Young Dick

by John Jarvis

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Richard regained consciousness and wished he hadn’t: the right side of his head pounded as though being the target of continuous blows. Through his half-closed eyes he could see a concerned pair of soft brown eyes that widened at his consciousness. A soft strange word matched the soft eyes. Richard realized his head was being bathed by a sponge soaked in cool water and quickly sat up. A mistake that was paid for in increased pain and dizziness. Soft hands restrained him. Cautiously he looked around; it was night-time and he lay not far from a large fire that kept insects well outside its heat. In the background he could make out scores of warriors sitting patiently and waiting for their leader to speak. In the foreground he could see the clothes of four or five sailors laid one on top of each other, not folded but neatly layered. On the top of the clothes lay his pistol, powder flask and shot bag along with four other sets of flasks and bags. One spark from the spitting fire could send them all to hell.

  “No!” Richard yelled pointed to the fire and then the powder-flasks and made pushing away motions. The natives, startled at his cry, jumped up, and then someone threw a flax blanket over the pile of clothes and pulled them well clear of the fire. These people were intelligent. Richard lay back and waited for the natives to decide his future.

  “What are we to do with this pale skinned outsider?” asked the Chief.

  “Kill him and throw his body into the ocean like the others!” said one warrior.

  “What if his tribe returns with their thunder spears to rescue him?” the Chief asked.

  “Let the people of the coast attack them first, then we can attack later,” suggested another warrior.

  “We are here at the invitation of the people of the coast to share their breath and food should we not share their danger too? Have not one of their war chiefs been slain by the giant canoe?” asked the Chief.

  “Bah, their invitation is a trick to entice us out from our Pa, then surprise and slaughter us,” warned another warrior.

  “That may well be so, but perhaps this young man and his weapon have been sent to us to save us from such an outrage. Let us use this boy to train us in the use of his weapon then use it to our advantage,” the Chief finished. There were no further comments from the warriors.

  Richard awoke with only a mild headache and surveyed his surroundings before sitting up. The sun rose and everyone, in the makeshift camp was up attending to their duties. The women were cleaning and preparing food, older men were bringing in fish shellfish and strange looking spiked eggs to cook or eat raw, and the warriors were training in faultless formations accompanied by uniform shouts and gestures. It was the warriors that held Richard’s attention: they were much larger than the average Englishman, and their dark brown bodies well formed and glistening with sweat. Their black hair was tied back behind their heads and their features, once you looked beyond their tattoos, were fine and almost patrician. They carried weapons that looked like an unlikely cross between a club and a spear a longer type of wooden axe, and all had some form of hand-club tucked into their braided flax skirts. Some of the clubs were of wood, others stone and more rarely, a type of jade.

  A shadow caused Richard to look up. Above him stood a teenage girl about his own age wearing nothing but a grass skirt that did little to conceal her privates. The nipples on her bare breasts had hardened in the cool morning air, but she seemed completely unconcerned about her exposures and called to Richard in a strange soft tongue that sounded not unlike the people of the Indies. She beckoned him up and, taking his hand as if he were a child led him away from the camp to a bathing area. The entire camp’s eyes followed them until they were out of sight.

  At first Richard thought the forest was on fire and he slipped his hand free from the girls, but her laughter calmed him and he realized that it was steam rising from fissures in the rocks. A little further on, steam from pools of water blended into the morning mist. The girl selected one and indicated that Richard should enter. Richard hesitated, unwilling to shed his clothes and the girl, giving him a look usually reserved for a child, sighed, dropped her skirt and entered the hot pool. Richard slipped off his canvas shoes, discarded his jacket and shirt but kept his shorts on, and then entered the pool. After the initial heat shock, Richard felt the dirt and grime from a long ship’s voyage ooze from him along with most of his fears and tensions. The girl stepped out, her perfect body glistening with heat and picked up Richard’s discarded clothes. Her nose wrinkled at the stink and Richard smiled; some expressions are international. She took them to another pool and began beating them on a rock to dislodge the ingrained dirt. When she was satisfied, she hung them on branches to dry, returned to the pool and pointed down to Richard’s shorts. Richard, not wishing to appear a prude, slid them off and handed them over for the same treatment. The girl slipped into the pool alongside Richard and touched his arm. Richard was thankful that the extreme heat of the pool seemed to prevent him from the embarrassment of hardening.

  The girl pointed to herself and said, “Pania,” then pointed to Richard, who replied, “Richard.” The girl tried, but it came out sounding like shit and after much laughing both settled for Rewi. Richard had no problem pronouncing Pania. They dressed and returned to a camp full of expectation, but Pania served Richard a breakfast of steamed fish on a bed of sweet potato washed down with the purest water he had ever tasted. Only after he was replete was he presented to the Chief.

  The Chief was a massive man, with tattoos not only on his face but extended over most of his body. The tattoos were more intricate than those on his warriors and suggested the work of a superior artist dedicated to a superior rank. The Chief sat down and his eyes bored through Richard’s, as if reading his mind. Richard had always been taught to look any man squarely in the eye when being addressed, but when he applied this he felt an immediate tension in the air and saw several warriors shuffle their feet in agitation. Could it be that in this culture it was impolite to stare into a superior’s eyes? Richard dropped his eyes to the ground and the hitherto tension dissipated. The Chief’s tattoos wrinkled with what could have been a smile and he stood up, beckoning Richard to follow him. A group of warriors followed them a short distance behind. Richard heard the ocean before he saw it and a few minutes later they broke out of the forest onto the very beach Richard and his crewmates had landed. The Chief stopped and indicated that Richard should walk on alone. He walked to the water’s edge and looked around the horizon from the headland to the far rocky outcrop at the end of the bay. Nothing. Subtile had gone, leaving him marooned in a Stone Age country. It took all of his inner strength to resist crying.

  Back at the camp it was all business as Richard was given back his pistol, powder and balls. The bag contained musket balls and Richard pointed to his shot bag, retrieved it and demonstrated the differences in diameter. His audience understood immediately. A target of soft fern trunks had been set up ten paces away. Richard loaded his piece carefully, watched by eyes like hawks. Powder measure, wad and ball all rammed home, then the pan primed and the lock pulled back to full cock. He expected the semicircle of warriors who closely shielded him from the Chief and his retinue, but the warriors did not expect the click, flash and loud report of the discharge; they jumped back in shock. A cloud of black dust had erupted from the target and Richard strode forward to retrieve his precious ball. There was a great clamor of excitement and then a communal sigh as Richard found his shot embedded in a tree trunk beyond the target.

  Richard took the initiative and invited the Chief to shoot, instructing him on the procedure; the Chief’s loading was faultless. He took aim in complete silence – all the birds had fled from such an abomination – and fired, scoring a direct hit. A great cry echoed around the camp; here was a mighty weapon wielded by a paramount Chief. Richard decided to push his luck and retrieving the bag of musket balls, mimed how they could be shaved with his knife and ground down to fit. The Chief issued orders and the musket shot bags were removed to be recalibrated. The aftermath of
all this excitement seemed something of an anticlimax: Richard was seconded to a toothless old crone who began to teach him their language.

  The early lessons were simple: the elderly lady who was somebody’s grandmother walked Richard around the camp, pointed to a person or object and made him repeat the name until he got it right. A rap with her cane at a mispronunciation ensured Richard’s attention. He enjoyed the homework: after the evening meal Pania would sit by him and quietly repeat the day’s lessons. Later lessons became more difficult he found it hard to differentiate between the Hapu and Iwi concepts of tribes; perhaps one was a federation of some kind. Richard was a quick learner and both women were satisfied with his progress.

  An incident occurred during the second week that caused Richard much embarrassment and revealed to him the vast difference between Georgian England and the local culture’s attitude towards sexual matters. Pania had attended him as usual in the early evening – extending his vocabulary – but instead of leaving as she usually did, she extended Richard in a very different manner. They had been sitting inside a whare or grass hut erected for the tribe’s special guest, and Pania gently pushed Richard on his back and not so gently pulled his shorts down around his knees. Richard was somewhat taken aback and before he could react, Pania first gasped at his circumcision and then began to stroke him into erection. Richard thought all his dreams had come true, was this dusky maiden to be his first sexual partner? The dream lasted less than a minute with Richard unable to restrain himself and ejaculated into Pania’s hand. He had been so full that Pania needed both hands to collect his semen. She then ran out of the whare and into a group of older women who gathered around to inspect Richard’s contribution. Richard would have been further embarrassed if he had understood their exclamations.

  “Behold the pale one’s seed!”

  “Ah, it is the same color as our men folks’.”

  Richard wished there was a door he could close.

  Several warriors proudly wearing items of the dead sailors’ clothes escorted Richard to the Chief. This made Richard uneasy. Kneeling beside the Chief was a despondent looking older warrior with his eyebrows and parts of his hair burnt off. At the warrior’s feet lay a powder horn and a set of stone flints: Richard did not need any new words to understand what had happened. He poured a measure into his hand, walked to the nearest fire and cast the gunpowder into the flames. A great whoosh caused everyone but Richard to flinch, and Richard tried to mime that the powder had to be sealed from the air to explode rather than burn. He could not ascertain whether he had been successful or not, but the Chief looked long and hard at the fire, and then nodded a dismissal.

  Something was in the air: nervousness, an expectation, an impatience for action but this was temporarily replaced with torrential rain. Envoys and messengers came and went, but the rain hosed misery around the temporary camp. It gave Richard an extra week to increase his language skills, and one night Pania stayed back and slept with him, bringing all his dreams to fruition.

  When the rain stopped, Pania carefully explained through words and signs that all the tribes’ warriors had been invited to a hangi, a feast in their honor to celebrate peace between their tribes. Richard was invited. As they advanced towards the large carved meeting-house surrounded by lesser buildings, women began a chant of welcome not unlike an Arab call to prayer. This was followed by synchronized dancing singing and a fearful haka, Richard’s latest word for a war dance. There were too many hosts and guests to fit into the meeting-house so speeches took place outside with prominent members of both tribes speaking at length and at times with obvious humor. Richard understood very little.

  Finally formalities were over and the feast began. Richard had noticed steam seeping from the ground and thought it another hot spot, but it proved to be an underground oven that had been steaming food since early morning. It was now evening. Soil was removed followed by flax covers exposing fish, game birds and vegetables. Guests were served first, with the local women and children kept well away.

  The Chief and his warriors feigned contentment and relaxation but a closer look would have revealed the Chief’s eyes never left those of his counterpart as if waiting for a signal. It came with the rival chief nodding to warriors hidden outside the firelight. Instantly, Richard’s Chief reached under his skirt and threw a small bag into the fire, blinding temporarily those reeling back from the ignition. The Chief then drew Richard’s pistol from under his cloak, cocked it and shot his rival through his heart. In the chaos that followed, the Chief’s warriors drew hand clubs and closed to infighting to negate the enemies’ long and more deadly clubs. After flailing their opponents to the ground they recovered the long clubs, used the bird feathers behind the decorative spear-head to wipe blood off their hands and continued the slaughter. Shouts and screams from the fringe of the village indicted a second attack by the Chief’s older warriors. The Chief flung his pistol to Richard to reload and, snatching up a discarded club, entered the battle. Richard hurriedly reloaded, then looked for a target but found none. He had no idea who was friend and who was foe. He decided to guard the Chief’s back, and it proved to be a good decision. One of the fallen foes had only been stunned and, drawing his hand–club, leaped at the Chief’s back. For the second time the thunder of a shot rang out and the attacker fell dead, his club still upraised. This proved to be too much for the enemy: deprived of their leader and under attack on two fronts, they broke and fled into the defensive darkness of the forest. When the Chief regained his breath he ordered the village fired and a retreat. He also managed a nod of thanks in Richard’s direction that did not go unnoticed.