Fear Drive My Feet

by Peter Ryan

  The meal consisted of bully beef, sweet potatoes, and papaw, and no great plenty at that. When it was finished, tobacco was produced, pipes filled and cigarettes rolled. For weeks not one of them had smoked a shred of proper tobacco, and ancient pieces of newspaper had taken the place of cigarette-papers. Some smoked the trade twist that was issued to the natives – foul black stuff made, I should say, from the sweepings from cigar factories and bound together with molasses in plaited sticks. Others rolled their own cigars from brus, the native-grown leaf tobacco, purchased from the kanakas in nearby villages. This too, was terribly strong. After a couple of brus cigars a Capstan seemed tasteless.

  The hurricane-lamp cast its smoky glow on the bearded faces of Bill and Bob as they played their evening game of chess. I saw that a number of chessmen were missing and had been replaced by buttons and bottle-tops. Faces grave, eyes deep-sunken, and foreheads lined, the two men made each move deliberately, shading their eyes from the lantern and occasionally brushing off with patient hand a more than usually vicious mosquito.

  Another bearded patriarch of twenty-two, not so long-suffering, cursed and swore as he slapped at the mosquitoes swarming round his head. He was doing his best to write a letter home on a rather grubby piece of canteen paper.

  A fourth man, who might also have stepped out of the Old Testament, was attending to his beard with all the care that a botanist would have lavished upon a rare specimen. With comb and mirror and folding nail-scissors he preened and pruned with loving care, until he achieved precisely that degree of elegance on which he had set his heart. Several reasons were given for this cult of the beard: one was that razor-blades were almost unobtainable; another, that beards were protection against mosquitoes, and useful camouflage in jungle fighting. While true to some extent, these were rationalizations. The real reason was that it helped to pass the time. It was a trifling diversion that helped bored men to endure a weary time of isolation, privation, and danger.

  From time to time one of them would wind up the wheezy old gramophone and play a record. There were about twenty discs, which they told me had been taken, with the gramophone, from an abandoned house in Wau. When one group of men grew sick of the records the outfit was passed to another hut, with strict instructions to look after the only gramophone needle. It was carefully sharpened and resharpened till it was ground down to the merest stub.

  The songs were a rubbishy lot – worn-out popular tunes and sentimental tangoes. The tinny sound of the banal words was flat and false as it disappeared into the surrounding darkness of the jungle. In that wilderness, a fruity tenor voice crying plaintively to men who had not seen a white woman for six months, ‘The night was made for love’, was about as appropriate as a juke-box on Judgment Day. But somehow the phoney sentiment struck home. We were all so starved for love and tenderness and all the deeply cherished private things that had made our individual lives worthwhile, that we seized upon even this fly-blown imitation to keep memory alive. And even today those tunes have a queerly evocative power. When I hear one of them memories crowd in upon me. I see bearded figures playing chess, surrounded by the brooding blackness of a fever-ridden camp; I hear the dull murmur of the Wampit rushing past, and see the wasted yet smiling faces of comrades who, side by side, faced jungle, hunger, and a savage enemy. Where they are today I do not know, but they were a good crowd, and it seems strange that a stupid, nearly forgotten tune should have the power to call up their images so vividly.

  By eight o’clock we were all driven to bed by the mosquitoes. The only refuge was under a mosquito-net, but there was another reason for turning in early. Like all other supplies, kerosene for the lamps was short. If more did not come soon, they would have to fall back upon the very unsatisfactory flicker given by lighted strips of cloth floating in tins of grease. To avoid this further privation early lights-out was essential.

  Bill Chaffey and I walked together to the sleeping-huts. The camp was already almost in darkness. On the other side of the dry creek-bed, where the native carriers and the police-boys had their huts, small fires were still burning. As the boys shifted in front of their fires, one could see their dark figures momentarily, and hear them talking in low tones. Occasionally the night was split with a gusty gale of laughter as someone scored with a good story. Otherwise the soft murmur of the Wampit was the only sound. Bill and I said goodnight and sprang hurriedly beneath our nets. Undressing was a matter to be performed in shelter. He would have been hardy who could have undressed calmly in the open, exposed to the attentions of the ravenous Markham mosquitoes.

  I lay awake for some time in the clammy darkness. Gradually the talking of the natives ceased, and their fires burnt out. Then the rain started, hissing quietly through the trees and pattering almost inaudibly upon the sago-palm-leaf roof of the hut. To this monotonous whisper I fell asleep.

  II

  DAWN BROKE dull and humid. The rain had stopped, but drops of water were still falling from the trees and from the ragged edges of the roofs. Even at seven in the morning it was a steaming, sweltering day. I was sweating before I was fairly up.

  As soon as breakfast was over – bananas and more bully beef – I settled down with John Clarke in his hut to find out all I could about the country I was going to. John spread a tattered map on the rough table before us.

  ‘When you cross the Markham tomorrow, you’ll be on the Huon Peninsula,’ he said, indicating a huge bulge of land with his pipe-stem. ‘I suppose it’s about three thousand square miles, all told. The Saruwaged Range runs down the centre like a backbone, and it rises way up to fourteen thousand feet in places. The country falls away to the coast in the north; and, as you can see, the southern boundary of the peninsula is the Markham Valley.’

  ‘How much of the peninsula is inhabited?’

  ‘I think there are native villages pretty well everywhere – except very high in the mountains, of course. Most of the area is fertile, but there are barren areas in the Markham Valley, and they are pretty sparsely populated. Actually you can’t say too much about this country, because a lot of it is unexplored. There are wild kanakas too, higher up.’

  ‘What about the Japs?’

  ‘Generally speaking, we reckon they own the other side of the Markham and we own this. We make an occasional visit over the other side, but Jock is the only one of our blokes who’s over there permanently. All the same, the Nips stick pretty much to Lae and round the coast, though they’ve been patrolling up the Markham Valley road a lot more lately.’

  I stared at this huge area on the map. Clearly, I might wander there for the rest of my life without finding Jock McLeod.

  ‘How do you think I should start looking for Jock?’ I asked John.

  He grinned, understanding what a hopeless job it must have seemed to me.

  ‘Jock’s got a hide-out somewhere in this area,’ he said, circling a stretch of country behind Lae. ‘It’s known as the Wain country. The Lutherans had a mission station at Boana, a couple of days’ walk from Lae, but of course that was in peacetime. Jock has naturally kept very quiet about his camp, but I think it’s near the village of Gain. If you start there you’ll probably pick up his trail. You might have to chase him a hell of a way, though. He hardly ever sleeps twice in the same place, in case the Nips get wise to him.’

  I found Gain on the map. ‘How
far would that be?’ I asked.

  ‘Depends which way you go. The long way is the safe way, and it’ll take you about five days. You go up the Markham on this side for about a day,’ he said, pointing to a spot on the map, ‘and then cross over by canoe to this big village here called Chivasing. You can work north to the mountains pretty safely then – we’ve never heard of the Nips patrolling farther up from Lae than the Erap River.’

  ‘The trouble is I’ve got so little food. How long would it take the other way?’

  ‘Three days. You go straight down to the Markham to Kirkland’s Dump, about two hours from here, cross the Markham, and dash straight up the Erap. It’ll take you about five hours to get off the flat country, where the danger from the Nips is, and into the hills through the Erap Gorge. You can camp the night at Bivoro village, just inside the gorge. You should get to Gain easily in three days then.’

  ‘I’m inclined to fancy the shorter route,’ I said. ‘What do you reckon the chances are of brushing the Japs?’

  ‘If you’re careful, and don’t waste any time on the flat, I’d advise you to go up the Erap,’ he replied. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll lend you Kari, my police corporal, to go with you as far as Gain.’

  He cut short my thanks. ‘Forget it. I’m glad to help you out. Kari has been up there once, too, and knows the route. You’ll find him a very reliable man.’

  John called out to his native orderly, who was standing nearby, to tell Kari that he was wanted.

  ‘You might as well meet him now,’ he said. ‘And I’ll tell him he’s to be ready to go with you in the morning.’

  While we waited for Kari to come from the ‘house-police’ I told John how much his offer meant to me and how grateful I was. Now the party would have at least one experienced member.

  A deep voice saying ‘Yessir!’ from the entrance of the hut made us look up. His arm raised in a smart salute, Lance-Corporal Kari was standing at attention outside. He was as black as coal, six feet tall, and so broad that he filled the whole entrance. He wore only a pair of spotless khaki shorts, immaculately starched and pressed. On his bare right arm was buckled a cloth band, with the single stripe indicating his rank. His skin was smooth, glossy, and hairless, and you could see the magnificent muscles that rippled underneath it. His expression was rather stern, and his face was strikingly handsome, whether judged by European or by native standards. He was about twenty years old, and it was hard to imagine a more superb specimen of young manhood.

  John told him to stand at ease, and, in a few terse words of pidgin, explained that I was crossing the Markham in the morning to join Jock, and that Kari was to accompany me up the Erap River, and as far as Gain.

  Kari turned his handsome, serious face to me, and regarded me rather disapprovingly, I thought. Probably he felt the disgust of an old campaigner at having to put up with the inexperience of a tenderfoot. But he said not a word, and at the conclusion of John’s orders he stepped back smartly, saluted, and was gone.

  My hopes for a successful expedition rose a hundredfold as I watched Kari’s erect, manly form striding back to the house-police. With such a companion anyone might have felt confident.

  ‘What about trade goods?’ John asked.

  ‘What? Oh – sorry, John, I was thinking about Kari. I wasn’t issued with any trade at all. I hoped you would be able to help me there as well.’

  ‘I haven’t got much. The only damned thing we have got plenty of here is malaria. Still, there must be a few things I can let you have. Let’s have a look.’ He led the way to the back of the hut and began hunting through boxes and drums.

  ‘Here’s a few dozen sticks of tobacco. What’s this? Ah – a ten-pound bag of coarse salt! I can spare you that. And here’s a pile of old newspapers – take as many of them as you want. Let’s bring everything down to my table and see what we’ve got.’

  I put this odd assortment on John’s table, and he bent over it, shaking his head ruefully.

  ‘There’s not much, is there? I’ll tell you what: just write me out a receipt for two quid, and I’ll give you forty shilling-pieces from my official funds. That should help. If you’re pretty stingy with all that stuff you can spin it out – for a few weeks, anyhow.’

  Trade tobacco, sheets of newspaper, coarse salt, and New Guinea shilling-pieces! Strange currency, I thought, for paying the carriers who would move my gear from one village to the next, and also for food for myself and the police. But the purchasing power of these goods was high, for most Europeans had left the country when war broke out, and the natives were missing such amenities badly.

  Newspaper, for instance, for rolling their foot-long cigarettes, was highly esteemed, and a couple of sheets was a considerable present. There is a story told of a village headman who, in peacetime, used to subscribe to the Sydney Morning Herald, not because he could read a word of it but because he required an assured supply of ‘smoke-paper’.

  Salt, too, was valuable, especially in the mountains, where it could not be obtained from sea-water. The people developed a craving for it, and a tablespoonful would buy anything up to thirty pounds of sweet potatoes or a large bunch of bananas.

  New Guinea shillings, with a hole through the centre so that they could be threaded on a string, were also acceptable. Strangely, these shillings were called ‘marks’, a hangover from twenty-five years before, when the Germans ruled the Territory. The name of the German coin was still applied to the Australian government’s minting.

  The clatter through the trees of a beaten kerosene-tin made us realize with surprise that we had talked till midday. I thanked John again, and we went our separate ways to lunch – more bully beef, more hard biscuits, more soggy sweet potatoes.

  In the hot afternoon I sat with Bill Chaffey in his thatched ‘orderly-room’ while he helped me draw a rough map of the nearer section of the country across the Markham. To keep the paper clean we had to stop every few minutes and wipe the sweat off our hands. Survey maps of the area were unknown, and even the best were little more than sketch maps. Bill, with careful accuracy, was gradually compiling a large-scale map from parts of earlier maps, sketches he had made himself on patrols across the river, and information obtained from the carefully sifted reports of others. He gave me a good idea of the main features of the flat Markham country and the nearer foothills, together with the names and positions of the more important native villages.

  ‘Did John Clarke fix you up with trade goods?’ Bill asked when we had finished the map.

  ‘Yes. And he’s lending me Kari, to go as far as Gain. I feel a lot happier about my chances now.’

  ‘Is there anything I can scrounge for you? What weapons have you got?’

  Bill was incredulous when he learnt I had nothing but a pistol.

  ‘Good God, you should have a tommy-gun at least!’ he exclaimed. ‘I can’t get you one, worse luck, because we’re as short as hell ourselves. But I’ll see if there’s anything else I can do.’

  The result of his scrounging was that I got half a dozen hand-grenades, a pair of powerful but old-fashioned field-glasses, and several boxes of ammunition for my .45 revolver.

  At about half past five we walked down to the Wampit for a swim, and as soon as I had eaten my tea �
�� the same old food – I turned in to sleep.

  Next morning, as the trees were shedding their last drops of water from the night rains, and the steam was rising from the wet ground, Corporal Kari, Constable Achenmeri, and I set out from Bob’s. John Clarke had helped again by securing six young men from nearby Mari village to carry my gear, for my other carriers had to return to Wau. As the line of eight natives swung into the jungle, heading north for the Markham, I waved goodbye to John, Bill, and my other new friends, and strode after the carriers. In a few seconds the camp was out of sight and the only hint of its presence was the put-put-put of the little motor that charged the radio batteries. Within a minute even this could not be heard. All round there was nothing but green, steaming stillness.

  It was about eight o’clock when I set out, and my immediate destination was Kirkland’s Dump, our farthest outpost on the bank of the Markham, nearly two hours’ walk away. I had by now adopted the habit of reckoning distances in hours rather than miles, for distance as the crow flies is a meaningless term in New Guinea. In bad country a whole day’s hard struggle might find one only three or four miles advanced, while twenty miles might be covered on the flat without great difficulty. For this reason one always thought in terms of how long it took to reach a place, and not how far away it was.

  Most of my two hours’ walk lay through swampy country, and the track wound its way hidden in the jungle which fringed the foot of a grassy ridge. In places the track was so boggy that poles had been laid along it to prevent its being turned entirely into a bottomless pool of mud. Covered with ooze and slime, and none too well anchored, the poles were a difficult obstacle unless one’s boots were plentifully studded with sharp sprigs. The natives, with their bare feet, negotiated the poles with much less difficulty.