Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/102

 Others did not look as if they had worked much in their lives—had indeed 'done time' more than once, as the slang phrase went, content to loll on the benches in the exercise yard and talk to their fellow-convicts—not always after an improving fashion. But to him it would be a living death. Up and out every morning of his life at or before daylight,—hard at work at the thousand-and-one-tasks of a farm until it was too dark to tell an axe from a spade,—how could he endure this cruel deprivation of all that made life worth living?

Fortunately for him, in one sense, the day of his trial was absolutely perfect as to weather. Bright and warm—it was late December—the sky unflecked by a single cloud. But there was a cool, sea wind, which, wandering up from the distant coast, set every human creature (not in sickness, sorrow, or 'hard bound in misery and iron'), aglow with the joy of living. It raised the spirits even of that plaything of destiny known among men as William Hardwick, so that as the whispering breeze stole through the open windows of the Court he held up his dejected head and felt almost like a man again. The proceedings commenced, the jury had been impanelled. The Crown Prosecutor threw back his gown, and fixing his eyes on the Judge's impassive countenance opened the case.

'May it please your Honour, you will pardon me perhaps if, before calling witnesses, I sketch briefly the state of affairs which, more or less connected with the strike of 1891, has developed into a condition of matters perilous to life and property, and altogether without precedent in Australia.

'From a determination on the part of the seamen on coasting steamers to refuse work unless certain privileges were granted to them by the owners, a commencement was made of the most widespread, important, and, in its effects, the most disastrous strike ever known in Australia. Into the question of the adequacy or otherwise of the wage claimed, it is not my intention to enter.

'The consequences, however, of the refusal of these seamen and others to continue at work except under certain conditions, were far-reaching, and such as could not have been reasonably anticipated. The revolt, as it was called by the leaders of the movement, spread from sea to land, and throughout all kinds and conditions of labourers, with startling rapidity.