THE BLACK POLICE.
“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.
“Here’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’t 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:—
[Illustration]
“_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 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
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.”
[Illustration: OFFICER AND “BOY” OF BLACK POLICE.]
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” 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—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.”
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 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 wet. You see, there’s not been much doing lately
in our line about here, and the ‘boys’ were getting troublesome, so I
told Blarney (the sergeant) to see if he couldn’t find something for
them to do. He heard of niggers having been seen up Mulberry Creek
way, and——”
“How did you word report?” interrupts Puttis, lighting a cigarette.
“Oh! same old style: ‘Having received repeated complaints from the
Mulberry Scrub settlers of the wholesale destruction caused by a
ferocious tribe of dangerous Myall blacks,’—and that kind of thing,
you know.”
“Ah! too risky nowadays!” snaps Inspector Puttis, again interrupting
his senior. “Can you get a written complaint? ‘We demand assistance,’
and that style of thing?”
“Oh! there’s Thompson, and that old German Bauer,—he wants to sell me
a couple of cows. Either would do that for me, I think.”
“Umph!” grunts Inspector Puttis, “I’d like to see sergeant. Will
think I’m up here about case.”
The white sergeant is summoned to the presence of the two superior
officers, through the medium of a native constable who is weeding
the garden close by, and, after a little word fencing, he settles
down into an account of the occurrence which corresponds, in most
particulars, with that of “our trustworthy correspondent.” In answer
to a question put to him he continues,—
“I heard of the camp, sorr, from a young gintleman, yer honours, who
kapes the stour at Riversleigh, an’ he tells me, sorr, that one of
them miner chaps up at High Cliff had tould him as how two murthering
thaves of nigger women was in the creek by their camp lately. ‘Divil
tax ’em, sorr,’ he said, but the varmints they got away before the
miner could get his mates to help catch ’em.”
“Were the miners glad to see you and the ‘boys’?” demands Puttis.
“Sure, sorr, it’s yourself has guessed the right words they spake,
sorr. They was sulky as bandicoots, an’ never said a word till I
amused ’em, with me arthful stories,—the ‘bhoys’ having started
afther the fire on the hill. ‘We’re not afraid of the niggers,’
said one,—who I’ll kape me eyes on when he’s in town for a bit of a
spree,—‘we hain’t afraid of niggers: let ’em bide.’”
“Wait a bit, sergeant. How do miners get tucker (provisions) up
there?”
“It’s Thompson, sorr, the only settler, yer honours, on that side of
the Cliffs; he kills fur ’em.”
“Is that Thompson who trained the bloodhounds for Inspector Versley?”
“The same, sorr.”
“That’ll do, sergeant.” The energetic non-commissioned officer
salutes and withdraws, and Puttis turns towards the local chief.
“Say, Bigger, have you got that western ‘boy’ you lent me once? What
was his name? Oh! Tomahawk. Got him still?”
“No, accidentally shot. Very sorry to lose him, for he was a good
‘boy.’ He knew every nigger’s tracks for fifty miles round. No, I
lent him to Versley, and you know what Versley is. Tomahawk gave him
a piece of cheek, and—and he was accidentally shot.”
“Ah! that’s a pity. Fact is, I want a ‘boy’ who knows the western
lingo. Also knows scrub. Got one?”
“Yes; Teapot’s a good ‘boy.’”
“I want to get hold of that educated nigger that Dyesart had with
him when he died. Giles heard him telling other niggers. Had killed
Dyesart. Have got warrant to arrest him. Served Dyesart right though.
Educating a cursed nigger.”
“Oh, you mean that fellow Billy. Why, I thought he brought a letter
or something to Murdaro from Dyesart. Should not be surprised if the
nigger wrote it himself though. Those civilized blacks are up to
anything.”
“He was at Murdaro,” remarks Inspector Puttis, “but he made himself
scarce.” He might have added, for he knew it to be a fact, that Billy
had only made himself “scarce” because he had very good reasons for
believing that Mr. Wilson Giles intended to make him altogether
“extinct,”—the reason for that worthy gentleman’s inhospitable
behaviour being explained and set forth hereafter for the benefit of
our readers.
“Shouldn’t be surprised if he was at the Mission Station,” observes
Inspector Bigger, after a short pause for reflection. “If so, I can
get him for you. I’ve got a little gin (girl) that will fetch him, if
he’s to be fetched out of the sanctuary where all these rascals go
to.” After another pause, and a “peg” at the volatile fluid on the
table, the speaker continues musingly,—
“If these missionary fellows did any good I wouldn’t object, but
they don’t. They just teach those black devils of theirs to think
themselves better than a white man. Why, one beggar they’ve reared
they sent over here,—in a black coat, if you please!—who had the
impudence, curse him! to give a sermon in the Wesleyans’ Gospel-mill
down there.”
“Ha! ha!” laughs Puttis grimly, looking straight in front of him,
his left hand unconsciously fingering the revolver pouch on his
hip. “These mission stations. Good preserves for us sometimes.
Besides missionaries prevent squatters doing our work themselves. No
missionaries, no Black Police very soon. A Black War, like they had
in Tasmania, would soon result. No more niggers for us to disperse.”
Taking a Sydney paper from his breast pocket, the little man points
to it, asking if his friend has “Seen this?”
Inspector Bigger adjusts his eyeglass after some nervous, blundering
attempts, and with some trouble, for he has “nipped” himself into a
happy, sleepy mood by this time, makes out the following paragraph in
the Sydney _Telegraph_.
“DEPREDATIONS BY BLACKS.
“SWEEPING CHARGES AGAINST THE MISSIONS.
“(BY TELEGRAPH.)
“ADELAIDE, _Wednesday_.
“A deputation of Northern Territory pastoralists to-day asked the
Government to send more mounted police to the Territory in order to
deal with depredatory blacks, who killed large numbers of stock.
The majority of these natives belonged to the mission stations.
The Minister for Education, in reply, said it seemed to him that
the mission stations did more harm than good. He had official
information that all the black outlaws in the Territory made for
the missions when hard pressed and the missionaries protected them,
and that the worst cattle-killers were the mission aboriginals. He
was sorry, however, that owing to the bad state of the finances of
the Northern Territory additional police protection could not be
granted.”
“Yes,” murmurs the inspector, when he has got the gist of the article
fairly into his slightly muddled brain. “That’s comforting. Right man
in right place. Education’s the thing. He knows what he’s talking
about. As long as we’ve squatters in the ministry and on the bench
we’re all right, eh?”
“Yes, and when Western Australia is out of home Government’s
interference. Ha! ha! something to do for squatters there, I fancy.
I’ll see Thompson,” Puttis adds, rising, “about your affair. He knows
me. Never allow nonsense from cockatoos (settlers). He will send
evidence you want. Double quick time.”
And Inspector Puttis knows what he is talking about, and is not
bragging when he declares himself superior to the irritations
occasioned wilfully at times by settlers. There were not wanting
instances where imprudent scrub-farmers and others had suddenly lost
horses and cattle; had found their cottages burned to the ground on a
temporary absence in the bush; had left their crops safe over night,
to wake cornless and hayless next morning; and yet no trace of the
ravagers and thieves was to be found when the aid of the Black Police
trackers had been called in to help to discover the aggressors. And
as such invisible pirates, it was noticed, apparently only attacked
the holdings of the few persons who were publicly at enmity with
the Black Police, ugly stories got about that pointed to the N. M.
“boys” as having played the _rôle_ of midnight marauding Myalls (wild
aborigines) “at the special request” of the officers of their troop.
Inspector Puttis now proceeds to bid his host adieu, and before he
goes arranges for the neighbouring mission station to be watched for
the arrival of Billy.
* * * * *
It is growing dark when Miss Mundella’s _fiancé_ leaves the
barracks, and he rides with loose rein at an easy canter towards his
camp. The black “boy,” Inspector Puttis’s aide-de-camp, follows some
hundred yards behind. After a couple of miles along the red clay
banks of a dried-up mountain torrent, the track leads up a small
ridge into an outlying portion of the dense “scrub,” or jungle, that
covers the high ranges on either hand. Here the way becomes far more
difficult to travel, and the riders allow their clever steeds to
slowly pick their own path. The clay surface of the treacherous road,
worn into wave-like corrugations, a foot or more in depth, from the
passing trains of pack-mules from the distant tin-mines, and ever
moist with the dews of the dense tropical growth on either hand, is
quite dark with the overhanging branches of buttressed fig-trees of
gigantic growth, of graceful palms and pendent ferns and creepers,
whilst dangerous stinging-trees and lawyer-vines to right and left
render caution necessary. But the other side of the patch of scrub
is safely reached, and the inspector is just about to urge his horse
into another canter, when that animal suddenly snorts and bounds to
the other side of the track. This impromptu action probably saved its
rider’s life, for as it does so, _phut!_ and a long kangaroo spear
flies harmlessly past the inspector’s body, and goes clattering down
upon the stony bottom of the watercourse in front.
Puttis, although a perfectly fearless man, is one of those persons
who never throws a chance away, and, knowing what good cause the
aborigines of the district have to wish for his destruction, always
carries a revolver in his hand when out late in the scrub. Almost
before the spear has touched the ground, certainly before it is
motionless, the active little man has swung round in his saddle, and
fired a snap-shot at his cowardly assailant, whose dusky form can
just be seen, as he stands, paralyzed for an instant at the escape
of his victim, upon a fallen tree trunk by the wayside. A sparkling
burst of flame, a crashing echo, half drowned with a yell of agony,
and the inspector’s horse becomes unmanageable, and bolts with him
down the track into the open land beyond.
When Puttis can prevail on his horse to return into the scrub,
he finds his attendant native constable standing by the side of
the prostrate body of the would-be murderer, examining him by the
light of a wax match he has just struck. The wounded savage, who is
desperately hurt in the region of the right lung, scowls up at his
enemies as they lean over him. He is quite naked, and lies on the
road on his left side. The necklace of joints of yellow grass that he
wears, shows him to be in mourning for a relative.
“What name this beggar, Yegerie?” inquires Puttis of his constable,
meaning, “Who is this?”
“_Malle_ beggar, Marmie. Him bin long a ’tation, mine think it” (Bad
fellow, master, has been a station-hand, I think), pointing to some
half-healed scars on the man’s shoulder-blades that demonstrate
to the experienced eyes looking down on him that he has recently
received a flogging.
“Any more black fellows about?”
“No more black beggar, Marmie. This one sit down long his self,”
replies the trained black, in whose wonderful powers of hearing,
seeing, and deduction his officer has perfect confidence.
“What ’tation you belong to?” continues Yegerie, kicking the wounded
man with the toe of his boot.
“Ah-r-r-r,” growls the wounded savage, with such angry fierceness
that Inspector Puttis’s revolver drops into position, ready to give
the sufferer his _coup de grâce_ should he attempt any mischief.
“_Monta karaan!_” (curse you!) hisses the feeble voice, “you white
devil. You kill um _lubra_ (wife); you kill um pickaninnie; you,”—he
pauses to gasp for breath,—“you kill um all about black fellow.
No more brudder long a me. Ah! no more brudder long a me. _Monta
karaan!!_” The sufferer’s head drops down towards the ground, and
he literally bites the dust, or rather mud, in a frenzy of passion
and agony. Then he becomes unconscious apparently, and murmurs a few
unintelligible words, followed by a groaning request for—
“_Kouta! kouta!_” (Water, water.)
“Ah!” muses Puttis to himself, knowing by experience that a dying man
speaks his last words in the language of his childhood, however much
he may have forgotten it a little while before, when in full health.
“Ah! _Kouta_ is a western word. He’s a runaway nigger, and has been
living with some tribe about here. He will be very well out of the
way.” And nodding to his black aide-de-camp, who thereupon begins to
drag the wounded savage off the track into the scrub, the inspector
mounts and rides off.
As he reaches the other side of the dried-up river bed once more,
his chestnut starts at the sound of a single carbine shot that rings
out with weird, muffled suddenness from the dark glades he has just
left. It is the requiem of another departed member of the fast-fading
aboriginal race of Australia.