Fear Drive My Feet

by Peter Ryan

  ‘We can try,’ said Les. ‘It’ll be a squeeze.’

  They made way for us, and rather diffidently offered us pieces of charred sweet potato to eat. As we had issued them with a packet of biscuits each, we did not feel it would be putting them on short rations to accept, so we took the potato and nibbled away as we squatted round the fire with them. The shyness soon wore off, and we carried on a lively and friendly, though unintelligible, conversation which lasted some twenty minutes. Then, feeling in danger of asphyxiation, we left them with expressions of mutual esteem – also unintelligible – and stepped into the freezing air outside.

  It was almost dark. We saw the police huddled together round their little fire – this they somehow always managed to keep going throughout the night. There were no complaints from them, and I could see by their determined faces that they had made up their minds to stick it out until morning. As Kari squatted there with the others I bent over his shoulder and murmured that he ought to place a guard over the carriers, for if they should run away in the night we would have no hope of getting over the range. He replied that he had thought of this, and that Constable Yaru had already taken up his position in the bush near the mouth of the cave.

  Les and I crawled into our own bed. We were wet, cold, not particularly well fed, and yet it would be wrong to suppose we were miserable. Long ago we had developed the stoicism in regard to little things that acted as a sort of filter for unpleasant experiences. Putting wet and dirty clothes on again when one has become warm and dry, for instance, is probably one of the most disagreeable of sensations, trivial though it may seem. But we had developed a state of mind where the physical sensation of such things did not register upon the consciousness, and so we were spared much misery.

  We put on all our spare clothes and wrapped our blankets round the two of us, but we were so cold that we hardly slept at all, except in fitful dozes. Whenever one of us moved, the freezing air rushed in under our coverings. Steady rain fell all night, pattering onto the rough shelter and gradually finding its way in upon us. About midnight there were two terrific hailstorms, and we hardly dared think how the police and other boys must be suffering. Occasionally we heard them swear or mutter as a hailstone registered a direct hit.

  At the very first sign of light we were happy enough to get out of our cramped, uncomfortable bed and prepared to resume the climb. I noticed ice on a billy of water, and hurried over to see how the police had fared. Apart from being cold, and passing a few uncomplimentary remarks about mountains, which really had no business to be as high as this, they seemed well enough. Strangely, it was the carriers who reported casualties, comparatively well protected though they had been. Five of them, through Pato, protested that they were too ill to continue. To make sure they were not shamming illness I decided to take their temperatures. It was only after much persuasion and explanation from Pato that they would consent to this indignity, and, even then, one of them showed a distinct desire to bite the end off the thermometer. To prevent this I kept a finger between his teeth while the mercury registered, which caused Pato great anxiety. He stood nervously by, afraid that the kanaka would bite my finger too. The temperatures of all five men were high, and there was no doubt that they were ill. We would just have to leave them behind in the cave and hope that they would recover sufficiently to be able to make their way back to Amyen.

  With five carriers ill we were forced to abandon nearly one-third of our gear. We were already carrying heavy packs ourselves, a thing which white men find difficult in New Guinea even under the best conditions. Up on these mountains they were almost the end of us. They chafed and cut, made our backs ache, and several times nearly caused us to overbalance down a precipice. We put on our best boots and threw the others away, and abandoned most of our food. The wireless and the trade goods were the most important things to keep – the trade goods to buy native foods (and native co-operation) and the wireless to send messages to Port Moresby.

  We were on the track again shortly after six o’clock. No more depressing sight can be imagined than this moss forest in the half-light. Damp, green, dim, unreal, it made the journey like a combination of a bad nightmare and a scene from one of Grimm’s fairy-tales.

  I shall never understand why the natives, with their unprotected feet, did not suffer more. It is true that Watute stumbled on a broken branch hidden in the moss, and a sharp sliver of wood passed right through his foot, but though the injury proved troublesome later, the foot was so cold at the time that he felt hardly any pain, and there was very little bleeding.

  As we pushed onwards the track became increasingly vague and faint, but there was no fear of losing the way, for travel in any direction except along the top of the ridge was impossible.

  At ten o’clock, at an estimated height of ten and a half thousand feet, the moss forest ceased abruptly, giving place to a growth of short prickly grass, and small shrubs about two feet high. We felt freer and less oppressed. There was a little pale, weak sunlight, which seemed to warm us and lift our spirits. Far below, spread out like a map, was the Wain and the Naba country and, beyond, the flat country of the Markham. Lae and Salamaua were both visible, and a huge stretch of coastline which we imagined must extend as far as Buna. Smoke was rising from the gardens of the Naba, where men were clearing the bush. Down below us, infinitely remote, natives were working, white men and yellow men were fighting, people were being born and people were dying. But these mountains seemed to put the momentous battles and affairs of mortals into another perspective: it seemed as if they did not matter at all, and as the clouds blocked out our view we felt that other people and other lives were little more than an unsubstantial memory.

  We still had several thousand feet to climb, and we set ourselves to do so before midday. We soon saw why the natives had brought their vine ropes. Bare rock-faces, smooth and polished by the water that had trickled over them for countless ages, blocked our way every half-mile or so. To walk round them was like walking round the side of a brick wall. To enable us to negotiate them, not once but many times a native crawled round to the other side, and the others tossed lengths of vine over to him, to be made fast to rocks, or, when convenient rocks could not be found, to himself. Then, hardly daring to breathe, we crept over, feet on one rope and hands gripping the other. When we got there we always found ourselves sweating profusely, with a pain in the chest from tensed muscles and constricted breathing.

  The top of the range was a semi-plateau some six or eight miles wide, a scene of utter desolation. A howling wind, with nothing to break its force, lashed us pitilessly as we struggled forward. The great limestone outcrops seemed like bones poking through the crust of the earth. When not struggling across the treacherous face of the range we were plodding painfully through a black, sodden bog of spongy earth that sucked at our feet as though it would pull us down for ever. Walking, instead of being a natural rhythmic movement, became a matter of individual footsteps. Every time we lifted our feet we wondered if we had the strength, or the desire, to put them forward once more. Once – but only once – we made the near-fatal error of sitting down for a rest. Intense lassitude caused by lack of oxygen in the atmosphere overcame us, and we wanted to sleep. As soon as we realized what was happening we forced our protesting legs to resume our weight, and stood up for the remainder of our brief spell.

  Headaches, faintness, giddiness, and attacks of nose-bleeding pl
agued us all. Then the carriers started to give trouble, and we caught some of them trying to throw their loads down and run away. The vigilant eye of Kari spotted the move, and he at once halted the line, made them walk closer together, and ordered the police to keep them hemmed in so that escape was impossible. But he was no slave-driver, and understood that the carriers were really distressed with their heavy loads in this frightful country. In spite of his own heavy pack, rifle, and ammunition, he moved in among the cargo and, one by one, gave each carrier a spell for half a mile or so, shouldering their loads himself.

  I pointed this out to Les. He had no words to express his feelings, but we both looked at Kari and marvelled as he ran from one end of the line to the other, bullying here, coaxing there, and sparing no one less than himself.

  ‘If we ever arrive wherever it is we’re going,’ I said, ‘the credit will be due to Kari more than to us.’

  Les nodded. ‘Whenever I look at that man, I feel that though we give the orders, in his strange stolid way Kari is the real guts of this outfit.’

  Another thought was constantly in my mind as the afternoon advanced: it struck me how little we knew of what lay on the other side of the range. We knew neither where we would come out nor the name of the first village we would find. For all we knew, the Japanese might be waiting in force for us, and all we would earn, at the price of the endeavour of this nightmare journey, would be a miserable and lonely death, which we might have found more easily by staying in the Wain. To me the irony of making such an effort only to meet the fate one was trying to escape from was overwhelming. I tried to tell Les what was in my mind.

  ‘It’s been gnawing at me a bit too,’ he confessed. ‘I know it’s no use fooling ourselves about what we may find here; but, all the same, I think we ought to try and put those ideas aside until the worst does happen.’

  ‘You’re right, of course, Les. We might take a leaf from Kari’s book again. He’s so intelligent that he must have thought of that horrible possibility, but he’s coping with the minute-to-minute problems and not worrying about what can’t be altered.’

  Watute, limping from his pierced foot, his old face screwed up with pain, moved towards us.

  ‘Master, look!’ he said grimly, pointing beneath a large overhanging limestone boulder.

  We followed the direction he indicated. Huddled together were the bones of several people.

  ‘What happened? Who are they?’ I demanded.

  ‘Pato ’e talk kanaka – all ’e buggerup long cold (Pato says they were kanakas – they all perished from the cold),’ Watute replied briefly.

  It was a salutary, if grisly, warning. It was no use worrying about what might happen after we got down off the range. The thing to do first was to get down. With an apprehensive backward look at the pathetic pile beneath the rock, we hurried on.

  About half past four we began the descent of the north side. At first it consisted of a perfectly vertical cliff, down which we had to lower ourselves on the inevitable vine. This continued for the first three-quarters of an hour or so, and thereafter it was still almost vertical until we left the grass behind and came to the forest level. About six o’clock darkness and heavy rain descended on us almost simultaneously. The old Amyen man who was leading the carriers kept saying ‘Meka! Meka!’ and pointing ahead. ‘Meka’ meant ‘house’, but when this had been going on for over an hour of darkness and no house had materialized, we lost patience. We felt sick from the combined effects of cold, hunger, altitude, and weariness, and had decided to roll up in our groundsheets and sleep where we were in the bush when Watute hurried up to us.

  ‘Master, place close to! Master, smell!’

  We sniffed, sniffed again. Very faintly, in spite of the rain, and the sweaty reek of ourselves and the boys, there came the tang of wood-smoke, a smell which hungry men can detect miles away. Though our shoulders seemed likely to crack with the effort, we lifted our packs up once more and staggered down the track in the wake of the carriers, to whom the thought of houses, warmth, and food had given a new lease of life.

  After twenty minutes’ hurrying through the rain and darkness we heard excited cries from the boys ahead and caught sight of flickering lights through the bush. In a few moments we had pushed our way, stumbling and breathless, through a clump of thick cane-grass and were in the middle of what appeared to be a fairly large village.

  An old man wearing the red-banded cap of a luluai stepped forward into a circle of torchlight and saluted.

  We had no idea that patrols from the north side had penetrated so far in peacetime, but there was our luluai, as large as life, giving orders for houses to be cleaned out to accommodate us. We threw ourselves exhausted on the ground beneath one of them, too worn out to speak or move for nearly half an hour. Then we hauled ourselves inside the tiny dwelling, where two of the police, who had recovered sooner than we had, were already engaged in putting up our bed-sails.

  Our first action was to take off our boots, which were sodden, heavy, agony to wear, and nearly ruined. Then we went over to the other house to see how the boys fared, whether they all had a dry place to sleep, and if food had been brought to them. While we crouched round the little fire in the centre of the floor, talking about the day’s walk, some of the village people brought in two huge blackened cooking-pots full of steaming boiled sweet potatoes, English potatoes, pumpkin, and other vegetables. The boys squatted round the pots and thrust their hands into the boiling mass. The smell of food was too much for us: we joined the circle and dived in with the others two white hands among a dozen or more black ones, and gorged till we felt we would burst. Then we staggered off to bed. We slept right round the clock, not waking till ten next morning.

  All day it poured with rain, and the cold seemed to creep in on us through every chink of the house. The ground, the houses, the men – everything looked grey, sodden, and dispirited. We crouched by the little fire that was burning on a pile of earth in the middle of the floor, but our aching limbs gave us no rest. When we got up to stretch our legs we found them almost too weak to support us.

  ‘ ‘‘Damp rusts men as it rusts rifles; more slowly, but deeper” ’ quoted Les. ‘I can’t remember who said that – can you?’

  ‘No. But he must have been a soldier.’

  ‘Too right he must have been!’ Les said fervently as he drew his knees up to his chin and then creakingly straightened his legs again.

  The village we had come to was called Gombawato, and it was at the head of the Yalumet River. It had taken us a walk of nearly fourteen hours to reach it, and we had crossed the range at an altitude of somewhere between twelve and thirteen thousand feet. We put this information in a brief radio message to Port Moresby, and settled down to rest again.

  We hardly moved from the house all day, for neither of us could stand steadily, but I was able to dress the bruises, scratches, and cuts of the rest of the party during the morning. Hardly anyone seemed to have escaped without an injury of some kind, and Watute’s foot was now very painful.

  About midday I walked over to the house-police. Through the smoke I could see the younger ones lying on their blankets on the floor, talking of their adventures of the day before in the awe-inspiring mountains we had left behind. Dinkila was telling a story of an argument he had had with an Amyen
man. The point of it escaped me, but it set the others laughing.

  Watute and Pato sat together, blankets draped over their heads and shoulders, and looking like a couple of amiable old chimpanzees as they conversed gravely in low tones about our best course of action for the future.

  Kari sat by himself near the door, sewing up a rip in his loincloth, looking seriously out into the rain from time to time. I tried, somewhat clumsily, to tell him how grateful I was for his magnificent work the day before.

  He flashed me one of his rare, quick smiles. ‘Something-nothing, master. Me police-boy – work belong me.’ I realized that Kari, in his way, was a truly great person. The dangers, the difficulties, and the petty annoyances of our precarious existence never troubled him: he thought only of his duty and the responsibility which command had put on his broad black shoulders. I had come to understand why the other boys never resented the stern discipline he imposed on them. It was not merely his enormous physical power that maintained his authority: it was an authority which sprang from a realization by the others that in Kari they had a man who, merely by being what he was, deserved respect.

  No one in Gombawato spoke pidgin, so our only way of talking to the people that day was to get Pato to put our questions into the Naba dialect, and have the Amyen carriers put them into the language of Gombawato. The answers, of course, came back through the same channels. However, the problem was solved by the arrival during the evening of a young man from another village some hours’ walk farther down the valley. He spoke pidgin English and had been summoned by the Gombawato people as an interpreter.

  Our Amyen carriers also spent the day in the village, resting instead of hurrying back, as we had expected them to. During the afternoon we paid them, in salt, razor-blades, and lengths of cloth, for their two days’ hard work, and told them that they should have, of course, all the stuff we had been forced to abandon on the range. All in all, they had no cause to complain of their bargain, but I wondered what they really thought of these two curious white men who insisted on crossing the Saruwageds in the wrong season and who had only the vaguest idea of where they were heading. I suppose that is a question which will never be answered.