Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/114

106 could. But the young blacks were both fast swimmers, and overhauled the boat before she had much way on her, and laying hold of the gunwales tried to get in again; but this was most effectually prevented by one of the boatmen seizing a hatchet and chopping off their hands near the wrist, in which disabled state the poor creatures went down, and the murderers got clear off with their prize—the poor girl—who had just witnessed the shocking massacre of her young companions.

But as legal punishment never overtook a white man for the murder of an aboriginal, so these homicides escaped; neglect, or a combination of lucky circumstances, always interposed to prevent enquiry. The girl could not then speak a word of English, and as the murderers kept silence nothing was ever known of this infernal transaction, until she first revealed it to M'Kay, but not until the men had escaped, and could not be brought to trial, if that would have availed anything at the time.

Newell must have been as depraved a felon as Lowe, but as I knew something of the latter, and not of the other, I can only speak decisively of Lowe. He was one of those fellows having no higher aspirations than to be thought a clever scoundrel, and he gloried in the reputation which his evil deeds had acquired for him. He was a perfect master of villanyvillainy [sic] in whatever shape it was to be achieved, and the practice of knavery was the business of his life.

It is now more than forty years since I knew him, loafing about a district with not a dozen persons in it, and where it might have been thought there was little opening for the exercise of such talents as his. But he found a way to employ them, and carried desolation to one hearth. His final act in the colony, after becoming free, was quite of a piece with all his antecedent practices.

At the time I am speaking of, Hobart Town was as much defiled by the presence of a low class of usurers as the holy temple itself eighteen or nineteen centuries before. No risk was too great for these worthies. Money was often obtainable on the most questionable security, but at such an enormous rate of interest as must have contemplated an occasional default.

Lowe, who had been in every gaol and chain gang of the colony, was heartily sick of Tasmania by the time his original and cumulative sentences had expired, and he longed to return home. But as he had not a shilling some device had to be hit on, whereby money enough could be raised to pay his passage, and which a fellow so gifted as he, was not slow to discover.

Clever and keen as money lenders are reputed to be, it struck Lowe that there must be some way of doing them, and a bright