In Bad Company and other stories

When the boat returned and not before, the captain descended with deliberation, remarking, 'Now, lads, we've got a clear track before us. There ain't no powder, there ain't no wounded man, and I reckon them long-shore skunks will find themselves in an all-fired mess when the police come. There's a big body of 'em only ten miles from here, at Moorara Station. We'll just make camp and have a snack – some of us want it pretty bad. We'll build fires to warm those that's wet – wood's plenty. Leave 'em burning and make down river so's to warn the police under Colonel Elliot. The Union army won't cross before morning, for fear of the old tub blowing up and making a scatteration among 'em.'

The programme was carried out. The night was of Egyptian darkness. Supper was hastily disposed of. The fires were freshly made up, and shortly afterwards the whole contingent took the down-river road and by daylight were miles away from the scene of the encounter.

The unusually large body of police which had been ordered up by the Government, to join with another force on the Darling, had made rendezvous at Moorara, having heard from a scout that mischief, rather above the ordinary limit, was being enacted near Poliah. When, next morning, the captain and crew of the Dundonald, with the greater portion of the free labourers, arrived, a strong sensation was aroused. This was an unparalleled outrage, and, if unchecked, meant the commencement of Civil War, plain and undisguised.

What horrors might follow! A guerilla band, with its attendant crimes – murder, pillage, outrage! Such a band of reckless desperadoes, armed and mounted, like a regiment of irregular horse, was sufficient to terrorise the country; gathering on the march, till every criminal in the land that could steal a horse and a gun would be added to their ranks in a surprisingly short time.

Once launched on such a campaign of crime, the country would be ravaged before a military force could be organised. The proverbial snowball may be arrested at the first movement, but after gathering velocity, it descends the mountain-side with the force and fury of the avalanche.

The colonel in command of the Volunteers was a soldier to whom border raids in wild lands, with a wilder foe, was not unfamiliar. 'Boot and saddle' was sounded. Without a moment's unnecessary delay, the troop was in full marching order along the 'river road,' a well-marked trail, heading for Poliah.

The night was still dark, but comparatively cool. No inconvenience was felt as the men trotted briskly along and joked as to the sort of battle in which they would engage.

'Bless yer, they won't fight, not if there was another thousand of 'em,' said a grizzled sergeant, 'and every man with the newest arm invented. I've seen mobs afore. Men as ain't drilled and disciplined never stands a charge.'

'They've got rifles and revolvers, I know,' said a younger man, 'and they can shoot pretty straight, some of 'em. Suppose they keep open order, and pepper us at long range? What's to keep 'em from droppin' us that way, from cover, and then makin' a rush?'

'There's nothin' to keep 'em, only they won't do it,' replied the sergeant oracularly. 'They know the law's agin' 'em, which means a lot in Australia – so far. Besides that, they've never faced a charge, or don't know what it's like to stiffen up in line. You'll see how they'll cut it when they hear the colonel give the word, not to mention the bugle-call. Why, what the devil – ?'

Then the sergeant, ending his sentence abruptly, almost halted, as a column of flame rose through the night air, sending up tongues of flame and red banners through the darkness which precedes the dawn.

'D – d if they haven't burned the bloomin' steamer!' quoth he. 'What next, I'd like to know? This country's going to the devil. I always thought it was a mistake sending our old regiment away.'

'Halt!' suddenly rang out in the clear, strong tones of the colonel – the voice of a man who had seen service and bore the tokens of it in a tulwar slash and a couple of bullet wounds. 'These fellows have set fire to the steamer, and of course she will burn to the water's edge. They will hardly make a fight of it though. In case they do, sergeant, take twenty men and skirt round so as to intercept their left wing. I'll do myself the honour to lead the charge on their main body, always supposing they wait for us to come up.'

The character of the resistance offered proved the sergeant's estimate to be absolutely correct. A few dropping shots were heard before the police came up, but when the rioters saw the steady advance of a hundred mounted men – an imposing cavalry force for Australia – saw Colonel Elliot, who rode at their head with his sword drawn, heard the clanking of the steel scabbards and the colonel's stern command, 'Charge!' they wavered and broke rank in all directions.

'Arrest every man on the river-bank with firearms in his hands,' roared the colonel. The sergeant, with a dozen of his smartest troopers, had each their man in custody a few seconds after the order was given – Bill Hardwick among the rest, who was fated to illustrate the cost of being found among evil-doers. One man alone made a desperate resistance, but after a crack from the butt-end of a carbine, he accepted his defeat sullenly. By the time his capture was complete, so was the rout of the rebel array. Hardly a man was to be seen, while the retreating body of highly irregular horse sounded like a break-out from a stock-yard.

Matters had reached the stage when the stokers at the Gas Works were 'called out,' and the city of Melbourne threatened with total darkness after 6 P.M.

Then a volunteer corps of Mounted Rifles was summoned from the country. The city was saved from a disgraceful panic – perhaps from worse things. The Unionist mob quailed at the sight of the well-mounted, armed, and disciplined body of cavalry, whose leader showed no disposition to mince matters, and whose hardy troopers had apparently no democratic doubts which the word 'Charge!' could not dispel.

At the deserted Gas Works, aristocratic stokers kept the indispensable flame alight until the repentant, out-colonelled artisans returned to their work.

This was the crisis of the struggle – the turning-point of the fight; as far as the element of force was concerned, the battle was over. It showed, that with proper firmness, which should have been exhibited at the outset, the result is ever the same. The forces of the State, with law and justice behind them, must overawe any undisciplined body of men attempting to terrorise the body politic in defence of fancied rights or the redress of imaginary wrongs.

The rioting in the cities of Melbourne and Sydney was promptly abated when the citizen cavalry, 'armed and accoutred proper,' clanked along Collins Street in Melbourne, while Winston Darling led the sons of his old friends and schoolfellows, who drove the high-piled wool waggons in procession down George Street in Sydney to the Darling Harbour Warehouses.

Much was threatened as to the latter demonstration, by blatant demagogues, who described it as 'a challenge; an insult to labour.' It was a challenge, doubtless – a reminder that Old New South Wales, with the founders of the Pastoral Industry – that great export now reaching the value of three hundred millions sterling – was not to be tyrannised over by a misguided mob, swayed by self-seeking, irresponsible agitators.

No doubt can exist in the minds of impartial observers that if the Ministries of the different colonies over which this wave of industrial warfare passed, in the years following 1891, had acted with promptness and decision at the outset, the heavy losses and destructive damage which followed might have been averted.

But the labour vote was strong – was believed, indeed, to be more powerful than it proved to be when tested. And the legislatures elected by universal suffrage were, in consequence, slow to declare war against the enemies of law and order.

They temporised, they hesitated to take strong measures. They tacitly condoned acts of violence and disorder. They permitted 'picketing,' a grossly unfair, even illegal (see Justice Bramwell's ruling) form of intimidation, employed to terrorise the free labourers.

The natural results followed. Woolsheds were burned, notably the Ayrshire Downs; the Cambridge Downs shed, 4th August 1894; Murweh, with 50,000 sheep to be shorn – roll to be called that day. Fences were cut, bridges sawn through, stock were injured, squatters and free labourers were assaulted or grossly reviled.

Everything in the way of ruffianism and disorder short of civil war was practised, apparently from one end of Australia to the other, before the Executive saw fit to intervene to check the excesses of the lawless forces which, well armed and mounted, harassed the once peaceful, pastoral Arcadia.

At length the situation became intolerable; the governing powers, with the choice before them of restraining bands of condottieri or abdicating their functions, woke up.

It was high time. From the 'Never Never' country in remotest Queensland, from the fabled land 'where the pelican builds her nest' to the great Riverina levels of New South Wales, from the highlands of the Upper Murray and the Snowy River to the silver mines of the Barrier, a movement arose, which called itself Industrial Unionism, but which really meant rebellion and anarchy.

It was rebellion against all previously-accepted ideas of government. If carried out, it would have subverted social and financial arrangements. It would have delivered over the accumulated treasure of 'wealth and knowledge and arts,' garnered by the thrift, industry, and intelligence of bygone generations, to one section of the workers of the land – the most numerous certainly, but incontestably the least intelligent – to be wasted in a brief and ignoble scramble.

The list of outrages, unchecked and unpunished, during this period, makes painful reading for the lover of his country.

A distinguished and patriotic member of the 'Australian Natives' Association,' in one of his addresses before that body, declared 'that, for the first time in his life, he felt ashamed of his native country.' That feeling was shared by many of his compatriots, as day after day the telegrams of the leading journals added another to the list of woolsheds deliberately set on fire, of others defended by armed men – sometimes, indeed, unsuccessfully.

When the directors of the Proprietary Silver Mine at Broken Hill saw fit to diminish the number of miners, for which there was not sufficient employment, it was beleaguered by an armed and threatening crowd of five thousand men. A real siege was enacted. No one was allowed to pass the lines without a passport from the so-called President of the Miners' Committee.

For three days and nights, as the Stipendiary Magistrate stated (he was sent up specially by the New South Wales Government, trusting in his lengthened experience and proved capacity), the inmates of the mine-works sat with arms in their hands, and without changing their clothes, hourly expectant of a rush from the excited crowd.

The crisis was, however, tided over without bloodshed, chiefly owing, in the words of a leading metropolitan journal, to the 'admirable firmness and discretion' displayed by the official referred to – now, alas! no more. He died in harness, fulfilling his arduous and responsible duties to the last, with a record of half a century of official service in positions of high responsibility, without a reflection in all that time having been cast upon his integrity, his courage, or his capacity.

More decisive action was taken, and was compelled to be taken, in Queensland than in the other colonies.

There, owing to the enormous areas necessarily occupied by the Pastoralists, the immense distances separating the holdings from each other, and, perhaps, the heterogeneous nature of the labour element, the acts of lawlessness became more serious and menacing. A military organisation was therefore found to be necessary. Volunteers were enrolled. Large bodies of these troops and of an armed constabulary force were mobilised, and many of the incidental features of a civil war were displayed to a population that had rarely seen firearms discharged in anger.

The nomadic population had been largely recruited from the criminals of other colonies, who, fleeing from justice, were notoriously in the habit of crossing the Queensland border, and evading a too searching inquiry.

These were outlaws in the worst sense of the word; desperate and degraded, conversant with undetected crime, and always willing to join in the quasi-industrial revolts, unfortunately of everyday occurrence.

In these, bloodshed was barely avoided, while hand-to-hand fights, inflicting grievous bodily injury, were only too common.

CHAPTER VI

After the burning of the Dundonald, a score of the rioters had been arrested and imprisoned. But owing to the confusion of the mêlée and the prompt dispersion of the Unionists it had been found difficult to procure the necessary identification and direct evidence of criminality. Thus, after some weeks of imprisonment, all were discharged except six prisoners, among whom, unfortunately for himself and his family, was that notorious malefactor, William Hardwick. Fate, in his case, would appear to have leaned to the wrong side!

His appearance and manner had so favourably impressed the Bench of Magistrates, before whom, after several remands, he and his fellow-prisoners had been brought, that they were on the point of discharging him, when Janus Stoate was tendered by the Sub-Inspector of Police in charge of the case as a material witness for the Crown. He had kept in the background after he saw the affair well started, taking care to be heard protesting against violence on the part of the Unionists. Having been sworn, he admitted his connection with them, to the extent of belonging to the camp and having acted as a delegate, appointed by the Council of the Australian Shearers' Union. He had worked last at Tandara woolshed. At that station the men had completed their contract and been paid off in the usual way. He as delegate had received notice from the President of the Union to call out the shearers before shearing was concluded. They declined, temporarily, and a messenger, elected by the men, was sent to Wagga Wagga for further instructions.

Before he returned, the shed had 'cut out' – finished shearing, that is. He could not say he approved of the arrangement, but was glad that the contract was completed and all settled amicably. He was an upholder of passive resistance, and could bring witnesses to prove that he dissuaded the men from violence.

'Did he know the defendant, William Hardwick?'

'Yes, very well – he was sorry to see him in this position.'

'Had he seen him inciting or assisting the men who were concerned in the burning of the steamer?'

'No, he could not say that he had, but – '

The witness was urged to explain, which he did, apparently with unwillingness.

'He had seen him standing by the river-bank, with a gun in his hand.'

'Did he discharge the gun?'

'Yes, he did; he saw him put the gun to his shoulder and fire.'

'Was it directed at any one of the crew of the Dundonald?'

'He could not say that. The night was dark – just before daylight. He fired at or near somebody, that was all he could say.'

'That will do.'

Another Unionist witness was brought forward. This man was actuated by a revengeful spirit towards the free labourers, and especially towards those shearers that had opposed the Union. He therefore gave damaging evidence against Bill and his companions. He swore that he had seen Hardwick – that was his name, he believed – anyway he was the 'blackleg' now before the Court – loading and firing, like some of the camp men.

He was warned not to use the expression 'blackleg,' as it was disrespectful to the Court. Such conduct might lead to his being committed for contempt of Court and imprisoned.

The witness had 'done time' in another colony, been before a Court more than once or twice probably. He laughed impudently, saying, 'He didn't mean no offence, but it was 'ard on a man, as was true to his fellow-workers, to keep his tongue off such sneaks.'

This was one of the cases where a magistrate, not being able to deal effectively with a witness, will take as little offence as possible, so as to get him out of the box and have done with him. In a city or county town such a man would be sent to gaol for twenty-four hours, for contempt of Court, to appear next morning in a chastened frame of mind. But as the fire-raisers were to be committed for trial and forwarded under escort to the Circuit Court at Wagga Wagga, nothing would be gained by delaying the whole affair for the purpose of punishing a single witness.

So poor Bill, being asked by the magistrate what he had to say in his defence, made a bungling job of it, as many an innocent man, under the circumstances, has done before, and will again.

'He could only state, that though seen among the Unionist rioters, he was there under compulsion; that he and his mates, who had come from Tandara, had determined, after seeing the unfair way in which the sheds that "shore Union" had been ordered out, to cut loose from the tyranny. But they had been captured by the rioters at Moorara; made to carry arms and stand in front, where they were nearly being shot. As God was his Judge, he never fired a shot or meant to fire one. He would far rather have emptied his gun at the fellows who had robbed and ill-treated him – for his horses, saddles, and swag were "put away," he believed, his cheque and loose money were gone, and he had nothing but what he stood up in. What call had he to hurt the boat, or any one aboard her? It was the other way on. The witnesses had perjured themselves, particularly Janus Stoate, who had eaten his bread and borrowed money from him in times past, and now was swearing falsely, to ruin him, and rob his wife and children of their home. He had no more to say.'

Unluckily for poor Bill, several of the accused, who were guilty, had made substantially the same defence. They were proved, by the evidence of the crew of the Dundonald and the police, to have been actively aiding and abetting in the outrage. One, indeed, who tried to look virtuous and made a plausible speech, had been seen pouring kerosene over the doomed steamer, preparatory to her being set on fire.

This prejudiced the Bench against all defences of the same nature as Bill's. He might, of course, have called on his mates, who had left the Tandara shed with him, resolving to sever all connection with the Union. They would, of course, have been able to corroborate his story, and have ensured his discharge. But, here again, Fate (or else blind Chance, which she too often resembles) was against him. 'Fortune's my foe,' he might have quoted, with reason, had such literary morceaux been in his line.

One of the shearers from Tandara, being a smart bushman, had escaped, in the uncertain light and confusion of the mêlée, and discovering the horses of the party, feeding by themselves, in an angle of the station fence, caught the quietest of the lot, annexed a stray halter, and ran them into a yard. He then returned to the insurgents, and mingling with the crowd, managed to warn his comrades, except Bill, who was wedged in between two armed men, with another at his back, by special instruction of Stoate. Leaving unostentatiously, they escaped notice, and providing themselves with saddles and bridles from the numbers which lay on the ground outside of tents, or on horizontal limbs of trees, departed quietly, and by sundown were many a mile away on the road to the next non-Union station. They would not have abandoned their companion had they the least idea of what he was likely to undergo at the hands of the law; but the last thought that could have entered into their heads would be that he was liable to arrest and trial in connection with the burning of the steamer. So, believing that they might run serious risk by remaining among the excited, dangerous crowd, at the same time being powerless to do him any good, they decided to clear off.

As there was sworn evidence to incriminate him without available witnesses to testify in his favour, the Bench had no alternative but to commit William Hardwick for trial at the next ensuing Assize Court, to be holden at Wagga Wagga. Thither, with the other prisoners, ruffians with whom he could neither sympathise nor associate, was poor Bill, manacled and despairing, sent off in the up-river coach, a prey to anxiety and despondent imaginings.

What would be Jenny's feelings when she saw in an extract from the Wilcannia Watchman, too faithfully copied into the Talmorah Advertiser: —

'Outrage by Unionists'Burning of the "Dundonald."

'Arrest and trial before the Bench of Magistrates at Tolarno. William Hardwick, John Jones, J. Abershaw, T. Murphy, and others, committed for trial at next Assize Court. Severe sentences may be looked for.'

Jenny's distress at this announcement may be imagined. She had not heard from Bill since he left Tandara, at which time he had written in good spirits, mentioning the amount of his cheque, and his resolution to cut loose from the Shearers' Union (which he was sorry he ever joined), and more particularly from Stoate and all his works.

'It's that villain, and no one else,' cried poor Jenny. 'I knew he'd do Bill a mischief before he'd done with him – a regular snake in the grass. I'd like to have a crack at him with a roping pole. He's worked round poor Bill, some road or other, who's that soft and straightforward, as any man could talk him over – and yet I wonder, after what he wrote – '

And here Jenny took Bill's last letter out of her homely treasure-chest, read it once more and cried over it, after which she dried her eyes and changed her dress, preparatory to seeking counsel of Mr. Calthorpe, the banker in the township. This gentleman received her sympathetically, and heard all she had to say, before giving an opinion.

In small and remote centres of population such as Talmorah the bank manager is, even more than the clergyman or the doctor, the 'guide, philosopher, and friend' of the humbler classes, whom he chiefly advises for their good, and, in moderation, aids pecuniarily, if he can do so, with safety to the bank. He is often young, but, from a wider than ordinary outlook on men and affairs, endowed with discretion beyond his years. For Jenny and her husband he had a genuine liking and respect, based chiefly on his knowledge of character, but partly on the creditable state of Bill's bank account.

'It's a bad business, Mrs. Hardwick,' he said, when Jenny had concluded her story in a fit of weeping, which she could not restrain. 'And Bill's the last man I should have expected to be mixed up with this affair. It's wonderful what harm this strike business is doing all over Australia. However, it's no use thinking of that. The question is, how to help your husband out of the trouble, now he's in it. He's only committed now – which doesn't go for much. It's the trial before the Judge and Jury we have to look to.'

Here Mr. Calthorpe took down a file of newspapers and looked through them. 'Yes, I thought so; to be tried at next ensuing Assize Court at Wagga. You'd like him to have a lawyer to defend him, wouldn't you?'

'Of course I would,' replied the loyal wife. 'We've worked hard for our bit of money, but I'd spend the last shilling of it before Bill should go to gaol.'

'Quite right. Bill's man enough to make more – his liberty's the main thing. Well, I'll send a letter by this night's mail to the Manager of our bank at Wagga and ask him to see Mr. Biddulph, the solicitor – I was stationed there years ago – and he'll get him off if any one can. Money is wanted, though, to pay witnesses' expenses – you must be prepared for that.'

'Whatever's wanted, let him have, in God's name,' Jenny cried recklessly. 'You know Bill's good for it, sir, and I've butter-money saved up of my own. Bill always let me keep that. I've got it in this bag. It will do to begin with.'

'Never mind that,' said the banker, good-humouredly. 'I have your deeds, you know, and the balance is on the right side of your account. So don't be down-hearted, and I'll let you know as soon as I hear from Biddulph. Good-bye, and keep up your spirits; fretting won't do you any good, or Bill either. All right, Mr. Mason,' he said, as his assistant, after knocking, looked in at the door; 'tell Mr. Thornhill I can see him in a minute.'