door and called the mate, who went inside, signed his name,
re-appeared directly, called Secker, and entered the house with him.
The Additional Resident was sitting at a table with the signature
book before him. He rose from the chair, told Secker to sit down,
gave him a pen, and pointed out the place where his name was to be
signed. Laming was sitting near the table. While Secker was signing
his name McDonnell suddenly put a twisted handkerchief under his chin
and tightened it round his neck. Laming presented a horse-pistol and
said he would blow his brains out if he uttered a word, and the mate
slipped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. He was then bundled out
at the back door and put into a bullet-proof building at the rear.
The other three seamen were then called in one after the other,
garrotted, handcuffed, and imprisoned in the same way. The little
formality of signing names was finished in a few minutes, according
to promise.

If such things could be done in New Zealand, where there was neither
law nor government, what might happen in Van Diemen's Land, where one
man was both law and government, and that man was Colonel Arthur?
The prisoners had plenty of time to make a forecast of their fate,
while the mate engaged a fresh crew and took in a cargo of flax and
timber. When he was ready to sail, he reshipped his old crew in
irons, returned with them to the Tamar, and delivered them to the
police to be dealt with according to law. For a long time the law
was in a state of chaos. Major Abbott was sent from England in 1814
as the first judge. The proceedings in his court were conducted in
the style of a drum-head court martial, the accusation, sentences,
and execution following one another with military precision and
rapidity.

He adjudicated in petty sessions as a magistrate, and dealt in a
summary manner with capital offences, which were very numerous. To
imprison a man who was already a prisoner for life was no punishment;
the major's powers were, therefore, limited to the cat and the
gallows. And as the first gallows had been built to carry only eight
passengers, his daily death sentences were also limited to that
number. For twenty years torture was used to extort confession--
even women were flogged if they refused to give evidence, and an
order of the Governor was held to be equal to law. Major Abbott died
in 1832.

In 1835 the court consisted of the judge-advocate and two of the
inhabita