Fear Drive My Feet (13 page)

Jock's anger flared high again. ‘The bastards! No comforts. That's all right – you
can't expect comforts on a job like this. No food. That's not too bad either – you
can always get hold of a bit of sweet potato or pumpkin or something, even if you
have to pinch it out of a native garden. But no radio! We'd do more good drinking
ourselves happily to death in a nice pub in Australia!'

He made one last effort. ‘How about trade goods? Did you manage to get a decent supply?'

‘Not much. I've got a few pounds of salt and a few dozen sticks of tobacco. There's
an odd newspaper or two, and that's the lot.'

Jock laughed, instead of raging as I had expected.

‘Well, we know the worst now,' he said. ‘No use worrying at this stage. It's only
when you've felt hopeful that you get wild like that. Let's talk about something
else.'

‘Tell me about Ian Downs,' I said. ‘Where is he now?'

‘I don't know exactly. He's somewhere in the mountains of the Momalili country,
having a rest. I reckon we can expect him back in a day or two. At least, I hope
so. There's one thing that's got me a bit worried, though.'

‘What's that?'

‘Well, there's a track that leads up from the coast between here and the Momalili
country. If the Nips get wise to it they might cut him off before he gets here.'

‘Do you reckon they will?'

‘I'm not really frightened about it. Up till now the bastards have stayed pretty
close to the coast and the main tracks. They aren't keen on the bush and the mountains.'

‘I don't know that I blame them,' I cut in. We both laughed.

‘No. They show more sense there than we do,' Jock said.

Until we saw Ian we could make no definite plans for the future, but Jock mentioned
several possible patrols that might yield valuable information. Jock himself was
keen to cross the Saruwaged Range over to the north coast, to see what was happening
there. As far as we knew, no white men had been there since the war started. Another
suggestion he made very much intrigued me: he said that the Japanese were holding
prisoner in a compound near Lae the whole peacetime Chinese population of the town.
They had been captured when Lae fell, and put behind barbed wire. From time to time
some of these Chinese – the tradesmen – were taken into Lae to do work for the Japanese.
It was certain therefore that they would have vital information about enemy installations,
the strength of the garrison, and the effects of our increasing air raids. However,
Jock thought that the sensation caused by Ian's appearance on the beach at Hopoi
would make the Japs very careful for a while, and it would be
much too dangerous
to attempt to visit the Chinese compound just now – for a few weeks, he thought.

At lunch, it did not surprise me when Jock's cook-boy produced porridge made from
crushed army biscuits. It was a common dish in those days when rations were short.
But at tea-time, when he brought more porridge and said that Master Jock always had
a dish of it, I was puzzled and asked Jock the reason. Surely no-one could like the
gluey stuff that much!

Jock laughed. ‘It's the only way I can eat those bloody slabs of concrete. I haven't
got any teeth of my own, and I lost my false ones over the side of a ship in Townsville.
You'd better tell the cook you don't want a side dish of porridge every meal yourself.
He probably thinks I have it so often because I like it.'

Jock had a few books with him, among them a cheap and battered edition of Winwood
Reade's
Martyrdom of Man
, which we dissected and discussed late into the night. When
we came to the passage which described religion as a force that commonly softens
the head and hardens the heart, Jock told me of some of his own peacetime experiences
with some of the missionaries. On one occasion he remonstrated with a missionary
who was making some sick natives work in a garden.

‘Mr McLeod, you do not understand!' retorted the indignant missionary. ‘We are not
interested in the miserable bodies of these people, but in saving their immortal
souls.'

All next day it rained. We sat on the floor, wrapped in blankets, our backs to the
little doorway so that the faint light would fall on our books. From another hut
a few yards away came the monotonous drone of a mouth-organ as one of Jock's police-boys
played ‘Auld Lang Syne' over and over again.

Late in the afternoon a native lad ran into the village through the gathering gloom
and rain and handed a wet,
crumpled scrap of paper through the doorway to Jock. It
was a note from Ian, saying simply that he had arrived at another hamlet about half
an hour's walk away, higher up the mountain, and was camping the night there in an
empty house. Jock at once rolled up his blanket and bed-sail and went to join him,
leaving me to arrange for the packing and carrying of all our gear next day.

Ian was squatting on the veranda of a little native house when I arrived. He seemed
fairly fit, though his legs were badly cut about. He was a stocky, fair-haired young
man. The old sea-boots into which his feet were thrust were one obvious relic of
his past years in the Navy.

We all crowded into the house to escape the cold wind. There was hardly room to move,
but we sat shoulder to shoulder, and plunged at once into a discussion of what we
should do. The many things to be considered, such as our lack of food, tenuous communications,
danger from Japanese patrols following Ian's betrayal at Hopoi, and so on, took some
time to discuss, and evening was approaching before we had worked out definite plans. What
we decided was this: Jock was to cross the Saruwaged Range and find out what was
happening on the north coast; Ian was to return to the Wain country, somewhere near
Boana Mission, and rest for a while; I was to return to Bob's with all speed, obtain
as much food and trade goods as possible, and rejoin Ian and Les Williams in the
Wain. For his journey over the range, Jock would take all the stores we now possessed,
and Ian would arrange by radio message to Australia for further supplies and a wireless
set to be dropped by plane on the north side for Jock. This meant that he would be
able to travel light on the difficult crossing, and take very few native carriers.

Accompanied by Buka I set out at first light next morning on the return journey to
the Markham. As Jock had taken over my stores I needed only a couple of men
from
the hamlet to carry my bed-roll and patrol-box. I intended to sleep at Bungalamba
that night, or, if we made particularly good time, to camp under one of the abandoned
houses at Dimini. Jock and Ian were still in camp. Because Ian could still travel
only slowly, they were going to make a leisurely day's walk of it to Samandzing.
Next day Jock would go to Bungalamba, there to start his journey across the mountains.
When I said goodbye they merely grunted, half asleep under the blankets, and turned
over to snore again.

As we wound our way up the tortuous track nearing Samandzing, Buka suddenly stopped
and pointed to a tiny figure far above, coming down the track towards us. Even with
the naked eye we could see that he wore the police-boy's peaked cap and was carrying
a rifle, and I whipped my binoculars from their case and focused them on the track
above.

‘Well, I think I know who it is,' I said. ‘See what you think.' I passed the glasses
to Buka.

At once a grin covered his broad black face. ‘Master, me savvy this-fella man! Achenmeri!'

We sat down at the side of the track to wait, wondering what news Achenmeri would
bring from Les.

When he came round the bend in the track about twenty minutes later, puffing and
blowing, Achenmeri told us that he had seen us from a distance, and that he had put
on a spurt to reach us quickly. He handed me a letter and flopped on the ground nearby
to recover his breath.

Les's letter said that the runner with the spare radio-parts had not arrived, and
that he himself was making a flying visit to the Tungu camp across the Markham, to
try to get the set working.

We had counted on Les's radio to send the message requesting the supply-dropping
for Jock, so I decided to
wait for Jock and Ian to see how Les's going to Tungu would
change our plans. We walked steadily on to Samandzing, where I set up house again
in the church, obtained food from the kanakas for the whole party, and had the billy
boiling for a mug of tea when Jock and Ian arrived about midday.

I stayed the night with them at Samandzing, and we slept side by side in the church.
The natives treated this larger party with more respect than they had shown me, but
they were still far from friendly. We posted a sentry to watch the village, and Jock
advised me always to do so in future.

‘You never can be too sure of these kanakas,' he said. ‘If they reckon the Japs have
won the war, they'll all be on their side, just as they abandoned the Germans to
come over to us thirty years ago.'

‘Would they change as quickly as all that?'

‘Why not? What chance would they have of resisting the Japs with bows and arrows?
Anyhow, all these years, some of the Lutheran missionaries haven't done anything
to make them loyal to the Australian government. The Germans used to boast openly
that the Australians would be chucked out of New Guinea. One of them actually told
me that Hitler would soon sweep through here like a fire. He didn't seem to care
a bit that I was a government officer.'

‘Why weren't the missionaries interned, or deported?'

‘God knows! Everyone here knew what was going on! Look, you'll hardly believe this:
right at the end, when the government just had to evacuate them, and the steamer
was pulling out of Lae, some fat-arsed fraus lined up at the ship's rail and heiled
Hitler!'

While Jock grumbled, Ian said nothing. He leant back in the shadows on his bed, eyes
nearly closed, with cigarette-smoke dribbling slowly from lips that turned slightly
in a half-sceptical smile. I looked at Jock's indig
nant face and back to Ian's expression
of doubt. Was this story about some of the missionaries true? I was to learn the
answer to this later.

The fact that Les had gone back across the Markham to Tungu caused only one slight
change in our plans. I was now to send Watute after Les to Tungu, carrying the radio
message arranging the dropping of supplies for Jock.

‘It'd be kinder not to take Watute across the range,' said Jock. ‘He's probably old
enough to be our father. He remembers when the Germans ran this joint. He can attach
himself to you when he's delivered the message, and then you'll have three police:
Buka, Watute, and Achenmeri – if you can call Achenmeri a policeman.'

We set out at dawn next day, stopping for a few moments while Watute rolled his blanket
and got ready. He grinned with pleasure at the idea of being on the move – life in
this miserable hamlet, perched up in the fog and cold winds, was uncongenial to his
old bones. The thought of warmer sun and lower altitudes brought a happy smile to
his wrinkled face as he trotted beside me down the steep track.

From the ruined village of Dimini we took the short cut down the river to Karangandoang. We
would be saved a day's walk, and would also avoid another meeting with the Kasenobe
kanakas, with their ostentatiously unfriendly bows and arrows. But the walk down
the Dimini stream was harder than we had expected, and for a long way we struggled
round steep cliffs or splashed knee-deep through the rushing, icy water.

For the rest of the journey I merely retraced my steps of a couple of weeks before
through Boana and Gain to Bivoro and across the Markham plain. From Bivoro, Watute
struck off across country to the south-west, to cross the Markham higher up and make
his way along the
Watut River to Ian and Les's base camp. He would then return to
the Wain country and join me, wherever I might be camping.

I slept the night in the house-kiap at Bivoro, and before dawn next day hid all my
gear except bed-roll and mosquito-net in the roof of the luluai's house. A bright,
mischievous-looking young man called Dinkila offered to carry the bed-roll to Bob's,
and I took him on, so the party which set out on the final stage numbered four, including
Buka and Achenmeri.

The most dangerous section of the journey lay in this final day from Bivoro to the
Markham. Gossip travels from one New Guinea village to the next as fast as it moves
across any suburban back fence, and native informers had probably told the Japanese
commander in Lae of our earlier trip up the Erap. This, coupled with Ian's sudden
appearance on the beach at Hopoi, might persuade him of the necessity to patrol all
the country surrounding his base; we might find a Japanese patrol sitting astride
the Erap, waiting to intercept any Australian party entering or leaving the mountains
by that route. The country was so flat and open that a vigilant enemy sentry would
certainly have no trouble spotting a large party. However, we hoped that our small
group would be able to slip through.

Buka led the way. He had left his uniform at Bivoro, and instead of a rifle was carrying
a hand-grenade in a little string dilly-bag at his side. We walked very fast, breaking
into a trot occasionally, just keeping Buka in view ahead of us. If he spotted danger
he was to put his hand on his head: we would then find what cover we could in the
grass.

The river was less swollen and did not hinder us as it had on the journey up, but
a tense moment came when we reached the Markham road. While we others hid,
breathless
and watchful, in the grass, Buka made a quick search up and down the track, looking
for enemy footprints. The grin that flashed across his shiny face told us that he
saw none. He beckoned us to follow, and we hurried on, hopeful now of reaching Bob's
safely. About two-thirty, tired, sweat-soaked, hungry, and thirsty, we pushed our
way out of the ooze and pit-pit grass of the Erap delta to the edge of the Markham.
I searched the low bank opposite through the glasses. Across the rushing, muddy water
we saw no smoke from the camp, nor any movement at the canoe landing. I fired the
prearranged three shots to summon the canoes, and looked again. There was still no
movement. I was going to fire once more, when the tiny figure of the sentry stepped
to the water's edge and waved. He had been studying us carefully before emerging
from the bushes. After some minutes the black specks of the crew could be seen launching
a canoe. They disappeared from time to time behind the islands, coming towards us
so slowly that I kept glancing over my shoulder, kicking at the ground in nervous
impatience, afraid that the Japs too might have heard the shots and would hurry
to attack us from behind, here at the end of our journey.