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 graphic, description of an execution at ile nou from the lips of one who had more than once been an eye-witness of the dread ceremony; and this i will reproduce hereafter not only because of its[136] dramatic interest, but because it is so absolutely different from anything ever heard of in england.
after we had inspected the cases, or dormitories, where the convicts of the third, or lowest, class sleep on sloping wooden shelves, with one foot manacled to an iron bar running the whole length of the long room, we went through other gates and walls into the central prison—the prison cellulaire—the heart and centre of the vast organisation.
here i might have fancied myself in a somewhat old-fashioned english prison. here there were no convicts smoking cigarettes or chatting at their work while their guardians smoked theirs and chatted also. the chill of silence cut down through the warmth of the tropic morning as the iron gates clashed to, and the heavy bolts shot back. underfoot, black stone or cement pavement; around, white walls and two tiers of little black doors, the upper fronted by stone balconies and iron rails.
the inner court of the central prison, ile nou. the cachots noirs are to the right. the condemned cells are in the upper gallery above the archway.
on the ground floor we went through several cells into which light as well as air was admitted, and here i found convicts who had been sentenced to various terms of hard labour with solitary confinement. this, with reduction of diet, is the first[137] degree of punishment inflicted on an idle or disorderly prisoner. it was about equal to the ordinary hard labour of english prisons.
then, after a look into the two little exercise-yards, we mounted to the second storey. here i noticed that the cells had no windows and no gratings in the doors. some of them had little cards affixed to them.
i went and read a couple of these; they contained the names of the prisoners, their first sentence, their subsequent offences, and their present sentences.
in these two cases it was “ten years’ solitary confinement in the dark.” then i knew that i was standing in front of the terrible cachot noir, or black cell—that engine of mental murder which the sentimentalism of french deputies, some of them amnestied communards, has substituted for the infinitely more merciful lash.
i asked for the doors to be opened. my polite commandant demurred for a moment. it was not réglementaire. the cachots noirs were never opened except at stated intervals,—once every thirty days, for an hour’s exercise and medical inspection,—but the wording of my credentials was explicit, and so the doors were opened.
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out of the corner of one came something in human shape, crouching forward, rubbing its eyes and blinking at the unaccustomed light. it had been three and a half years in that horrible hole, about three yards long, by one and a half broad. i gave him a feast of sunshine and outer air by taking his place for a few minutes.
after the first two or three the minutes lengthened out into hours. i had absolutely no sense of sight. i was as blind as though i had been born without eyes. the blackness seemed to come down on me like some solid thing and drive my straining eyes back into my head. it was literally darkness that could be felt, for i felt it, and the silence was like the silence of upper space.
when the double doors opened again the rays of light seemed to strike my eyes like daggers. the criminal whose place i had taken had a record of infamy which no printable words could describe, and yet i confess that i pitied him as he went back into that living death of darkness and silence.
we went along the galleries, looking into other cells and at other prisoners, some of whom i was surprised to find quite cheerful, but they were new-comers, and perhaps liked the idleness and the[139] sleep. then we came to a corridor cut off by a heavy iron gate. there were six ordinary cells in this, the cells of the condemned, and it is here that the last tragedy of the convict’s life on ile nou begins.
let us suppose that, as often happens, there are four or five men lying in these cells under sentence of death. the english murderer knows the day and hour of his doom. these men do not. every night they go to sleep not knowing whether or not it is their last sleep on earth. all they know is that they are doomed. then the fiat goes forth that “un nommé d.” is to make the final expiation of his crimes.
that night, when the prison doors are locked, the parts of the guillotine are brought in through the door at the end of the great courtyard, and set up on a platform supported on a stone foundation, under the supervision of “monsieur de l’ile nou,” who is always a convict released from his other duties in consideration of performing the last functions of the law on his colleagues.
soon after three the next morning, accompanied by the chaplain and the chief surveillant, the commandant mounts the little hill on which the central prison stands. the black doors open,[140] and they ascend to the corridor of the condemned; a key clicks in the lock, and the bolts rattle back.
you can, perhaps, imagine what that sound means to a., b., c., and d. men in their position do not take much awakening. perhaps they have been waiting for this for weeks.
they hear the footsteps coming along the stone-paved corridor. which door will they stop at? think of the agony of apprehension that is compressed into those few seconds!
then the footsteps stop. three men wipe the sweat from their brows, and fall back on their plank-beds. they at least will not die for a day or two yet. the fourth hears a key rattle into the lock of his cell door. the door swings open, and the early morning flows in. “l’un nommé d.” has already accepted his fate. he is already off his bed and standing to attention as steadily as he can. the commandant says kindly, and, perhaps, with a check in his voice:
“c’est pour ce matin!”
then he steps back, and the priest takes his place. the door is not closed, but the commandant and his assistants retire a little out of respect for the last confidences of the condemned.
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meanwhile “monsieur de l’ile nou” has been summoned, and, in due course, he takes the chaplain’s place. he binds his patient’s hands behind his back, ties his legs so that he can only just walk, and cuts away the collar of his shirt.
at the same time, other and more picturesque preparations have been made in the great courtyard. a company of infantry with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets have been marched in and surround the scaffold in hollow square. almost at the same time come the director of the administration, the procurator-general, the clerk of the marine tribunal, the court which holds the power of life and death over the convicts, and a few other officials.
the swift tropical dawn is approaching by this time. the gates and doors of the prison are thrown open, and columns of convicts file into the yard, guarded by surveillants, revolver on hip. they take their places in ranks inside the hollow square of soldiers.
the door at the end of the courtyard opens last of all, and through it comes a little procession composed of the commandant, the chief surveillant, the priest, and “monsieur de l’ile nou,” escorting the principal actor in the scene. the priest[142] mounts the scaffold with the victim, followed by the executioner and his assistant; the clerk of the court reads the verdict and sentence, the commandant hands his warrant to the director and then he gives the order:
“uncover and kneel!”
the broad-brimmed hats come off and the grey-clad ranks sink on their knees around the altar of justice. the living sacrifice is asked if he has anything to say. he usually makes a short speech either of exhortation or bravado.
then, with the assistance of the executioners, he takes his place on a sloping plank. a roll of drums rumbles echoing round the white walls. the plank swings into a horizontal position, the body is thrust forward till the neck is imprisoned in the lunette—the little window through which those who die by french law take their last look at the world. “monsieur de l’ile nou” touches a button; then comes the “skirr” of the falling knife, a sharp thud, and there is one scoundrel the less on ile nou.
after which the comrades of the deceased are marched back to breakfast, and thence to their daily tasks.
the central prison, ile nou. in front is the execution ground. the quadrangle is enclosed by a high whitewashed stone wall. to the left is the chapel in which the condemned may, if they choose, attend mass for the last time.
