Читать книгу Under the Broad Arrow - George Forbes - Страница 5

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SYDNEY, at the time when John Fitch arrived in the colony, was a small irregular township, extending from the Circular Quay towards Brickfield Hill, beyond which and all around appeared the unexplored scrub of the Australian bush.

The houses of the officials, however, were pleasantly situated, and there was scarcely a house that had not its garden or orchard attached to it. The band of one of the regiments usually played in the barrack-yard of a summer's evening, around which a well-dressed group were accustomed to gather, and to the casual observer the inhabitants appeared to be a gay and prosperous community. The convicts, at an early hour, were shut up in their barracks, and there was nothing to convey the notion that Sydney was the capital of a penal colony.

But with the morning the delusion was dispelled. At seven o'clock the gates of the convict prison were thrown open, and several hundred convicts were marched out in regimental file, and distributed among the public works in and about the town.

As they passed in slow and melancholy procession to their work, many of them with chains clanking at their heels, and all with downcast countenances, the whole appearance of the men exhibited a truly painful picture, which, as the day advanced, was not improved when bands of them could be seen yoked to waggons laden with gravel and stone, which they dragged through the streets like beasts of burden.

The Sydney Hospital, situated where it is now, was in a line with the prisoners' barracks, and at a short distance from the hospital, about three hundred yards away, was an enclosed yard, shut out from the public view by a high wall, where flogging was administered, and from which might daily be seen those who had been lashed being carried on stretchers to the hospital to have their wounds dressed before being put once more to labor.

It may well be imagined that, if it was not considered necessary to hide such scenes from the more respectable portion of the inhabitants, no attempt would be made to lessen the dismal nature of their surroundings to the convicts themselves, and even Fitch, hardened though he was, and inured to scenes of cruel discipline, felt his blood run cold when he marched to the barracks, in company with the other prisoners, and there heard read over the rules and regulations to which they were expected to conform.

As an object-lesson of what might be in store for some of them, the new arrivals were then paraded in the flogging yard, where they witnessed the flagellation of twenty-five men and boys at the triangles.

To Fitch, however, by reason of his high connections, further clemency was extended. He had been treated with great indulgence on board the Asia, and, soon after his arrival in Sydney, he was sent as a "special" to the out-station at Wellington Valley, to which the better class of those who had the misfortune to be exiled were deported.

On his arrival at Wellington Valley, in order to improve his own position, and regardless of the cruel punishment of the chain and the lash which his conduct would inevitably bring upon others, Fitch set himself to initiate a systematic course of trickery, which he carried out with a diabolical skill that almost approached perfection.

His plan was simple enough, and consisted in getting up little conspiracies among his less artful companions, and then betraying them to the overseers, in order that he might obtain the usual indulgence for exemplary conduct.

Acting on this plan, he induced more than one party of prisoners at the Valley to abscond, or to take to the bush, deluding them with hopes of success, and, after he had betrayed them, joining in their pursuit and capture.

For these services he was rewarded with a ticket-of-leave for the Bathurst district, and was sent there to serve as an ordinary constable.

It was well for Fitch, however, that these victims of his treachery did not have an opportunity for revenge, for it was known that there were some among them who had sworn to serve him in the same manner as another informer was served by a gang of bushrangers in Tasmania, who was torn limb from limb by being fastened with traces to horses, which were then driven different ways.