Cirrus@Austlit

Author's note: 'In the year 1866 I was living in Tasmania... I had gone there from Australia to edit the Hobart Town Fun... The position won me many friends and acquaintances, and I am not ashamed to own that some of them had once been convicts... One of my friends who was not of this class, but who considered himself as being in no way above it... had lived in the colony for twenty-nine years, having come out as a surgeon superintendent on board the convict ship Sterling Castle in the year 1837. To him I am indebted for many tales of the terrible old days, when the beautiful island was a penal settlement... I will now proceed to narrate one of these true stories; it is concerning a brave and noble boy who was condemned to fifteen years' penal servitude... for no graver fault than shooting a pigeon on a gentleman's private grounds.'

(From 'Introduction' to Stirring Tales of Colonial Adventure, 1894).