Moondyne/The Convict Road Party

It was a scorching day in midsummer—a few days before Christmas.

Had there been any moisture in the bush it would have steamed in the heavy heat. During the midday hours not a bird stirred among the mahogany and gum trees. On the flat tops of the low banksia the round heads of the white cockatoos could be seen in thousands, motionless as the trees themselves. Not a parrot had the vim to scream. The chirping insects were silent. Not a snake had courage to rustle his hard skin against the hot and dead bush-grass. The bright-eyed iguanas wee in their holes. The mahogany sawyers had left their logs and were sleeping in the cool sand of their pits. Even the travelling ants had halted on their wonderful roads, and sought the shade of a bramble.

All free things were at rest; but the penetrating click of the axe, heard far through the bush, and now and again a harsh word of command, told that it was a land of bondmen.

From daylight to dark, through the hot noon as steadily as in the cool evening, the convicts were at work on the roads—the weary work that has no wages, no promotion, no incitement, no variation for good or bad, except stripes for the laggard.

Along the verge of the Koagulup Swamp—one of the greatest and smallest of the wooded lakes of the country, its black water deep enough to float a man-of-war—a party of convicts were making a government road. They were cutting their patient way into a forest only traversed before by the aborigine and the absconder.

Before them in the bush, as in their lives, all was dark and unknown-tangled underbrush, gloomy shadows, and noxious things. Behind them, clear and open, lay the straight road they had made—leading to and from the prison.

Their camp, composed of rough slab huts, was some two hundred miles from the main prison of the colony, on the Swan River, at Fremantle, from which radiate all the roads made by the bondmen.

The primitive history of the colony is written for ever in its roads. There is, in this penal labour, a secret of value to be utilized more fully by a wiser civilization. England sends her criminals to take the brunt of the new land's hardship and danger-to prepare the way for honest life and labour. In every community there is either dangerous or degrading work to be done: and who so fit to do it as those who have forfeited their liberty by breaking the law?

The convicts were dressed in white trousers, blue woollen shirt, and white hat; every article stamped with England's private mark—the broad arrow. They were young men, healthy and strong, their faces and bare arms burnt to the colour of mahogany. Burglars, murderers, garotters, thieves—double-dyed law-breakers every one; but, for all that, kind hearted and manly fellows enough were among them.

"I tell you, mates," said one, resting on his spade, "this is going to be the end of Moondyne Joe. That firing in the swamp last night was his last fight."

"I don't think it was Moondyne," said another; "he's at work in the chain-gang at Fremantle; and there's no chance of escape there—"

"Sh-h!" interrupted the first speaker, a powerful, low-browed fellow, named Dave Terrell, who acted as a sort of foreman to the gang. The warder in charge of the party was slowly walking past. When he was out of hearing, Dave continued, in a low but deeply earnest voice: "I know it was Moondyne, mates. I saw him last night when I went to get the turtle's eggs. I met him face to face in the moonlight, beside the swamp.

Every man held his hand and breath with intense interest in the story. Some looked incredulous—heads were shaken in doubt.

"Did you speak to him?" asked one.

"Ay," said Terrell, turning on him; "why shouldn't I? Moondyne knew he had nothing to fear from me, and I had nothing to fear from him."

"What did you say to him?" asked another.

"Say?— I stood and looked at him for a minute, for his face had a white look in the moonlight, and then I walked up close to him, and I says—‘Be you Moondyne Joe, or his ghost?’

"Ay?" said the gang with one breath.

"Ay, I said that, never fearing, for Moondyne Joe, dead or alive, would never harm a prisoner."

"But what did he answer?" asked the eager crowd.

"He never said a word; but he laid his finger on his lips, like this, and waved his hand as if he warned me to go back to the camp. I turned to go; then I looked back once, and he was standing just as I left him, but he was looking up at the sky, as if there was some'at in the moon that pleased him."

The convicts worked silently, each thinking on what he had heard.

He mightn't ha' been afraid, though," said low-browed Dave; "I'd let them cut my tongue out before I'd sell the Moondyne."

"That's true," said several of the gang, and many kind looks were given to Terrell. A strong bond of sympathy, it was evident, existed between these men and the person of whom they spoke.

A sound from the thick bush interrupted the conversation. The convicts looked up from their work, and beheld a strange procession approaching from, the direction of the swamp. It consisted of about a dozen or fifteen persons, most of whom were savages. In front rode two officers of the Convict Service, a sergeant, and a private trooper, side by side, with drawn swords; and between their horses, manacled by the wrists to their stirrup-irons, walked a white man.

"Here they come," hissed Terrell, with a bitter malediction, his low brow wholly disappearing into a terrible ridge above his eyes. "They haven't killed him, after all. O, mates, what a pity it is to see a man, like Moondyne in that plight."

"He's done for two or three of 'em," muttered another, in a tone of grim gratification. "Look at the loads behind. I knew he wouldn't be taken this time like a cornered cur."

Following the prisoner came a troop of "natives," as the aboriginal bushmen are called, bearing three spearwood litters with the bodies of wounded men. A villainous-looking savage, mounted on a troop-horse, brought up the rear. His dress was like that of his pedestrian fellows, upon whom, however, he looked in disdain—a short boka, or cloak of kangaroo skin, and a belt of twisted fur cords round his, naked body. In addition, he had a police-trooper's old cap, and a heavy "regulation" revolver stuck in his belt.

This was the tracker, the human bloodhound, used by the troopers to follow the trail of absconding prisoners.

When the troopers neared the convict party, the sergeant, a man whose natural expression, whatever it might have been, was wholly obliterated by a frightful sear across his face, asked for water. The natives halted, and squatted silently in a group. The wounded men moaned as the litters were lowered.

Dave Terrell brought the water. He handed a pannikin to the sergeant, and another to the private trooper, and filled a third.

"Who's that for?" harshly demanded the sergeant.

"For Moondyne," said the convict, approaching the chained man, whose neck was stretched toward the brimming cup.

"Stand back, curse you!" said the sergeant, bringing his sword flat on the convict's back. "That scoundrel needs no water. He drinks blood."

There was a taunt in the tone, even beneath the brutality of the words.

"Carry your pail to those litters," growled the sinister looking sergeant, "and keep your mouth closed, if you value your hide. There!" he said in a suppressed voice, flinging the few drops he had left in the face of the manacled man, "that's water enough for you, till you reach Bunbury prison tomorrow."

The face of the prisoner hardly changed. He gave one straight look into the sergeant's eyes, then turned away, and seemed to look far away through the bush. He was a remarkable being, as he stood there. In strength and proportion of body, the man was magnificent—a model for a gladiator. He was of middle height, young, but so stem and massively featured, and so browned and beaten by exposure, it was hard to determine his age. His clothing was only a few torn and bloody rags; but he looked as if his natural garb were utter nakedness or the bushman's cloak, so loosely and carelessly hung the shreds of cloth on his bronzed body. A large, finely-shaped head, with crisp, black hair and beard, a broad, square forehead, and an air of power and self-command—this was the prisoner, this was Moondyne Joe.

Who or what was the man? An escaped convict. What had he been? Perhaps a robber or a mutineer—or, maybe, he ad killed a man in the white heat of passion. No one knew—no one cared to know.

That question is never asked in the penal colony. No caste there. They have found bottom, where all stand equal. No envy there, no rivalry, no greed nor ambition, and no escape from companionship. They constitute the purest democracy on earth. The only distinction to be won—that of being trustworthy, or selfish and false. The good man is he who is kind and true; the bad man is he who is capable of betraying a confederate.

It may be the absence of the competitive elements of social life that accounts for the number of manly characters to be met among these outcasts.

It is by no means in the superior strata of society that abound the strong, true natures, the men that may be depended upon, the primitive rocks of humanity. The complexities of social life beget cunning and artificiality. Among penal convicts there is no ground for envy, ambition, or emulation; nothing to be gained by falsehood in any shape.

But all this time the prisoner stands looking away into the bush, with the drops of insult trickling from his strong face. His self-command evidently irritated the brutal officer, who, perhaps, expected to hear him whine for better treatment.

The sergeant dismounted to examine the handcuffs, and, while doing so, looked into the man's face with a leer of cruel exultation. He drew no expression from the steady eyes of the prisoner.

There was an old score to be settled between those men, and it was plain that each knew the metal of the other.

"I'll break that look," said the sergeant between his teeth, but loud enough for the prisoner's ear. "Curse you, I'll break it before we reach Fremantle." Soon after he turned away, to look to the wounded men.

While so engaged, the private trooper made a furtive sign to the convict with the pail; and he, keeping in shade of the horses, crept up and gave Moondyne a deep drink of the precious water.

The stern lines withdrew from the prisoner's mouth and forehead; and as he gave the kindly trooper a glance of gratitude, there was something strangely gentle and winning in the face.

The sergeant returned and mounted. The litters were raised by the natives, and the party resumed their march, striking in on the new road that led to the prison.

"May the lightning split him," hissed black-browed Dave, after the sergeant. "There's not an officer in the colony will strike a prisoner without cause, except that coward, and he was a convict himself."

"May the Lord help Moondyne Joe this day," said another, for he's chained to the stirrup of the only man living that hates him."

The sympathizing gang looked after the party till they were hidden by a bend of the road; but they were silent under the eye of their warder.