HIGHWAY ROBBERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11229, 25 November 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

HIGHWAY ROBBERY.

A TRUE STORY FROM REAL LIFE. The Transvaal papers, which have just arrived in London, contain full accounts of one of the most daring attempts at highway robbery ever committed in the criminal annals of the Rand. Mr. E. W. Adeney, the secretary of the Consolidated Main Reef Gold Mining Company, was returning from his usual Saturday visit to Johannesburg with 'close upon £2000 in ;old in his possession, the salaries for the employees in the mine. Ho was travelling in » light Cape cart, sitting on the left of his driver, a Cape boy, and had almost reached the second railway crossing when suddenly five men with slouch hats crammed down over their eyes, and each nourishing a six-shooter, jumped out from a declivity where they had been awaiting tiie advent of the cart, and brusquely ordered the driver to stop, simultaneously surrounding the vehicle and grasping the horses by the reins. At the same instant a volley of revolver bullets, aimed at the secretary, whizzed through the air. He immediately returned the compliment by drawing his six-shooter, and fired into the crowd, while the coloured coachman pluckily whipped up the horses, and attempted to get away. At this moment the poor fellow, who was already wounded in threo different placcs about the legs and in the left foot, received two bullets in his left breast, just below the armpit, and, dropping the reins, collapsed and fell senseless backwards into the carriage. The whole of this tragedy had been enacted in rather less time than is required to describe it, and now Mr. Adeney, who had preserved the most courageous attitude throughout, pulled his unconscious servant up from the bottom of the trap, grasped the reins with his left hand, and his revolver in his right, and started the horses, firing meanwhile with deliberate aim at the ..-robbers and succeeding happily in hitting one, who fell with a gasp, and rolled 'down into the ditch. When the wounded desperado fell, his comrades appeared to realise that the situation had taken a serious turn, and ceasing to lire, they lifted their dying comrade into a cab waiting near by, and drove rapidly away towards town.