Fear Drive My Feet

by Peter Ryan

  ‘Brand new! Look – the grass thatching hasn’t even dried out yet!’

  ‘I’d say it’s only been finished a few days,’ said Les, who had moved over closer. ‘Yes. Look here – there’s still sap oozing from the ends of some of the logs.’

  ‘Now, why would they bother building a rest-house when there’s nobody to use it?’

  ‘You’d think they’d be only too glad to get out of it. Let’s talk to the tultul and see what he’s got to say.’

  We summoned the tultul and asked him why the house had been built. He replied that when he had heard of our arrival at Sintagora he expected us to pass through Sugu, and had at once made arrangements for us to be properly accommodated.

  ‘Look,’ he said to support his point, ‘the house is quite new.’

  ‘Why did you build it so big?’ asked Les. ‘There’s room enough for twenty men to sleep in it!’

  For just a second the tultul was stumped, but his recovery was magnificent. His eyes fell upon our huge pile of stores and equipment.

  ‘I heard from the talk that you had a lot of cargo,’ he said calmly, ‘and so I thought I ought to see there was plenty of room for it.’

  We looked at each other, and Les shrugged his shoulders in response to my raised eyebrows.

  ‘All right, tultul, you can go. Tell some people to bring us food.’

  He vanished at once, and we heard him shouting to the women to bring food.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked as soon as we were alone.

  ‘I think it stinks!’ Les exclaimed. ‘But why has he built it? There isn’t a single sign of Japanese patrolling. I feel certain that if the Nips have been through here we’d have heard at least a whisper of it. It’s got me beat.’

  Till late at night we puzzled over the building that sheltered us, and got nowhere. We dropped off to sleep at last, still wondering.

  Next morning we set out for Gain, which I had last visited on the way out of the Wain country early in the year. If the large new rest-house at Sugu had been a mystery, the condition of the track to Gain was an even greater enigma. Grass had been cut, fallen trees removed, landslips cleared, and a serviceable bridge constructed over each stream. Such diligence on the part of the kanakas and zeal on the part of the village officials had been uncommon even in peacetime, when there had been regular routine patrols to inspect such things. At a time when patrolling had ceased, it was nothing short of extraordinary to see a bridle-path so well tended, and we asked the village officials to explain their new-found conscientiousness. But they would say nothing. Apart from an occasional mumbled ‘Work belong me’ from the tultul, they maintained a stubborn, though embarrassed, silence.

  This was only our first taste of an attitude which prevailed over almost the whole of the Huon Peninsula. We were to encounter many such strange activities, and nowhere would the people explain the motive for their unwonted energy. Model villages, well-tended cemeteries, a high standard of cleanliness, especially in regard to latrines – in fact, all the things that a hardworking administration had been trying for so long to introduce to village life – seemed to have become a fait accompli overnight. All our inquiries failed to breach the blank wall of silence that the natives had erected. But it could not conceal the profound uneasiness which lay behind it. In the end, our nerves began to be affected, for the continuous sense of being alone in the midst of some vast but intangible force imposes a strain even on the most unimaginative temperament. Not till the following year, and then only by piecing together many shreds of evidence, was it possible to construct even a partial picture of the sinister and, to a white man, almost incomprehensible forces then at work in the area.

  At Gain everything seemed to be the same as when I had passed the previous January. Dinkila, who was waiting for us at the entrance to the village, said there had been no news of the enemy at his home village of Bivoro, and apparently no Japanese had been near Gain either. Nevertheless, he said, something seemed to be happening here at Gain which he could not quite fathom. The natives would tell him nothing.

  The buildings of Boana Mission could be seen from Gain, and we studied them carefully through binoculars. There was no sign of smoke from cooking-fires, and it was too far away to see whether there were any people about. The luluai and the tultul of Gain declared that to their knowledge the enemy had never been in Boana. We felt that if the Japs had visited there, the news would certainly have reached Gain. And so we decided that we could safely go on to Boana the next day, by my usual route through Kasin, Wasinim, and Dzendzen.

  I ate tea in a cheerful mood that night.

  ‘I’m thinking of Jock McLeod,’ I said to Les, who had looked up inquiringly at my chuckle. ‘Wait till I tell him his pessimistic prophecies were all wrong! I felt all along that the Nips wouldn’t have found their way in here yet.’

  Next morning we had our gear lined along the track and were about to order the carriers to move off along the road to Boana when I noticed the tultul of Kasin, which was the next village on the road, hovering at the edge of the clearing. He caught my eye, blinked, and looked away. Then he cast another quick glance at me. He seemed in two minds whether to approach me or run away. This was very strange behaviour, for he had always been most friendly and helpful. I called him over.

  ‘Why didn’t you come and talk to me?’ I asked in an injured tone. ‘I thought we were friends.’

  ‘Master, me like talk lik-lik long you,’ he mumbled. ‘Me got talk.’

  ‘Well, what is the news?’ I asked, as he stood there silent for some moments.

  He stared at the ground and shifted his shoulders uncomfortably. Then, trembling and swallowing, he told us in barely audible monosyllables that a Japanese patrol had visited Boana. By painfully minute cross-examination we placed the date of the visit as 17th April. It was now 1st May. He either could not or would not tell where they had come from, nor where they had gone. He knew only that they had been there on the 17th and were now gone.

  I retracted mentally the things I was going to say to Jock. An enemy patrol – almost certainly much stronger than ours, if the Nips were following their usual practice – had appeared out of the blue and then vanished just as mysteriously. Not the least disquieting feature was that the natives were concealing what they knew: either lying to us or keeping silent. For all we knew, the enemy might be making a systematic tour of all the villages – might swoop down on Gain itself at any moment. As the realization burst upon us we almost unconsciously cast a glance over our shoulders at the high mountains behind. I called Kari, told him briefly what had happened, and ordered him to post a policeman a few hundred yards along each track leading into the village, so that we could not be surprised.

  Using the map, and information supplied by kanakas, we found another route to my old camp at Bawan, skirting Boana itself. It involved penetrating deeper into the mountains, to a village called Sedau, and a long walk over what appeared to be rough and difficult country. It would have been most foolish, however, to have risked contact with the enemy at that stage.

  ‘If we get into a scrap now,’ said Les, ‘the only thing that’ll happen is that we’ll lose a good part of our supplies. I’m all in favour of keeping well clear of trouble until we’ve got all this junk planted somewhere.’


  ‘Me, too. The longer we can keep out of strife the better.’

  It was no part of our duty to seek combat. Our role was to see and not be seen: once we clashed with the enemy they would become so wary that our chances of obtaining worthwhile information would be much reduced.

  We set out at once for Sedau, some four hours’ climb into the mountains behind Gain, where we felt it would be safe to spend the night. By the time we had been going a couple of hours we were enveloped in dense fog which, though it had the advantage of concealing us, prevented us from observing the surrounding country.

  Through occasional breaches in the fog we watched Sedau from a hillside a few hundred yards above it. Natives were moving about, and there seemed to be no sign of anything unusual happening, so we marched into the village. The people received us without enthusiasm or any other emotion, showed us to a house to sleep in, brought us a reasonable quantity of food, and left us alone. They said they had never seen, and practically never heard of, the Japanese.

  Towards evening Kari and Watute, who had been poking about the village, asked us to look at a large house in course of construction a little distance from the village, and an enormous latrine nearby.

  ‘What do you suppose they are for?’ Watute asked, after he and Kari had drawn our attention to the unusual design of the house.

  Les and I could not guess their purpose, and asked Kari and Watute what they thought.

  ‘I think these people have heard the Japanese are coming, and want to have houses ready for them,’ Kari said. ‘The natives here are much more frightened of the Japanese than they are of us, you know. They have heard all these stories of the Japanese cutting people’s heads off.’

  ‘It is only a guess, master, but it is the only thing I can think of,’ Watute put in. ‘As if the Japanese would know what a latrine was for!’ he added with a chuckle, for he was familiar with the filthy habits of many of the enemy soldiers.

  Les sent for some of the villagers again, and we questioned them closely, trying to detect any inconsistency in their stories. They were unshakable: they knew nothing whatever of the Japanese, and were building the house and the latrine for their own use.

  ‘Do you use that latrine yourselves?’ Watute shot in suddenly.

  ‘Yes,’ said the tultul.

  ‘How long has it been finished?’

  ‘About two weeks.’

  ‘See, master!’ Watute said triumphantly. ‘They are lying about something, for that latrine has not been used at all.’

  But even this could not shake the tultul’s composure. He had his story, and he was sticking to it.

  In the morning we called for men to carry our gear to Sokulen, a small village in the hills directly behind Boana. There was no dearth of men: willing carriers appeared from all the houses, each man eager to be on the road. This anxiety to be rid of us confirmed our suspicions that something was amiss.

  Watute watched their hurried preparations with a sardonic grin.

  ‘Master lookim?’ he asked. ‘Altogether man ’e hurry up too much long rausim you-me.’ And indeed their indecent haste to see us beyond their borders could not have escaped even the most unpractised eye.

  The track to Sokulen led up a tributary creek of the Kusip River, over a low divide, and into a tributary of the Bunzok. Most of the way we walked knee-deep in icy water, slithering and stumbling on the stony beds of the streams. The wear and tear on our boots was very great, for at least half of each day’s walking was along a watercourse, and the boots were never dry from one day’s end to another. They were soon reduced to a sodden pulp, which fell to pieces. Already, only a week out from the Markham, our first pair were showing signs of disintegration, and it seemed that our five spare pairs each would be none too many.

  Where the track to Sokulen lay across the divide it seemed as though it had been subjected to recent heavy traffic. The ground was muddy and churned up, and the track was much wider than the usual native pad. Bamboos, which grew in thick clumps on either side, had been slashed and cut – a thing no native, appreciating their value, would ever do. It looked as though a Japanese patrol had passed that way, but heavy rain had obscured all definite footprints, and we could not tell whether the travellers had worn boots, or in what direction they had gone. The police, however, were of the opinion that those who had passed before us were not natives, and that they had travelled in the opposite direction to ours. They indicated the angle at which the slashes had been made in the bamboos, and pointed out that if we, for instance, wished to make such a cut we would have to stop and turn round, whereas a man travelling the other way could do it as he walked.

  ‘I wonder if we would have thought that one out?’ said Les.

  He called the tultul of Sedau over and questioned him on the state of the track. The tultul still insisted that he had never seen a Jap, but he was so ill at ease that we did not believe him.

  While we were talking to the tultul one of the police noticed two natives running down the track from the direction of Sokulen. They made straight for Les and me and, without waiting to get their breaths, told us excitedly that a large party of Japanese had arrived at Bungalamba on their way to Lae, and that all the village officials of the surrounding settlements had gone to meet them. The two boys did not know what had happened then, because they had hurried to tell us about the arrival of the Japs. We pointed to the track, and asked what had caused it to get into such a condition.

  The boys looked at us in astonishment, saying, ‘Japanese, of course! Didn’t the tultul of Sedau tell you about them? They slept one night in his village, and told him to build a house for them, because lots of Japanese parties would be coming through here.’

  Les and I noticed the venomous look the tultul shot at them, and we could not help laughing, in spite of the grave news.

  ‘Where did they go after they left Sedau?’ I asked.

  ‘Through the Kisengan, in the Erap River. They slept at Sugu on the way.’

  My scalp prickled, and I heard Les’s sharply drawn breath. So that was it: the new rest-house at Sugu, where we had slept, had, only a few nights before, housed Japanese, and the track, which we had remarked as being uncommonly well tended, had been cleared in honour of the enemy! Twice already we had crossed the trail of that party, and now there was news of another one ahead of us.

  The game played by the natives was understandable and, from their own point of view, justified. They wanted neither Japanese nor Australians wandering round their country. Both were merely nuisances to them – useless people who ate their food, had to be carried for and shown their way round the bush. The natives were frightened, too, that there would be a battle between us in which they would inevitably suffer, and they were bending all their energies to keeping us apart, each in ignorance of the other’s presence.

  From our point of view things were as bad as could be, and we could not continue wandering round the mountains blindly crossing and recrossing the paths of enemy patrols. It was a shock to find that the Japanese had departed from their habit of the previous year and were now patrolling extensively in the wild mountain country into which they had been once so reluctant to venture. But it was a worse shock to find that the natives were giving them as much assistance as they gave u
s: this attitude I blamed largely on the fact that for two and a half months the area had been abandoned by us. If I had never left the country, but had stayed on in the villages, I felt sure that things would never have come to this pass.

  There was only one thing to do now: we must get all our cargo safely into some remote spot and then find the enemy patrols for ourselves. We told the tultul and the two messengers from Sokulen of our intention, and the three of them joined in tearful entreaties to us to leave immediately.

  ‘Go back to the Markham at once,’ they pleaded. ‘If you go now you will be able to reach your own people safely. If you stay here you will certainly be killed. There are so many Japanese, and if they find we are hiding you from them they will cut our heads off. Some of them are coming to sit down at Boana Mission,’ they added.

  Jock’s words came back to me: ‘If I were the Jap commander I’d have a standing patrol at Boana.’ It seemed as if his gloomy forecast was being fulfilled in earnest.

  In spite of the pleas of the local natives we resumed the journey to Sokulen quickly, after having told the police what the situation was and sending Watute and Pato ahead to scout. At a point on the track which offered a particularly good view of Boana we paused for ten minutes to let the carriers catch their breath, while we watched the mission. Through binoculars we could see right into the houses, and since there was still no movement we concluded that the mission was, at any rate up to this moment, unoccupied.

  At Sokulen we set up the radio and informed headquarters in Port Moresby that the Japanese seemed to have taken up inland patrolling in a big way. Then, still keeping the unwilling Sedau people as carriers, as punishment for having lied to us, we pushed up the Bunzok Valley to an out-of-the-way village called Bandong. It was dark when we arrived, and raining hard. The Bandong people received us with indifference and showed us to the only spare house in the village. Wet through, and too tired to eat, Les and I and all the boys lay on the floor and went to sleep.