When we had inspected the camp at the terminus and, for the Commandant’s sake, I had duly admired the landing-stage, the trim buildings, and the gardens in which the flowers and vegetables were struggling for existence in the burning iron soil, the State car was brought out for us.
It was a platform on wheels, with four sloping seats facing backwards. I could see the line twining away up through the forest, but there was no engine.
Presently it, or, rather, they, materialised at the summons of the Chief Surveillant. Fifteen blue-clad figures, each with a halter and hook-rope over his shoulder, came out of one of the dormitories. There was a long chain shackled to the front of the car. At an order the human beasts of draught passed the halters over their heads and hooked on to the chain, seven on each side and one ahead.
Then the Commandant invited the company to mount. There were seven of us. The Commandant had brought his two little girls, and there were four besides: the Chief Surveillant, who weighed fifteen stone if he weighed a pound, the Chief Forester, who weighed a good twelve stone, and the Doctor and myself, who were comparatively light weights.
I had often seen convicts harnessed to carts in England, and, of course, I had ridden many miles in rickshaws in the East, but this was the first time I had ever travelled in a car drawn by human beings who did it because they had to, and who would have had their food docked if they had refused to do it, and I confess that I didn’t exactly like it. Still, I took my place, and the strange journey began.
At first it didn’t seem very bad, for the line was almost level, but when we got into the hills the collar-work began, and our human cattle had to bend their necks and their backs to it.
The line wound up through cuttings and over bridges at what seemed to me an ever-increasing gradient. It was a damp, muggy, tropical morning. It was not exactly raining, but the moisture soaked you to the bones for all that, and the leaves and branches of the vast virgin forest on either hand shone and dripped as the moisture condensed on them.
We perspired sitting still and making no more exertion than was necessary for breathing, so you can imagine how those poor wretches tugging at the chains sweated—and, great heavens, how they stank!—though the most fastidious, under the circumstances, could hardly blame them for this.