Roger was a little mortified as well as amused. ‘Well, I’d rather be a kangaroo than a wild pig.’
‘We’ll ship you home and Dad can sell you to a zoo,’ Hal said. ‘It would pay well for a tree-climbing kangaroo.’
The men admired Hal’s wristwatch. They liked any shiny ornament. But when Hal told them it gave the time of day, they were scornful. These whites were pretty stupid after all.
Pavo explained that they didn’t need any machine to give them the time.
‘When the sun is on the other side of the river, it is morning. When the sun is on this side of the river, it is afternoon. When the sun goes down behind the mountain, it is night.’
The men never tired of fingering the boys’ clothing. They didn’t understand how the bark of a tree could be made so soft. For their own clothing, they depended upon tree bark and grasses.
Two men at the same time asked for those things Hal wore on his legs. He got a pair of trousers from the ship and gave it to them. Each tried to get it away from the other and there was every chance that there would be a fight that would end in bloodshed. Then one of the men thought of a way to solve the problem. He tore the garment apart in the middle and each man strutted around the village wearing one trouser-leg.
When a small boy who was as naked as the day he was born asked for a hat, Roger gave him one, and the youngster was very proud as he went about wearing the hat and nothing else.
One day when Pavo visited the ship he caught sight of a wheelbarrow that the young naturalists sometimes used in collecting specimens. Captain Ted, feeling generous that day, filled it with foods from the ship’s stores and ferried it ashore to the dinghy. As soon as it was set on land, Pavo hoisted it up on his strong back and carried it off.
‘No, no,’ Hal called. ‘That’s not the way.’
He made Pavo set it down on the ground. Then he took up the handles and pushed it along. All the village came to marvel at that thing that went round and round.
‘The big bowl - it travels!’
It was a miracle. Everybody had to try it. This was their introduction to one of man’s greatest inventions, the wheel. It made the boys realize how much we owe to this wonder, the thing that goes round and round, and without which we could not have the carriage, the wagon, the automobile, the landing gear of the aeroplane, the millions of machines that manufacture the products that make life comfortable.
The houses had windows, but no glass - just holes that let in the mosquitoes and the rain. Pavo, visiting the Flying Cloud, tried to stick his head out of the window. It struck something very hard. He backed off and stared at the window but could see nothing.
‘What’s the matter?’ Roger asked.
‘I try to look. Somebody strikes me. One of the white man’s devils, I think.’
Roger tried to answer in the village language. ‘Nobody struck you. You struck your head against the …’ He was stuck. He didn’t know the native word for glass. ‘How do you say glass?’ he asked Hal.
‘You don’t say it - because there’s no native word for it. Why should they have a word for something they don’t know anything about?’
Roger took Pavo’s fingers and tapped them against the glass. ‘A kind of rock,’ he said.
Pavo shook his head. ‘No rock. No can see through rock. I think devil.’
Other visitors had the same trouble with the windows and there were many bruised heads.
Roger broke out a can of white paint and drew a line across every pane of glass. People seeing the line realized that there must be something solid there, and there were no more attacks by the window devil.
‘Sometimes I think they’re pretty stupid,’ Roger said.
‘About as stupid as you were ten thousand years ago,’ said Hal.
Everything bad that happened was the work of a devil. A gentle breeze was a kind spirit, but a typhoon that tore down houses and trees was a devil. Thunder and lightning were devils. The river was alive with water devils waiting to drown you if you could not swim. The forests swarmed with devils of the dead - because even a good man turned into a devil when he died. That was because his family did not keep on feeding him. He was forgotten by his relatives and friends and he punished them for neglecting him.
All rocks had devils in them, and the bigger rock had a bigger devil. If a large rock had a sort of human look it must never be touched. When Roger was guilty of this two old men seized him and began chanting some rigmarole to conjure the devil out of him. One of the men tilled his own mouth with red betel, pepper and lime, chewed up the whole mixture, then spat it into Roger’s face.
‘Thank you,’ said Roger, knowing that they were just trying to be kind.
When Roger trimmed his fingernails and dropped the clippings on the ground, Pavo carefully picked them up and gave them back to him.
‘Now why did he do that?
Captain Ted gave him the answer. They believe that if you leave any trace of yourself lying about, a fingernail, a rag, some of your hair, the bone of a chicken or pig that you have eaten, some devil will use it to put a curse on you. Have you noticed what these people do when they chew betel nut and spit out some of the juice? They take care to spray it out so it is scattered in such small drops that nobody can scoop it up and turn it into a curse.’
The people lived in mortal fear of fireflies. These were the spirits of the dead, each one carrying a lantern, hunting for relatives in order to punish them.
They were equally afraid of animals. When you died,
your devil passed into a tiger shark or Komodo dragon or giant scorpion or dinosaur lizard or one of the great black fruit bats. You were not so much afraid of the teeth or claws of such creatures, but of the spirit of your grandfather or uncle or mother-in-law that passed into such an animal when they died.
Several villagers had one or two fingers missing. A woman who was particularly kind to the boys had no nose and no fingers. Pavo explained what had happened. The woman’s husband had died and the widow must cut off her nose to show that she was sorry. Her children had died one after another and after each death she had a ringer cut off. There was a man in the village who was very skilful at cutting off fingers. He would place a finger on a piece of wood and one blow of a stone adze would remove it. Such fingers were hung in the cooking shed to dry, and the next day burned, then buried with the dead body.
The same woman slept with her head on the skull of her husband. That was so his virtues could pass into her. But she had taken the precaution to remove the lower jaw so that the skull could not bite.
Another woman wore her husband’s skull on a rattan rope around her neck. It bobbed and bumped against her chest as she walked. It was quite a nuisance because it was forever getting in the way, but she didn’t mind that so long as she could please her husband and keep him from sending his devil down to torment her.
‘You know,’ Captain Ted said, ‘these people are even afraid to go to sleep because they might dream that they were somewhere else and then if someone woke them suddenly there would not be time for their spirits to get back into their bodies.’
The many fears that haunted these people made the boys sad. They had never realized before how lucky they were to be living today rather than ten thousand years ago. There were plenty of things wrong in the world of today - but it was a lot better than the world of the Stone Age.
Hal and Roger did not go around trembling with dread of a thousand devils - the devil in every rock, the devils in trees, the water devils, the thunder devil, the devil in the wind, the devil that made them cold, the devil that made them sick, the devils in their dead ancestors and so on and on and on.
The only devil they could think of was the one who had said just before they had put him in jail, ‘When I get out, I’ll have a score to settle with you.’
‘But we don’t need to worry about Kaggs,’ Hal said. ‘He’s far, far away, safely locked up in prison, and he’ll never get out.’
Chapter 15
&
nbsp; The Komodo dragon
The cannibals were ignorant but not stupid. They could not read or write, yet they could send a message a hundred miles. All the villages within that distance knew that there were three white men in this village on the Eilanden River.
The messages were sent by beating a heavy stick against a hollow log, making a sound that could be heard in the next village a few miles away, which would then repeat it on their own great drum and other villages would pick it up and pass it on and on.
It was done by a sort of shorthand or code. Two quick strokes meant one thing, two slow strokes meant something else, three strokes had another meaning, and so on up to twenty-seven, which was as high as they could count. Not all villages had the same spoken language, but they had the same drum language, so the gossip flew in all directions from valley to valley.
The nearest they could come to reading and writing was by tattooing designs on the body. Certain lines on a woman’s skin meant that she was married, some curves announced that she was the daughter of a chief. Tattooing under the eyes or a line running from her chin down the middle of her chest said that her father was very brave and had killed a man. Each village had its own village mark, so you could tell at a glance where the man or woman lived.
Of course this was a painful way of writing. A sharp sago thorn was used to cut the designs into the skin and the cuts were filled with powdered charcoal. Too often infection got into the cuts and sickness or death was the result.
‘It’s wonderful how they get along with so little,’ Hal said. ‘They don’t need chairs, beds, blankets, boots, clothes, dishes. They know the jungle like a book. They know which roots, leaves and berries are good food and which are poisonous. They can make traps for animals and fish. They can make a fire by rubbing two sticks together. They can make a cup to hold water by putting twists in the leaf of the water lily. They can walk better and climb better than we can. They can make fish nets out of nothing but vines, and beautiful designs on their canoes with only a stone knife.’
‘And see how clean they keep themselves,’ said Captain Ted. That’s because they don’t wear clothes. In parts of New Guinea where they do, their clothes get filthy, so their bodies are filthy. They’ve never been used to washing clothes. But here the grass or leaves they use instead of clothes are changed every day. Cotton or woollen clothing is too expensive to be thrown away, so people wear it until it gets grey with dirt and falls to pieces. But grass is not expensive and you can wear a fresh new suit every day.’
One of the men of the village came running in with the head of an enemy. He had been found skulking around in the woods nearby. All the villagers gathered about to look at the head.
‘Ah, I know him,’ one said. ‘He’s from the tribe of Dormon. He has taken many of the heads of our own people. Very dangerous rascal, very clever.’
‘Clever?’ said the man who had brought in the head. ‘I will eat his brains, then I will be clever too.’ He ran to his house for an axe.
‘What does he mean?’ Hal asked.
Captain Ted explained. ‘Didn’t you notice in the tambaran that some of the skulls had holes in them? That’s what happens to a clever man, a man of courage, or a man of great strength. The warrior who cuts him down wants to be as brave or as smart or as strong as he was. So he cuts a hole in the forehead, takes out the brains and eats them.’
Roger’s face twisted up. He felt as if he were going to lose his dinner. When the headhunter came out after finishing his lunch of brains, Roger could hardly bear to look at him. Hal noticed the expression on the boy’s face.
‘It’s pretty awful,’ Hal admitted. ‘But back in your own Stone Age you were doing the same thing. It’s natural for people to want to be smart. How are they going to do it if they have no schools? That you can get smart by eating a smart man is an ancient superstition that still exists in other places besides New Guinea. In Borneo and Sumatra and some parts of Africa it is believed that eating a wise enemy will make you wise. He doesn’t have to be an enemy. He may be the chief of your own tribe, or your own father, and you love and respect him so much that you want all that was good in his character to go into your own character.’
‘It seems beastly and cruel,’ Roger said.
‘So it is from our point of view. But these are not really cruel people. How good and kind they have been towards us. And you notice they are very kind to each other. Take a look at your headhunter now - sitting on the drum, with a child on each knee. The perfect image of a loving father. The explorer Vandercook, who visited wild tribes all around the world, found them more gentle and gracious in their manners than “civilized” people are. You haven’t heard a single loud voice since we’ve been here. There’s no quarrelling. They fight other tribes but don’t fight among themselves. You can walk anywhere in the village in the middle of the night and not be hurt. Try that in New York or Chicago.’
Just how smart a savage could be they learned when they took Pavo and some of his men on an animal-collecting expedition.
Pavo knew nothing about the outside world - but he knew his own world very well. As they clambered through the jungle, he named every tree and flower, using his own language. Then he would ask the English name and Hal would give it to him. He had a remarkable memory.
After he had been introduced to the acacia, eucalyptus, cypress, palm, orchid, he could repeat the name in English when they came to the next specimen.
Of course he had a little trouble with some of them, especially eucalyptus; ‘ike-a-lup-tus’ was the closest he could come to it.
But Hal thought that was very good. He himself had trouble with such native names as ‘parafitikup’.
It was astonishing to Hal that this quick-brained savage was able to pick up English as rapidly as he himself was picking up the language of the Eilanden River.
They traded names of the animals they saw - the flying fox, the six-inch-long grasshopper, the spider so large that it catches birds, the deadly scorpions, the leeches, the butterflies that flashed like jewels as they flew from flower to flower, the screaming cockatoos, and the gorgeously colourful birds of paradise.
But just now they were after larger animals and they were armed with sacks, plenty of rope from the ship, strong nets, and antitoxin - everything but guns.
Hal and Roger almost wished they had brought guns when they suddenly came upon two of the most terrifying creatures of the New Guinea forest.
One was the taipan, the largest and most poisonous of the one hundred and fifty snakes of New Guinea.
The other was a real living dragon. Most naturalists didn’t believe it existed. It had lived sixty million years ago -they knew that because the fossil remains had been found on the small island of Komodo. So they had called it the Komodo dragon, or giant monitor lizard. But most of the experts believed it had become extinct millions of years ago.
Recently one or two living specimens had been seen in remote valleys of New Guinea, but attempts to capture them had failed. Now the Hunts had their chance.
Even if they had brought guns they would not have used them. That would have been too easy. They must go at it the hard way. They must take these two rather dreadful animals alive.
The serpent and the dragon were too busy to pay any attention to their visitors. They were actively engaged in trying to kill each other.
The big brown-and-yellow snake, ten feet long, was coiled around the dragon trying to find a soft place to dig in its fangs and spill deadly poison into the monster.
But the dragon was covered with scales almost as tough as steel. It looked like a crocodile or an enormous lizard. Its yellow tongue, forked like the tongue of a snake, shot in and out, and its large, pointed teeth tried to get a grip on the slithery snake.
Like the crocodile, it was a carnivore, a flesh eater, and this enemy would make a very tasty dinner.
The more the snake struck, the more angry the dragon became. It hissed violently, gulped air, and swelled up its body so as to terrify
its opponent by its great size, lashed its tail back and forth and dug its huge claws into the serpent’s hide.
To fight better it stood up on its hind legs and towered twelve feet tall. It could easily kill a large deer or a giant hog, and seemed well on the way to finishing off the taipan.
‘We’ve got to get them apart before they murder each other,’ Hal said. ‘Let’s divide up. Four men take hold of the snake’s tail and four latch on to the dragon’s tail and try to pull them loose. Roger, see if you can wangle the snake into a sack and I’ll try to get a net over the dragon.’
Pavo repeated the order. The men were not eager to obey. They were not only afraid of these deadly creatures, but even more afraid of the evil spirits that must live within them.
Hal and Roger set an example by being the first to lay hold of the two tails and pull in opposite directions.
Trembling with fear, the men joined them.
They were strong men but the animals were so tightly glued together that it seemed impossible to separate them. After a ten-minute struggle, the men had to let go to breathe and rest.
Only Roger and Hal held on. It was not so bad for Roger, because a snake’s tail is not the end that is dangerous. But both ends of a dragon are deadly. This beast was a cousin of the crocodile whose tail will easily knock a man or even a rhinoceros off the shore and into the water.
But the dragon’s tail lay quietly on the ground, so quietly that Hal was taken completely by surprise when the creature became annoyed by this persistent hanger-on and with one tremendous sweep of the tail sent Hal spinning into a tree where he landed on a branch eight feet above the ground.
The wind had been completely knocked out of him and he was bruised and battered both by the armourplated tail and by his crash into the tree. For a moment he thought he was going to faint but he pulled himself together, breathed deeply, and felt himself all over to see if any bones were broken.
12 Cannibal Adventure Page 7
