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"BULLY" HAYES was a notorious American-born "blackbirder" who flourished in the 1860 and 1870s, and was murdered in 1877. He arrived in Australia in 1857 as a ships' captain, where he began a career as a fraudster and opportunist. Bankrupted in Western Australia after a "long firm" fraud, he joined the gold rush to Otago, New Zealand. He seems to have married around four times without the formality of a divorce from any of his wives.
He was soon back in another ship, whose co-owner mysteriously vanished at sea, leaving Hayes sole owner; and he joined the "blackbirding" trade, where Pacific islanders were coerced, or bribed, and then shipped to the Queensland canefields as indentured labourers. After a number of wild escapades, and several arrests and imprisonments, he was shot and killed by ship's cook, Peter Radek.
So notorious was "Bully" Hayes, and so apt his nickname, (he was a big, violent, overbearing and brutal man) that Radek was not charged; he was indeed hailed a hero.
Dorrington wrote a number of amusing and entirely fictitious short stories about Hayes. Australian author Louis Becke, who sailed with Hayes, also wrote about him.
—Terry Walker
BULLY HAYES once said that if you dug deep enough anywhere between Pine Creek and the Palmer River you would probably unearth a dead Chinese city. Certainly junk and joss have decorated many a northern inlet since the yellow man learned to steer by star and headland and make his reckoning by moon and tides.
"Beats me," the famous buccaneer once said, "the way they overland from Cairns to Sydney. Look at old Sam Lee that I gave a feed to on the Dumaresq about Christmas time. His two sons and three uncles had done a famish on the way down. But Sam was selling rhubarb and stuff near Circular Quay by the time I reached Sydney; and that was only April.
"Tell you, George-street was a sight when I first reached Sydney. Chinks!
"Is this a town or a temple?" I says to a constable, leaning on the quay-rail opposite the Ship Inn.
"When I got back to the Leonora that night I found a bailiff in charge. He led off by helping me to some pickles and beef out of my own pantry; and through him I became acquainted with Mother Lanigan.
"'Bully Hayes,' she says to me one day, 'they tell me ye pinched the Sultan of Sarawak's paycock before ye began to be chased by the gunboats?'
"'Don't believe it, Mother Lanigan,' says I. 'I never yet mistook a paycock for the family plate. It was the gold dinner-service that got pinched. The rajah lent it to me the night I entertained the British High Commissioner aboard the Leonora.
"'Take care of it, Captain Hayes,' says he. There are seven hundred ounces in the service. And I must apologise for not being able to join you and his Excellency at dinner on board the Leonora.'
"I had a Chinese cook named Jim Ling. In the presence of the rajah I told Jim I'd leave him on a cannibal island where they ate little Chinks with banana sauce if anything happened to the gold dinner-service during the washing up. Jim said that nothing could happen to it.
"'Haw, haw, Hayes,' the High Commissioner chuckles after the rajah had gone ashore. 'That was devilish funny about the banana sauce! Do they really put sauce and things on their horrible food?'
"'Only with Chinamen,' I told him, and let it go at that.
"Just before the dinner I met Jim Ling outside the pantry. 'Jim,' I says quietly, that gold dinner-service must not leave this ship mysteriously. Savvy?'
"Ling just opened his mouth and shut it. Then he gave me a look that was as good as a receipt for the goods.
"'Worth a king's ransom!' old Mother Lanigan said. 'Ye thievin' blackguard!'
"'Thievin'!' says I. 'I never saw Jim Ling again after the wash-up. He got away with the service in a sampan while I was mixing a drink for the High Commissioner.'"
HAYES'S brig, the Leonora, lay off the entrance to Emu
Creek. East and west stretched the dark mangroves, with here and
there a low range of sandhills to heighten the monotony. Beyond
the hummocks lay Belter's Gully, a mining township composed of
tin hovels and Chinese huts. The scum or North Queensland had
swarmed down to the creek, bringing out-of-date mining
implements, and fossicking and dollying quartz as they travelled
over the ranges.
A ceaseless murmuring of voices reached Hayes as he dozed in a hammock under the sun-awning. The eternal clink-clink of picks told him that the near-by gullies were being prospected by bands of feverish Chinese "swampers."
"Bully" had escaped the gold-fever which had deprived many coastal vessels of their crews. His business instincts warned him not to desert his brig to risk fortune on a mining field. Very few schooners visited Emu Creek, and he was certain that a payable cargo would offer sooner or later. Whether the field prospered or failed there would be an exodus of miners eager to reach Brisbane or Sydney; and Hayes knew all about skying the passenger rate when the psychological moment arrived.
As the sun dipped over the western hummocks swarms of tiger-mosquitoes rose from the mudflats. The sound of land crabs scuttling over the sandbars reached him. Slipping from the hammock he began pacing the narrow deck, while the drowsy-eyed Kanaka crew watched him with childlike curiosity.
A silhouette had become suddenly visible on the edge of the mud-flat facing the Leonora. For several minutes the figure remained motionless; then, glancing about in nervous haste, the man signalled the brig with a handkerchief.
"Guess he looks lonely out there!" Hayes grunted. "These darned shore-men reckon they've only to wave their penn'orth of millinery to attract an ironclad. Maybe he's lost his feeding-bottle and wants a drink."
The man signalling on the tide-swept flat sauntered up and down as the Leonora's dinghy pulled towards him. Stepping in gingerly, he wiped his long, hot face as the moist heat rose in choking waves from the mangrove-blackened water.
Hayes watched the dinghy's return with cold indifference. A glance showed him his visitor's city-made clothes and almost spotless linen. "Camp spieler," he told himself; "or one of those copper-plated mining agents. Guess he's going to bite me for a passage home!"
The newcomer regarded the buccaneer closely as he stepped aboard. He was like one trying to recall a few of the episodes which had made the name of William H. Hayes a terror from Sandakan to the Kermadecs.
"My name is Molyneux," he announced at last. "I joined the rush to Emu Creek with the intention of buying a mine. But the fact is—"
"See here, Mr. Molyneux," Hayes broke in, wheeling on him like a hawk, "I don't want city men to flag me as if I owned a threepenny 'bus. There are no threepenny passages to Sydney on this barnacle. You've lost your money and you're giving me your troubles to mind. I'm a bad listener. And that long, white face of yours reminds me of a circus horse. No offence, Mr. Molyneux. I can't stand this Queensland weather!"
Molyneux wiped his hot face deliberately.
"I came aboard the Leonora, Captain Hayes, to make a proposal," he said at last. "Mining is a fool's game, especially in this locality, where most of the stuff is being bucketed from slime and blue mud." He glanced at the eager, listening Kanakas and became silent.
"They don't understand," Hayes snapped. "Speak out!"
A bleached grin wandered over the visitor's long face. "I came aboard," he continued, "under the impression that my little scheme for walking into the slab-and-bark bank at Emu Creek might meet with your support and approval, Captain Hayes. I've heard men say you never turn your face from a good thing."
The buccaneer considered Molyneux through his half-shut eyes for a moment. Then: "I might be game enough to bail up a gunboat or scrap it out with a gang of head-hunters. But banks scare me stiff, sir. The only thing I ever got out of a bank was a bullet from the cashier's grille in Samoa the minute I stuck my head in at the door. The cashier wasn't taking any chances, he said. Money can shoot, as well as talk, Mr. Molyneux."
The split grin on Molyneux's lips widened.
"There are no shooters in this bank, Captain Hayes. The manager is an old German named Krantz. He has been buying gold at the rate of sixty ounces a day for the last month. Next week it will be shipped or escorted to Cooktown by troopers."
Hayes yawned like one not easily drawn into sudden conspiracies. "If this slab-and-bark bank bought a hundred-weight of gold a day it wouldn't interest me. These Australian troopers can shoot buttons off you at half a mile. And where there's a bank there's generally a policeman round the corner. Why, any cop who pinched me up here would be promoted to inspector. So I'm just a bit sniffy about bank hold-ups."
Molyneux's grin faded as he searched for his cigar-case. "There isn't a trooper within twenty miles of the Creek," he answered, offering a fat Manila. "I've shadowed old Krantz's movements every hour of the day for the last week. He's using a safe shipped down from Darwin two months ago. You could punch a hole in it with a pick handle."
"This man Krantz?" Hayes demanded with the fat Manila between his teeth. "Sleeps on top of the safe, eh, with the family blunderbuss for a pillow?"
"There's no one in the bank at night. Krantz bunks in a two-roomed place adjoining. And the five thousand quids' worth of bullion in that old Dutch-oven safe will be sleeping in your state-room to-night if you'll take a chance with me."
Hayes sucked in his breath as though Molyneux had touched a raw nerve. "Wait a bit," he said at last. "Perhaps I've been over-hasty."
Molyneux sat on an upturned keg while the buccaneer dived below and reappeared with a bottle.
"It takes a full-sized spieler to get wine out of me," he remarked. "Use your glass, and I'll smoke while you line out this bank-breaking scheme of yours. Funny you should have come to me," he added thoughtfully, as Molyneux drained his glass. "Sailor men are not good safe-busters."
"I came because your vessel fills the bill. Last night I could have cleaned out the bank without assistance. But the moment I moved north or south with a pack-horse, I'd be tracked and pinched. Not being a bushman I'd stand a chance of being speared or clubbed and eaten. The sea for me, Captain Hayes."
The buccaneer nodded.
"Your ship is bettor than a pack-horse, Captain. Once clear of this hole we could make for the Islands and play poker for the rest of the year."
The wine kindled Molyneux's white face. Hayes helped him to a second glass. "Poker never interested me," he growled. "You were talking about a bank. Mr. Molyneux?"
Molyneux shifted uneasily on the keg, his narrow eyes focussing the man of whom he had heard so much.
"I wouldn't ask you to come into a scheme that hadn't been well thought out, Captain Hayes. The bank at the Creek is full to the lips with Chinese gold."
"Full to the lips! I like that! Is this Krantz working alone?"
"Absolutely. He's at his books day and night trying to keep his accounts straight. Most of the day he's behind the counter weighing the gold and muck at so much an ounce, and paying for it in minted sovereigns and banknotes. Just now he's easing off the night work and goes to bed about eleven. I've watched him patiently," Molyneux added in a low tone, "and he's the biggest thief outside Pitt-street."
Hayes laughed derisively.
Molyneux nodded. "Serve them right, too. They bring their gold packed in old tins and pickle-jars and bottles. They wrap the stuff in old rags as if it was grease or pieces of iron."
The buccaneer's eyes lit up. "It makes my blood itch to think of the way men handle gold!" he snapped.
Hayes was not without imagination. He saw Molyneux's picture of the bank at Emu Creek, a narrow slab-and-bark structure, crowded from morning till night with sludge-covered fossickers of all nationalities, eager to exchange their "dust" for coin, while behind the scales stood Krantz, weighing, testing laboriously and cheating as only such gold-buyers know how.
"I saw a parcel of stuff brought in by a party of alluvial miners," Molyneux continued. "It was wrapped in old newspaper. They spread it on the counter while Krantz scooped it up with both hands and sifted it into the scales. He stuck his hands deep into the dust, and gathered several ounces in his turned-up flannel shirt-cuffs. Then he stooped behind the counter to pick up a fallen pencil and let the fine gold run from his cuffs to the floor. That's Krantz."
"I guess he'll be weighed with the rest of us," the buccaneer commented absently. "It's going to be a pleasure to skin him alive, Mr. Molyneux! Anything else?"
"Yes. Last evening a couple of coolies stumbled in carrying a lot of stuff wrapped in a goatskin."
"Goatskin?" Hayes interrupted sharply. "There's only one animal I hate worse than goat. What's the goatskin for?"
"It was wrapped that way, I suspect, because a coolie carrying a goatskin isn't likely to rouse suspicions."
Hayes padded softly up and down the deck, pausing at times to scrutinise the white-faced rogue seated on the keg. Hayes was conscious of his own limitations, and was in no hurry to pit himself against unknown forces.
"We'll have a feed in my stateroom," he said after a while, "before I promise to stick my head into this. Goats are deemed unlucky."
SHORTLY after midnight Hayes and Molyneux put off from the
Leonora in a dinghy, and landed near a clump of mangroves
at the rear of the township. Picking their way through a
stone-strewn gully they came upon a crooked street of huts and
tents. Here and there, across the distant mullock-heaps, a
slush-lamp bobbed and flickered, showing where a night-shift of
fortune-hunters was still at work.
Half-way down the street stood the bank, enclosed by a barbed-wire fence. The window overlooking the street was shuttered with a rusty piece of plate-iron. Round the corner of the bank the two men halted sharply at sight of a light burning in Krantz's window. Almost immediately the door of the shanty opened. Both men drew into the shadows as the bulky, slow-footed figure of the German emerged. Opening a gate in the wire entanglement, he entered the bank.
Molyneux swore softly as he clung to the buccaneer's arm. "The big stiff will stay in there over his books for hours," he said angrily. "We'll have to wait."
"Wait for nothing." Hayes snapped. "Come in with me or stay out!"
Before Molyneux could protest Hayes was on the heels of the slow-moving Krantz with no more sound than a stalking tiger. Krantz lit an oil-lamp that hung above the counter, then whirled with an bath at sight of Hayes standing with his back to the door of the bank.
"Gott! Who vos you?" he snapped, his nerveless hand groping for the weapon somewhere in his side-pocket.
"Cheese the gun-play, Krantz. If I took an old binger like you seriously I'd hit you with the safe and bury you with a goanna. Straighten up and listen!"
The gold-buyer came near to collapse as he glared at the lean figure with the steely eyes, the seafaring clothes and unforgettable face. Then his jaw sagged, the grip on the revolver relaxed.
"Ach! You are Bully Hayes!" he quavered. "Dot is your ship in der offing. Vat you vant mit me, Hayes?" he wailed, a gleam of terror in his pouched eyes. "Is dis one of your hold-ups?"
Hayes slammed the bank door, and locked it in the face of Molyneux, who had been content to peer in. Then he turned again to the fear-shaken gold-buyer.
"See here, Krantz! I never yet killed a man who did the sensible thing. And don't behave as if I was Ross Lewin.[*] He would have dug your heart out for daring, to finger with that gun. Are you going to listen?"
[* Henry Ross Lewin (c. 1830-1874). One of the most notorious blackbirders of South Sea Islander labour in the 19th Century. —R.G.]
"Yes, Hayes. You vill not hurt an old man?"
Hayes laughed outright at the naked terror in the old eyes. He knew that men spoke of him as a human fiend, a bloodless kidnapper and recruiter, a destroyer and ravisher of native villages. While conscious of his own shortcomings he was often stung by the thought, of the pictures drawn of him by schooner captains and traders.
"Open the safe, Krantz!" he ordered. "I want that goatskin and all that's in it. No squeals and I'll leave the rest of the stuff alone!"
Krantz stumbled blindly to the safe, opened it and drew out the bulging goatskin, placing it with a painful wheezing of breath at the buccaneer's feet.
"Dis vas my ruin, Hayes," he quavered. "All my days I vork hard to make a leedle moneys. Now you come cleans me out."
The big-voiced seaman laughed in Krantz's face as he swung the bundle to his shoulder.
"Easy, old jellyfish, about your loss. You're filling the Townsville banks with your gold."
A sound of running feet turned him to the door. Molyneux had disappeared. Krantz squared his bulky shoulders against the safe.
"Troopers!" he articulated almost gleefully. "Now you vas in for it."
Hayes flung wide the bank door, stood for a moment in the open, his blazing eyes fixed on the chattering Teuton inside the shanty.
"One sniff out of you, Krantz, and I'll kill you and the two cops you're expecting. Are you going to yell out the minute I leave here?"
"No, no! I vill not put you avay. Good-nighd—you vas a shentlemans!"
"Good night, Krantz!" the buccaneer sent back, striding down the squelching road.
The glow of hurricane-lamps showed in his rear. A party of miners was hurrying in his footsteps. They quickened their pace at sight of the lighted bank, at the tall seaman with the bundle making his way to the creek entrance.
"Hey, old timer! Where you off to with the load?" one of the miners called out, suspiciously.
Hayes halted at the challenge. "One goat at a time, sonny!" he gave back sharply. "I'll put horns on any son of a gun who tries to get between me and my ship. Stop running!"
"Struth!" came from the group of miners with the lamps. "His ship! It's Bully Hayes! Been after the dust, I'll bet. Serve that damned German right. Always showing lights in his window when the field's asleep!"
The buccaneer gained the dinghy at the creek mouth, and rowed back leisurely to the gangway of the brig.
By the light of the port binnacle Hayes ripped open the carefully-laced goatskin, and drew out an armful of straw and pack-ing-waste. Then his hands closed on a shimmering, tinkling gold dinner-service, twenty pieces in all, that bore the crest of His Serene Highness the Sultan of Sarawak on each piece!
William H. Hayes sat on the keg recently occupied by Molyneux, end wiped his brow.
"This," he declared at last, "beats all the tom-toms from Heligoland to Hades!"
SHORTLY after daybreak the buccaneer called to a Kanaka
standing in the shadow of the galley:
"Esanon, you go ashore plenty quick now, and fetch Jim Ling here to me. You savvy?"
The Tanna boy started.
"Bring Jim Ling to me," Hayes repeated with deadly earnestness. "You're the good tracker. Ling is somewhere in the town. Get him! In case you don't come back, Esanon. I'll take the trouble to remind you that I've got a hold on your brother Gorai's plantation at Eromanga. And there's your old father, too. And now what about it?"
Esanon's big dark eyes took in the distant township of tents and lean-to shanties, and then, almost in a breath, was away in the dinghy.
"That boy has feelings," Hayes declared, loud enough for the eager-eyed Kanaka, crew to hear. "I lent his father thirty dollars when there wasn't a barrel of oil or a pound of copra in the family. I made the old chief Tauo give land to his dog-poor brother. Now he's troubled about me going back to Eromanga, and throwing the whole damn family to the sharks. It put the quicksilver on his heels!"
HAYES breakfasted sulkily in his little stateroom aft. The
bread was sour and almost black; the coffee undrinkable; the
piece of barracuda on his plate had been fried in bad dripping.
Mounting the companion, be reached the deck at the moment the lithe-bodied Esanon was climbing the gangway, followed by a shivering, protesting Chinese boy.
Esanon dramatised the situation with sweeping gestures in the direction of the cowering Chinese boy:
"I catch him alonga one more China feller in Sam Yick's fantan-house. He plenty too much no good. Plenty fright alonga that feller stuff he steal. My word, be catchum hell now!"
Hayes lit his first morning cigar with sudden gusto as he contemplated a noosed rope dangling from the yardarm. Then, with a schoolboy's alacrity, he seized the rope, and swung himself to and fro across the deck. The Chinese boy watched with stark understanding as the buccaneer stretched and softened the rope to his own satisfaction.
"Jimmy," he said, landing within a foot of the cowering Celestial, "you played me dirty. And I always treated you like a brother. You pinched my best cigars and I never squeaked. Like an old wife, you emptied my pockets when I got drunk. In Sydney you pawned my gold-braided suit of naval-duck for thirty bob, the one suit I had when I sat down to entertain royalty. And I forgave you every time because you were the best cook that ever dished up a feed to a sailorman!"
There were tears in the buccaneer's eyes, the salt tears of one about to destroy an unfaithful friend.
Jim lung bent his head, his slim, yellow hands crossed over his neat, blue tunic.
"I welly sorry, Cap'n. I mad I think when I lun off with gold-plate in Sarawak. I think I find one li'lle gel in Batavia who plomise to mally. She run off with planter-man to Singapore. So I ship to Darwin. Welly hard to hide gold dinner-service," he sighed.
"How in hell did you get to Emu Creek?" Hayes demanded wrathfully. "It's months since you bolted."
"I wait long-time in Darwin to sell gold service. No good. People welly flikened. Then I heah about Klantz, and I walkee long way. Don't hangee me. I keep one li'lle sistah and mother in Shanghai. Welly poor mother, Cap'n."
"I ought to hang you and throw your carcase to the 'gators!" the buccaneer thundered, as he reached for the snakeskin belt around the Chinese boy's waist. Opening the pockets he carefully drew out a bundle of notes and sovereigns.
Jim Ding moistened his lips. "Two honred ponds, Cap'n. No moah."
Hayes glared. "Is that all Krantz gave you for a packet worth a fortune? The hound! I've a good mind to go ashore and put a firestick to his old hut. Body-snatching's his real trade!"
Stuffing the notes and gold into his pocket, Hayes took a turn across the deck. Then, stooping over the companion, he bellowed an order to Clews the carpenter.
"Knock me up a small packing-case, Tom. Burn in the address with an iron: To His Serene Highness the Sultan, the Residency. Sarawak. It's a back-yard trick stealing a man's plate!"
"Aye, aye, skipper."
"We'll ship it at Thursday," Hayes further instructed. "I'll write a note now, and put it in the case."
Slipping below, the buccaneer sat at ms table and wrote the following:
Dear Sarawak,
I caught Up with your runaway dinner-service. It was in the possession of a German gold-buyer named Krantz. Rest assured that the thief will be punished with the utmost severity. You will find the service none the worse for its adventure. May I tender my sincere regards to the ladies of the Residency, who never for a moment believed me capable of a low-down fraud.
Your humble servant,
William H. Hayes, the brig Leonora
Esanon was standing at the head of the stairs when Hayes ascended with the note in his hand. The Tanna boy was strangely agitated.
"Well," Hayes snapped irritably, "what's on your mind?"
Esanon fawned. "You bin forget to hang Jim Ling," he reproached. "Wait long time now."
Hayes fetched a deep breath as he stared at Esanon, and then at the Chinese boy standing with head bent, under the dangling rope.
"You're a good boy. Esanon. You're always around when I forget to hang somebody. A lot of bad men would be alive to-day if you hadn't been about to jog my memory."
He turned almost fiercely to the drooping-shouldered Chinese boy under the rope.
"Into the galley with you and; get me something to eat! D'ye hear?"
"Yes, sah!"
"Sea-pie. You know the sort I like! Hurry now before I change my mind about the hanging."
Jim Ling passed with phantom swiftness to the galley, leaving Hayes staring at the dark-skinned tracker.
"Below with you, my lad, and clean out those damned bilges. Next time there's a hanging you shall have the rope to yourself!"
A strong gust of wind rattled the loose cordage above the buccaneer's head. In a moment the waters of the creek entrance was lashed to foam. Hayes almost leaped to the narrow poop.
"Stand by those sheets, you damned sons of the tar-pot! Here's the wind at last."
A man was seen running wildly towards the creek-mouth, followed by a crowd of miners.
"Ahoy there, Hayes!" he shouted in his desperation. "Get me out of this. They're after me!"
"So it seems!" the buccaneer trumpeted through his hands. "You're a quitter! You can wear this when those diggers have done with you!"
An empty goatskin was whirled through the air; it fell a few yards from where Molyneux was frantically beckoning.
A few minutes later the Leonora was standing out to sea.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.