Daily Life on Table Island. 405 



any moment they choose, as they were all armed and 

 I but seldom, and then only when out shooting, but 

 that they would be no gainers, for there were many 

 who would willingly take my place and treat them 

 far worse than I did. I fed them liberally ; each 

 man's rations, including even a little tobacco, were 

 issued daily. Each man had an allotted task, not too 

 heavy and just sufficient to keep him in health, and 

 directly that was completed he had the rest of the 

 day to himself, and as there were no means of escape 

 from Table Island, they wandered where they pleased, 

 supplementing their rations by rats which they 

 caught in traps, and by fish which they caught, some- 

 times in trawl-nets (of which I had taken a couple), 

 but principally by torchlight. When the high tides 

 set in Slipper Island would be separated by a shallow 

 strait in which thousands of mullets used to come. 

 I tried to catch them by stretching a net across, but 

 the fish, as soon as they discovered what it was, used 

 to leap over it, and I took to shooting them flying ! 

 There were many varieties of fish of every kind, and 

 many of these most gorgeous. A common one, no use 

 for food, was the sea porcupine, which inflates itself 

 like a balloon ; one extraordinary fish we got, had 

 three distant hooks in its tail ! The shoots of the 

 bamboo, and a growth near the crown of a palm tree, 

 commonly called a cabbage, when cooked are not 

 only very good eating but nutritious. During my 

 first season everything went perfectly smoothly. We 

 got to know the men and the convicts became used 

 to us ; I scarcely had to strike a single man. The 

 Madrassies gave far more trouble than the other 

 races, though the latter were, to a man, in for crimes of 



