FIGHT WITH BRIGANDS.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12770, 11 February 1910, Page 4

FIGHT WITH BRIGANDS.

A band of brigands who attacked the railway station at Rosetti, a small Roumauiau town, got a reception they little expected. Choosing the hour of minight, they approached the station, which is desolately situated, and commenced imeir attack on the dwelling of the telegraph clerk, which stands some two hundred" yards from the station itself. This official possesses a terribly savage watchdog, but the brigands silenced it by throwing to it dead fowls stolen from the adjacent shed. TJien they proceeded to force an entrance by a back window, thinking they had an easy task, tho only inhabitants being the clerk and his wife. They reckoned, however, Without their host, for hardly had they begun to force the window when a door was thrown open and a shot from a rifle stretched one bandit dead. This threw the others into disorder. They rushed from the yard, the clerk following, but seeing he did not fire again (having recklessly advanced without reloading), they turned en him with the knives and axes with which they were armed, and for a moment his death seemed certain, when his courageous 3'oung wife ran forward and fired with a shot-guv with which she had armed hersolf, and another brigand fell wounded. Picking up their companion, the raiders, now fairly oowed, took to tlieir heels. The clerk and his wife, loading, followed tlioin, but unfortunately both fell in the dark, the band making their escape. Tlie gendarmerie have already arrested some members of the band. They havo confessed their complicity, and say that they threw their wounded comrade, still living, into a deep well, being afraid, if they left 'him, that he w«uld denounco them. The body has since been discovered.