On one point Mr Povondra was mistaken: the skirmish at Kankesanturai was not the first clash between humans and Newts. The first recorded conflict occurred several years earlier on the Cocos Islands, in the good old days of pirate raids on the salamanders. But even that was not the earliest incident of its kind: in the Pacific ports there had been a good deal of talk of certain regrettable occurrences when the Newts had put up some sort of active resistance even to the regular S-Trade - but then history does not concern itself with such trifles.
The business on the Cocos or Keeling Islands happened like this. The raiding ship Montrose of the well-known Harriman Pacific Trade Company under Captain James Lindley arrived there on its regular hunt for Newts of the so-called Macaroni type. There was a well-known and rich Newt colony in a bay of the Cocos Islands, established at the time by Captain van Toch but, because of its remote situation, was abandoned, as the saying is, to the care of the Good Lord. No one could accuse Captain Lindley of having been in any way negligent, not even in allowing his crew to go ashore unarmed. (The point is that by then the piratical Newt trade had acquired its regularised form. It is true, of course, that in the early days corsair ships and their crews had been armed with machine-guns, and indeed with field guns, not against the salamanders but against unfair competition from other pirates. On Karakelong Island, a landing party from a Harriman steamship had on one occasion clashed with the crew of a Danish ship whose captain had regarded Karakelong as his hunting ground; on that occasion both parties had settled their old scores, and more particularly their prestige and commercial differences by forgetting the Newt hunt and instead opening up at each other with their rifles and Hotchkisses. The Danes had won on land by making a knife charge, but the Harriman steamship had subsequently fired her guns at the Danish ship and succeeded in sinking her with all hands, complete with Captain Niels. That became known as the Karakelong incident. The authorities and governments of the two countries had to intervene at that time, and pirate ships were henceforward forbidden to use heavy guns, machine-guns or hand-grenades. Moreover, the pirate companies divided the so-called free hunting grounds amongst themselves in such a way that each locality was visited by one particular pirate ship only. That gentleman’s agreement between the big pirates was actually kept and was respected also by lesser piratical entrepreneurs.) But to return to Captain Lindley. He was acting entirely in the spirit of the customary commercial and naval conventions of his day when he sent his men ashore on the Cocos Islands to hunt for Newts armed only with clubs and oars. Indeed the subsequent inquiry fully exonerated the dead captain.
The landing party which went ashore on the Cocos Islands that moonlit night was commanded by Lieutenant Eddie McCarth, a man with experience of this kind of hunt. It is true that the crowd of Newts he encountered on the shore was unusually large - according to estimates some six or seven hundred strong adult males, whereas he only had sixteen men under his command. But no one can blame him for not abandoning his enterprise, if only because officers and crew of private vessels were customarily paid bonuses based on the number of captured Newts. In their subsequent inquiry the naval authorities found that ‘while Lieutenant McCarth must be held responsible for the unfortunate incident, no one would have acted differently in the given circumstances’. The unfortunate young officer actually displayed considerable prudence in not proceeding with the usual gradual encirclement of the Newts - which in view of the numerical ratio could not have been complete anyway - but instead ordering a sudden charge with the objective of cutting the Newts off from the sea, forcing them towards the centre of the island, and stunning them one by one with their clubs and oars. Unfortunately in the course of the charge the line-abreast of the sailors was broken and nearly two hundred salamanders escaped into the sea. Just as the raiding party was belabouring the Newts it had cut off from the sea the sharp cracks of submarine pistols (the shark guns) rang out at their backs: no one had suspected that these natural wild Newts of the Keeling Islands had been equipped with anti-shark pistols, and it was never discovered who had in fact supplied these weapons to them.
Michael Kelly, a young sailor who survived the whole catastrophe, related: ‘When the firing started we thought that another crew was shooting at us, someone who had also come to hunt for Newts. Lieutenant McCarth immediately turned about and yelled: “What the hell d’you think you’re doing, you idiots, this is the Montrose crew!” Just then he was hit in the hip but he managed to draw his revolver and started firing. Then he stopped another, in the neck, and fell. So Long Steve picked up an oar and charged the Newts, shouting Montrose! Montrose! The rest of us also yelled Montrose and battered the brutes with our oars as best we could. We left about five of our lot lying there, but the rest of us made it to the water. Long Steve jumped in and started wading out to the boat; but several Newts clung to him and dragged him under. They also drowned Charlie; he screamed to us, “For Christ’s sake, boys, don’t let them have me,” but there was nothing we could do for him. Those bastards fired at our backs. Bodkin turned round and got it in his belly; all he said was, “Not that,” and fell. So we tried to get back into the interior of the island: but we’d smashed our oars and clubs against those brutes and we were just running like rabbits. By then there were only four of us left. We were afraid to get too far away from the shore in case we couldn’t regain our ship; so we hid behind the rocks and bushes and had to watch the Newts finishing off our mates. They drowned them in the water like kittens, and if someone still tried to swim they bashed his head in with crowbars. It was only then that I noticed I had dislocated my foot and that I couldn’t move.’
It appears that Captain James Lindley, who had stayed behind on board the Montrose, heard the firing on the island. Whether he thought there had been a clash with the natives, or that some other Newt merchants were ashore, he grabbed the ship’s cook and two engine-room men - that was all the crew that was left - got them to load the remaining boat with a machine-gun which he had providentially, if against strict orders, hidden away on his ship and set out to help his crew. He was careful enough not to step on land but brought the boat close in, with the machine-gun ready in its bow, and stood up ‘with arms folded’. Let us hand over again to young seaman Kelly.
‘We didn’t want to call out to the captain because we didn’t want the Newts to discover us. Mr Lindley was standing in the boat, arms folded, and called out: “What’s going on here?” Then the Newts turned towards him. There were a few hundred of them on the shore, and more and more were swimming in from the sea and encircling the boat. “What’s going on here?” the captain asked, and one big Newt then came closer to him and said: “Go back!”
The captain looked at him, for a while he didn’t say anything and then he asked: “You’re a Newt?”
“We are Newts,” said that Newt. “Go back, sir!”
“I want to know what you’ve done to my men,” our Old Man said.
“They shouldn’t have attacked us,” said the Newt. “Go back to your ship, sir!’
Again the captain was silent for a little while, and then he said quite calmly. “That’s it, then. Jenkins, fire!”
And Jenkins, the engine-room man, began to fire his machine-gun at the Newts.’
(In the subsequent inquiry into the whole incident the naval authorities declared literally: ‘In that respect Captain James Lindley acted in the manner expected of a British naval man.’)
‘The Newts were all bunched up,’ Kelly’s account continued; ‘so they were mowed down like corn. A few of them fired their pistols at Mr Lindley but he just stood with his arms folded and didn’t even move. Just then a black Newt surfaced from the water behind the boat: he was holding something in one hand like a food tin, with his other hand he ripped something off and dropped it in the water under the boat. Before you could count five a column of water rose up at that spot and there was a muffled but powerful explosion that made the ground rock under our feet.’
(The inquiry officials concluded from Kelly’s account that the explosive must have been W-3, an explosive supplied to the Newts working on the fortifications of Singapore for breaking up rocks under the water. But how those charges got from the Newts there to those at the Cocos Islands remained a mystery; some people speculated that they must have been shipped there by people, others believed that even then the Newts must have had some kind of long-distance communications amongst themselves. Public opinion called for a ban on supplying the Newts with such dangerous explosive substances, but the competent authorities declared that it was impossible for the moment to replace W-3, ‘a highly effective and comparatively safe’ explosive, with any other. And that was the end of the matter.)
‘The boat went up in the air,’ Kelly’s testimony continued, ‘in smithereens. Those Newts who were still alive crowded round the spot. We could not make out if Mr Lindley was still alive, but my three mates - Donovan, Burke and Kennedy - jumped up and raced down to help him, so he shouldn’t fall into the hands of the Newts. I tried to run too, but my ankle was dislocated, so I sat down and pulled my foot with both hands to get those joints together again. So I don’t know what happened at that moment, but when I looked up Kennedy was lying face down in the sand, and of Donovan and Burke there wasn’t a trace - only some swirling under the water.’
Young Kelly then fled further into the island until he found a native village; but the natives acted oddly and did not even want to give him shelter. They were probably scared of the Newts. Seven weeks later a fishing boat found the completely looted and abandoned Montrose anchored off the Cocos Islands and rescued Kelly.
A few weeks later His Britannic Majesty’s gunboat Fireball sailed up to the Cocos Islands and, riding at anchor, awaited darkness. The night was again brilliant with a full moon. The Newts emerged from the sea, sat round in a large circle on the sandy foreshore and began their ceremonial dance. At that moment His Majesty’s Ship Fireball fired the first shrapnel into their midst. The Newts, those that were not torn to pieces, were stunned for a moment and than began to run towards the sea; at that moment a terrifying salvo from six guns rang out and only a few mutilated salamanders were able to crawl back to the water. Then a second and third salvo cracked out.
H M S Fireball thereupon stood off half a mile and, moving slowly along the coast, began to fire into the water. This went on for six hours and some 800 rounds were fired. The Fireball then sailed away. Even two days afterwards the surface of the sea off the Keeling Islands was still covered with thousands and thousands of dismembered Newts.
The same night the Dutch battleship Van Dijck fired three rounds into a crowd of Newts on the little island of Goenong Api; the Japanese cruiser Hakodate sent three shells on to the Newt island of Ailinglaplap; the French gunboat Bechamel scattered some dancing Newts on Rawaiwai Island with three salvoes. This was a warning to the Newts. It did not go unheeded: no similar incident (this one was called the ‘Keeling killing’) ever happened again, and both the regular and the illicit Newt trade was able to flourish undisturbed and as profitably as before.