Fear Drive My Feet (17 page)

One morning, as I was handing out the usual remedies for malaria and for constipation,
there was a howl from Buka, who was filling my lamp in the storeroom beneath the
house. ‘Hey, master, come quick! Some-fella man 'e stealim kerosene!'

I hurried to the store and found him excitedly waving an empty tin in the air.

‘Kerosene 'e go finish! Kerosene 'e go finish!' he chanted.

I grabbed the tin – our only one. It was empty right enough, but theft was not the
reason. The kerosene had all leaked away through a small hole in the bottom. The
tin must have got knocked in the carry up from the Markham.

The gloomy prospect of spending every night in darkness set me hard at work to make
an emergency lamp, and Watute helped me to rig a strip of cloth for a wick in a shallow
tin of dripping. The light it gave was dim and flickering, and the smoke and smell
were unpleasant. It was useful for an emergency, and nothing more, but it would have
to do until I could get more kerosene from Bob's.

Darkness came suddenly at six o'clock each night. Almost always there was a violent
thunderstorm and heavy rain, then the wind rushed up the valley, shaking the house,
blowing down huge trees with rending crashes, and whistling through chinks in the
bark walls. I used to sit at
the door of the house and watch the brilliant lightning
flashing over the stormswept mountainsides and flickering on the roofs of Bawan village,
just down the hillside. After half an hour the weather would become calm and the
drifting mist would shut the little clearing tightly away from the rest of the world,
and I would shiver in the cold. Unless men from the village came up to gossip I would
go straight to bed.

A fire seemed the best way of cheering up the dark and silent house, so I sent Watute
to Boana Mission to collect three old sheets of roofing-iron we had seen lying about.
When he returned, with two Bawan men carrying the iron fastened to a pole, we tried
our hands at making a fireplace. A pile of rocks and earth protected the bamboo floor,
and we fastened one sheet of iron as a protection for the wall and made a hood over
the fireplace with another. A chimney was out of the question, but we cut a slot
in the wall behind the fireplace, rather like a letterbox, and lit an experimental
fire to see what happened. The draughts went the right way, and most of the smoke
went through the slot and out the side of the house. Always afterwards the police
lit a fire there just before nightfall, and from a gloomy cavern of darkness the
house became a friendly, cheerful dwelling.

So that Buka and Watute could celebrate Christmas suitably, I bought them a pig,
which cost £3. Its owner wanted to put it on the fire alive, and apparently regarded
me as rather eccentric when I insisted on its throat being cut first. ‘Why bother?'
was his attitude. ‘The fire would pretty soon have killed it, anyhow.' But he happily
counted his sixty shining perforated New Guinea shillings, and strung them on a thong
for safe keeping, content with his bargain even if the pig was dispatched in a somewhat
messy way.

The two policemen invited friends from the village to eat with them, and they all
gorged themselves. The following morning there was still a quarter of the pig left,
so they made a basket of bamboo slivers and hung the remnant in the smoke to cure.
The ham surprised me by its tender juiciness, though the smell was rather uninviting.

So Christmas passed, and then New Year. There was still no word of Jock. Every day
some new speculation filled my mind. Had he perished crossing the mountains? Had
the natives on the north side failed to send my message after him? Had the Japanese
caught him? Had he been attacked by wild natives? My mind fastened on these questions
one by one, and spun round and round upon them till they became obsessions. I used
to say angrily to myself, aloud, ‘For God's sake stop wondering about it! Thinking
won't help him, and it'll only drive you nuts!' But, just the same, when the storms
came at night I would still find myself wondering whether, at that moment, Jock was
exposed somewhere on the bare peaks to the cutting rain and freezing wind.

Medical stores were now running out, and I had only a bare personal supply of quinine
and sulpha drugs and other vital necessities. I decided to make another quick visit
to Bob's to get more, if they could spare them, and also to send in a report about
our activities in the Wain. Buka was left in charge of the camp, with a supply of
food and trade goods for Jock in case he returned, and a note saying that I would
be back from Bob's within a week. Watute and I set out for Bob's, taking our bed-rolls
and arms and also the hundredweight or so of brus we had collected to give the boys
back at Bob's a smoke. When we reached Bivoro, Dinkila, the lively young man who
had carried my bed to Bob's on the previous trip, squatted down to talk to us. Life
in the village was too quiet, he
said discontentedly. The old men kept nagging at
you, and work in the gardens was drudgery. Could he join the police force, and have
a uniform, and come with us?

‘What did you do in peacetime?' Watute asked quickly.

Dinkila looked at him. ‘I was a cook-boy in Lae, first of all for some white women
and then for Master Jacobsen.'

Watute grinned. ‘There you are, master – he'll be a good cook if he worked for Master
Carl Jacobsen! Master Carl knew all about food. Why don't you take this man on as
a cook?'

I put the idea to Dinkila. The wages were ten shillings a month and all found, and
he would have to accompany us wherever we went. If he wanted a change from village
life, what about it?

He had set his heart on a uniform, but after a few moments' consideration he took
the job of cook, and from that moment on became the tyrant who ruled the details
of my personal life: what I should wear, what I should eat, how my bed should be
made, how strong my tea should be. It was no use arguing with Dinkila. What he thought
I should have, I got, but he was a devoted servant and worked tirelessly to secure
my personal comfort. How often he nursed me through attacks of fever and sickness
I have forgotten, but whenever I awoke he seemed to be there with a cool drink, a
mug of soup, or a cup of coffee with aspirins and quinine.

We hurried down the Erap again, stopped for the usual welcome cup of tea and gossip
with Tom Lega at Kirkland's, and rushed straight through to Bob's. The men fell upon
the parcel of brus, tearing leaves out to roll themselves cigars, upon which they
drew fiercely, exhaling with luxurious contentment. We had arrived in the
middle
of their worst tobacco famine, and none of them had had a smoke for days.

Next morning I was surprised when Bill Chaffey called me to the orderly-room. There
was a phonecall for me from Kirkland's. Tom Lega's voice, faint and blurred, came
out of the earpiece. ‘One of Jock's police-boys has just swum across the river!'
he said excitedly. ‘He's got a letter for you, and he's coming on at once to Bob's.
He says Jock got back across the range O.K.'

I was so excited that I hardly thanked Tom for calling, but slammed the field-telephone
down and strode off along the track to meet the policeman. About half-way to Kirkland's
I saw him come round the bend and I recognized him as Nabura, an intelligent man
who could read and write a little. He was weary, and though he grinned when he saw
me he was too tired to quicken his pace. When we drew near to one another he fumbled
in his haversack and handed me a thick bundle of papers tied together with a piece
of vine. This was Jock's official report to the district officer, with a short note
to me asking me to type out a copy of the report for him, and to forward the original
to headquarters. The note said Jock would wait in Bawan for my return.

The official report told of the crossing of the range; of the cold that had almost
killed Jock and his native companions; of the dreadful storms; of the rocky cave
in which they had sheltered one night; of the wild bush kanakas who had attacked
them. He had reached the north coast and come upon a lonely Australian there watching
the activities of the Japanese as they moved supplies in barges round the coast from
Madang to Lae. At a coastal village he secured a canoe and travelled with his boys
to the island of Sio. It was not occupied by the Japs, but they visited it periodically.
A Japanese reconnaissance plane
flew low over Jock's canoe on his return journey
to the mainland. He dropped into the water and remained hidden under the decking
while the plane circled above. His boys kept paddling doggedly, expecting at any
moment to be sunk by a burst of machine-gun fire, and eventually the Jap pilot decided
it was only a harmless native fishing-party, and flew away. Jock scrambled back onto
the canoe, thankful that the sharks had left him alone, only to find a few days later
that his immersion had resulted in a case of ‘coral ear', an intensely painful infection
that lies in wait for anyone unlucky enough to get tropical sea-water in his ears.
In his note to me Jock said he was in such pain that he was practically living on
aspirins at the camp in Bawan, and he asked me to get something from the doctor to
fix the ear up.

I hurried back to Bob's, where Bill helped me type the report. Then we got medical
supplies from the doctor, and the few items of food that could be spared. I was going
to return to the Wain next morning.

At dawn we woke to the deafening roar of aeroplanes. The thunder from the bombing
raids on Lae was terrific, and went on ceaselessly. Through the trees we saw flight
after flight of our heavy bombers droning over, and soon a phonecall from Kirkland's
told us that enormous columns of smoke could be seen downriver, and that all Lae
seemed to be ablaze. I decided to defer my return until we knew what was happening.
There was another ring from Kirkland's, a personal one for me, and I almost fell
out through the grass wall of the orderly-room when I heard the voice. It was Jock!

‘Ear's too bloody crook!' he bawled into the phone. ‘Can't sleep at all, so I've
come in to see the doc. Be seeing you in an hour or two.'

I hurried down the track to meet him. He was much
thinner than when we had parted,
and it was plain that the journey had affected him. ‘Bastard of a trip,' was all
he would mutter, however, concerning the crossing of the range itself.

Bill Chaffey was waiting for us back at Bob's. He took us aside to talk quietly,
and though his tone was humorous his expression was troubled.

‘I'll tell you what all that racket down at Lae's about,' he began. ‘We've had a
signal to say that the Japs have a big convoy of ships there, and they're unloading
reinforcements and a hell of a lot of stores. Our planes have been belting hell
out of them since dawn, but naturally there's a lot of gear and troops got ashore
in spite of it.'

Jock and I were silent.

‘You know what it means, don't you?' pursued Bill.

‘Yeah,' said Jock, rubbing his bristly head thoughtfully. ‘It means the Nips are going to hang on in Lae and Salamaua and drive all us
poor bastards out of the bush and out of Wau and right off this side of the island.'

‘What about you blokes staying here?' Bill asked. ‘We can get away through the bush
all right from here, if they come up in force. If you're across the Markham you'll
be trapped.'

Jock squatted on his heels. I noticed that his sandshoes were worn out and that
the tropical ulcers on his legs were eating bigger and bigger patches out of the
flesh. ‘Point is this, Bill,' he said after a pause. ‘If the Nips are going to take
over in Wau, there'll be more need than ever for us to keep in touch with the natives
and see what's going on. I think we could manage to live in the bush there.' He turned
to me. ‘What do you reckon?'

‘I'll give it a go if you think so,' I said. ‘I wouldn't care to try it on my own.'

From then on, things moved so quickly that the rest
of the day was a confused jumble
of events. By evening I found myself, with Watute and Dinkila, asking Tom Lega at
Kirkland's for a bed for the night. Jock had to remain for a few days to have his
ear treated, but would join me at Bawan as soon as he could. And all the time, in
the background, there was the roar of our planes and the rumble of the bombs on Lae.

Next day, just after dawn, Tom had the canoe ready for me to cross the river. He
had become used to saying goodbye on the banks of the Markham, but he made it pretty
plain on this occasion that he didn't expect to see me again. His handshake was firmer
and longer as he followed the canoe out into the shallows.

In midstream we looked suddenly upriver. Almost at water-level three Beaufighters
were bearing down on us. We reckoned it was the finish, for our planes had had orders
to regard all movement along the Markham as hostile. They saw us, banked off, and
came at us in another run. The boat's crew sprang overboard and struck out for the
shore, leaving Watute, Dinkila, and me rushing downstream wildly. I snatched my
slouch hat off and waved it frantically above my head, almost overbalancing the canoe.
Watute did the same with his khaki cap. In spite of the panic we were in I felt a
momentary pang of annoyance as my pipe slipped and fell into the water with a dull
little plop. Then, with a screaming whistle, the three planes passed over us. They
had recognized us in time, and with wings dipping in salute they hurtled off towards
Lae. At the rate the current was racing us seaward we would soon be in Lae ourselves
if we didn't do something about it, so we paddled madly with our hands and managed
to land the canoe on one of the islands. Through the field-glasses I saw the boat's
crew get new paddles from the landing and start swimming over to us, to finish the
journey so ignominiously interrupted. While we waited for them I
became conscious
of something like a pebble in my mouth. It was the end of my pipestem. Apparently
I had bitten it clean through in the excitement.