12 Cannibal Adventure

by Willard Price

  The shark’s keen sense of smell brought it around the ship and upstream towards the meat. Hal and Roger hastily went ashore in the dinghy and walked up the bank close to the reef, ready to help Pug if necessary.

  As the shark came closer Pug backed up. He kept waving the meat in the air so that the sight of it and the smell of it would attract the shark.

  Suddenly the White Death lashed the water and shot forward at full speed, jaws wide open to receive this choice bit of food. It never got to it Pug kept well beyond its reach. The great three-ton fish ran up on the reef and stuck fast. Its huge tail thrashed the water into foam as it tried to back off. It was far too heavy to succeed in this manoeuvre. Pug was about to avenge his sister’s death. That big villain was at his mercy.

  ‘Smart boy, that Pug,’ Hal said. ‘By using his brain, he’s going to win out where the men failed.’

  ‘Can’t we help him how?” Roger asked.

  ‘We will if necessary. But I think he’d rather do it alone. He wanted to take a head to show that he was a man. You talked him out of that. Now he has a chance to prove himself in another way. I think he intends to take a head. But it won’t be the head of a man, woman or baby.’

  ‘You mean the shark’s head. But he’ll never get that off even with that steel axe.’

  ‘Watch,’ Hal said.

  Pug approached the shark and brought the axe down on the monster’s neck. It bounced up from the thick tough skin.

  ‘See, I told you so,’ Roger said.

  ‘Just wait a bit.’

  With repeated blows, Pug finally got through the skin.

  ‘What do you think now, Roger?’

  ‘I think he did very well, but the hardest part is still ahead. He’ll never get through the bone.’

  ‘Haven’t you forgotten something? A shark has no bones. Only cartilage, a bit like gristle, much softer than bone.’

  Blow after blow, .the axe went on with its deadly work. It easily went through the flesh, less easily through the cartilage, and at last the head was separated from the body.

  ‘By golly, he killed it,’ Roger exclaimed.

  ‘Yes and no.’

  ‘What do you mean, yes and no? It’s either dead or it’s not dead.’

  ‘It’s not quite that simple,’ said Hal. He shouted to Pug, ‘Look out! Keep away from those jaws.’

  Roger stared. ‘Now that’s silly advice if I ever heard any. How can a dead shark bite?’

  Hal did not need to answer. The monster’s jaws suddenly opened wide, then closed with a crash that could be heard all over the village.

  ‘How could it do that?’ Roger wondered.

  ‘Don’t you remember those piranhas up the Amazon? After we chopped off their heads they kept on snapping their jaws for a good half-hour. A matter of reflexes and nerves. You’ve seen snakes wriggling even after they’ve been cut in two.’

  Pavo came running from the village. ‘We found a man lying like dead on the bank of the river. Not a brown man. More like you. So we took him out to your ship and put him in your cabin. Perhaps you’ll give him good medicine, make him come alive.’

  Men were already helping Pug bring ashore the enormous head, taking care not to be caught in the snapping jaws. They set up the head by the great village drum and men, women, boys and girls, all danced around it shouting at the top of their lungs, celebrating the victory of boy over monster. Pug was a man now - he would never have to take a human head to prove it.

  Hal and Roger forced their way through the crowd and congratulated Pug. The captain also was there to praise him.

  Then Hal took the captain aside. ‘What’s this about a man in the cabin?’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been on shore watching Pug.’

  ‘Well, we’d better get on board and see what we can do. Somebody had an accident, and the men found him unconscious, so they put him on board so we could doctor him. Let’s go.’

  Kaggs stirred uneasily and opened his eyes. He groaned. He ached all over. What had happened to him? He faintly remembered having been struck by a shark.

  But how did he get here? The place was vaguely familiar. It seemed like the cabin of the Flying Cloud. Somehow, he had been delivered into the hands of his worst enemies.

  The cabin door opened. Three men looked in. Kaggs covered his face. Hal came to the bunk and pulled away the covers.

  Then he turned to the other two. ‘You won’t believe this,’ he said. ‘It’s Kaggs.’

  ‘Can’t be,’ said the captain. ‘We put him away for life.’

  Kaggs groaned.

  ‘Let’s see what’s the matter,’ Hal said. He pulled off the man’s shirt. The entire chest was black and blue. Hal felt for broken ribs. ‘No bones broken,’ he said. ‘He’s only badly bruised. Roger, get me the liniment.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said the captain. ‘This man planned to murder all three of us. You’ve got him now - you’re not going to let him live? Dump him overboard. He’s a rat-let him drown like a rat.’

  Kaggs found his voice. ‘I swear, I didn’t mean any harm to any of you.’

  ‘How did you get out of that prison?’

  ‘I was released on parole for good behaviour.’

  ‘I can’t imagine your behaviour being good either in prison or out.’

  ‘But you don’t know what prison does to a man,’ said Kaggs. It changes him. It gives him time to think. It gives him a chance to become a new man. I read my Bible and I preached to the other prisoners. The Lord made it possible for me to walk out of the prison a free man.’

  ‘Why did you come up here? Weren’t you chasing us?’

  ‘Not at all. Why should I chase you? I have forgiven you. I wish for you only one thing - that the Lord will save you as he saved me.’

  ‘Well, what brought you here?’

  ‘You know very well that I used to be a pearl trader along this coast,’ Kaggs said. ‘I know New Guinea well. I know the needs of these people. I came to be a missionary to them and rescue them from paganism.’

  ‘My eye, you did!’ exploded the captain. ‘You came here to give us a ticket to heaven or the other place.’

  Kaggs whined, ‘How did I know you were coming here?’

  ‘You saw it in the paper. The destination of every ship is in the paper.’

  ‘And all the time since you got here you’ve been sneaking around trying to do us in,’ said Hal, rubbing liniment into the man’s sore flesh. ‘It was you who shot me in the back. You triggered a log to kill Roger. You poisoned Pavo.’

  Kaggs said, ‘I can’t imagine how you ever got such ideas. You can’t prove a single one of these charges. I am not the sort of person to commit a murder.’

  ‘Oh no? You have already been convicted of four murders.’

  ‘But I am telling you - that’s all in the past. Prison and the Bible changed all that. I’m now a minister of mercy. I challenge you to prove that I meant to do you any harm. Give me solid proof. Otherwise I can have you arrested and tried for slandering my good reputation.’

  Pug appeared at the door. ‘See what we found,’ he said. ‘This thing.’ He held up something that looked like a briefcase. ‘We cut open the shark. We found my sister’s body, and Mulo’s. And there were things that did not come from this village. There were pots and pans that were not made of stone. Also there was this thing.’ He held up the briefcase. ‘We didn’t know what it was, so we brought it to you.’

  ‘I’ll take that,’ Kaggs said. ‘It’s mine.’

  ‘You seem very anxious to get it,’ Hal said. ‘Perhaps we’d better take a look.’

  Kaggs objected. ‘The contents are private. You have no right to examine them.’ He raised himself and tried to reach the briefcase. Hal pushed him down on the bed. Kaggs made a desperate effort to get up. ‘Take care of him, captain, while we look at this.’

  The captain sat down on Kaggs. That was enough to hold him in place, for the captain was a heavy man. Kaggs squirmed and squealed
but could do nothing.

  Hal opened the briefcase. It contained nothing but a book.

  ‘You see?’ Kaggs said. ‘Nothing there that could interest you. Give me the briefcase. It’s my property.’

  Hal was about to close the case when Roger said, “That book. It looks like a notebook or a diary. Better take a look.’ Sure enough, it was a diary. Hal’s eyes lit on a name -Hunt. He read aloud, ‘“I think I got Hunt today - the big one. I wish I had had a gun, then I would be sure that I had wiped him out. But I had a bow and arrow that I had borrowed from my friend the witch doctor who hates these Hunts as much as I do. Hunt was busy wrestling with a Komodo dragon. I shot him in the back - a very neat job, I think. He fell down. The men carried his dead body to the village. I sneaked after them and watched to see if they would bury him. Instead, they took him on board the ship. Now I can’t tell whether he is really dead or not. I hope so -so long as he was alive there was a chance that he would find me and send me back to prison.”’

  ‘Quite interesting,’ Hal said. He turned the pages. ‘Here’s another choice bit.’ “Today I rigged up a clever deal to kill off the young Hunt. Made a log-trap with a teak log heavy enough to smash a dozen Hunts. Laid the trigger line across the path.

  The cannibal’s foot caught on the line and down came the log, but Hunt moved too fast and it fell just in front of him, bruising his foot a little. Never mind, I’ll try again. As for the big fellow, he hasn’t shown up. Perhaps he is just lying low, or perhaps his dead body was dropped into the river at night. No sign of any burial on land. It’s unfair for me to be kept in suspense this way. Did I kill him or not?”’

  Hal turned a few more pages. He saw Pavo’s name, and read: ‘“Today I really accomplished something. Chief of the village is a man they call Pavo. He’s been protecting the Hunts, so I decided to get rid of him. When no one was around I slipped into his hut and put poison in his soup. These natives are pretty tough, but I think the dope was strong enough to finish him off. So that makes two dead, I think, Hal Hunt and Pavo. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of the big Hunt. The captain is still around - I’ve got to take care of him too. He knows too much about me.’”

  And a few pages later:

  “Now I’ve done it. Now I can sit back and feel safe. Tonight I made sure of that. My witch doctor friend gave me a sack full of cobra eggs just ready to hatch. Must have been about forty in the pack, every one of them loaded with deadly poison. Sure to kill within a few minutes. I opened the sack, threw it in the porthole of the cabin, and heard the eggs smash open against the bulkhead. With forty of the deadliest snakes on earth swarming in that cabin it’s as sure as shooting that both those brats and the captain are as dead as doornails. And the chief too. Now I can enjoy life. I’ll sail the schooner back to Thursday Island, disguise myself, take another name, and go back to pearl trading. I am really quite pleased with myself. Not everybody could have done such a neat job. Four dead, and not one bit of proof that I had anything to do with it.”’

  Hal looked at Kaggs and grinned. ‘Your job wasn’t quite as neat as you thought. You asked for proof of your intent to commit murder. All the proof we need is right here in this little book.’

  ‘But that’s my property. You have no right to it. You’re not the police.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Hal said. ‘We’ll see that the police get it.’

  ‘Put him in the brig,’ the captain said.

  The thought of being locked up in that iron cage like a wild animal made Kaggs feel worse than ever.

  ‘He’ll go into the brig,’ Hal said, ‘but first he needs a little doctoring.’ He took up the liniment bottle and went to work.

  ‘Well of all the blithering fools,’ the captain said. ‘Why do you do that for a skunk that’s out to kill you?’

  Hal replied, ‘I’d do the same for a mad dog.’

  Chapter 26

  House of skulls

  When Kaggs recovered he was removed from the cabin and locked up in the brig on the afterdeck. Peering out between the iron bars of his cage he queried, ‘What do you plan to do with me?’

  ‘Take you back to Brisbane and hand you over to the prison authorities.’

  Kaggs laughed. ‘There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip. You’ll never get me back into that prison.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can stop us.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ acknowledged Kaggs. ‘But I’ll find a way.’

  Captain Ted was getting restless. He complained to Hal, This ship is as full of animals as a three-ring circus. When do we make tracks for home?’

  ‘We’re almost done,’ Hal said. ‘We have nearly everything Dad asked for except cannibal skulls, a sea cow and a tiger shark.’

  ‘But how do you expect to get skulls? Collect your own by chopping off a few heads?’

  ‘Not exactly. There are plenty of skulls in that tambaran.’

  ‘And what makes you think they’ll let you take any of those? Don’t forget that every skull in that spirit house is supposed to have the spirit of the dead man still living in it. The natives are afraid of those spirits. They think that if the spirits are annoyed, they will come out and punish the village.’

  ‘Yes, 1 know. It’s not going to be easy. I’ll talk to Pavo about it.’

  Hal and Roger went ashore and approached the great spirit house, its towering front wall glowing with brilliant colours. The door of the tambaran was open and they went

  in. On one side they were met by the staring eyes, now only black holes, of hundreds of skulls on the shelves. On the other side of the building were piles of human bones.

  ‘It gives me the creeps,’ Roger said. ‘It just shows what savages these people really are. Nothing like this in good civilized countries like England and America.’

  ‘Think again,’ Hal said. There are ossuaries in America.’

  ‘What are ossuaries?’

  ‘Vaults full of bones of the dead. And as for England, don’t you remember going down into that crypt under the church in Hythe, Kent, where we saw what is said to be the world’s largest collection of human skulls? Two thousand skulls and eight thousand thigh bones were stacked in that crypt. When the cemetery became too crowded, they dug up the bones and put them there so that they would have room to bury more people. And some of the folks in that town believed that every one of the two thousand skulls had its ghost and these could be seen any midnight walking in solemn procession around the church. As for being savages, I’m afraid there’s a little of the savage left in all of us.’

  But it was too spooky for Roger when way back in the gloom one of the dead men came to life and walked towards them. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Roger urged.

  ‘Don’t be in a hurry. It’s only Pavo.’

  When he came into the light from the doorway they could see that it really was the headman and no ghost.

  ‘Pavo,’ said Hal, ‘you are just the man we want to see. Our father asked us to bring back some skulls. Do you think we could buy a few?’

  Pavo thought it over. Then he led them back to the other end of the tambaran. On a shelf were skulls two or three times as big as a human skull.

  ‘Men with skulls like those must have been giants,’ Roger said.

  Hal examined them carefully. They are skulls of wild boars. No, it is human skulls we want.’

  Pavo shook his head. ‘A boar’s skull has a small, weak spirit in it,’ he said. ‘But a man’s skull has a strong spirit that can do much harm. We could not sell you men’s skulls. Their spirits would be angry. They would not like to be bought and sold. They would come out and avenge themselves on us and on you also. We would all be in much trouble.’

  ‘But we would treat them very kindly,’ Hal said. ‘Perhaps they would enjoy the journey to our land and all the new things they would see there. Perhaps they would thank us.’

  Pavo nodded solemnly. ‘It may be as you say. It is true that we would like to move some of these from the tambaran. The place is very crowd
ed and we need room for more. Every year we have a war and we must have a place to put new skulls. We cannot sell you any - but perhaps the spirits would not be angry if we gave you a few. They would have to be skulls of our enemies. We wish to keep and honour the skulls of our own wise men. Stay here while I go and speak to the other men of my village.’

  He came back in half an hour, smiling. ‘They agree,’ he said, ‘provided you take part in the dance.’

  ‘What dance?’

  ‘The dance of farewell to the spirits. Then we must feed them so that they will not get hungry on the long voyage to your country.’

  Roger was rummaging in the piles of bones. Suddenly he exclaimed, “This did belong to a giant. Take a look at this.’

  He tried to lift it, but it was too heavy.

  ‘What do you make of it?’ he asked Hal.

  Hal studied it with great interest. ‘You’re right - it did belong to a giant. But not a human giant. It’s the leg-bone of a mastodon or a mammoth - I don’t know which. If these people are willing to part with it, we’ll take it for some museum. Let’s carry it out and put it with our skulls.’

  The two boys and Pavo tried to lift it but could not.

  ‘What makes it so heavy?’

  ‘It’s partly stone.’

  Roger stared. ‘How could stone get into an animal’s leg?’

  ‘Bone is porous. Water seeping through the ground also goes through the bone. Sometimes it carries minerals such as iron, lime, quartz, flint or agate. These deposits are left in the bone and naturally increase its weight. Of course this is a fossil. You’ve seen fossilized wood in the Petrified Forest in Arizona. It’s not wood any more but solid stone. The wood rotted away, and the holes that were left filled up. So, finally, the wooden trees became rock trees. Same thing here. That’s not bone we’re trying to lift, but rock. No wonder it’s heavy.’ He turned to Pavo. ‘Would you be willing to let us buy this? I suppose a leg has no spirit in it?’

  Pavo called in half a dozen men and together they got the great rock leg out into the sunshine.

  The skulls of the village fathers were painted in many colours but the skulls of enemies were not so honoured. Hal wanted people at home to see the art work of New Guinea natives, so he asked Pavo if the skulls he had chosen might be painted. Pavo agreed and sent for the village artist.