Fear Drive My Feet (35 page)

We decided it was no use trying to move farther, when nobody could do better than
drag himself painfully round the village. The best thing was to stay a while and
recruit both our strength and our morale. There was plenty of food about, so we bought
a very large pig and
decided to have a barbecue that night. This helped a lot, and
there was a perceptible lift in spirits as soon as the pig's expiring squeals were
heard.

The tultul of Worin – whose name, to my sorrow, I have forgotten – was a most remarkable
man, and we spent the day sitting under one of the houses talking to him. He had
for some years been a cook for Leigh Vial, the first patrol officer to penetrate
this area, and upon his return home he had been made tultul. He was a person of great
strength of character. He told us that mission teachers had been pestering him to
get rid of the village book and his official hat, but he had steadfastly refused
to do so. Indeed, his was the only village on the north side of the Saruwageds where
the book and hat could be produced at our request. In spite of all discouragements
he had endeavoured to acquaint his people with the ways of the government, and had
taught several of his relatives to speak pidgin, though none of them had ever left
the village. He would have liked to come with us to meet Leigh Vial again, whom he
obviously admired almost to the point of hero-worship, but the tultul was now a married
man with a family, and could not leave. However, he asked if we would take his younger
brother with us, for the boy was very anxious to see something of the world beyond
his own valley. Les and I discussed this but decided against taking the young fellow,
for there was a good chance that before we reached Wampit again we should come in
contact with enemy patrols, and we did not think it fair to take him into danger.

Vial was our ‘contact man' in Port Moresby, and we could scarcely have had anyone
more co-operative. Having worked in the bush himself in circumstances of fantastic
danger, as the famous ‘Golden Voice' behind Jap-occupied Salamaua, he knew how much
it meant to
us to have our signals answered promptly, and to feel that there was
someone who would give us help and support wherever possible. It was he, for instance,
who had arranged the strafing of Boana Mission. (When finally, some months later,
I reached the comparative civilization of Port Moresby, I learnt of a curiously ironic
and tragic coincidence: almost at the very moment when we were talking to the tultul
of Worin, Vial himself was out on a leaflet dropping flight not far away. His plane
crashed into a nearby valley and everyone aboard was killed. We wondered why we
no longer heard from him by radio. Quiet, capable, unobtrusive, he was one of the
greatest heroes of New Guinea.)

Late in the afternoon, while the pig was being prepared for the fire, we tried to
send a message to Port Moresby informing them of our position and asking for any
information that might be available about enemy movements in the surrounding country.
At first we had some difficulty in passing the message and receiving the signals
from Moresby but the trouble was only a flat battery, which was easily changed. Afterwards
we heard some of the police discussing this failure to hear the ‘talk', and were
very amused at their theories:

‘I suppose it's because we are too deep in the valley for the talk to get down to
us,' one said.

‘That isn't the reason,' another replied. ‘It's because those high trees up on the
mountain won't let the talk past.'

A third boy staggered them all with his superior knowledge. ‘If you knew anything
about wireless, you would have noticed that the wind was blowing the wrong way. How
can the talk get all this way from Port Moresby if the wind is against it?'

Afterwards, whenever I built a new post, I put the house-police close to the house-kiap,
for it was lots of fun
at night-time to listen to the conversation, which was usually
dominated by the ‘old soldiers' telling extravagant lies about their deeds in the
peacetime police force before the war spoilt things.

Feeling much refreshed by our day's rest, we left Worin about seven o'clock next
morning, and at about eleven reached the village of Moren. There was a fine church
here, but all the natives had run away, so after a short spell we followed the track
down into the deep gorge of the Uruwa River, where our tultul said there was a bridge.
He confirmed our belief that there was a place where the range could be crossed easily
into the head of the Leron River, which flowed into the Markham, and agreed to come
with us as our guide as far as Ewok, the first Leron village. He had made the same
journey some years before with Leigh Vial.

The bridge over the raging torrent of the Uruwa was nearly broken, and we had to
wait over an hour while the boys cut vines in the bush to repair it. While we sat
in the shade waiting, we took note of the unusual rock formations exposed by the
river. They were all manner of brilliant colours, varying from a rich ochre, through
red to pale pink. They were very soft and chalky, which no doubt accounted for the
fantastic shapes into which the water had carved them.

The country we were now in (and through which we were to pass for several days) was
rather different from any I had seen hitherto. It was undulating, and the greater
part of the ground was covered by kunai-grass, forest being confined to the hilltops
and watercourses with the exception of a few patches here and there. For the first
time since leaving the Markham it was possible to command a fairly extensive view
of the surrounding country as a whole. Even in the most open parts of the Wain and
Naba one was restricted to a view of one valley
at a time. This Uruwa region was rather
hot and dusty, but we welcomed the free feeling of open spaces, a contrast from the
shut-in sensation we had had in the jungle.

We climbed up the steep western bank of the Uruwa, passed through a small hamlet
set in a banana-grove, which the tultul said was called Sugan, and reached the village
of Sindamon late in the afternoon.

This village, we were told, had never been visited before by either missionary or
patrol officer, and of course it was not shown on our map. There was a legend that
the people had fired such a number of arrows at the only missionary who had dared
to approach that they were left in peace thereafter. Whether any of the arrows found
their mark I was never able to find out.

Although they spoke no word of each other's language, our tultul and the Sindamon
men soon established friendly relations. They were big, upstanding, dignified men,
their bodies painted red with clay and their hair tied up tightly in dome-shaped
hats of bark. Keeping a tight hold on their bows and arrows, they willingly exchanged
food for razor-blades, which they had never seen before but for which they developed
an instant liking. All our bargaining was done by signs, and we soon became very
friendly.

When we indicated (again by signs) that we wished to sleep in one of the houses they
nodded politely, removed a rotting corpse from the veranda, and motioned us to enter.
It was apparently the custom here for a dead man to be left in his house until he
had decomposed, when his bones were interred in a shallow grave beneath the veranda.
Naturally the stink still clung to the place, but heavy rain fell and we were glad
enough to be dry, though a large number of fleas did nothing to improve our night's
rest.

We left Sindamon early next morning, really sorry to part from these friendly savages,
and struck straight across the grassy hills to Kundam. There was a track we could
have used, but it would have taken us through Goriok: with our binoculars we had
seen a wide road leading into that village from the south, so we decided to avoid
it. Though it was more difficult walking, the line we were taking across country
was at least more direct. The Som River, swollen from the heavy rain the night before,
was difficult to cross, but we joined hands and plunged through, a human chain.

At Kundam village, one of the most primitive I had ever seen, there were extensive
gardens. We were unable to establish any contact with the people, who stood silhouetted
against the brassy evening sky, black forms lining the crests of the nearby ridges,
hurling their choicest terms of abuse at us. Now and again one more impetuous than
the rest fired an arrow at random, though the range was much too great. Since nothing
would persuade them to come down and talk to us, we had no choice but to help ourselves
to the produce of their gardens. When they saw their bananas and taro being plundered
their fury knew no bounds. ‘Hopping mad' is the only expression that describes it.
They screamed and danced with rage, and with loud yodelling cries discharged a whole
cloud of arrows in our direction, though they must have known that their chances
of hitting anyone were remote. In case they made a night attack, we doubled the sentries
before rolling in our blankets on the ground at the edge of the village. Here again
the fleas were too plentiful for a really restful night.

Before leaving Kundam in the morning we tied several pieces of cloth and a dozen
razor-blades to a tree in the middle of the village, by way of payment for the food
we had taken. There was now no sign of the inhabitants, and we hoped this did not
mean they were lying in ambush for us somewhere along the track.

We could see the village of Ganma, the next on our route, about four miles away across
the valley, but though
we spent two hours searching for a path, there was none to
be found, and we had to march on a compass-bearing, cutting our way through the bush
and secondary growth. When we arrived at the village shortly after midday we found
that it consisted of two or three very poor houses. At first none of the natives
was to be seen, but about three o'clock a party appeared on a hill nearby and made
a hostile demonstration. We could not understand a word of what they said, but their
gestures, obscene and defiant in turn, left nothing to the imagination. We called
to Nabura, the best shot in the party, to climb quickly onto the roof of the tallest
house, from where he would be able to detect anyone crawling through the grass. He
was told to keep the people just out of arrowshot, and not to fire to kill or wound
unless the situation seemed dangerous. We asked the tultul what our chances were
of making friends with them, but he did not seem to think it worth while trying,
saying that they were notoriously bad hats and that it would take us at least several
days even to open a conversation.

The next day we were to cross the mountains once again, onto the Markham fall of
the Huon Peninsula. We expected to reach Ewok village in the afternoon, for according
to the tultul the crossing was nowhere near so high as the one we had made over the
Saruwaged Range proper.

The tultul asked to be allowed to return home from here, though the other Worin boys
would stay with us until we reached Ewok. We let him go. He had done us good service:
none of the other natives would have directed us to this easier crossing, and we
would merely have blundered along, hoping to find it by good luck. The only other
person who might have been able to advise us was Vial, and he, though we did not
know it then, was dead.

We abandoned most of our gear at Ganma – keeping just the wireless, our personal
packs, and a small parcel of trade goods. We gave our shotgun to the tultul, together
with a packet of cartridges. He was doing a fine job, preserving government authority
all on his own, and the fillip to his prestige from the possession of a shotgun would
greatly ease his unenviable burden. He asked whether he could also have two empty
cartridge-boxes in which we had kept tobacco. We gave them to him and asked why he
wanted them.

‘It's like this,' he explained in pidgin. ‘If I go back home with a carton of a dozen
cartridges they will spy on me when I am hunting, and every time they hear a bang
they will say “Another one gone”, until they know I have used them all up and the
gun is useless. However, when they see these three boxes they will think I still
have plenty left.' With a sly grin he filled the empty cartons with pebbles, and
then closed them securely.

We also gave him a bottle of oil and told Kari to show him how to care for the gun.
I never saw a man so proud of a present. He would allow nobody to take it from him,
and as he lay down to sleep that night the gun lay beside him.

This place was the worst for fleas that I had ever been in. The whole surface of
the dusty ground seemed to be crawling with them. During the afternoon Les and I
amused ourselves by seeing how many of the pests could be caught in one blanket,
killing upward of seventy before tiring of the game. The sort of night we spent,
lying on the ground, is better left to the imagination. In the morning it would have
been literally impossible to put a pinhead between the bites anywhere on our bodies;
we had the appearance of suffering from some skin disease. Even the police, not unduly
fussy over a flea or two, said they had spent a sleepless night.

Shortly after sunrise we shook hands with our tultul and turned our faces towards
the mountains. The crossing was not really difficult, and was lower than we had dared
to hope – scarcely above seven thousand feet according to our estimate. The worst
part came when the mountain had been crossed and we had to follow a rough, stony
riverbed down to Ewok. My bare feet were pretty much cut about, and Les, who put
on again the tattered remnants of his last pair of boots, did not fare much better.

The country as we approached Ewok was more like the Wain – country of luxuriant growth
and heavy rainfall. It was a change from the arid grasslands we had left behind,
and, moreover, we would probably secure much better food. We were sick of the taro
and hard cooking-bananas which seemed to be all the Uruwa country had to offer.
Boiled bananas are the most unpalatable and uninteresting food one could have – looking
and tasting like a piece of grey stodgy clay. The only result of eating them, as
far as I was concerned, was an unsatisfied hunger and a bellyful of wind.