dragged me out
of bed and trailed me in this fashion along the ground till they came to
the sea beach. Here they beat me with clubs, then kept me three-quarters
of an hour naked whilst they were searching for the rest of my people."
Murrell goes on to detail as to how he threatened them with the wrath of
the Governor, to which they replied that the Governor was not there to
protect him. He was then taken to a tree and lashed to it, stripped, and
all the Americans took a hand in flogging him into insensibility. When
he recovered, he says, he asked for death rather than torture, and was
answered savagely that he and his men were the means of depriving the
Americans of 3,000 dollars' worth of skins by their operations, and that
Englishmen had better keep away from Cape Barren and leave the field
open to Americans.

"Then," he wrote, "they began to sport away with their bloody cruelties,
until some few Englishmen belonging to other [sealing] gangs out of
Port Jackson, stung to the quick to see the cruelties exercised upon
me without humanity, law, or justice, determined not to suffer it, and
began to assemble. This occasioned the Americans to face about, at which
instant I got my hands loose and ran into the sea, determined to be
drowned rather than be tortured to death. I was followed by a number of
Americans to the seaside, who stoned me, and sent into the water after
me a Sandwich Island savage, who gave me desperate blows with a club. I
put up my arm to save my head and he broke my arm in three places. I
was then dragged on shore and left lying on the beach, the men remarking
that they supposed I had had enough, but that there were more of their
country's ships expected, who would not let me off so lightly. Then
they took away some of my people, rescuing from my custody a King's
prisoner."

In all a dozen men--convicts and others--were taken away by Delano and
his ruffianly crowd of Chilenos and Portuguese, and this particular
sealing station was practically destroyed.

Captain Moody, of the colonial schooner _Governor King_ had recorded a
similar instance a few months earlier, and there is no doubt that the
colonials had just cause for complaint; as there is equally no doubt
that they themselves were not altogether innocent of provocation.
Nothing, however, came of these quarrels, for although the Governor
wrote to England on the matter, the authorities "remembered to forget"
to answer, and the rival sealing parties