Fear Drive My Feet (25 page)

‘Suits me all right. We'll have the milk of a green coconut to drink, too. I don't
fancy that water unless it's boiled.'

We squatted in the dark on the edge of the veranda and ate the rough meal in our
fingers. Then, stripping off our wet clothes, we rolled beneath mosquito-nets and
slept.

VII

I SEEMED HARDLY
to have fallen asleep when I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard
the soft, husky voice of Constable Nabura:

‘Master! Four o'clock! You-me go now.'

A grey light filled the village, and I thought for a moment that we had overslept
and that it was already morning. The watch, however, showed exactly four o'clock,
and we saw that the overcast sky and a slight misty rain had diffused the moonlight,
giving it the appearance of the dim light of early dawn.

We tossed the mosquito-nets aside, shivering slightly as we pulled on our damp boots
and clothes. The stillness was being broken by the grunts and yawns of sleepy men
as the police went from house to house rousing the carriers. Here and there flickering
lights appeared as almost-cold embers were blown into a blaze, and one by one the
men wandered over, yawning, rubbing their eyes, and hitching their loincloths about
their waists.

By the light of torches of flaming coconut-fronds the cargo was lined along the track
and a man told off for each load. Half a dozen women were coming with the party,
not only to carry food for their men but to help them with the carrying. Accompanied
by Kari and the luluai Les went along the line, checking each load and making sure
that it was securely fastened. Then, at the command ‘All right, walkabout!' the long
line of natives picked up their loads and headed north along the narrow track through
the kunai, towards the mountains.

We passed the last house of Chivasing and made our way between the tall rows of coconuts.
Two towering palms at the end of the row looked like gateposts against the grey-silver
sky. They were, in another sense, like a gate, for each time I crossed the Markham
on my way to the mountains I felt I had passed through a door into another life.
The door closed behind me, and the life on the far side of it was forgotten. The
whole universe seemed to be contracted to a few score native villages and their black
inhabitants.

We hoped to reach Sintagora village, in the Middle Erap, that night. There we would
be well into the hills, off the flat country, among a dense population where carriers
would be readily available, and whose foods were plentiful and easily purchased. This
first day's journey was the most hazardous, for in a few hours' time we would cross
the important foot-track which ran the whole length of the Markham Valley, and which
the Japanese were now using for increasingly frequent trips from Madang to Lae. We
would have to pass right through a place where they usually camped – namely, the
old Wawin rest-house, in peacetime a sort of half-way house for the patrol officer
making his way from Lae to the Upper Markham. The surrounding country was so flat
and devoid of cover that an enemy reconnaissance plane, or a sentry on one of the
low foothills, could scarcely fail to see us. Nabura and a couple of the local men
hurried ahead to the Wawin rest-house – if there were any signs of the enemy they
would return and warn us, otherwise they would wait at the junction till we arrived.

An hour or so out from Chivasing, in a hamlet comprising about a dozen houses, we
paused for a few moments to allow the stragglers to catch up. It would soon be daylight. Already
the darkness seemed to be less intense, and the drizzle of rain had ceased.

We had made a further mile or two on our northward journey when the sun rose, an
indistinct yellow blot in the grey sky, and the oppressive, steamy heat of the Markham
day began in earnest. At a quarter to seven Constable Nabura suddenly materialized
out of the bushes beside me.

‘Master, road belong Markham close to now!'

‘Japan 'e stop? You lookim leg belong 'en?' I asked.

There were quite a number of enemy footprints, he said, made by the well-known rubber
shoe with the heavy tread on the sole. None of the prints seemed to be very recent.

The two local men who had gone ahead with Nabura were immediately posted as sentries
on the road, one on either side of the junction.

By the time Nabura had finished his report Les had moved up, and I repeated swiftly
to him what the native had told me.

‘That's good. But I don't think we ought to stop here, do you?'

‘No. We ought to push on and cross the road, and keep going for at least an hour
before we have a spell.'

We called all the police together and told them they were to keep the line tight
and compact and allow no
straggling. We wanted to cross the danger spot as quickly
and inconspicuously as possible.

In close order, the line moved forward. From this point onwards there was no track
to Sintagora, and we either had to break our way across country through the kunai,
or follow the bed of the Wawin River. Deciding to go by the river, we plunged in
and began plodding upstream against the current. In the lower reaches we often sank
to our waists in the soft ooze, and had to be extricated by the boys. Higher up,
where the bed was more solid, fine gravel worked its way into our boots and socks,
chafing every inch of skin from our feet, which were softened – almost as if they
had been parboiled – by long immersion. In spite of these disadvantages it was an
excellent route for us under the circumstances, for we were walking in the bed of
the river some ten feet below the level of the plain, and were thus hidden from observers
on the ground, while the trees which lined the banks and overhung the water gave
perfect concealment from patrolling aircraft. Moreover, we left no tracks behind.

Shortly after midday Les came splashing up to me. ‘Do you notice how the banks are
increasing in height?'

‘Yes – it's almost a gorge we're getting into.'

‘You might say we're into the foothills, in fact. There are small tributary streams
coming in from the sides now.'

With every mile we advanced, the stream became more and more a mountain river, and
the valley walls grew higher and steeper, while the water became cooler on our legs.

About four o'clock the luluai and a couple of the older men held a brief conference,
and it was decided to leave the Wawin and follow one of the small tributaries which
joined it from the east. This stream rose up steeply, its bed rough and boulder-strewn.
Half an hour's climbing
brought us out on an open kunai spur, which we ascended
to the top of the ridge, and Sintagora came into view, a further half-hour's walk
round the ridge.

We had seen no Erap natives: unless they had spotted us earlier in the day our coming
would be a complete surprise to them. When we entered the village at sunset surprise
was hardly the word to express the looks on the faces of the people as they saw white
men and a long line of carriers approaching from that unexpected direction.

When they had recovered their composure, however, they proved to be friendly, and
showed us the way to the house-kiap and then helped the exhausted Chivasings with
their burdens.

Sintagora was a lovely place. It was, we estimated, a couple of thousand feet above
sea-level, and commanded a splendid view of the Markham Valley. We could just see
Salamaua across the blue waters of the Huon Gulf.

Scarcely had we asked for food when the open grassy space in front of the house-kiap
was filled with women carrying bilums of excellent sweet potatoes, bananas, and papaws.
Several natives ran up with English potatoes from the gardens.

It was too late for the Chivasings to return home – they were too tired to make the
journey, anyhow – so we bought a lot of food for them and asked the tultul of Sintagora
to see that they all found a place to sleep. We were tired too, after thirteen hours
on the track, and after a quick meal we turned in, rolling ourselves in three blankets,
so cool was the night, and not bothering about mosquito-nets, for there was no sign
of the pests.

Early next morning the Chivasing people assembled in front of the house-kiap and
were paid for their day's work. Each man received a shilling and a razor-blade, and
the women who had accompanied the line were each given
a strip of calico for a loincloth. These
were substantial presents in those days of scarcity, and the natives were delighted.
The luluai, too, came in for a little extra present, and with a smart salute he led
his people quickly away, to get as far as possible along the track before the sun
became hot.

We decided not to move farther that day, but to remain among the people, making friends
with them and learning all we could of enemy movements and propaganda. As far as
we could discover there had been no visits by the Japanese to the area, and the people
seemed to know very little about them. Of course, they knew that Lae and Salamaua
were in enemy hands, but that was the extent of their knowledge. We were uneasy when
they told us that a native mission teacher who was living in the vicinity had run
away into the bush and would not come to see us.

A lot more food was brought in during the morning, and we paid for it in salt, which
the people craved for. It was well that we had brought three big drums of it. The
slightest amount spilt on the ground was at once carefully scraped onto a leaf by
some thrifty mother and carried away as though it were a rare gem.

Les looked at the pile of native food with satisfaction.

‘It's good to see the food situation's O.K. I think we only brought one bag of rice
for our boys, didn't we?' he asked, drawing reflectively on his after-breakfast cigarette.

‘That's right – only one,' I replied. ‘It'll do for a while if we have to hole up
and remain hidden. We can all feed from it without having to approach the villages
for food.'

‘Not only that, of course – we may easily be forced into an uninhabited area where
we can't buy food anyhow.'

I spent the morning giving medical treatment to the natives of Sintagora and surrounding
villages. There were many bad cases of yaws. I treated the huge, sickening ulcers
by injecting an arsenical preparation. In a few days
this would dry up the open,
running sores as if by magic. The natives, no doubt, imagined that it was magic,
and elderly men who hadn't a sign of a sore presented themselves for a ‘shoot' –
not with the idea of having any disease cured, but to keep themselves strong and
virile. I suppose I gave a hundred injections that day, besides doing dozens of dressings
for tropical ulcers and minor wounds.

Towards evening Les set up the radio to test it for the first time. We were quite
tense with excitement as he called Port Moresby and then switched over to see if
we had been heard. The usefulness of the patrol depended entirely on effective radio
communications. If they failed we had taken the risk of coming to live in the mountains
for nothing.

The voice of the operator in Moresby was clear and loud: ‘You're coming through well,
old chap. Go ahead and pass your message.'

Les shot a quick, smiling glance of triumph at me, and then bent intently over his
Morse key. Although we could receive the powerful Port Moresby station clearly, the
transmitting power of our little set was so small that we had to send our messages
in Morse. Les tapped out a brief message, merely telling Moresby where we were, and
that all was quiet.

‘All O.K., AVL, all O.K. See you again,' replied the Moresby operator – thereby breaking
all formal rules of radio procedure.

The air was fresh and very cool when, with a sigh of contentment, we rolled into
bed. We were into the mountains; the natives seemed friendly; food was abundant;
our communications were in good order. What more could one ask? With a shout to Corporal
Kari to make sure a sentry was posted, we pulled the blankets about us and were asleep.

The next stage of our journey was to Fi, a village eight or ten miles north. We started
at dawn, with Sintagora people and men from all the surrounding settlements bearing
the cargo. The Erap, swinging round to the west, lay across our path, as formidable
a stream in the mountains as it was on the flat country. Assisted by the local men,
who knew almost every stone in its bed, we made the crossing without accident, clutching
a stout vine that was stretched from bank to bank. There could have been no more
dangerous enterprise than trying to cross this stream without the assistance of the
people who lived on its banks.

We were established in the house-kiap at Fi by two o'clock, before the afternoon
rain began. Our meal was prepared by Tauhu, the substitute cook, for we had sent
Dinkila on a visit to his home village of Bivoro, to pick up any gossip about the
Japanese. The alacrity with which he seized the opportunity to call at his home town
suggested to the other boys that he had a girlfriend there, and they made countless
ribald jests about it. Dinkila only gave a rather smug smile, which seemed to say:
You're jealous – you wish you were coming with me.

About four o'clock we set up the radio to hear the weekly talk in pidgin English. This
was designed as a propaganda service to natives, who could not, of course, speak
English. This day the talk was given by John Murphy, a leading expert in pidgin and
the author of the first pidgin dictionary with any claim to completeness.

Murphy's talk was listened to intently by our police and other boys, but the natives
of Fi gave it only a perfunctory hearing, and sat there without the slightest glimmer
of enthusiasm, or even understanding. No doubt these broadcasts had a certain value
in some areas, but as far as we were concerned they were a failure.