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18 The Sea Gypsy
"Are all these Indians wandering around, apparently quite freely, really murderers?"
He smiled. "Not quite all," he answered. "We have some famous dacoits (bandits) and a few political prisoners, but the majority are murderers." He pointed at the musty row of files which lined one side of the room. "In those books," he said, "are the records of enough romances to keep a dozen story writers at work for life. But perhaps the editors might not print the yarns; for they all have the same tragic climax — a killing and then exile to this place."
"But if all these men are murderers, isn't there great danger for you whites walking about unarmed?"
The Governor looked up as if a little surprised. "Why, no. There are a few — er — accidents now and then, but no real danger. No."
The accidents to which he referred are of the kind that happened to a Viceroy of India who visited the island one winter many years ago. It was a Mohammedan convict who stabbed him to death in the midst of his retinue.
3
I found this same attitude among all the white rulers of this strange place. This little group — not more than fifty in all — after the fashion of the English, took their bizarre surroundings as the most natural thing in the world. Instead of worrying about either convicts or savages, they had built themselves the club where we had met the Major — when half a dozen Englishmen settle anywhere they must have a club.