Barton and I returned to Cape Nelson on the 24th of April, and found all in order; we waited there for the return of the Merrie England, as she was to take Barton and his men away, and bring stores for me. Day after day, week after week, went by; our supplies of European food were soon finished: tea, coffee, sugar, meat, biscuits, tobacco, shot cartridges, all were done; fish and native vegetables, washed down with cold water, our sole fare; and still, daily, we scanned the horizon for the hourly expected Merrie England, or any vessel from which we could get stores, but none came: until, on the 14th of June, the Merrie England put in a belated appearance, and we were told that the Revs. J. Chalmers and O.F. Tomkins had been murdered in the Western Division; so we had been left, while she hunted the murderers. I thought then, as I think now, that however great the excitement might have been over the murders, still some little thought should have been given to two isolated officers on the north-east coast and their possible plight; if a Government vessel were not available, a Mambare trader might have been instructed to call in at Cape Nelson (several passed in the distance), instead of our being left, as we were, from March until June, entirely cut off from the world, newsless and semi-starved.

Captain Harvey and I had a slight breeze over something or other, I have forgotten now exactly what it was, on the occasion of this visit; which resulted in my turning sheep-stealer. The ship had got a pen of sheep for fresh meat, some half dozen or so, on which I cast a hungry eye. “Harvey, old chap,” I said, “tell the butcher to kill one of the muttons, and leave me a joint.” “You did not call me ‘old chap’ this morning,” said Harvey, “you called me a ‘marine Fenian,’ and said my voice was worse than that of the wooden bird in a cuckoo clock; you also said that you were surprised at my being entrusted with the navigation of anything more valuable than the gaol sanitary punt; there were several other things you said, including that you would ask the medical officer at Samarai to examine me for incipient softening of the brain.” “That was in the heat of argument,” I answered; “you must remember that you used language that, if I did my duty as a beak, would be well worth five bob a word to the revenue; but I made allowances, because I fancied you must have put in some of your early training as apprentice to a Bargee. How about my mutton?” “You will see,” said Captain Harvey, and sent for the chief steward. “Thanks, Harvey,” I said, and waited. “Steward,” said Harvey, on that functionary’s arrival, “see that no sheep are killed before we are back at Samarai.” “All right, skipper,” I said, “I will make you sit up for that before long.” “I don’t think you should have meat,” commented Harvey, “you have been living too well, and your blood has got heated.”

The ship was to sail at dawn; accordingly I went ashore and called my constabulary into consultation. “To-night,” I said, “you are to steal a sheep from the Merrie England. Can you grab and lower the brute into a boat, without making a noise and causing it to baa?” “Very simple to do,” they said, “but what about the watch on board?” “The constabulary are all on shore, and wouldn’t tell in any case,” I told them; “and at anchor, there is only one night watchman on duty; I’ll settle him.” That night I went off, and remained on board until all the officers had gone to bed; then I waylaid the night watchman. “Lonely work, yours,” I said, “come to the saloon and I’ll give you a drink; I’ve got a bottle down there. My police will look out while you come.” He rose like a trout at a May fly, and I called out to my corporal, “Corporal, the watchman goes below with me for a few minutes, you must look out sharply.” “I understand, sir,” replied that smart non-com. Five minutes later he came to the saloon, where the watchman was indulging in his second drink. “The men are getting very sleepy, sir, will you be long?” I left at once; a shapeless bundle of sail at the bottom of the boat containing a large fat sheep, with its mouth securely tied, showed how successful the raid had been.

Captain Harvey had a happy Irish knack of leading me into crime; from sheep stealing he led me later into body snatching, a still more heinous offence. Time had elapsed; Oelrichs was my Assistant R.M., when the Merrie England one day appeared, and after I had completed my work in the Governor’s cabin and was leaving, Harvey waylaid me and wiled me into his cabin; where, after producing vessels of strong waters and cigars, he mysteriously whispered, “Monckton, I want you to do me a very great favour.” “Well, what is it?” I asked. “Do you want me to let you down lightly if you come before me in my official capacity, or what?” “Well, the fact is,” said Harvey, “I am under great obligations to a doctor in Brisbane, who has been most good to my family; he has an ethnological turn of mind, and hankers for the skull and skeleton of a New Guinea mountaineer, a Doriri for choice.” “Do you expect me, a senior officer of the Service, apart from my judicial position, to go out, shoot and stuff a Doriri for your medical scientific friend?” I asked in surprise; “if so, I must tell you that I draw the line at homicide, even of Doriri.” “Don’t be a fool,” said Harvey, “I am serious; you can buy me a skeleton somewhere, I don’t care how old or decayed.” “I can’t,” I said; “such a request on my part would, in the first instance, start all sorts of yarns of sorcery; and secondly, since one trader bought up a lot of skulls and grew orchids in them like flower pots, afterwards selling them in Europe as sacred or devil orchids worshipped by Papuans, and another chap cleaned out a lot of caves of skeletons and sold them to make bone dust for manure, there has been an Ordinance prohibiting traffic in human remains.” “There is no question of traffic,” said Harvey, “you must find plenty of graves in abandoned villages, and can easily dig me up a skeleton.” “‘Desecration of Sepulchre’ happens to be a penal offence, my dear Harvey,” I remarked; “I wish the favour you ask did not contain a considerable risk of free lodging for the pair of us in one of his Majesty’s houses of entertainment; neither the diet nor the lodging appeal to me.” “Damn your scruples,” said Harvey. “Museums and savants always manage to get skeletons; if you were an Irishman, instead of a cold-blooded Englishman, you would do it for the fun of the thing, not to speak of obliging a pal.” “Skipper,” I said, “my father came from Kent, but my mother came from the Curraugh of Kildare, and the Irish strain is always getting me into trouble, as it will probably do once more over this night’s work. I will give you your bones; though you don’t deserve them after your action last year in turning an eminently respectable magistrate and his police into sheep-stealers. Tell one of your crew to blow your whistle for my boat, and come ashore with me.” The night happened to be very dark, wet and windy, and my boat’s crew had departed for the shelter of the boat shed on shore.

“Where will you get the bones!” asked Harvey. I explained that some five or six months before, the Collingwood Bay people had found a Doriri man badly wounded by a wild boar in the forest, and had brought him to me; he was too far gone to cure, when I got him, and died without our being able to ascertain his name or village, and his corpse had been planted in our cemetery. Going ashore, I summoned Oelrichs and my sergeant, a Kiwai man named Kimai, and explained to them that I wanted them to go and disinter the Doriri. Oelrichs said that he did not think that body-snatching, in the middle of the night, was included in the duties of an Assistant R.M.; and Sergeant Kimai said that nothing would induce the Western or Eastern men in the constabulary to go corpse hunting in a cemetery after dark. I persuaded them into undertaking the job, however; and, accompanied by half a dozen Northern police, who had no fear of ghost or devil, they departed on their cheerful quest. Harvey and I waited hours, listening to the rain and wondering why they did not return; at last, about two in the morning, I took Harvey back to the ship, fearing that he would be missed and inquiry made as to what we were up to.

A couple of hours later, alongside came my boat, and a dripping Oelrichs crawled into Captain Harvey’s cabin, followed by Sergeant Kimai and a Mambare corporal bearing a very smelly sack. “My God!” gasped Oelrichs, “give me a drink, and Sergeant Kimai one too; he has seen seventeen ghosts and quite a score of devils. If it had not been for the Mambares, I never should have got the corpse.” “What do you mean, Oelrichs,” I asked, “by keeping me sitting up all night wondering what had become of you? I did not tell you to picnic all night in the graveyard, I told you to bring the Doriri.” Oelrichs flung up his hands and appealed to the universe at large to witness my appalling ingratitude. “The Kiwai men buried that Doriri,” he said, “and the sergeant was not there, so no one knew where he was, and the grass had grown over his grave; we dug up about an acre, and quite six other corpses, before we found him. The smell nearly killed me, and Kimai saw spooks all the time.” “You look out that no one discovers this,” I said to Harvey, “or we shall all be in the devil of a row.” Harvey shoved the smellful remains into a drawer under his bunk, where he kept them until he reached Samarai and got the doctor to fix them up in a cask with disinfectants. He certainly went through a lot for his medical friend.

But I must return to more serious affairs. I have referred in this chapter to the reason of the Merrie England remaining away for such a length of time from Cape Nelson, namely, the murder of the Revs. Chalmers and Tomkins by natives in the Western Division. The death of such a well-known pioneer missionary as Chalmers, of course excited intense interest and sympathy throughout the Empire; much was written at the time in the Press, missionary publications, and by New Guinea officials through official channels, but something yet remains to be said from the point of view of an onlooker, neither swayed by sentiment nor eager to praise or condemn. Firstly, in order to arrive at a proper sense of proportion, one must consider the characteristics of the European actors in the tragedy; the natives we can eliminate, for from their point of view—as it is from my own—the killing of Chalmers and the looting of the vessel was no greater crime than would have been the killing of a wandering trader, at whose hands they had suffered no hurt.

Chalmers, one must remember, was not of the ordinary type of missionary, but was of the type of a David Livingstone; and, though belonging to the London Missionary Society, was—like Livingstone—as much an explorer as a missionary. He was a man of particularly forceful character, who was inclined to take unnecessary risks, and this trait had been accentuated by the recent death of his wife; the very boat he was using on the fateful journey was her last gift to the Mission, or really to him. Tomkins calls for no remark: a young man, but recently from a religious training school, always taught to regard Mr. Chalmers as the wisest and best of men, he was not likely either to understand the danger of the action they were about to take, or to differ in any degree from Chalmers’ views. Next we come to the Resident Magistrate in charge of the Division, who should be, in the first instance, responsible for the lives of all in his district, missionary, trader or native. This officer, at the time, was the Hon. C.G. Murray, who had recently succeeded the experienced Bingham Hely. Murray had arrived in New Guinea as assistant private secretary to Sir George Le Hunte, not so very long before; he had then been transferred to the Government Secretary’s Office as a clerk, and from thence been promoted to be Resident Magistrate of the Western Division, without the slightest district or divisional experience, or training of any description; if Murray had any knowledge of natives, it could only have been acquired at Eton, the Bachelors’ Club, West End drawing-rooms and country houses, or by dint of working a typewriter under Mr. Musgrave’s fostering eye in the Government Secretary Department at Port Moresby, where an irate washerwoman, demanding payment for an overdue account, was the most dangerous native likely to be encountered.

Now Mr. Chalmers, before leaving on the journey that was to end in the death of himself and his young companion, as well as that of many friendly natives, and was eventually to lead to a great deal of bloodshed, culminating in the suicide of one of the most promising officers New Guinea ever possessed—Judge Robinson—had been to Murray and told him what he proposed doing, and said that “he intended that it should be his last journey of any importance”; and Murray made no effort to dissuade him, nor did he, in the absence of dissuasion, make any effort to secure the safety, by means of his constabulary, of the Mission party, in admittedly one of the most dangerous parts of New Guinea. The natives in the vicinity of Cape Blackwood had an exceedingly bad reputation, of which Murray either was, or should have been, aware. In the year 1845, they had attacked the boats of H.M.S. Fly, the Cape having been named Blackwood after her captain, and the Fly River after the ship. The only subsequent occasions upon which they had been visited were in 1892 and 1898 by Sir William MacGregor, when his Excellency, skilled as he was in native ways and backed by his trained men, had but narrowly averted hostilities with them. To the experienced eye, a number of men embarking in a punt to shoot Niagara falls, would go to no more certain death than would a few unarmed men landing, at that time, in any village on Cape Blackwood; and Murray should have used every means in his power to prevent it. There can be no two opinions about this.

Chalmers went to Cape Blackwood, and the inevitable result followed. I now give the exact wording of the official report, first notifying the tragedy to Headquarters, and sent by Murray’s assistant, Jiear:—

“Sir,

“I have to report that the London Missionary Society’s schooner Niue returned to Daru late last night from what was intended to be a trip to Cape Blackwood, and thence along the coast back to Daru. The captain of the Niue states that on the 8th instant, while anchored off Risk Point on Goaribari Island, near the mouth of the River Omati, a party consisting of the Rev. James Chalmers, Rev. Oliver Tomkins, nine Mission students, natives of various villages on Kiwai Island, Naragi, the chief of Ipisia, and James Walker, a half-caste native of Torres Straits, left in their whaleboat and landed in a small creek near the village on the island. The landing took place about 7 a.m. on the 8th instant, and it was the intention of the party to return in about half an hour to have breakfast.

“The party was totally unarmed. After waiting until about midday the Niue moved off about half a mile to await the return of the party.

“The Niue was surrounded here by a large number of canoes, full of armed natives, who boarded the schooner and took away all the “trade,” tools, and clothing belonging to the Mission party. The Niue stayed at this place until the next morning, and then sailed round the island, but could not see or hear anything of the party, and so the captain decided to return to Daru to report, taking seven days to reach here.

“The natives were naked and had on their war paint, and were yelling the whole of the time the Niue remained in the vicinity.

“The people on the Niue are quite sure that all the party were murdered. “The Resident Magistrate is at present away on a trip to the Bamu River district, and is probably not aware of the occurrence. I am therefore sending a small cutter with all the available police and some ex-constables, with the necessary arms and rations; also a report of the occurrence to him, in case he should see fit to proceed to the spot before returning to Daru.

“I have, etc.,
“A.H. Jiear, Subcollector of Customs.”

From this dispatch, three things are clear:—

1. Chalmers, Tomkins, and a considerable number of Christian natives, were in the hands of the Goaribari.

2. A surmise might be made that they were already murdered, but there was not a single shred of evidence to that effect.

3. Mr. Jiear clearly expected the Resident Magistrate at once to proceed to the spot and effect a rescue, if such rescue were yet possible; and for that purpose had sent additional police and reservists to strengthen the force that the R.M. then had with him.

How then would an experienced officer—such as the senior officer in charge of a Division should be—have reasoned? The answer is plain. He would have placed himself in the position of a chief of the tribe holding the captives, and reasoned thus: “We have got a certain number of a strange tribe in our hands, the vessel in which they came has escaped, and probably fled back to that tribe with the news; before we kill our captives, perhaps it would be better to wait a short time and see what that tribe will do.” Never, in my opinion, was the need of haste more evident; and how did Murray rise to the occasion? It must be remembered that Chalmers’ party landed at Goaribari on the 7th of April; well, on the 22nd of that month, while Murray was in the Gulf, he was given a circumstantial account of the affair, and at once started for Daru, which lay in the opposite direction; it is true that he missed the cutter sent to him by Jiear, with additional police, but he reached Daru on the 24th of April, when the news was confirmed by his own assistant, and then wasted precious moments in sending a report, of which I give the following extracts:—

“On hearing the fuller particulars, and from my knowledge of the natives near that part, I could no longer believe that any of the party were alive; and although I should have liked to have at once proceeded to the spot, it was impossible; the means suitable for the conveyance of even the small detachment of police under my command being wanting.

“I therefore decided to wait for the return of the Niue, or possibly the arrival of the Merrie England, with your Excellency on board, as it also occurred to me that you would wish to deal with such a grave matter yourself; besides, all the survivors had departed in the Niue, and thus I was left without a guide.”

And then he continues:—

“I may also mention that this massacre has created the intensest state of sorrow, excitement, and revenge on the part of the Kiwai Island natives, both for the death of Messrs. Chalmers and Tomkins, and for the ten Kiwai boys who were with them. Their great desire was to be allowed to muster all the large canoes on Kiwai, go to the spot, wipe out the offending tribes, and bring their heads to Kiwai. I, of course, informed them that I could not allow such a proceeding, and that the Government would take care that the offenders were properly punished.”

Murray first shows that he had no means of transport, and then conclusively proves that he had at his disposal a fleet of canoes, capable of transporting a regiment from one end of New Guinea to the other. And yet Murray sat doing nothing until the 26th of April, when he reported:—

“At 3 p.m. on the 26th of April, the s.s. Parua arrived from Thursday Island, having on board a detachment of the Royal Australian Artillery under Lieutenant Brown in connection with the massacre.”

Murray enclosed a copy of the letter brought to him by the soldiers from the Officer Commanding at Thursday Island, which was as follows:—

“Sir,

“I have the honour to inform you that I have received instructions from the Artillery Staff Officer in Brisbane to furnish a detachment consisting of one officer, two non-commissioned officers, and eight gunners of the Royal Australian Artillery to leave here by the s.s. Parua at daybreak to-morrow, 25th instant, to act in defence of the ship, and also protect, if required, the Resident Magistrate and his followers.

“The detachment will be under the command of Lieut. Brown, Royal Australian Artillery, and are armed with rifles and 100 rounds per man. I have instructed Lieut. Brown to report to you on arrival and to place his detachment at your disposal, and act solely under your instructions.

“I have, etc.,
“Walter A. Coxen. Captain, R.A.A.”

Murray now had at his command the strongest fighting force that any district officer had ever had available in New Guinea: he had twelve white soldiers, all picked shots; he had eighteen regular constabulary, well armed, and he could have called up fifty or more time-expired men of the constabulary, if he had required them; also as many bowmen as he pleased, the latter in companies under the discipline and control of village constables and Government chiefs, not a savage horde, but a controlled force as well armed as the Goaribari. There was no possible further excuse for delay: Murray’s alleged grounds for such, namely, weakness of force and lack of transport, had been cut from under his feet; but the only action taken by him was to steam for Port Moresby, on the possible chance of finding the Merrie England there, first forwarding this interesting epistle to the Officer Commanding at Thursday Island:—

“Sir,

“In reply to your letter of the 24th April, I have the honour to inform you that the Parua arrived to-day at 3 p.m. with the detachment of the R.A.A. under Lieut. Brown.

“Even with the addition of the native contingent of police stationed here, I do not consider there would be sufficient force to cope with the villages concerned, certainly not as effectually as they should be.

“I have therefore decided to proceed in the Parua to Port Moresby, collect some more police there, then return to Daru, pick up my Daru police and interpreters; from Daru proceed to the place of the massacre.

“I have instructed Lieutenant Brown to this effect.

“I have, etc.,
“C.G. Murray, R.M., W.D.”

In this report Murray clearly showed an entire lack of initiative, judgment, nerve, or grasp of the situation. He was not in command of a punitive expedition—such could always follow at a later date, if the worst had happened—but of a force more than sufficient to effect a rescue, if the missionaries were still alive, or so to overawe the natives as to prevent their immediate murder. Another most imperative reason for haste on Murray’s part was that the South-East Monsoon was due, during which it was impossible for any landing to be effected at Goaribari; in fact, it did come on while the Merrie England was there and expedited her departure, gravely endangering a launch and whaleboat returning from the shore to the ship.

As a matter of fact, it was afterwards ascertained that Chalmers and his party had been murdered soon after landing, and no action on Murray’s part, however prompt, could have saved them; but nothing in Murray’s then knowledge justified him in not taking immediate action to ascertain whether they were killed or not; and nothing justifies the Governor in not having called him to account for lack of initiative. I do not wish to infer in this that Murray was guilty of personal cowardice, for I knew him well, and he was no coward; but I do think that the placing of a very young untried man in a responsible position, and that a position in which he could not obtain the advice of older or more experienced officers when grave matters affecting human life were at stake, was a lamentable blunder, which brought about the foregone and inevitable result. Had Moreton, Hely, or Armit been in charge of the Western Division, or Sir William MacGregor been Governor of New Guinea, I feel certain that Chalmers would not have been permitted to meet his death in such a way.

Murray reached Port Moresby, only to find that the Governor and the Merrie England had already left for Goaribari, to which point Sir Francis Winter then instructed him to proceed. The following telegram from the Lieutenant-Governor of New Guinea to the Governor of Queensland gives a concise history of the action then taken:—

“S.Y. Merrie England, off Cape Blackwood.
“Gulf of Papua, 5th May, 1901.

“Merrie England was starting for Cooktown 27th April in accordance with my telegram of that date, when London Missionary Society’s schooner Niue arrived Port Moresby, reporting massacre of Mission party and looting of the schooner at Goaribari Island, mouth of Omati River, 12 miles west of Cape Blackwood, Gulf of Papua, on 8th April, hitherto hardly known and not yet under Government control, visited by Sir William MacGregor in 1892 and 1898. I should have visited it two months ago if I had not been called away to North-East by death of Armit, R.M., and murder of miners on Upper Kumusi, in which case it would probably not have happened. I left at daylight 28th in Merrie England with Ruby launch in tow, Government party and Rev. Hunt, L.M.S., called at Hall Sound for additions to party and Rev. Dauncey, L.M.S. Smaller steamer Parua chartered by Queensland Government joined us off Orokolo 1st May with Murray, R.M., Western Division and detachment of R.A. under Lieutenant Brown from Thursday Island vi Daru and Port Moresby. Proceeded together to island, arrived noon 2nd May, Merrie England anchored three and a half miles outside, and Parua entering channel inside island, low and thick bush, five miles across. Boats landed at three villages simultaneously, natives immediately commenced hostilities. We fired on them and occupied villages, total killed twenty-four and three wounded as far as is known. No casualties in our party except native constable on sentry at night slightly wounded by sniping arrow. Captured one prisoner belonging to neighbouring island. Obtained names of principal murderers and villages concerned. Mission party consisting of Chalmers, Tomkins, a native chief of Kiwai Fly River Estuary and ten Kiwai Mission boys all killed and eaten and whaleboat broken up at Dopima Island, where massacre planned. Some articles and pieces of boat recovered, some human remains not recognizable. After careful consideration I decided to visit all villages on island and vicinity, reported to be implicated, burning the large fighting men’s houses but no other dwelling-houses of women and children. Villages at top of soft mud, thick impracticable bush and swamp behind, very strong tides. Found it impossible to get prisoners. Ten villages, nearly all large, visited by us. Camped night in two of them. Burnt all fighting men’s houses, except in the prisoner’s village, small, spared on account of assistance given by him. Some fighting canoes destroyed. Regret to say at last village visited by one party, wind sprung up after large house fired and carried flames to several other houses, purely accidental. Returned to ship evening fourth. South-east fortunately held off, as coast unapproachable during it. Can do nothing further until next North-West season, when I shall return. There will be no further fighting or burning. I am satisfied this is last massacre of this kind on coast of British New Guinea. Regret nature of punishment but action absolutely necessary at once, and best in the end. Further report will follow, but above contains all material particulars. Please convey my best thanks to Queensland Government for prompt action in sending Parua and assistance to Murray, and to Commandant Defence Force my grateful appreciation of Lieutenant Brown and the men under his command. Parua leaves this morning fifth for Thursday Island for coal. Return Port Moresby and send ship Cooktown for stores, and finish eastern cruise as formerly arranged on her return.

“To his Excellency Lord Lamington, G.C.M.G., Brisbane.”

Then, if we take the following statement made by the only prisoner taken at the time, we have the whole history of the events which took place up to the departure of the punitive party from Goaribari on board the Merrie England.

Statement of Kemere of Dubumuba, taken prisoner at Dopima, Goaribari Island:—

“The name of the village that I was captured in is Dopima. I, however, belong to Dubumuba, a village on Baiba Bari Island. I, myself, was not present at the massacre; only the big men of the village went. I have, however, heard all about it. My father, Marawa, sent me to Dopima to get a tomahawk to build a canoe. The name of the village you camped in the first night is Turotere. The first suggestion for massacring the L.M.S. party came from Garopo, off whose village, Dopima, the Niue was anchored. Word was at once sent round that night to villages in the vicinity to come to help. It is the usual custom for people of surrounding villages, when a large boat is sighted, to congregate in one place. The following villages were implicated: Dopima, Turotere, Bai-ia, Aidio, Eheubi, Goari-ubi, Aimaha, Gewari-Bari, Ubu-Oho, Dubumuba. The next morning all the canoes went off and persuaded Messrs. Chalmers and Tomkins and party to come on shore in the whaleboat. Some of the natives remained to loot the Niue. When they got on shore Messrs. Chalmers and Tomkins and a few boys entered the long house, the rest of the boys remaining to guard the boat. These last, however, were also enticed inside the house on pretence of giving them something to eat. The signal for a general massacre was given by knocking simultaneously from behind both Messrs. Chalmers and Tomkins on the head with stone clubs. This was performed in the case of the former by Iake of Turotere, in that of the latter by Arau-u of Turotere. Kaiture, of Dopima, then stabbed Mr. Chalmers in the right side with a cassowary dagger, and then Muroroa cut off his head. Ema cut off Mr. Tomkins’ head. They both fell senseless at the first blow of the clubs. Some names of men concerned in the murder of the rest of the party are: Baibi, Adade, Emai, Utuamu, and Amuke, all of Dopima; also Wahaga and Ema, both of Turotere.

“All the heads were immediately cut off. We, however, lost one man, Gahibai, of Dopima. He was running to knock a big man [Note: this must be Naragi, chief of Ipisia] on the head, when the latter snatched a stone club from a man standing near, and killed Gahibai. He (Naragi) was, however, immediately overpowered. The other boys were too small to make any resistance. In the meantime the people in canoes left at the Niue had come back after looting her of all the tomahawks, etc. This party was led by Kautiri, of Dopima. Finding the party on shore dead, it was determined to go back to the Niue and kill those on board. However, the Niue got under way, and left, so they could not accomplish their purpose. I think the crew of the Niue were frightened at the noise on shore. Then Pakara, of Aimaha, called out to all the people to come and break up the boat, which had been taken right inside the creek, it being high water. This was done, and the pieces were divided amongst people from the various villages. Pakara is the man who followed and talked to you in the Aimaha Creek for a long time. Directly the heads had been cut off the bodies, some men cut the latter up and handed the pieces over to the women to cook, which they did, mixing the flesh with sago. They were eaten the same day.

“Gebai has got Mr. Chalmers’ head at Dopima, and Mahikaha has got Mr. Tomkins’ head at Turotere. The rest of the heads are divided amongst various individuals. Anybody having a new head would naturally, on seeing strange people coming to the village, hide them away in the bush, and leave only the old skulls in the houses. The same applies to the loot from the Niue.

“As regards the skulls in the houses, those having artificial noses attached to them are of people who have died natural deaths; those that have no noses attached have been killed.”

“Taken by me

C.G. Murray, R.M., W.D.”

Time went on: Murray, who had only taken the billet while he waited for a more congenial appointment, heard of a private secretaryship in South Africa and promptly left for there; Jiear, whose sole experience in handling natives had been gained under Murray, succeeded him as R.M.; Sir George Le Hunte was appointed Governor of South Australia and departed; and a young lawyer, Christopher Stansfield Robinson, who had but recently been appointed Chief Justice in lieu of Sir Francis Winter, recently resigned, acted as Administrator; it had always been the custom in New Guinea for the Chief Justice to perform that duty in the absence of the Lieutenant-Governor, in place—as in most Crown Colonies—of the Colonial Secretary. Robinson was a young man, for whom one might reasonably predict a brilliant career. He was the son of the Venerable Archdeacon Robinson of Brisbane, and therefore his early training had been hardly that of the swashbuckler he was later made out to be; but Robinson had not previously been in command of other men, nor had he any administrative experience. That he was a humane man was proved by the fact that almost his first work was to endeavour to improve the conditions under which the European miners on the gold-fields lived; his second, to prepare Amendments to the Native Labour Ordinance, with a view to better care being taken of native indentured labourers; and his third, to endeavour to better the conditions under which the officers in the Service worked.

At the time Sir George Le Hunte left, the heads of Chalmers and Tomkins were still in the hands of the Goaribari natives, and some of the actual murderers were still uncaptured, although the men and their names were known. It was essential, in Robinson’s opinion, that the heads should be recovered, and the murderers apprehended and brought to trial; for, even in the eyes of the natives of the Western Division, the killing of the Mission party had not been an act of war or revenge, but patently a cold-blooded treacherous murder of men who were, at the time, in the position of guests and entitled to the protection of the very men by whom they were done to death. Robinson decided to go to Goaribari and get the murderers and heads.

The point of interest now is the composition of his party: firstly, Robinson himself, Governor of the Possession and in Supreme Command, but quite inexperienced in the work he was undertaking; next, Jiear, R.M. of the Division, to whom the Governor would naturally look for advice and guidance in the matter; but Jiear, as I have already shown, was also inexperienced, being only a Customs clerk, who had suddenly found himself in the position of officer in charge of a Division, after a short training under a man as ignorant as himself. Next we have Bruce, Commandant of Constabulary, also a recent arrival in the country, inexperienced in dealing with natives, a soldier pure and simple, and incompetent to advise as to any action other than a purely military movement; lastly, Jewell, secretary to Robinson, a young Englishman recently imported by Sir George Le Hunte, and until now, engaged in copying letters in the Government Secretary’s Office. Robinson, Bruce, and Jewell had all arrived in New Guinea at the same time. There was, therefore, on board the Merrie England, from the Administrator downwards, not one man who had previously been engaged in similar work to that which they were about to attempt; the ship’s officers do not count, as they have nothing to do with either the planning or carrying out of district work.

Robinson told me, when he was with me in the Northern Division, what he purposed in the way of recovering the heads and arresting the men in the Western Division; and I expressed a hope that he would take one of the more experienced officers with him, and volunteered to accompany him as A.D.C., for I had some leave due to me and was prepared to spend it in that way. I was, however, at the time very weak from protracted malaria, work and worry; so his Excellency said, “You are worn out and need change and rest; take your leave and go south.”

Judge Robinson went to Goaribari in 1903, within a year of his appointment. Soon after their arrival a number of natives were induced, by the display and gift of trade goods, to go on board the Merrie England; among them were several of the men who had actually participated in the murders, and were identified by a Goaribari man, whom they had brought back with them in the ship. It was decided that, upon a given signal, these men were to be seized by the constabulary. This was done: a violent struggle then began on different parts of the ship’s deck, between the suddenly grabbed men and the police; the other natives fled over the side into their canoes, and then, in conjunction with their friends in other canoes, opened arrow fire on the ship, upon whose deck the struggle was still going on. The constabulary promptly answered with rifle fire; by whom the first order to fire was given has never been quite clear. Several natives were hit, others jumped overboard from their canoes and swam for the shore. Every man on that ship, with one exception, then lost his head: Robinson grabbed his rifle and began wildly blazing at every canoe in sight; Jewell saw a man hit with a bullet, and promptly went into screeching hysteria; what the R.M. did, Heaven and he alone know; some of the European crew of the ship took shelter in the chart house and other refuges, and one of the officers, at least, got his fowling-piece and blazed away. Bruce alone kept his head, ordered the “cease fire,” and thumped every man he found firing; but most of the men were out of sight of one another behind deck houses, etc., and each man imagined that, as long as the firing continued, a fight was going on and blazed away. As a matter of fact, I am convinced that the damage done to the Goaribari was very slight; canoes were emptied, but principally by the men in them diving over the side and making for the shore. The Governor, at the best, was a vile shot; the detachment of constabulary on board came from the Central Division, where, under Captain Barton’s rÉgime, their musketry practice had become a farce, and Bruce had not had time as yet to get it up again.

The Merrie England returned to Port Moresby: the European crew, most of whom had been planted in safe security, described the dreadful battle in which they had taken part; the constabulary bragged of their prowess, and the number of Goaribari each individual had shot; many of the police were related to the tribe from which the Kiwai boys came who had been murdered with Chalmers, and therefore were only too prone to magnify their deeds for the benefit of their relations; while Jewell’s hysteria had evolved at least ten men shot by the Governor, from the one he had seen struck by a bullet, fired by some hand unknown.

Now appears upon the scene the Rev. Charles Abel of the London Missionary Society, on his way south to incur the greatest danger he was ever likely to shove his head into, namely, that of being choked to death at some suburban muffin worry, or dying from mental strain induced by the necessity of telling tales of dire peril incurred in his work, or clergyman’s sore throat from relating stories of cannibalism and crime. He had not been within hundreds of miles of Goaribari, but on his way down the Queensland coast he found an enterprising reporter, and unburdened his soul of a circumstantial tale of treachery, bloody murder and slaughter, on the part of the Governor of New Guinea. “Nothing less than a Royal Commission will satisfy the European population of Port Moresby; their indignation is profound,” he announced, and quite forgot to say that the European population of Port Moresby consisted of a handful of public officials, half of whom were jealous of so young a man as Robinson being put over their heads, and that the rest of the men were profoundly uninterested in the whole affair.

It was a dull season at the time for the Australian papers; they had not had a fight in their Parliaments, or a sensational murder for some time. Here was a chance of selling their rags! Never mind sacrificing a good man, on the unsubstantial hearsay statement of an individual whose living greatly depended upon his power of romancing. The Press fairly howled for the head of Robinson, as did also certain Australian members of Parliament; according to them, he was a man to whom the Emperor Nero or Captain Kidd were as angels in comparison; while happy comparisons were drawn between the Merrie England and the “blood-drenched Carl, brig,” a notorious and particularly infamous early Australian “black birder.” The Administration in Australia bowed to the storm, votes might be at stake, and the announcement was made that a Royal Commission would be appointed to inquire into the matter, and that though Robinson would not in the meantime be suspended, he would be summoned to Sydney, while an Administrator would at once be sent to succeed him. Practically the attitude of the authorities amounted to this: “We intend to offer up Robinson as a sacrifice, but we must give him some form of trial before we judge and immolate him; in the meantime we will fill his job, in case there should be any doubt as to our intentions.”

Sir George Le Hunte was then asked to suggest the name of an officer, then in the Service, suitable as an Administrator; and his Excellency replied, “Captain Barton.” This was rubbing it into Judge Robinson with a vengeance; Captain Barton was a junior magistrate, under Robinson in both his judicial and administrative capacities, and he was now to regard Barton as his chief. Jewell was transferred to Captain Barton as private secretary. Robinson had fallen, unheard and untried, from the highest position in the country to that of a man looked at with eyes askance by those by whom he had formerly been regarded with awe, and who now were afraid that they might possibly become involved in his downfall.

Now, to Robinson there only appeared to be one course left, and he took it. Every vessel brought fresh gusts of execration against him from Australia; Bruce alone in Port Moresby sympathized with him; Moreton and myself, the only two men he could call friends in the Service, were hundreds of miles away, ignorant of his plight, and in any case powerless to help; the very native servants at Government House knew that he was a disgraced man, and that on the morrow the Jack on the flagstaff would fly in honour of another, while he went in humiliation to trial and possible dishonour. Whilst all the house was plunged in sleep, Robinson sat late at night writing an account of his views and actions, and the troubles of his Administratorship, and concluded by fully accepting all responsibility for the action taken at Goaribari, and exonerating all others concerned. He then took his revolver, and walking out under the flagstaff, there blew out his brains. So died Christopher Stansfield Robinson, first Australian Administrator of New Guinea, murdered as clearly as ever a man was murdered, by the lying sensation-mongers who had hounded him to a suicide’s grave.

The Royal Commission was held, and the officer concerned exonerated from blame; Robinson had gone to answer for his act and alleged misdeed at the Highest Court of all, the Court before which his traducers will some day stand and be judged. The surprised man was the Rev. Charles Abel; he was proceeding south to give evidence, when he suddenly heard that the Judge, by whom the Royal Commission was conducted, held the—to him—extraordinary view, that the evidence of a man who had been at the time six hundred miles distant from the scene, and only heard various garbled versions at second, third, fourth and fifth hand, was not admissible. This was hard luck for Abel! He had made himself prominent in the limelight as a principal performer on the stage, and suddenly the stage manager said, “What is that super doing there? Send him back to his own job of selling programmes!” Robinson, however, had gone; nothing now could bring him back.

Apart from the loss to the Service caused by Robinson’s death, a very bad example had been set, and the Service and public had been taught that clamour, abuse and misrepresentation, if sufficiently persisted in, could pull down any officer, however highly placed, even to the King’s Representative; and soon indeed, later, Barton, the Governor; Ballantine, the Treasurer; and Bruce, the Commandant, all went down before the same methods.