A RUSSIAN "SCARE" IN WEST AUSTRALIA.

Inangahua Times, Volume X, Issue 1562, 17 June 1885, Page 3

A RUSSIAN "SCARE" IN WEST AUSTRALIA.

The captain and crew ofH.M.S. Diamoud, which left Adelaide a week or so a*o with sealed orders, have succeeded" 3 in affording an immense amount of harmless amusement to the ftlacid Western Australians. lh« Diamond arrived at Kin? Georges Sound in full expectation that war had by that time been declared against Russia, and their suspicions were aroused by observing that the lights in the lighthouse were burning unusually low. The English warship extinguished her tamps, and six boats crews, armed to the teeth, were lowered, and swept through the waters with muffled oars towards th? supposed scene of the Russian surprise. I lie boat* dompletely surrounded the liglitlionse; and while the party advauced silently to the landing-place, the Other crews remained on th« watch, rea.ly to ; storm the place as soon as the signal was given. The gallant tars of the Diamond who had landed on the rocks perceived, in the dim twilight, an old man seated at the lighthouse door quietly smoking his evening pipe. Anxious to capture him without giving an alarm to the supposed Russian guard inside the building, the marines crept towards him on their hands and knees, and seized, gagged, and carried him to the boat. Their aged prisoner was interrogated by two of the officers in English, bnt he merely stared around upon his armed captors with every appearance of terror in his face, and answered never a word. The officers then tried him with French, next with the soft (1) tongue of Crerraany, and as a last desperate resource addressed him in the liquid (?) accents of Russia. Although they were ineffectual in elioiting a reply, the triglot torture resulted in sending the nnfortonate old man into a series of alarming fits, bo that it was feared he would expire in the arms of the gallant officer commanding the boats, who had experimented upon him with Russian. When at length the ship's surgeon had brought him to, and his companion had also been marched out of the lighthouse, it was discovered that the aged lisrht-keeper was a thoroughly loyal snbject of the Queen, but stone deaf. He had reciprocated the Diamond s mistake by imagining hat he had been captured by the Russians !