A word as to the position and appearance of this place of punishment. Tasman’s Peninsula is, as we have said before, in the form of an earring with a double drop. The lower drop is the larger, and is ornamented, so to speak, with bays. At its southern extremity is a deep indentation called Maingon Bay, bounded east and west by the organ-pipe rocks of Cape Raoul, and the giant form of Cape Pillar. From Maingon Bay an arm of the ocean cleaves the rocky walls in a northerly direction. On the western coast of this sea-arm was the settlement; in front of it was a little island where the dead were buried, called The Island of the Dead. Ere the in-coming convict passed the purple beauty of this convict Golgotha, his eyes were attracted by a point of grey rock covered with white buildings, and swarming with life. This was Point Puer, the place of confinement for boys from eight to twenty years of age. It was astonishing—many honest folks averred—how ungrateful were these juvenile convicts for the goods the Government had provided for them. From the extremity of Long Bay, as the extension of the sea-arm was named, a convict-made tramroad ran due north, through the nearly impenetrable thicket to Norfolk Bay. In the mouth of Norfolk Bay was Woody Island. This was used as a signal station, and an armed boat’s crew was stationed there. To the north of Woody Island lay One-tree Point—the southernmost projection of the drop of the earring; and the sea that ran between narrowed to the eastward until it struck on the sandy bar of Eaglehawk Neck. Eaglehawk Neck was the link that connected the two drops of the earring. It was a strip of sand four hundred and fifty yards across. On its eastern side the blue waters of Pirates’ Bay, that is to say, of the Southern Ocean, poured their unchecked force. The isthmus emerged from a wild and terrible coast-line, into whose bowels the ravenous sea had bored strange caverns, resonant with perpetual roar of tortured billows. At one spot in this wilderness the ocean had penetrated the wall of rock for two hundred feet, and in stormy weather the salt spray rose through a perpendicular shaft more than five hundred feet deep. This place was called the Devil’s Blow-hole. The upper drop of the earring was named Forrestier’s Peninsula, and was joined to the mainland by another isthmus called East Bay Neck. Forrestier’s Peninsula was an almost impenetrable thicket, growing to the brink of a perpendicular cliff of basalt.
Eaglehawk Neck was the door to the prison, and it was kept bolted. On the narrow strip of land was built a guard-house, where soldiers from the barrack on the mainland relieved each other night and day; and on stages, set out in the water in either side, watch-dogs were chained. The station officer was charged “to pay special attention to the feeding and care” of these useful beasts, being ordered “to report to the Commandant whenever any one of them became useless”. It may be added that the bay was not innocent of sharks. Westward from Eaglehawk Neck and Woody Island lay the dreaded Coal Mines. Sixty of the “marked men” were stationed here under a strong guard. At the Coal Mines was the northernmost of that ingenious series of semaphores which rendered escape almost impossible. The wild and mountainous character of the peninsula offered peculiar advantages to the signalmen. On the summit of the hill which overlooked the guard-towers of the settlement was a gigantic gum-tree stump, upon the top of which was placed a semaphore. This semaphore communicated with the two wings of the prison—Eaglehawk Neck and the Coal Mines—by sending a line of signals right across the peninsula. Thus, the settlement communicated with Mount Arthur, Mount Arthur with One-tree Hill, One-tree Hill with Mount Communication, and Mount Communication with the Coal Mines. On the other side, the signals would run thus—the settlement to Signal Hill, Signal Hill to Woody Island, Woody Island to Eaglehawk. Did a prisoner escape from the Coal Mines, the guard at Eaglehawk Neck could be aroused, and the whole island informed of the “bolt” in less than twenty minutes. With these advantages of nature and art, the prison was held to be the most secure in the world. Colonel Arthur reported to the Home Government that the spot which bore his name was a “natural penitentiary”. The worthy disciplinarian probably took as a personal compliment the polite forethought of the Almighty in thus considerately providing for the carrying out of the celebrated “Regulations for Convict Discipline”.
CHAPTER XXI
A VISIT OF INSPECTION
ONE afternoon ever-active semaphores transmitted a piece of intelligence which set the peninsula agog. Captain Frere, having arrived from head-quarters, with orders to hold an inquiry into the death of Kirkland, was not unlikely to make a progress through the stations, and it behoved the keepers of the Natural Penitentiary to produce their Penitents in good case. Burgess was in high spirits at finding so congenial a soul selected for the task of reporting upon him.
“It’s only a nominal thing, old man,” Frere said to his former comrade, when they met. “That parson has made meddling, and they want to close his mouth.”
“I am glad to have the opportunity of showing you and Mrs. Frere the place,” returned Burgess. “I must try and make your stay as pleasant as I can, though I’m afraid that Mrs. Frere will not find much to amuse her.”
“Frankly, Captain Burgess,” said Sylvia, “I would rather have gone straight to Sydney. My husband, however, was obliged to come, and of course I accompanied him.”
“You will not have much society,” said Meekin, who was of the welcoming party. “Mrs. Datchett, the wife of one of our stipendiaries, is the only lady here, and I hope to have the pleasure of making you acquainted with her this evening at the Commandant’s. Mr. McNab, whom you know, is in command at the Neck, and cannot leave, or you would have seen him.”
“I have planned a little party,” said Burgess, “but I fear that it will not be so successful as I could wish.”
“You wretched old bachelor,” said Frere; “you should get married, like me.”
“Ah!” said Burgess, with a bow, “that would be difficult.”
Sylvia was compelled to smile at the compliment, made in the presence of some twenty prisoners, who were carrying the various trunks and packages up the hill, and she remarked that the said prisoners grinned at the Commandant’s clumsy courtesy. “I don’t like Captain Burgess, Maurice,” she said, in the interval before dinner. “I dare say he did flog that poor fellow to death. He looks as if he could do it.”
“Nonsense!” said Maurice, pettishly; “he’s a good fellow enough. Besides, I’ve seen the doctor’s certificate. It’s a trumped-up story. I can’t understand your absurd sympathy with prisoners.”
“Don’t they sometimes deserve sympathy?”
“No, certainly not—a set of lying scoundrels. You are always whining over them, Sylvia. I don’t like it, and I’ve told you before about it.”
Sylvia said nothing. Maurice was often guilty of these small brutalities, and she had learnt that the best way to meet them was by silence. Unfortunately, silence did not mean indifference, for the reproof was unjust, and nothing stings a woman’s fine sense like an injustice. Burgess had prepared a feast, and the “Society” of Port Arthur was present. Father Flaherty, Meekin, Doctor Macklewain, and Mr. and Mrs. Datchett had been invited, and the dining-room was resplendent with glass and flowers.
“I’ve a fellow who was a professional gardener,” said Burgess to Sylvia during the dinner, “and I make use of his talents.”
“We have a professional artist also,” said Macklewain, with a sort of pride. “That picture of the ‘Prisoner of Chillon’ yonder was painted by him. A very meritorious production, is it not?”
“I’ve got the place full of curiosities,” said Burgess; “quite a collection. I’ll show them to you to-morrow. Those napkin rings were made by a prisoner.”
“Ah!” cried Frere, taking up the daintily-carved bone, “very neat!”
“That is some of Rex’s handiwork,” said Meekin. “He is very clever at these trifles. He made me a paper-cutter that was really a work of art.”
“We will go down to the Neck to-morrow or next day, Mrs. Frere,” said Burgess, “and you shall see the Blow-hole. It is a curious place.”
“Is it far?” aske
d Sylvia.
“Oh no! We shall go in the train.”
“The train!”
“Yes—don’t look so astonished. You’ll see it to-morrow. Oh, you Hobart Town ladies don’t know what we can do here.”
“What about this Kirkland business?” Frere asked. “I suppose I can have half an hour with you in the morning, and take the depositions?”
“Any time you like, my dear fellow,” said Burgess. “It’s all the same to me.”
“I don’t want to make more fuss than I can help,” Frere said apologetically—the dinner had been good—“but I must send these people up a ‘full, true and particular’, don’t you know.”
“Of course,” cried Burgess, with friendly nonchalance. “That’s all right. I want Mrs. Frere to see Point Puer.”
“Where the boys are?” asked Sylvia.
“Exactly. Nearly three hundred of ’em. We’ll go down tomorrow, and you shall be my witness, Mrs. Frere, as to the way they are treated.”
“Indeed,” said Sylvia, protesting, “I would rather not. I—I don’t take the interest in these things that I ought, perhaps. They are very dreadful to me.”
“Nonsense!” said Frere, with a scowl. “We’ll come, Burgess, of course.”
The next two days were devoted to sight-seeing. Sylvia was taken through the hospital and the workshops, shown the semaphores, and shut up by Maurice in a “dark cell”. Her husband and Burgess seemed to treat the prison like a tame animal, whom they could handle at their leisure, and whose natural ferocity was kept in check by their superior intelligence. This bringing of a young and pretty woman into immediate contact with bolts and bars had about it an incongruity which pleased them. Maurice penetrated everywhere, questioned the prisoners, jested with the gaolers, even, in the munificence of his heart, bestowed tobacco on the sick.
With such graceful rattlings of dry bones, they got by and by to Point Puer, where a luncheon had been provided.
An unlucky accident had occurred at Point Puer that morning, however, and the place was in a suppressed ferment. A refractory little thief named Peter Brown, aged twelve years, had jumped off the high rock and drowned himself in full view of the constables. These “jumpings off’ had become rather frequent lately, and Burgess was enraged at one happening on this particular day. If he could by any possibility have brought the corpse of poor little Peter Brown to life again, he would have soundly whipped it for its impertinence.
“It is most unfortunate,” he said to Frere, as they stood in the cell where the little body was laid, “that it should have happened to-day.”
“Oh,” says Frere, frowning down upon the young face that seemed to smile up at him. “It can’t be helped. I know those young devils. They’d do it out of spite. What sort of a character had he?”
“Very bad—Johnson, the book.”
Johnson bringing it, the two saw Peter Brown’s iniquities set down in the neatest of running hand, and the record of his punishments ornamented in quite an artistic way with flourishes of red ink.
“20th November, disorderly conduct, 12 lashes. 24th November, insolence to hospital attendant, diet reduced. 4th December, stealing cap from another prisoner, 12 lashes. 15th December, absenting himself at roll call, two days’ cells. 23rd December, insolence and insubordination, two days’ cells. 8th January, insolence and insubordination, 12 lashes. 20th January, insolence and insubordination, 12 lashes. 22nd February, insolence and insubordination, 12 lashes and one week’s solitary. 6th March, insolence and insubordination, 20 lashes.”
“That was the last?” asked Frere.
“Yes, sir,” says Johnson.
“And then he—hum—did it?”
“Just so, sir. That was the way of it.”
Just so! The magnificent system starved and tortured a child of twelve until he killed himself. That was the way of it.
After luncheon the party made a progress. Everything was most admirable. There was a long schoolroom, where such men as Meekin taught how Christ loved little children; and behind the schoolroom were the cells and the constables and the little yard where they gave their “twenty lashes”. Sylvia shuddered at the array of faces. From the stolid nineteen years old booby of the Kentish hop-fields, to the wizened, shrewd, ten years old Bohemian of the London streets, all degrees and grades of juvenile vice grinned, in untamable wickedness, or snuffed in affected piety. “Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven,” said, or is reported to have said, the Founder of our Established Religion. Of such it seemed that a large number of Honourable Gentlemen, together with Her Majesty’s faithful commons in Parliament assembled, had done their best to create a Kingdom of Hell.
After the farce had been played again, and the children had stood up and sat down, and sung a hymn, and told how many twice five were, and repeated their belief in “One God the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth”, the party reviewed the workshops, and saw the church, and went everywhere but into the room where the body of Peter Brown, aged twelve, lay starkly on its wooden bench, staring at the gaol roof which was between it and Heaven.
Just outside this room, Sylvia met with a little adventure. Meekin had stopped behind, and Burgess, being suddenly summoned for some official duty, Frere had gone with him, leaving his wife to rest on a bench that, placed at the summit of the cliff, overlooked the sea. While resting thus, she became aware of another presence, and, turning her head, beheld a small boy, with his cap in one hand and a hammer in the other. The appearance of the little creature, clad in a uniform of grey cloth that was too large for him, and holding in his withered little hand a hammer that was too heavy for him, had something pathetic about it.
“What is it, you mite?” asked Sylvia.
“We thought you might have seen him, mum,” said the little figure, opening its blue eyes with wonder at the kindness of the tone. “Him! Whom?”
“Cranky Brown, mum,” returned the child; “him as did it this morning. Me and Billy knowed him, mum; he was a mate of ours, and we wanted to know if he looked happy.”
“What do you mean, child?” said she, with a strange terror at her heart; and then, filled with pity at the aspect of the little being, she drew him to her, with sudden womanly instinct, and kissed him. He looked up at her with joyful surprise. “Oh!” he said.
Sylvia kissed him again.
“Does nobody ever kiss you, poor little man?” said she.
“Mother used to,” was the reply, “but she’s at home. Oh, mum,” with a sudden crimsoning of the little face, “may I fetch Billy?”
And taking courage from the bright young face, he gravely marched to an angle of the rock, and brought out another little creature, with another grey uniform and another hammer.
“This is Billy, mum,” he said. “Billy never had no mother. Kiss Billy.”
The young wife felt the tears rush to her eyes. “You two poor babies!” she cried. And then, forgetting that she was a lady, dressed in silk and lace, she fell on her knees in the dust, and, folding the friendless pair in her arms, wept over them.
“What is the matter, Sylvia?” said Frere, when he came up. “You’ve been crying.”
“Nothing, Maurice; at least, I will tell you by and by.”
When they were alone that evening, she told him of the two little boys, and he laughed. “Artful little humbugs,” he said, and supported his argument by so many illustrations of the precocious wickedness of juvenile felons, that his wife was half convinced against her will.
*
Unfortunately, when Sylvia went away, Tommy and Billy put into execution a plan which they had carried in their poor little heads for some weeks.
“I can do it now,” said Tommy. “I feel strong.”
“Will it hurt much, Tommy?” said Billy, who was not so courageous.
“Not so much as a whipping.”
“I’m afraid! Oh, Tom, it’s so deep! Don’t leave me, Tom!”
The bigger boy took hi
s little handkerchief from his neck, and with it bound his own left hand to his companion’s right.
“Now I can’t leave you.”
“What was it the lady that kissed us said, Tommy?”
“Lord, have pity on them two fatherless children!” repeated Tommy. “Let’s say it together.”
And so the two babies knelt on the brink of the cliff, and, raising the bound hands together, looked up at the sky, and ungrammatically said, “Lord have pity on we two fatherless children!” And then they kissed each other, and “did it”.
*
The intelligence, transmitted by the ever-active semaphore, reached the Commandant in the midst of dinner, and in his agitation he blurted it out.
“These are the two poor things I saw in the morning,” cried Sylvia. “Oh, Maurice, these two poor babies driven to suicide!”
“Condemning their young souls to everlasting fire,” said Meekin, piously.
“Mr. Meekin! How can you talk like that? Poor little creatures! Oh, it’s horrible! Maurice, take me away.” And she burst into a passion of weeping.
“I can’t help it, ma’am,” says Burgess, rudely, ashamed. “It ain’t my fault.”
“She’s nervous,” says Frere, leading her away. “You must excuse her. Come and lie down, dearest.”
“I will not stay here longer,” said she. “Let us go to-morrow.”
“We can’t,” said Frere.
“Oh, yes, we can. I insist. Maurice, if you love me, take me away.”
“Well,” said Maurice, moved by her evident grief, “I’ll try.”
He spoke to Burgess. “Burgess, this matter has unsettled my wife, so that she wants to leave at once. I must visit the Neck, you know. How can we do it?”
“Well,” says Burgess, “if the wind only holds, the brig could go round to Pirates’ Bay and pick you up. You’ll only be a night at the barracks.”
For the Term of His Natural Life Page 37
