Lloyd Osbourne

The Queen Versus Billy And Other Stories Lloyd Osbourne

IT was the Sandfly, Captain Toombs, that brought the news to Sydney and intercepted her Majesty's third-class cruiser Stingaree, as she lay in Man-of-War Cove, with her boats hoisted in and a deck-load of coal as high as her bulwarks, on the eve of a long trip into the western Pacific. It was the same old story-another white man sent to his last account in the inhospitable Solomons, where if the climate does not kill you the black man soon will: "Thomas Hysslop Biggar, commonly known as 'Captain Tom'; aged forty-six; British subject; occupation, trader in coprah; place of residence, Sunflower Bay, island of Guadalcanar; murdered by the natives in September, 1888, between the 7th and the 24th, and his station looted and burned." There was trouble in store for Sunflower Bay; they had killed Collins in 1884, and Casseroles the Frenchman in 1887, and had drawn upon themselves an ominous attention by firing into the Meg Merrilies in the course of the same year. Murder was becoming too frequent in Sunflower Bay, and Captain Casement, while policing those sweltering seas, was asked to "conduct an inquiry into the alleged murder of T. H. Biggar, and take what punitive measures he judged to be necessary."