Page:Papers of William Shakespeare Hall, 1861–1895.pdf/155

 them across the sand banks and speared both to death. Sholl, R.M., having been sub editor of a paper in Perth, and being quite ignorant of natives and their ways, sent an equally raw constable and I think a tracker to arrest the murderers. The constable arrested and chained up the alleged ringleader, camped alongside the prisoner with his saddle for a pillow and his revolver under his saddle and went to sleep. The prisoner dug gently under the saddle, handed the revolver to his woman; and she handed him a spear with which he pinned the constable to the ground. I think there was a black tracker with the constable but whether he was killed or escaped back to Roebourne I am not sure. Then it was that the natives, hearing the settlers were intending to punish them, said that while the white men were attacking them in the vicinity of Nicol Bay a party of natives would attack Withnell's camp, fire the thatched roof and spear the women (Mrs. Withnell and Sophie Hancock) and the children.

The natives about this time tried to get the DeGrey party (Padbury's) to attend a corroboree with intent to snare them with their dugong nets and spear them. But a native boy warned them and the plan failed.

Not long after a man named Shay and a half caste, who had pursued some runaway pearling natives from a craft, probably working off the Condon Banks off the mount of the DeGrey, or near what is now Port Hedland, were bringing the