h_ of the streets, like the gay Bohemians of more advanced
civilisations. They did more; they defied authority, and varied their
pleasures with occasional bouts of house-breaking and burglary. They
appropriated such property as they could lay hands on in the sequestered
houses of the West End, and played tug-of-war with mahogany that lacked
the merit of being portable. An epidemic of looting prevailed--and fine
sport it seemed to offer.

But Colonel Kekewich did not think it a time for sport, and lost no time
in ventilating his thoughts on the subject. Drastic measures were
adopted to suppress the fun. Another proclamation adorned the dead
walls--decreeing that native bars and canteens were to be closed
altogether. To deal effectively with the hooligan school stern methods
were necessary, and total prohibition was the initial step--a step
highly lauded by the public in general, and by the _white_ topers of the
city in particular. The coloured bibbers were thus suddenly reduced to
water, and some twenty of them--caught red-handed in crime--were lashed
and sent to prison for two years. One or two got off with a caution, and
with instructions to preach to the locations on the heinousness of
hooliganism, and of the power of Martial Law to hang "boys" for less
than murder--as the next roost-robber would learn to his cost. No
remarkable curiosity to be learned in the "Law" was afterwards
manifested for some time.

As for the aggrieved liquor people, the Colonel's proclamation well-nigh
broke their backs. Their feelings must be left to the sympathetic
imagination of the reader. That thirty thousand of her Majesty's
subjects should be "by law forbid" to quench their thirst was
incredible. That men in the "trade" should by consequence suffer
financial loss, and have the sweat of their brows, as it were,
confiscated, was an evasion of the Constitution (superseded though it
was by Martial Law) which outraged the name of liberty. It was a bitter
pill to swallow; but it had to be swallowed under pain of penalty for
even a grimace. Some of the patients could not let the purgative down;
they deliberately let nature take its course--the sequel to which was
the mobilisation of the Trapper Reserves for active service. And still
the slimness of the native contrived to dodge the wiles of civilisation.
With the assistance of some Coolie shop-keepers (who acted as middlemen)
he yet managed to drink a fair share. But the middlemen, too, were