Fear Drive My Feet (24 page)

Early next morning we sent Kari to Chivasing, several miles upstream on the other
side of the river. He had often been there when he was in charge of the police at
Bob's, under John Clarke, and he knew some of the villagers. We expected him back
the next day, but he did not turn up. The morning of the following day advanced and
there was still no sign of him. We became more and more anxious.

We discussed possible reasons for Kari's non-appearance. Like all the Manus people
he was a powerful swimmer, so there seemed little likelihood of his having been drowned
when crossing the river.

‘There's only two things could have gone wrong, Les,' I said as we squatted at the
water's edge. ‘He may have been taken by a crocodile, or the Nips may have grabbed
him.'

‘Pretty crook alternatives for Kari,' Les replied grimly. ‘We'd better watch out,
in case he has been captured – the
bastards might have forced him to give us away.
You know their form with prisoners.'

I called for Watute, who was second in command of the police.

‘Tell the boys not to move away from the camp without their arms, and post two sentries
on the track and on the riverbank instead of one,' I told him.

‘Yes, sir – me talkim all boy look-out good long Japan,' he replied with impassive
face, and a few moments later his voice came across the clearing as he called his
orders to the others.

About midday there was a loud shout from the riverbank, and we hurried down to the
spot where Watute had posted a man in a tree so as to command a better view of the
surrounding country.

‘What is it? What's happening?' we asked.

‘You hearim master 'e talk!' Watute snapped to the boy above. ‘You lookim wonem something?'

‘Master, plenty man 'e come. All 'e come long water.' Les scrambled up the tree beside
him and pulled out his binoculars.

‘There's a hell of a lot of people drifting down the river hanging onto logs,' he
announced after a few moments. ‘As far as I can see they are all natives.'

We ordered the boys to stand to. Not only the police, but the cooks and every other
native member of the party were armed, so we had in all quite a respectable little
force. Nevertheless, five minutes later we breathed a sigh of relief when Kari stepped
ashore, wringing the water from his loincloth, to tell us that seventy natives from
Chivasing and the nearby village of Teraran were accompanying him, and that the
luluai of Chivasing had come to ‘boss' the men. Though the danger from crocodiles
was great, they had made the journey downstream in the usual
Markham way – gripping
a log or plank and floating with the current.

Kari tossed his rifle to one of the police to clean the muddy Markham water out of
it. He then explained the reason for the delay. It had taken him some time to assemble
the men, he told us, for in these troubled times most of them were living in houses
widely scattered among the gardens. He had found that there were not enough natives
to cope with all our gear, and there were further delays while he sent a message
to Teraran asking for extra assistance.

We interrupted the luluai to give him a couple of dozen sticks of tobacco and some
newspaper to distribute, so that each man received a smoke for the road. Then he told
us how he proposed to transfer our party and gear across the river. We were to move
that afternoon to a little group of rough shelters a few miles upstream, and spend
the night there. In the morning he would arrange for the construction of rafts to
take us over the river. We felt that to have to spend another night on the south bank
of the river was not only irritating but dangerous: we were most anxious to get out
of the flat country, where we might at any time encounter a Japanese patrol from
Madang or Lae. But there was nothing we could do but accept the luluai's suggestion.

We asked Kari what he thought of the general attitude of the people. Could they
be trusted? He replied that they had probably been telling the truth when they said
there were no enemy patrols in the vicinity, but he thought we should take no risks.

The walk to the shelters took till almost sunset. There was no track, and we had to
crash through kunai and jungle, from time to time splashing through the shallow
water at the edge of the stream. We passed many gardens and many clumps of bananas.
Several rough houses belonged to the Chivasing people, we were told. They spent a
good
deal of their time on the south bank of the river, we were surprised to hear.
This would be unwelcome news for the district officer, who had planned to keep the
area between the Watut and Wampit rivers an uninhabited no-man's land.

The huts where we were to spend the night were just rough thatch-covered platforms,
dirty and rather smelly, standing a couple of hundred yards from one arm of the Markham
on a low-lying piece of ground which looked as though it would be inundated during
the wet season.

Upon our arrival the luluai announced that he and his people would go back across
the river to Chivasing for the night and return in the morning. Les and I discussed
this with Kari and Watute, and finally agreed to let them go provided a couple of
his men remained with us. The word ‘hostage' was not actually mentioned, but the
old man knew well enough what we were getting at, and selected two men to stay. They
were so ready to remain in our camp that we felt sure the natives were not contemplating
any treachery. They seemed pleased at their luck – looking forward, no doubt, to
a good feed of tinned meat and plenty of smokes at our expense. When the luluai started
off home with the rest of his people Kari and Constable Witolo were sent with them,
to sleep in the village and keep an eye on things generally, and to make sure that
they really did return.

The only water came from the Markham, and when dipped from the river in a billy it
was so charged with silt that it resembled porridge. The natives drank it unconcernedly,
though they admitted that it sometimes made their throats sore. In spite of our raging
thirst Les and I waited for about an hour while half an inch of mud settled on the
bottom of the billy, and then we carefully transferred the somewhat clearer water
to another billy, to be boiled for tea.

There was a steady breeze, and the night was cool and almost free from mosquitoes.
We sat for a couple of hours round the fire, smoking our pipes and yarning to the
police, who kept us in gales of laughter with Rabelaisian tales of their experiences.
These were mostly lies, no doubt, but it was all good fun, and each strained his
imagination to outdo the others. By eleven o'clock a faint silvery light reflected
from the few scattered clouds indicated that the moon would soon rise, and Les and
I turned in. But the story-telling went on, in a lower tone – and probably continued
most of the night, but we were not awake to hear it.

It was midday before the luluai returned, accompanied by about thirty men carrying
great lengths of vine which they had cut in the bush earlier that day. Under the
luluai's supervision, they started making four rafts, which he said would carry all
our gear. They cut down banana-plants for the job. No doubt the cellular inside of
the banana-palm makes it very buoyant, but to us it seemed a waste, for the hard
cooking banana is one of the staple foods of these people.

Eight or ten banana-plants, laid side by side and lashed with vine, formed the main
body of the raft. Several short, very thick logs were then laid crosswise over it,
and a rough platform of smaller poles was built on top of them. The solid lower part,
made of banana-palms, would be under water, while the platform of poles would keep
our gear high and dry. Such at least was the theory of it, but when the cargo was
piled aboard, all the lowest things were awash. It was just as well they were all
more or less impervious to water – our iron patrol-boxes and cases of meat – not
the radio set or our blankets.

Four of our boys could not swim at all, so we ordered one to board each raft. This
extra load settled the
rafts even deeper into the water, and we asked the luluai
anxiously whether they were safe. He dismissed our foolish fears with an airy wave
of the hand. Hadn't he been arranging this sort of thing for years and years? That
was true, but we felt far from happy about those four extraordinary craft moored
to the bank by vines and stakes. This was only a minor channel of the mighty Markham,
yet even here the current was plucking at them as though eager to hurl them away
to destruction.

By the time loading was complete the sun was getting low and the luluai wished to
start. However, there had recently been great activity by a slow, old-fashioned Japanese
observation-plane known to the troops as Photo Joe, and so we waited till almost
dusk, when there would be less chance of being spotted if Photo Joe happened to be
on the prowl.

Finally, about five o'clock, we pushed off. The four boys on the rafts had Owen sub-machine-guns
across their knees, for they would be the only ones able to shoot if there were trouble.
The strong swimmers of the party plunged gaily in, each pushing a log in front of
him for support. Those of us whose swimming was nothing to boast of – this included
Les and myself – clung to the sides of the rafts, to be carried along as the Chivasing
boys pushed and hauled and strained. All the hazards of a sea voyage were to be had
in a trip across this incredible stream – reefs, islands, currents, waves, and sand-banks
– any one of which might have wrecked us. Our method of progress was much the same
as that used by the canoe-boys at Kirkland's – across to the first island, haul the
raft upstream to the top of the island, then off into the current of the second channel.
After three such operations we were into the last and largest stream, and the real
north bank of the Markham came into view.

‘Master, me lookim Kari now Witolo!' called one of the boys from his raft.

‘True! Two-fella 'e wait long you me!' another cried from his vantage-point on top
of the cargo. They waved and called to Kari and Witolo, who were waiting at the water's
edge about three hundred yards downstream.

The bank seemed to be flying past at a terrific rate, and the boys grunted and panted
as, pushing with one arm and swimming with the other, they strove to force their
reluctant craft across into slacker water. Les and I, no longer merely passengers,
threw our weight into the struggle. Inch by inch we drew nearer to the shore, until
the men who were standing with Kari and Witolo were able to throw out long vine ropes
and haul us to dry land.

Stepping ashore, we found our pockets, socks, and boots full of silt and gravel drifted
in by the river, and our tempers were not improved by the sight of several tall canoe
masts showing above the kunai. It seemed that these people had canoes after all!
We called upon the luluai to explain.

‘Ah, they are very old canoes!' he said glibly. ‘They could not possibly be used
to make a crossing of the river.'

But Watute, sent to investigate, reported that the canoes were in perfect condition,
some of them new. They were partly concealed in a small backwater, and this had caused
the illusion that their masts were rising out of the kunai.

Confronted with this, the luluai was silent, and with downcast gaze curled his toes
up in the dust with embarrassment.

We were furious that all our gear should have been entrusted to those crazy rafts,
and we had had such an uncomfortable crossing, when it all might have been accomplished
with speed, safety, and comfort. However, we restrained our anger, for we dared not
antagonize the
people, or they would refuse to carry for us next day. With a few
general remarks expressing our low opinion of liars, we moved off up the path to
the village, followed by the people carrying our cargo. The motive in concealing
the canoes was plain enough of course: they had grown tired of maintaining the ‘ferry
service' at Kirkland's, and now that it had been discontinued they sought to prevent
its re-establishment by hiding the canoes.

Chivasing, with a population of about five hundred, was built on a strip of slightly
rising ground about a mile from the river. Round about the village the people had
planted thriving coconut-groves, which supplied them with much of their food, fuel,
and building material. The houses stood in lines, radiating, like the spokes of a
wheel, from a large open space worn bare and smooth by the passage of many feet.
They were well built, designed for this hot region with the rooms well above ground
and largely open at the sides. These neat dwellings were another example of the mastery
over their environment achieved by these ‘backward' people. I remembered the reflection
of Joseph Conrad, looking for the first time upon the Bangkok of his day, that in
all the habitations he saw in that city ‘there was probably not half a dozen pounds
of nails'.

As soon as we had found a house to sleep in, and seen the gear safely stacked beneath
it, I had a look round the village, though it was now nearly dark. I always studied
the surroundings of a new camp – a precaution that saved my life, a couple of months
later, in this very village. A broad, clear creek, from which the villagers drew
their water, flowed across the north end of the clearing. The farther bank was covered
with dense jungle and vines.

As there would be a moon shining in the early hours of the morning we decided not
to wait for sunrise but to
leave at about four-thirty. The luluai was told, and we
arranged for the sentry to call him in the morning.

‘Do you reckon it's worth unpacking the cooking gear for a meal?' Les asked.

‘I don't think so. What about just having a tin of bully beef and some biscuits?'