"You kill that black-fellow mother belonging to you?"

"Yes, master."

"Yes," Drysdale continued, "Bimbi went out with a police expedition
against his own tribe, and himself cut his own mother's head off. As a
race, as a family, the blacks have no loyalty. They will track their own
brothers down for the whites as ruthlessly as they track down the whites.
As a race they are treacherous and vile, though as individuals they may
have good points."

"No, Cadi," once more added Barlas, "we can get along very well without
your consolidated statutes or High Courts or Low Courts just yet. They
are too slow. Leave the black devils to us. You can never prove
anything against them in a court of law. We've tried that. Tribal
punishment is the only proper thing for individual crime. That is what
the nations practise in the islands of the South Seas. A trader or a
Government official is killed. Then a man-of-war sweeps a native village
out of existence with Hotchkiss guns. Cadi, we like you; but we say to
you, Go back to your cultivation-paddock at Brisbane, and marry a wife
and beget children before the Lord, and feed on the Government, and let
us work out our own salvation. We'll preserve British justice and the
statutes, too. . . . There, the damper, as Bimbi would say, is
'corbon budgery', and your chop is done to a turn, Cadi. And now let's
talk of something that doesn't leave a bad taste in the mouth."

The Cadi undoubtedly was more at home with reminiscences of nights at the
Queensland Club and moonlight picnics at lovely Humpy Bong and champagne
spreads in a Government launch than at dispensing law in the Carpentaria
district. And he had eager listeners. Drysdale's open-mouthed, admiring