On 10th May, as I came to my office, I saw one of the Water Police at the door, and realised that the end had come. My mind naturally turned to drowning, and it was some time before the man made the mode of death clear to me. The place Bartie chose was on the shore of Long Bay, one of the arms of Middle Harbour. His body was found, suspended by the lash of his stockwhip from the limb of a tree, by a man engaged in clearing the bush for a proposed sewer. So secluded was the spot that he might otherwise have hung there for months.
At the coroner's inquest a verdict of suicide was returned. I was required to identify the body, which I could only do by the letters ‘F.E.B.’ (his mother's initials) tattooed on the left arm by Assimul, a black-boy from Noumea. The police handed me two library tickets found in a pocket. On the backs was written in pencil:—
Dear Father,—Write to Miss McKeahnie.—Your loving son, BARTIE.
Give ‘Jack Corrigan’ and ‘Featherstonhaugh’ to Mr. Archibald; he will pay you for them.
I did as desired, and had the body conveyed to the North Sydney cemetery, where it was buried.
Boake's suicide was an appeal to Death to end his hopelessness as Life had ended hope. For him, of course, the wisdom of the act was conditioned by the circumstances: he could no other than he did. I have already indicated what those circumstances were. A weak heart and sensitive brain brought him into the Debatable Land: tobacco led him to the edge of the precipice. The memory of the mock hanging at Rocklands was always tempting him to look down the dizzy depths. He looked and drew back; looked and drew back;—then, to aid the pressure of daily worries and the prepossessions of a lifetime came the blow to his lover's dreams, and, looking, he leaped.
