The Unknown Zone

by Phil Smith

  Thence proceeded an astonishing spectacle whose description is constrained by respect for readers faint-of-heart. Suffice to say that the poor fellow was set upon with instruments of war and his carcass dismembered and divided among our captors.

  The marauders, around eighty in number, then looted our camp, taking clothes and metal items such as tomahawks, knives and axes, and the firearms. Never had I felt so futile, so forlorn. By virtue of my rank and status I was responsible for the welfare of my men. And I had failed them!

  Thus began our dreary march. We were pushed and prodded northwards through the night with hands bound, our feet clattering over the harsh schist, and the glow from our burning boats diminishing with distance.

  The warriors’ gruff Polynesian speech, aggressive motion and determined gait marked the contingent as purposeful travellers from afar, unlike the peaceful Wairangi folk resident to these parts, whose trust and good will we enjoyed.

  So along the beach trudged we, as mourners to a graveyard, which indeed we were since Cartwright’s demise. Daylight found us cast upon the shingle strand of a swift and icy river. Had we known what ghastly fate would overtake us one by one during the next three weeks, we would have broken free and plunged willingly into the torrent there and then.

  Instead we watched as, with speed and skill, the natives set to snapping tall, woody stalks from the nearby flax bushes, lashing a hundred or more together to form long, conical floats, their thick ends assembled at the stern, with a natural sheer ascending to the bow. Two bundles comprised the keel. Thereupon two further components were attached slightly above these, all being bound by stout strands of scraped and plaited flax leaves. Thus was a vessel constructed fourteen feet in length, roughly eight feet in the beam, and of surprisingly seaworthy form. Others wove green fibres into a plaited cable of no small strength, which they attached to the prow. I heard them call the plant harakeke.

  ‘They’ve made a raft,’ said Flanagan. ‘We’re doubtless on a journey with them, to be sure.’

  ‘A journey to damnation, ’twould seem to me,’ I said, knowing our ordeal would doubtless be protracted and painful. I saw the current, and the near-solid wall of the forest a furlong away, and knew an escape would be doomed.

  Two men bearing stout poles of timber mounted the craft, followed by half a dozen passengers. Those on our side paid out the line while the punters plunged their staves into the riverbed and propelled the boat diagonally across the void, landing well downstream. This done, they disembarked, placed the poles back in the boat, and signalled to our side to haul the raft back over.

  In such manner was our crossing expeditiously performed, till all were assembled, with supplies and equipment, on the northern bank. The same ritual was performed over the many days ahead whenever a river of significant depth or velocity was encountered, or a lagoon or swamp whose crossing would facilitate our progress.

  Other times we’d ford the stream chin-deep in groups of six or eight, grasping a stout pole lengthwise in the current, with two large men anchoring either end. At times our legs would sweep from under us, but so long as we maintained our grip on the spar, those with their feet on the bottom would keep the line intact.

  It was usually upon the riverbanks, in the lee of the low sandhills among the wind-sheared shrubs, that camp was made for the night. This procedure usually included a ritual whose nature defied all decency and violated the very definition of civilised behaviour.

  Employing a curious method involving brisk friction ’twixt two pieces of wood, the Maoris would kindle a fire. On our first night we imagined this was for purposes of warmth and consolation, a precursor perhaps to a lessening of our predicament. But to our revulsion the tribe proceeded to assemble the body parts of the departed Cartwright on a flat log of smooth driftwood. Then the legs, arms, torso, genitalia, and indeed the interior organs were wrapped in broad harakeke leaves, laid with gleeful anticipation on the embers and covered with glowing coals.

  While the meat was cooking, a man of extraordinary stature who was obviously their Chieftain, was handed the head. This he held in one hand like a lawn bowl while with the other he drew a greenstone stabbing-club, which they called a mere-pounamu, from his waistband. Murderous eyes were fixed upon him as he drew the wicked weapon back; then, with a swish, drove its blade into the skull, just above the eyebrows. His accuracy and dexterity were proof of a well-exercised skill, as with a deft twist of the wrist he separated the crown from the base.

  With lustful bulging eyes and broad protruding tongue the chief licked the mere clean before sliding it back into his waistband. Then, in one hand, he scooped forth the brain which he devoured uncooked, and pulled the eyeballs free, each sphere comprising a single mouthful.

  Such unbridled barbarity caused several of our men to collapse upon their knees and vomit, occasioning great mirth among the cannibals. How I longed for England now!

  Seeing me turn aside in disgust, the Chieftain drew from the fire one of the bundles and unwrapped the charred leaves from the steaming contents.

  It was the left arm. Grabbing it by the wrist, he peeled off a strip of skin and thrust it towards me.

  ‘Kai tangata!’ he cried. ‘Kai tangata Pakeha, ka pai!’

  My bitter revulsion was the signal for prolonged merriment whereupon the crowd proceeded to divide up the feast and devour it with efficiency born only of practice and potent craving.

  So it was that our party of sealers, sent from Australia with valiant hopes of forging a new frontier and wresting a fortune from a wild Pacific land, understood clearly our destiny: to be carved asunder and our flesh wrapped in leaves, baked on a driftwood fire, and eaten as pork or beef. Indeed I was to discover in the days to come, to my shame and eternal disgust, that human flesh does in point of fact have a taste that resembles very closely that of pork, and perhaps the texture of baked pheasant.

  I reveal this with the utmost remorse and contrition and confess with shame that I, Rupert Morgan Revington, did eat some of the remains of Standring in the days following our capture. And later, driven by desperate exhaustion wrought by starvation, I consumed the right hand of our ship’s carpenter, Gordon Wilkinson.

  3

  A man of strength

  His eyes ablaze with shame and rage, Hemi Ratana glared up from the undergrowth.

  He slapped his hands against the tree’s flank and felt the soles of his feet prickle with anticipation.

  Plates of mauve and orange bark stippled the gargantuan trunk, while here and there dribbles of golden kauri gum hung like melted candlewax.

  Cicadas made the fragrant summer air vibrate.

  Thirteen metres above him, the Square Kauri’s head branches arched out and upwards like triumphant arms above the surrounding forest.

  Hemi was panting from an hour of scrambling up the Kaimiro Valley, following the old logging roads now overgrown with fern and supplejack. Scratched, muddy and groaning with embarrassment after a miserable attempt to match Tamatea’s prowess in front of the girls, he gasped with pain and exertion.

  His latest ordeal had begun when he was fishing in the pool under the waterfall. Tamatea arrived with Te Maika and her school friends, Rachel and Janet, to swim and dive from the rocks.

  ‘Well, how’s this, then?’ Tamatea had bellowed when he saw Hemi. ‘Monkey-boy is here, the boy who climbs trees. Hey, boy, we’re playing Taunt the Taniwha. Prove to us you’re not the son of a chimp, a loser like your old man!’

  At eighteen, Tamatea was taller, fitter and three years older than Hemi. He played in the front row for the high school first XV and on Friday nights he borrowed Baldy’s Zephyr and drove over to Thames where he was the bouncer at the Goldfields Hotel. Hemi knew it was dangerous to challenge Tamatea in any kind of contest, unless, of course, it involved matters of the intellect. Or climbing trees.

  There was no way out.

  ‘Go on, Tarzan, give it a go!’ Te Maika laughed. ‘Show him you’re not an ape!’

  Hemi glanced
at Rachel. She held his gaze, then looked away. She seemed uncomfortable with the situation, unhappy with the danger and the victimisation.

  ‘I don’t have to prove anything to you,’ Hemi muttered. ‘Leave me alone!’

  He raised his line from the water, held the bait netting over a bucket, and gently shook a dozen dark green koura into it. ‘At all costs,’ Sonny had often told him, ‘avoid confrontations and don’t get in fights — unless you’re sure of winning.’

  ‘Look at it this way, weakling,’ Tamatea boomed. ‘If you can stay under the water for even half as long as me, the mighty Tamatea, then it could be a big boost to your pathetic need for recognition and acceptance. So come on, wanker, let the contest begin!’

  Tamatea climbed to a high ledge, waited till he had the adoring attention of Te Maika and Janet and dived straight as a gannet into the pool where the falling water thumped the surface to foam and envelop him.

  ‘One, two, three …’ the girls counted.

  Hemi breathed deeply in anxious anticipation and tensed his muscles. Perhaps he’d need to dive in and rescue the great blowhard.

  ‘Thirty, thirty-one …’

  There was no sign of the diver.

  The girls exchanged worried looks. Even Rachel appeared concerned. Had Tamatea wedged his foot in a fork of the sunken pohutukawa? Maybe this time the taniwha had …

  From out of the depths a shape like a kingfish glided up towards them. On the count of fifty-nine, Tamatea burst from the water, tossing his head and flinging back his long hair with a flourish.

  His nostrils flared as he drew a deep breath and bared his perfect teeth to his admirers. Sunlight flashed from the koru-pounamu around his neck.

  ‘How was that?’ he declared. ‘Not too bad, eh!’

  He rose from the water, took a towel from his sister, and flexed into a muscular pose on a boulder. His two fans clapped and giggled.

  It was Hemi’s turn.

  He grinned at Rachel and sensed her anxiety. The clay bank was wet and as he prepared to dive he slipped and fell clumsily, crashing painfully on his side. The cascade thrashed at him, ripping his shorts from his body.

  Hemi battled the current, struggling deeper to where the water ran darker and swirled more slowly. He groped for a handhold to prevent him floating up, going deeper to where the water grew cold. He grabbed at the bank, plunging his fingers into the thick clay. For several precious seconds he stayed relaxed, his body outstretched in the translucent gloom, like Superman in flight.

  He became aware of something hard in the clay under his right hand, something flat and smooth. He curled his fingertips over it and tightened his grip.

  Now he could see bursts of orange light. His heart was thumping like a gold stamper and the thunder of the bursting water above turned Hemi’s attention to the surface.

  Suddenly the clay yielded and the smooth object pulled free in his hand. A surge of air bubbles swept him spiralling in a shroud of diamonds to the surface.

  Throwing his head back for air, the boy gasped in the glare of sunlight amid the explosive gusts of spray. Then he swam to the shallows where he stood spluttering, draped in slimy weed, with no clothes on.

  ‘Twenty seconds,’ the spectators yelled, dancing around thumping their chests and hooting like apes.

  ‘The young monkey better go back to the trees,’ Te Maika cried. Tamatea, smirking, put his arm around Rachel’s waist and pulled her towards him.

  ‘Let me go, you great oaf!’ she said, using both hands to fend him off. ‘You’re absolutely cruel and sadistic.’

  Hemi shrugged the weedy tresses from his shoulders and ears and clambered from the pond holding a bundle of raupo reeds to conceal his nakedness. Rachel gave him her towel and he wrapped it thankfully around his waist. He would find a way to repay her one day, he hoped.

  ‘Behold!’ Tamatea was blustering. ‘The terrible taniwha emerges from the slime! Behold what a filthy, stinking beast he is!’

  ‘Just as well Dad’s not here with the dogs, eh Tama!’ said Te Maika. ‘They’d be onto him for sure. He looks more like a wild pig than a monkey. We should cook him in the hangi tonight, eh? Stick an apple in his mouth, eh?’

  Te Maika’s animosity was no surprise to Hemi. In spite of the fun they’d had as children, the bitter tongue of Atawhai had gradually poisoned her daughter’s mind with resentment, and she, like Tamatea, was always on the alert for opportunities to mock him. What hurt most was that today it had happened in front of outsiders, one of whom was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

  High in the valley, where Hemi had retreated, the Square Kauri’s flat flanks soared like the sides of a small skyscraper. On the uphill side, Hemi saw an entanglement of rata vines, some the diameter of his thigh, twining sinuously into the heights. About halfway up, a supplejack colony from a nearby tawa joined the rata and the two vine systems — one barky and brown, the other nobbly and black — ascended into the crown.

  Hemi leaned back and called into the treetops, ‘You think I fear the forest!’ He looked around, surprised by the sudden, courageous outburst. If only he could speak to Tamatea like this, stand up for himself; or be a man when Uncle Baldy debased him, respond decisively when Te Maika derided him or when Atawhai demeaned him.

  ‘You think I fear ghosts and bush-devils?’ he shouted. ‘And the tapu and the makutu? You think I fear death? The hills will run with my blood, the rats will feast on my eyeballs before Hemi Ratana backs down again.’

  A startled wood pigeon, a fat kereru, wooshed by on emerald wings.

  ‘I’ll show you; I’ll show the lot of you that I’m a man of strength and courage. I’m not a loser. I will conquer the forest giant! I will impress Tane, god of the forest, and avenge the loss of my mana. I will die horribly if I have to and my ancestors will honour me in heaven!’

  Reaching up now,

  Fists gripping the vine,

  Holding his life with his hands,

  Eyes narrowed with determination,

  Placing bare feet against the rata bark,

  Hauling higher, higher still, higher yet again,

  Ascending from desperation, darkness, despair

  Lips drawn tight in resolution, tight with concentration.

  At the place where the rata converged with the supplejack, Hemi jammed his feet between the crossed vines and paused, standing erect for a few minutes, taking the weight off his arms. He was higher in the forest than he’d ever been before, yet he was still only halfway up. His hands were slippery with sweat. His feet ached and his biceps burned. Drawing breath through clenched teeth, he felt his knuckles tighten.

  Dragging dead branches aside,

  Wedging knees in vines entwined,

  Stretching now for a higher handhold,

  Groaning, grunting, heaving, hauling, Hemi

  Pushed further upwards, fighting off initial terror

  Desperation burning self-pity, flames of confidence

  Consuming his anger, firing desire to abandon boyhood.

  A supporting branch snapped and Hemi dropped a yard or more in a cascade of leaves and branches. He stayed calm and focused. This was a confrontation on his terms. Here was a fight he could win, so long as he kept his nerve.

  For twenty minutes he swung and swayed his way up the lianas like an Amazonian sloth, lunging slowly in an aerial ballet towards the shafts of light that filtered and flickered through the canopy.

  He was nearing the head branches, where centuries of accumulated leaves and compost supported a garden of glossy shrubs and epiphytes in sub-tropical profusion.

  The corners of the trunk formed inverted buttresses that supported the four largest branches. These concealed the green sanctuary from ground level.

  A hanging branch came within his reach and Hemi began a pendulum motion, swinging towards it. With perfect timing he released his grip on the vines, grabbed the branch and hauled himself hand over hand into the thick undergrowth.

  Draped in dead leaves and cobwebs
and streaming in sweat, Hemi crawled through a hole in the vegetation and emerged in a small clearing. He lay there panting with exertion, cradled safe and cool within the tree’s colossal embrace.

  The cicadas up here were deafening.

  He got to his knees and looked around.

  In the distance, over the treetops, he could see the ocean to the north.

  It was late afternoon.

  If Atawhai could see him now she’d be incandescent with fury.

  ‘You young bugger!’ she’d shriek. ‘Getting into more bloody trouble. I worry myself sick over you. You just wait till Baldy hears what you’ve done!’

  He vividly remembered her truculence after he rescued Te Maika from the flooding river four years previously. ‘You stay out of those trees,’ she cackled, finger wagging. ‘There’s death in them trees. And you stay away from that square one.’

  The paua eyes in her carved walking stick, the terrible rakau-tapu, had flashed their sinister warning at him.

  ‘You hear me? Them trees is tapu! Specially that Square Kauri. You go near that one and you’ll bring a curse on the whole lot of us.’

  4

  Flight from the cannibals

  By the twenty-ninth day of our captivity there remained only the Irish lad, Flanagan, and myself of our original crew.

  Since Okahu we had been driven north over sand and pebble beaches, through swamp and forest, bluff and outcrop, our people diminishing in number and in spirit as the natives, who called themselves Ngai Tahu, did progressively kill and eat our men along the way.

  Their flesh-eating did appear the more gluttonous since they did not lack other fare: eels, fern root and frond, birds’ eggs, a brown fowl called weka, and whitebait in abundance, scooped from the shallows of the river with baskets and devoured raw by the handful. We found also, among the rocks at low tide, a great plentitude of shellfish, each one greater in width than the span of a man’s hand, having a strong, black flesh, that cooked upon coals or in their luminescent shell, bore no small resemblance to pork or indeed, to human meat. We called these pork-fish and it was, I suspect, the willingness of myself and the Irishman to harvest them when seas were rough and other food was scarce, that secured our precarious salvation.