Two months earlier, the makeshift prison near a trading post in the
colony had been stormed by a team of seven native men. Women and
children, of three villages' worth of wives and children of indentured
native labourers, had been interred in the prison as hostages. The five
guards on duty that night had had their necks twisted as the inmates
were stolen into the night. The local army garrison was called in and
within two hours the barges that transported the fugitives were
ambushed. In the kerfuffle, five of the conspirators, including the
ringleader, were apprehended. The next day, they would be shot.
At the colonial capital, the warden watched the ringleader. The
ringleader knew his sentence and that it would be before any trial, but
seemed indifferent to his fate. The warden threw him a smirk, unfurled
the day's papers that he had tucked away under his arm, and read the
headlines out to him.
"From the opinion columns: Jungle prison raid not justifiable by
law," he read. "Any threat to the harmony of the society in the Colony
must be swiftly and severely dealt with." Thousands of miles away,
respectable townspeople read the same columns and nodded to each other
in agreement, finding it easy enough to accept an image of
unscrupulous, thieving natives before getting on to their daily
business.
"This is criminality, pure and simple," interjected the ringleader. "did they remember to put that sentence into it?"
"This is criminality, pure and simple," opined the director of the
rubber trading company at the other end of the world, after hearing
news of the audacious prison break and pressured to give his comment to
the reporters. "It must be punished to serve as a warning to the
others, and reasonable policies instituted to prevent its relapse." His
audience murmured approvingly, happy that someone is out to speak the
truth.
The warden's eyes met the ringleader's, and they laughed. "Yes, they
did," replied the warden, as the rubber baron's comments were printed
on the adjoining page of the warden's papers. Later in the night, the
warden offered to join the ringleader in his last meal. They toasted
every criminal: every murderer, insurgent and malingerer that walked
under the sun, and proceeded to drown themselves in generous helpings
of liquor and sarcasm.
