I Married Adventure

by Osa Johnson

  Some experiences can’t be measured in actual time. This was one of them. I had turned to thrust our last stick of tobacco into the hand of a clutching native when, to my utter amazement, I saw Martin setting up his camera. That I should be so frightened, and he should be so cool and have such presence of mind in the face of what might turn out disastrously, held me, staring blankly. Then I saw his hand shaking as he turned the camera crank, and next I saw him grinning with relief: The entire mob had started running for cover. (He afterwards admitted to me that he had set up the camera to divert the minds of the barbarians from the fast-emptying sacks of trade stuff, for in their frenzy they were capable of thinking of but one thing at a time.)

  Old Yellow Ocher, of all his people, remained where he was. Quite apparently he was frightened by the camera, but he had courage enough to stand and demand pompously to know what it was all about. Martin opened the camera and showed him the little wheels and the ribbon of film. The old bluff nodded and pretended to understand everything, then ordered his people out of hiding and made them stand while he made a show of explaining the little wheels and ribbon of film. They were all much impressed—not with the camera, but with their chief.

  Everything was now on a more friendly footing. Martin and old Yellow Ocher grew quite chummy over the camera and its mechanism, and the rhythm of the native festivity was once more resumed to the accompaniment of the inevitable boo-boos. I don’t know just when the dancing started, but it grew out of that pulsating, compelling beat of the drums, and soon there were two hundred or more natives chanting and dancing in the clearing. Dancing doesn’t seem the word for it. It was more of a hop-and-skip grand march around and around the idols and boo-boos, punctuated now and again by leaps and blood-curdling yells. As some dropped out, exhausted, others joined in.

  Martin, beside himself, was grinding out film of the magnificent native spectacle. The beat of the jungle drums quickened. More and more of the painted men leaped into the gyrating circle, and apparently our presence was forgotten in the orgy that followed. Chanting, leaping, screaming, their eyes rolling back and foam from their mouths spattering their gaudy, naked bodies, they might have been out of a scene of mass torture in some inferno. I had felt, and now I was certain, that a sort of madness takes possession of some primitive people under the hypnotic beat of their drums.

  I dug my nails into my palms: “Martin!” I screamed. “I can’t stand any more of it. I can’t!”

  My husband gave me one look of quick concern and started to take down his camera. He was packing his equipment with the help of Captain Moran when he discovered some two hundred sticks of tobacco which had been overlooked. And then he made a mistake. He dumped it on the ground and motioned Yellow Ocher that he could have it. Some eight or ten young men pounced on it, and in less than five seconds several hundred natives were fighting for it. They howled and scratched like a pack of hyenas. Their painted bodies churned in a dizzying, kaleidoscopic mass, and soon the bright circles, stripes, and dots decorating their black skins were stained with a darker color. I waited for no more and took to my heels down the steep incline.

  Hours later, and safely aboard the Amour under a clear, windless tropical night, I stood close beside Martin on the deck and tried to explain that even though I still shook a little, it wasn’t because I had been frightened; it was rather an instinctive reaction to what we had witnessed. Faintly in the distance then, as we stood there, we heard the boo-boos once more. Apparently the battle over the sticks of tobacco was at an end, and the dance had been resumed.

  We continued our journey after a day’s rest and put in occasionally along the shore. Martin was no longer interested, however, in just the average native at an average task; we had thousands of feet of film of these. At length, Captain Moran asked if he would be interested in taking some pictures of a tribe that made it a practice to smoke the heads of both relatives and enemies over open campfires. Martin thought this would be fine. I remembered the little brown mummified head, a relic of the Snark trip, which had given me the shivers, as we set sail for the little island of Tomman about half a mile off the southernmost tip of Malekula.

  Captain Moran had traded at Tomman and said that the natives there were well disciplined by the British government. He added that it would be perfectly safe to take me ashore.

  We arrived in the little island bay too late in the day to go ashore, but we took the trail into the interior early the following morning. It was a pleasant island, and, if outward appearances could be believed, the natives lived peaceably enough. A peculiar characteristic was their strangely shaped heads, which were almost twice as long as the normal head and sloped to a point at the crown. The married women, we observed, had no front teeth; their husbands had knocked them out, as part of the marriage ceremony.

  Following a well-beaten trail, we came to a clearing in which were eight or nine crude huts. In the center of the clearing, before a devil-devil, an old man carried on a solemn solo dance. Nothing more uncomplicated could be imagined. He simply lifted one foot very slowly and put it down again, and then lifted the other foot, also very slowly, and put it down again. A hoarse, chanting whisper was his only accompaniment. After four days he was still at it, but no one could tell us why. Unquestionably, however, it had to do with the eerie scene on the far side of the clearing, where a group of old men squatted beside a smoldering fire and gave earnest and undeviating attention to a human head impaled on a stick and held over the smoke by a very ancient member of their group. I counted five other heads impaled on sticks nearby, doubtless in various stages of “seasoning.”

  Martin set up his camera and photographed the scene, and neither comment nor protest was made. After a little my husband went and squatted beside the old head-curer, and found that he understood Bêche-de-Mer. He drew him on to talk of his strange “art.” I tiptoed in and listened.

  The head, freshly cut from the body, the old man said, was first soaked in a chemical concoction of certain fermented herbs, which both hardened the skin and in a measure “fireproofed” it. Next it was held over a fire and turned in the smoke until all the fat was rendered out and the tissue dried. Then it was smeared with clay and baked. All of this took some weeks of constant work. Lastly, it was hung in a basket of pandanus fiber, and time put its finishing touches to the job. Naturally, the old patriarch added, only the heads of friends and relatives were given this amount of care and time. The heads of enemies, merely smeared with clay, took their chances of either drying or cooking in the hot ashes.

  Proud of his craft, and apparently expert at it, the old man told us that in his time he had done many chiefs. These he dried “whole,” which must have been a job indeed, involving, it seemed to Martin and me, certain awkard mechanical complications.

  The people of Tomman liked Martin—and me too, I think—and when we left, we had photographs of the interiors of their headhouse. Even the mummified bodies of their chiefs were brought out for us to see and photograph.

  Grateful to Captain Moran for having suggested Tomman, we chugged happily away and cruised around the southern end of Malekula, then put in at Port Sandwich, where we bade a reluctant farewell to the captain, his brother, and the fat, sturdy little schooner so romantically named Amour. Luckily, we found the British gunboat Euphrosyne in the harbor. Commissioner King was aboard and made us most welcome, and we sailed with him back to Epi. Here, through the kindness of the commissioner, we were guests on one of the largest coconut plantations in the South Seas. Our thoughtful host, Mr. Mitchell, the British manager of the plantation, wore white tie and tails every evening for dinner, even when alone. I felt both silly and uncomfortable in my hickory shirt and overalls, and these none too clean.

  It was another three weeks before we were able to make boat connections back to Vao. A hearty welcome awaited us. Fully a hundred natives were on the beach yelling and cheering, and they let us know at once that they had missed our tobacco. Nothing co
uld have been simpler than for them to break into our stores and help themselves, but however many their vices, stealing was not among them.

  We were nearly ten days sealing our motion-picture film and developing the hundreds of exposed “still” pictures, and as we worked we thought of home. I had even begun to pack my personal things when a small cutter owned by a Tangan trader named Powler dropped anchor in the bay.

  I looked at Martin. He had that eager glint in his eye that meant just one thing: another trip.

  “We are going home now, aren’t we, Martin?” I asked.

  “Huh? Sure. What?” he replied.

  In less than an hour we were abroad Powler’s boat bound for Espíritu Santo, an island some forty miles to the north.

  Powler was a good-natured giant. We had heard of him in our wanderings about the islands, and he had an enviable reputation for honesty and fair trading unusual among white men in these parts. Also, he was familiar with all the languages of the island tribes. He had heard of Martin and had stopped at Vao on the chance that his knowledge of the different islands and their natives would be of value to us. The trip to Espíritu Santo was his suggestion, and one for which we were to be most grateful.

  Landing with us, Powler took three of his best men, all armed, then gathered up fifteen natives. With these we set out for the interior. After a three-hour tramp over well-beaten trails, we came upon a tribe of little men. Though at first they were frightened, Martin’s friendly manner and smile soon won their confidence, and he secured some fine pictures. These little people might also be classified as dwarfs. I persuaded them to walk under Martin’s outstretched arm, and there was a clearance of a full inch even above their bushy mops of hair. Their weapons were bows and arrows.

  My husband urged the little men to talk about themselves, and they confided at length that they were ruled by a madman who occasionally ran amok and killed a number of his subjects. They never knew when this might happen and therefore lived in constant terror of their irrational chief.

  “He bad,” they explained earnestly. “He takem plenty pigs; he takem plenty women; he killem plenty men.”

  Suddenly one of them was inspired with the idea that Martin was the very person to rid them of their mad ruler. The others took it up and enthusiastically suggested hanging as a good method of killing him. Martin regretfully declined the task of executioner and shouldered camera to leave, whereupon the little men were thrown into a state of great dejection and eyed him with sadness and reproach.

  We had gone a little distance from the clearing when Powler struck off through a thick screen of brush that hid a well-packed trail. Following this, we were able to make good time and presently, off in the distance, we saw smoke and caught the beat of the inevitable boo-boos. Powler quickened his stride; apparently he knew of something here of which he had not spoken.

  Another half mile, and the jungle drums were loud on our ears. We also caught a faintly sweet smell of roasting flesh.

  Advancing cautiously, we stopped behind a thin screen of bush, and Martin set up his camera for a long-range shot of the native celebration which was in full swing. There was nothing unusual about the celebration. The natives, small and graceful, were much less ferocious in appearance than many we had seen. The dance was the usual circular shuffle around the devil-devils in the center of the clearing. Yet, somehow, I had a sick, uneasy feeling that may have been part instinct or may have been wholly the result of Powler’s quiet, meaningful smile as he looked at Martin. I looked sharply toward the fire, and then I knew. Those pieces of meat spitted on long sticks were not the usual pork—they were parts of the body of a human being.

  My husband, always watchful of me, put his arm around me and pulled me close for a moment.

  It was growing dark when Martin, after a whispered consultation with Powler, gave a radium flare to one of our men and instructed him to move into the clearing and mingle with the celebrants for a few minutes, and then to throw the flare on the fire.

  This was done. The explosive suddenness of the white glare sent the natives yelling in terror for the brush. Some headed in our direction; then, seeing us for the first time, their terror was doubled, and they leaped off in the opposite direction. Several with pure animal instinct snatched the meat from the fire as they ran, and I heard my husband groan with disappointment. He had hoped for a picture of it.

  Martin and Powler, with me at their heels, dashed into the clearing and made straight for the fire. Looking over Martin’s shoulder, I felt the blood drain from my face, for there lay something which the fleeing natives had failed to retrieve. In the red embers lay a charred human head, with rolled leaves plugging the eye-sockets. (Powler’s humor sometimes took a grisly turn, for he told me afterwards and with relish that the leaves used for this purpose were always selected carefully from the bush of a spicy herb!)

  With the aid of flares, Martin secured some excellent pictures of the roasting human head. These were considered important for the reason that they rounded out his film record of South Sea Island natives and proved conclusively that cannibalism there is still practiced. I did not linger, however, to watch him taking these pictures, and I didn’t know until we were once more putting out to sea that he had wrapped the head in leaves and carried it all the way back to the boat; that the round bundle tied up in a piece of bright-red trade calico and lying beside the camera and cases of film actually was it.

  “There’s proof nobody can get around!” Martin said.

  I protested that it was enough proof to have the film—are we now going to carry that gruesome thing with us everywhere we went? Martin said that anyhow it was double proof. At best my protest was a feeble one, and suddenly I was sick. Sick at sea, though I insisted then, and do now, that I was not seasick.

  I don’t know when I’ve ever been so happy at the thought of going home. Eight months among dirt-encrusted man-eating strangers had brought on a homesickness that was almost beyond my bearing. I was hungry for dear, familiar things—for my own people, and most of all, and for the places where I had spent my simple and uncomplicated girlhood. Equally intense, if in a different fashion, was my longing for just plain hot water and soap. Plenty of it. And these were not my feelings alone. They were also Martin’s; he wanted home and his people and civilized living every bit as much as I did.

  “Oh, Martin, it’s Paradise,” and so the lake was named. Note the wide game trail leading to the lake.

  A male leopard at the entrance of a cave trying to decide whether to attack or retreat.

  Buildings and fences at Lake Paradise, their home in Kenya’s Northern Frontier District.

  Young and old giraffes in flight on the plains.

  Baby giraffe just born—returned by Osa to its mother and the herd.

  Natives of the Northern Frontier resting in a characteristic posture as they watch their flocks.

  Boculy, the Johnsons’ guide, and Osa examine an elephant track.

  In camp. Left to right: Blayney Percival, Mary Jobe Akeley, Carl Akeley, Dr. Aubrey Stewart, Martin and Osa Johnson, and George Eastman.

  George Eastman and Osa baking bread.

  On a trip up the Nile with the Johnsons, George Eastman photographs shilluks at Kodok in the Sudan. Mr. Eastman was understandably intrigued with the name.

  The wild hunting dog of Africa, which runs in packs and pulls down antelope and other kinds of game.

  Rhino in a nasty mood charging Martin.

  Osa shops for supper.

  Chapter 14

  “Well,” Martin said, “want to buy a house?”

  “A house?”

  “Yes. Settle down in Chanute. Or in Independence. Well, what I mean,” Martin went on—eyeing me pretty closely, I thought—“is that with what we’ll be getting out of the pictures, we could settle down and have a
little home—if you want to.”

  I didn’t answer right away. I just looked straight back at him.

  “If you want to,” he repeated. I saw an anxious line appear between his eyes.

  “Why, my goodness,” I said finally. “Where’d you get such a crazy idea?”

  “Good!” he shouted, and hugged the breath out of me. “Then we’re going to Borneo!”

  “Borneo?” I said blankly. The name always had had an unpleasant sound to me.

  “Yes. I’ve talked it over with the Robertson-Cole people, and that’s where they want me to go this time—to get pictures of the natives there. The headhunters.” He eyed me closely again. “Would you like that?”

  “Why—”

  I was really very tired of headhunters and cannibals.

  “Why, sure. That’s fine,” I said.

  * * *

  —

  The beauty of Sandakan, capital and principal port of British North Borneo, held us in a spell of sheer delight as we steamed into the bay. Stretching along the shore for two miles and back into the deep valley for another mile, it is the home of some ten thousand strangely assorted people. A range of moderate mountains forms a picturesque backdrop against an intensely blue sky.