Half-past five on a glorious tropical morning. The sun was still hidden behind the green, rugged mountains which gained its name for New Caledonia; but it was still high enough for the shadows to be melting out of the valleys; for the grey roofs and white walls of the town to be glimmering among the dark masses of foliage; and for the smooth waters of the lovely harbour to light up with foregleams of the glory of sunrise. A little beyond the northern end of the plague-infected area, with its corrugated iron walls and its white-clad sentries, I found a collection of pretty buildings, with neat little gardens round them. They were the offices of the executive police, and when I had passed through them I found myself on a short, board, wooden, T-shaped quay—the Quai de la Transportation—which is used solely for the purposes of the Administration.
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Leading down to this is one of the only two railways of New Caledonia on which a locomotive travels. It is quite a toy affair, with a gauge of about twenty inches, and a length of perhaps five hundred yards; but the engine puffed around just as busily, and seemed just as proud of itself, as if it had been hauling the Empire State Express. It runs from the wharves to the head of the quay, and its function just then was carrying ballast for a new road.
It is a curious fact that the French have had possession of New Caledonia for nearly half a century, and yet the only railway by which passengers can travel is one on which the cars are drawn by convicts, concerning which more hereafter.
I presented my credentials at the douanerie, where my cameras were viewed with considerable suspicion until the all-compelling documents had been read. After that, I suppose, they would have almost let me take a Maxim gun on to the island. Then they were noted and handed back to me with a polite “Très bien, monsieur. The canot will start in a quarter of an hour. If you will give your apparatus to this officer he will see it safe in the boat.”
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A polite surveillant stepped up, touched his helmet, and took them from me. Then I lit a pipe and strolled up and down the quay to enjoy my strange surroundings.
I had seen hundreds of convicts in England working both within and without the prison walls; working in grim, joyless silence, surrounded by equally silent, rifle-armed warders, and never a prisoner moving without one of these at his heels. Here it was difficult to believe that I was in Prisonland at all save that the other occupants of the quay were wearing two very different uniforms, and that I was the only one en civile.
The surveillants were dressed in spotless white—the official washing-bill of New Caledonia must be something enormous—their white helmets bore a silver badge, the chief figure in which was a glorified representation of the now forbidden rod, with the letters “A. P.” (Administration Pénitentiare). Their rank was shown by galons, a sort of stripe worn on the cuff of the left sleeve. This was of blue cloth with silver braid—the lines of braid served the same purpose as stripes do with us. For instance, the French equivalent for “two stripes” is “à deux galons.”
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The uniform of the others was chiefly conspicuous for its ugliness and utility—a pair of trousers and a jumper of light grey canvas cloth, with a vest underneath, and a very broad-brimmed straw hat, without a ribbon. No convict in Caledonia is allowed a ribbon on his hat. Some had stout, undressed brogues, and some were barefoot. They were without exception extremely ugly and fairly hearty.
A good many of them were smoking, and this rather got on my nerves, for I kept on asking myself what would happen to an English prison official if he saw a convict take out a cigarette and go and ask another one for a light? But here surveillants strolled about puffing their own cigarettes—making me wonder again what would happen to an English warder smoking on duty?—and not worrying particularly over anything.
At the same time, there was no lack of discipline of its kind, though it was not what we should call discipline in England. Still, the convicts worked hard and regularly; harder, indeed, than I have ever seen English convicts work.
Their task was loading the canots and the steam-launch with provisions for the great prison on the[132] other side of the harbour; and they went at it steadily and in excellent order until it was finished, scarcely needing a word of direction from the surveillants.
As I watched them I thought of the quiet-spoken, square-headed despot with whom I had been talking a day or two before. These men, like hundreds of others that I saw, evidently knew him, if only by repute.
Presently the surveillant who had taken my cameras came and saluted and told me that the canot was ready. I got in, and found it manned by twelve convicts, who were protected by an awning stretched from stem to stern. They were chatting and smoking when we got in, and my conductor, thinking perhaps to impress the Englishman with a sense of French discipline, ordered them to be silent.
They stopped talking for five minutes while they got under weigh, then, like a lot of school-boys, they began again, whereupon the surveillant rebuked them again. “Silence, je vous dis!” said he in his most authoritative tone; and they obliged him more or less for the rest of the passage.
I must say that they rowed very well, and with a vigour which betokened good nourishment.[133] They looked at me with smiling curiosity. They evidently knew pretty well all about me by this time—Heaven and the mysterious “loi du bagne” only know how; and I daresay they wondered why any one should have taken the trouble to come across the world just to make their acquaintance.
I was received on the quay at Ile Nou by an officer—a chief warder, as we should call him in England—who took me to the Commandant’s house. En route I found that Ile Nou, about which I had read such terrible stories, is a very pleasant little settlement, composed of white houses and shady streets, at the foot of a hill on which the great prison buildings stand.
In a few minutes another illusion was shattered. I admit that I expected to find the Commandant of the greatest prison in Caledonia a semi-military despot in a braided uniform, boots and spurs, with a sword, and, possibly, a revolver, to say nothing of fiercely waxed moustache and imperial.
Instead of this I found a mild-mannered, grey-haired gentleman of about sixty, clad in a négligé white suit, with no sign of official rank about him save a silver-embroidered blue band round the left cuff of his coat, which reminded me rather[134] oddly of the band that a British policeman wears when he is on duty.
He was drinking his early coffee and receiving reports, which were noted by a convict clerk at another table. He gave me a cup of coffee, and ordered the carriage to be got ready. Meanwhile, he dropped his reports and began to ask me about my journey, my impressions of New Caledonia, and so on.
Presently a surveillant came in to say that the carriage was ready. We got in, and a couple of well-bred, well-fed horses pulled us at a good pace up the winding road, until our convict driver halted in front of a big black iron door in a long white-washed wall. As the Chief Surveillant put his key into the lock the Commandant said to me, with a smile:
“You will be the first Englishman who has ever passed this gate.”
“Mais pardon, Commandant,” said the surveillant, as he threw the door open. “There have been two others, but they did not come across the world to see the prison, and they stayed a good deal longer than monsieur would care to do.”
“No doubt,” said I; and with that we crossed the Threshold of Lost Footsteps.
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As the door swung to behind me I found myself in a long rectangular courtyard, one side of which was almost filled by a row of long, white buildings fronting endways on to the court, with a door at the end and small windows along the side.
At the further end, to the right hand, there was another door in the high, white wall, of which I was to learn the use later on, for the quadrangle which we were crossing is to the convicts of Ile Nou what the Place de la Roquette was lately to the Parisians—the Field of Blood, the Place of Execution.
The Commandant apologised for not being able to invite me to assist at the spectacle, as there was no patient available. I should see shortly a for?at awaiting trial for murder, but it would be some time before he could be tried, and then there would be the ratification of the sentence.
I should, of course, have assisted at such a spectacle if it had been possible; but I had the advantage of hearing a simple, but none the less gra............