had consumed the rum, and were able to enter up the log.

Ex-Attorney-General Gellibrand sailed to Port Philip to look for country in Australia Felix, and he found it. He was last seen on a rounded hill, gazing over the rich and beautiful land which borders Lake Colac; land which he was not fated to occupy, for he wandered away and was lost, and his bones lay unburied by the stream which now bears his name.

When Colonel Arthur's term of office expired he departed with the utmost ceremony. The 21st Fusiliers escorted him to the wharf. As he entered his barge his friends cheered, and his enemies groaned, and then went home and illuminated the town, to testify their joy at getting rid of a tyrant. He was the model Governor of a Crown colony, and the Crown rewarded him for his services. He was made a baronet, appointed Governor of Canada and of Bombay, was a member of Her Majesty's Privy Council, a colonel of the Queen's Own regiment, and he died on September 19th, 1854, full of years and honours, and worth 70,000 pounds.

Laming was left an orphan by the death of Lizard Skin. The chief had grown old and sick, and he sat every day for two years on a fallen puriri near the white man's pah,