He had entered a house about eight in the morning,forced a trunk,and stolen eleven hundred francs;and now,under the horrors of darkness,solitude,and a bedevilled cannibal imagination,he was reluctantly confessing and giving up his spoil.From one cache,which he had already pointed out,three hundred francs had been recovered,and it was expected that he would presently disgorge the rest.This would be ugly enough if it were all;but I am bound to say,because it is a matter the French should set at rest,that worse is continually hinted.I heard that one man was kept six days with his arms bound backward round a barrel;and it is the universal report that every gendarme in the South Seas is equipped with something in the nature of a thumbscrew.I do not know this.
I never had the face to ask any of the gendarmes -pleasant,intelligent,and kindly fellows -with whom I have been intimate,and whose hospitality I have enjoyed;and perhaps the tale reposes (as I hope it does)on a misconstruction of that ingenious cat's-cradle with which the French agent of police so readily secures a prisoner.But whether physical or moral,torture is certainly employed;and by a barbarous injustice,the state of accusation (in which a man may very well be innocently placed)is positively painful;the state of conviction (in which all are supposed guilty)is comparatively free,and positively pleasant.Perhaps worse still,-not only the accused,but sometimes his wife,his mistress,or his friend,is subjected to the same hardships.I was admiring,in the tapu system,the ingenuity of native methods of detection;there is not much to admire in those of the French,and to lock up a timid child in a dark room,and,if he proved obstinate,lock up his sister in the next,is neither novel nor humane.