Explore "Red O'Shaughnessy" by J.H.M. Abbott on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A CONVICT constable conducted O'Shaughnessy from the gaol to the Commandant's house. Glumly morose he was, partly for the reason that he seemed to consider Captain Axthorpe's clemency to the defaulters a sign of lamentable weakness of government policy, and partly because of O'Shaughnessy's good fortune in having been chosen for the envied billet of "Commandant's Man."
"I tell ye wot, me Joker," he said as they walked across the isthmus, "this 'ere sort of carryin' on won't do no good--won't do no good at all. 'Im lettin' of 'em off like this won't make them coveys think any th' better o' th' Commandant, that it win't. 'E oughter've flogged th' tripes out o' them for a beginnin', jest to show 'em wot's wot, an' that 'e ain't no Mary Hann. Then they'd ha' respectit 'im proper. Now they won't give a damn for 'im, nor for us neither. An' wot th' 'ell does 'e go a-pickin' you hout for to make ye 'is horderly? Ain't you th' cove was brung in from Port Stephens be th' blackfellers?"