Although the general tone of the settlement is excellent, and good order is preserved, there are occasionally lapses among the convicts whose manners and dispositions are by no means mild and submissive, nor can their evil impulses be easily repressed, or still less entirely stamped out. The convict temper is irritable and breaks out often into resistance to authority and bitter quarrels of one with another which sometimes end in murderous affrays. There is a seamy side to Port Blair which is often shown in resistance to authority exercised, as it mostly is, by fellow convicts advanced to positions of trust; for some six per cent. of well-conducted convicts are regularly employed as warders, guards and overseers. This is in accordance with the general practice in India, although entirely condemned by modern penal science. Nevertheless, mutiny and insubordination are uncommon on any large scale, although vindictive feelings are aroused and cherished at real or fancied injustice and oppression, and in the annals of murders committed one or two convict officials killed by comrades figure annually.
The causes of murder in the Andamans hardly differ from those inciting to it elsewhere. Murderous passion is swiftly aroused among men with savage, irritable tempers, quick to quarrel, quicker still to strike; consuming thirst for revenge will be slaked only in blood; and greed and covetousness are easily awakened in people whose self-control is weak. A small reason often suffices for the infliction of death. A convict asked a village woman to be allowed to husk his rice in her mortar and killed her brutally with an axe when she refused. An old Dacoit, who had been refused permission to marry, killed a more fortunate rival to whom the woman of his choice was given. Two convicts, about to be granted tickets as self-supporters, were eager to obtain sufficient funds to give them a good start; they discovered that a convict, who was a notorious miser, had a secret hoard, and his fate was sealed. His body was picked up in a running stream with his head broken in. A somewhat similar case was that of a labouring convict who was in possession of a sum of money lent by a friend; he first was inveigled into a lonely spot and there knocked down by a blow on the eye, after which he was strangled. A convict employed as a petty officer in hospital incurred the deadly enmity of a patient for reporting him to the doctor, and the patient gave vent to his hatred by killing his enemy with a thrust of a pointed bamboo. The same weapon was used by another convict who beat out the brains of a petty officer for slapping him on parade in the presence of a hundred men. One convict had caught another hanging about the barrack room bent upon thieving, and having expressed his intention of denouncing him was murdered while asleep on his bed. A convict warder supervising a party of sail-makers had reason to find fault with one of his charges for idling, and at the first opportunity, before anyone had time to suspect or prevent him, the labourer picked up a knife and stabbed the overseer.