MURDERED.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18890, 4 January 1927, Page 4

MURDERED.

BY FIERCE ABORIGINES. GRIM FIGHT ON LUGGER. (raoii oob ow» cobmsposdmt.) SYDNEY, December 24. Despite the ever-incroaßing spread of settlement in Australia, there are still parts where the law of the wild rules and where men daily face violent death. No part is to uncivilised as that part of northern Australia fringing the Gulf of Carpentaria, where many tribes of aborigines are fierce and unafraid of white men. Illustration of this was afforded recently by a murderous attack on the Japanese captain of a pearling lugger, resulting in the death of the captain and one of his men. Details of- this outback tragedy were brought to Darwin by Mr Zakharrow,, an Anglo-Bussian oil expert, who has spent several years in those northern districts. He said that he was camped at Bickerton Island when a native boy informed him that a lugger was stranded on the rocks, and that a dead aboriginal was lying on the deck. Mr Zakharrow visited the scene, and found that the lugger showed evidence pf a gruesome fight. There were bloodstains everywhere about the vessel, and there I were human footprints in blood on the deck and on the canvas. Story of Tragedy. After questioning many natives, Mr Zakharrow was able to piece together the story of the tragedy. The assailants, four in number, were abori. ginal pirates, members of a tribe which specialise in attacking vessels which are in difficulties near the shore, or wanderers from ships. The Japanose captain of the lugger went ashore, leaving one native, a member of his crew, named Timbttck, on the ship. During his absence, the four pirates attacked the lugger, creeping on board from two Bides, armed with waddies. Timbuck evidently put up a desperate fight with a small axe, for the dead aboriginal on the deck, one of the pirates, had a frightful gash in his head and several gaping wounds in his body. Evidently Timbuck was then felled with an iron bar, in an attack from the rear, and his body was thrown overboard. Murder of Captain. . Meanwhile the Japanese captain was unaware of the tragedy on his ship, to which he innocently and leisurely returned. Two aboriginal members of his crew who were with him boarded the ship first, and were savagely attacked. During a runr.ing fight, the captain managed to scramble aboard the lugger, and went in the direction of his cabin to procure firearms. Two of the pirates attacked him with iron bars, but he parried the attack for a while, and used a coal shovel, inflicting cuts and bruises on both his enemies. The two men of his crew, having now only one man to deal with, escaped and fled. The remaining aboriginal, thus freed, joined in the assault on the captain, using a crowbar with fatal effect. The body of the Japanese was then thrown overboard. After looting the ship, the pirates took the lugger's dinghy and decamped. They would have taken the lugger, too, but their native superstition forbade them doing so while their dead mate, killed by Timbuck, was stretched out on deck, and their tribal custom prevented them from throwing his body overboard, as they had the others. It was in this neighbourhood, Caledon Bay, that persistent reports attributed the capture of women from the wrecked steamer Douglas Mawson.