IN THE ANDAMAN ISLANDS.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE " EPECTATOR."1

Sra,—The sun was just peeping over the horizon as the ' Nile ' steamed into Port Blair, the chief port of the Andaman Islands. The voyage from Burma had taken some thirtysix hours. When we left India it was the middle of the cold weather, but these islands are too near the equator for the difference between summer and winter to be very marked. On the left was the main island with its heights covered with vegetation of all sorts growing in tropical luxuriance, but almost unexplored by the white man and left to the aborigines. On the right was the small island on which the Resident and most of the Europeans, including the garrison, reside. This island is a huge rock, and on it Anglo-Indian life proceeds with unvarying monotony. Above us was a blue cloudless sky, below us the bluest and clearest sea that it has ever been my fortune to behold, and looking over the ship's side I saw fish of different forms and sizes as clearly as if they had been in the air.

After I had landed the Resident very kindly placed a young officer at my disposal, and under his guidance I went round the British colony. Fort Blair is principally known as apenal settle ment, and Captain Seymour explained the many advantages the place offered for this purpose, and said : "During the last twenty years only one man has succeeded in escaping from the islands, although the great majority of the convicts are unguarded and employed in useful work, for which they receive a small remuneration. A man escaping into the interior is sure to be killed, and possibly also eaten, by the Andamanese, pygmies who creep at an amazing pace through the bush, which is practi cally impenetrable to other men, and who use arrows steeped in a deadly poison. To swim is certain death from sharks, and the chances of getting to Burma in a surreptitiously constructed boat are very small indeed." Captain Seymour went on to explain

that the domestic servants of the European community were nearly all -men or women who had been convicted of murder,

and said, to my surprise : "The murderers are as a rule by far the best of the people we get here. You see, a person convicted of murder is always hanged unless there are some vary extenuating circumstances, and many of these convicts are men who according to their own codes of honour had no alternative but to commit murder, wherea&those sent here for other crimes are pretty 'bad hats' as a rule or they wouldn't have got penal servitude. The children's ayahs are practically all murder. eases. Some of them have murdered their husbands, either in a fit of jealousy or because they would not any longer put up with ill-treatment; and these are the lucky ones, for after five years' good behaviour, being unmarried, they are released from confinement and are allowed to marry a convict and to keep house for him. For every woman ready for release on these terms there are dozens of suitors, and marriage is the only means by which a female convict can, obtain release from confinement, so the wooing is generally qniekly done. The leas fortunate women are those who have murdered their lovers or their children. In the latter case this . has often been done at their husband's instigation, because the baby was a girl, and as you know, Sir, a daughter is an expensive and useless encumbrance in the house of a poor Indian."

Presently we reached the Anriamanese settlement, where about a hundred tame aborigines live. They are the lowest type of mankind I have ever come across, and as the diseases which accompany civilization have infected them, as they do all aborigines, they are fast dying out. They are kept and looked after by the authorities, and manufacture queer implementa and knick-knacks for sale, but are confined to their own settlement, for were they to stray into the interior their untamed brothers who live in the jungles would kill them as surely as the wild sparrows would kill one which was loosed from a cage.

Half-an-hour's pull brought us to another island where convicts unguarded and working under a headman, also a convict, were felling trees. Captain Seymour here said to me : I told you just now that some of these murderers were men whom I am very sorry for, and I wish you would talk with Abdul Khan and hear his story. Come here, Abdul Khan, the General Sahib wants to hear your case, but don't buoy yourself up with hopes that he can help you, for to do so is out of his power."

Abdul -Khan, a tall Pathan, lithe as a cat, with brown hair and blue eyes, salaamed as he came towards the trunk on which I was seated, and said : "Long have I wished for the opportunity of telling my story to a high officer who will perhaps be able to represent my case to the War Lord at Simla, who may deign to speak to his brother the County Lord [Viceroy] about me. I was judged by civilians who were honourable gentlemen, but I am a fighting man as my ancestors have been for countless generations, and I only look on men of the sword as my peers, and it is by such that I want to be judged. It was only a few hundreds of yards on the wrong side of the frontier, and if I hadn't killed him he would have killed me. Is this a crime for which I, a man who can climb the hills as fast as an ibex, who has never killed a man unnecessarily, who loves the snows of my native land, and to whom freedom means as much as it does to the wild hawk, should be couped in this cursed place and made to work alongside low, cowardly Bengalis, who, in spite of the fact that they have tried to murder the Sahiblog's women and children, and that not one of their base race has ever died in your country's service, have received shorter terms of imprisonment than I have ? All my prayer is, Sahib, that, if I may not be released, I may at all events be allowed to join a regiment. and so have the chance of either dying like a man or of obtaining a pardon for having offended the Government by shooting a man who had strayed into British territory."

"But what is your story, Abdul Khan ? You haven't told me where you come from, and have only hinted at the crime for which you have been convicted. If you like to tell me your case I will listen to it carefully, though it is not at all likely that I can help you."

"Well, Sahib, it is at all events more pleasant to talk to a sympathetic listener like Your Highness than to match those bunglers felling trees, and so if I have your permission I will sit down and tell my tale from the beginning. 1 am a Zakha KM. My father had two sons, of whom I was the younger : my elder brother, Hassain Khan, had a piece of ground which he cultivated, and had a wife called Gulabi, a woman renowned for her beauty. She was a Durani, and of one of the Royal houses of Afghanistan. As the Sahib knows, there are five Royal houses, and the Amir is sometimes a member of one and sometimes of another, and the first duty of a new Amir on ascending the throne is to put to death all possible rivals; but women are not of much account in such matters. Suffice it to say that Gulabi was very beautiful; but let her name be for ever

accursed, for it is on account of her that I am now pining here. There were two brothers, Mir Wazir Ali Khan and Mir Mahomed Khan, who lived close together and not far from my brother, 'Husain Khan. As is implied by their names, they claimed to be descended from the Prophet. It so chanced that Mir Wazir

All Khan, the elder of the two, on more than one occasion saw

Gulabi drawing water, and the fire of love entered his heart. My brother had to go to Hindustan on business, and was away for five months. On his return he found that Gulabi had gone, and was living with Mir Wazir Ali Khan in his tower. My brother was able to purchase a rifle, but it was only a Snider,

which, as Your Highness knows, is a very inferior weapon, kicks hire a mule, and is very hard to shoot straight with but i6 was the beet he could get. He lay in wait outside Mir Wazir All Khan's tower, but got no chance until one morning he espied him coming home. There is a piece of open ground about a mile away, and over this he saw his enemy coming, carrying a long bundle in his arms. My brother was also in the open when he first saw him, but he was not certain whether he had himself been seen. Mir Wazir All Khan, however, walked to a big rock on the flat ground and sat down behind it, as if he intended to pray at the hour of the rising sun. My brother stalked round it and opened fire at his enemy's head at about five hundred yards. It then became evident that the bundle the latter was carrying contained a Martini-Henry, and after exchanging half-a-dozen rounds, my brother was shot through the head. The blood was now on me.

"I was at Agra when I heard the news, which was told me by a man of my tribe who lives in a neighbouring valley. According to our unwritten laws, I could not again hold up my head in myown country as an honourable man until I had revenged my brother and killed Mir Wazir All Khan, and, moreover, I could not live in any sort of safety until his brother, Mir Mahomed Khan, was also disposed of. The only alternative was to live as an exile in India, but this dishonourable course did not appeal to me. It was essential that, in order to do my business with any chance of success, I should be well armed and should obtain a Lee-Metford rifle. With such a weapon the chances would be all in my favour against Mir Wazir Ali Khan's Martini-Henry rifle. Although the price of a Lee-Metford if a Sahib want4 to buy one is only about 32 rupees, the price of such a weapon across the frontier was1,200 rupees, and this I had not got. I know that Your Highness will sympathize with me, and will not bring anything up against me which I tell in confidence, and it may interest you to know how I got the rifle. The obtaining of it meant to me more than life; it meant my honour. In the Agra Bazaar I bought fifty cartridges at a rupce each, and then went to Peshawar. It was the time of the year when the winter is ending that I got there and made friends with some of the Bhistis [water-carriers] of the soldiers of a British regilnent. These were men who did not come from England but from some other place close by—I think it is called Mande—and the Bhisti told me that on the day of their great saint they all got drunk, and that this would be a good day to get a rifle. I gave the Bhisti the last fifty rupees I had and he kept me informed. He showed me how the rifles were secured to the poles in the tents, and the best way of unfastening them. I waited until past midnight, crawled into a tent, and disengaged three rifles from the rack; but although I could have taken them all I only carried one away. I am not a thief, Your Highness, and the money for which I could have sold them was not my object, but my honour was at stake, and in order to retrieve that I was willing to steal a rifle, and rifle-stealing is after all a man's game. A sentry had three shots at me as I went out of camp, and a buckshot hit me in the calf of the leg. A hue and cry was raised, but the little wound did not stop me, and I'm a hard man to catch on the hills. By dawn I was over the frontier.

I did all I could to avoid places and persons I knew, but quietly purchased a fortnight's provisions and made my way to Mir Wazir All Khan's tower. In order to avoid notice I did not go by the direct mute. I hoped that my enemy would know nothing about my return and would fall an easy prey. I reached my destination on a moonlight night, and before dawn had taken up my position on some high ground about six hundred yards from the tower. I had no opportunity of taking sighting shots with my rifle, and I knew that he would know the distance of surrounding marks to a yard ; but with a Lee-Metford the exact distance is not so important as with a Martini, and had I fired to check distances he would have been alarmed and have been on the qui rive. At the break of day the false Gulabi, the cause of all this mischief, came out, but she was not game worthy of my first round. I waited expecting my enemy to come, but there was no sign of him, although I had received positive information that he was living in his tower. The sun moved high into the heavens, and still he did not come. Three days I watched through two big rocks and a bush, but there was no Mir Wazir Ali Khan; but early one morning, before it was light enough to draw a bead with my rifle, I thought I saw him entering the tower. Somebody must have recognized me and given him warning.

" Other tactics had to be adopted. Three hundred yards further from his tower there is a peak, and to this I went. Nine Lund:ail yards is a long range for good deadly shooting with a Martini, and I stood upand showed myself, shouting:'Mix Wazir All Khan should put on woman's pyjamas, for though he can betray a ficklewench he fears to leave his tower when a man is about.' I had not long to wait before a bullet pinged against a rock close to sue; this was followed by another and another. At the third I fell, but unhurt. I had • previously arranged my pugaree and coat so that they would look like the corpse of a man, and myself crawled by a concealed way to slightly more advantageous ground. Here I waited for several hours. At last Mir Wazir All Khan came towards me. He had, on leaving his tower, to come two hundred yards over the open. I waited until he was half-way across. My first shot was short ; he rushed back, but my second had him, and I filled him up with more. Gulabi saw what had happened, and a few minutes later I heard a thud—she was lying at the bottom of the tower with an Afghan knife through her heart. She was the cause of all this evil, but she was a Durani and had courage.

"On the morning on which this occurred I had seen a boy come to the tower and shortly afterwards depart, and on my enemy's body I found a lettervevidently brought by this boy from his brother, telling him where he was. No time was to be lost. I had either to kill Mir Mahomed Khan or he would kill me, for the blood was on him now, and I knew he was no coward. If I were to succeed, there was no one else to take up the feud on his behalf, and I should be safe. I made tracks as quickly as I could to Shahpur, the village from which Mir Mahomed Khan had written, and on the way passed the boy I had seen in the morning. It was a race, for the boy had probably heard the shooting and drawn his own conclusions, and if Mir Mahomed Khan was aware of what had happened my task would be immensely complicated. I knew that Shahpur was close to the border-line, but I did not know exactly where this ran. It -was the afternoon of the second day when I took up a commanding position just beyond the village. I had not waited half-an-hour before I saw my man. I drew a bead on him and the rifle went off. He fell dead, and the cursed race of the fathel of Mir Wazir All Khan was extirpated. I went to Shahpur as a man who could again smoke the hookah with honourable men.

"The next day the frontier police arrested me. They did not get my rifle, nor was I charged with stealing it. I was tried and convicted for murder because it was in British territory that this cursed fellow fell. In another two hundred yards he would

have been over the border and nothing would have been said. Is this a crime for which it is just to commit me to this purgatory ?

A great Sahib who remains a man of honour cannot consider that I committed a grave fault. How is it that these political agitators can stir up sedition and commit dastardly murders, and be very much more leniently treated than are we whose crimes are the crimes of men ? Is it true, as I have heard, that a new sort of Sahib now governs India, and that the great Lord Sahib takes advice from those who do not know the country, and who think that by this lenient treatment to Bengalis and Mahratts.s and by giving them authority they please the rest of India, whereas no power on earth would induce the men of the North to submit to their rule ? The Sahib has heard my story, and I will not detain him longer ; but I pray that the Lord Sahib when he hears the truth will grant me my release."—I am,

Sir, &c., T. D. FILCHER.