‘Why, sure, sure . . . come right on down!’
After a couple of hours of steaming eastward, the sloop came to anchor in a bay of small islands. The sloop’s pinnace, a roomy vessel, since it did most of the so-called survey work, was lowered. A demonstration of the quality of the work was immediately forthcoming, when the sloop’s captain, Lieutenant-Commander Toby, told his guests that he was taking them to the islets for a bit of pigeon shooting. The shotguns produced looked well and truly handled. The General and Captain Silskin went readily enough. Prindy also went, still under the wing of CPO Pickles, who skippered the launch, with one of the ex-cooks swinging the lead in the bow. Pickles instructed his charge in steering, once taking the liberty of putting his cap on the fair head, as reward for his skill and to show how matey they were. But it was not just a picnic. Soundings were made that showed that quite big ships could use the bay; although they would need to have more forthright commanders than Lieutenant-Commander Toby, who declared that whatever the lead said, he wouldn’t risk his own ship in there.
Having returned their bag of pigeons to the sloop to be made into pie for dinner tonight, the pinnace headed for the coast, sounding along the edge of the tidal mud, which the Lieutenant-Commander declared he would never trust, even if the soundings did show that some of the channels would take the battleships Ark Royal and Prince of Wales. Then it was lunch-time; and they went up a creek through the mangroves to eat at a spot the Commander promised as a Little Paradise, and where they would be able to bag some more game: geese and duck. Bottles and cigarette packs and rusty cans showed that the paradise was well known, and not only to the like of those now enjoying it, as revealed by the fact that some of the beer bottles were Japanese. Here Captain Silskin somewhat dryly remarked that the Japs would make a happy hunting ground of these parts if and when they invaded. That caused Toby to guffaw, ‘If and when they get past us you mean, Sir!’
Even more dryly the Captain answered, ‘Of course, of course.’
That was the limit of any directly spoken criticism.
From there they returned to the sloop. Up anchor then, and back to Lady Beaumont, where they arrived soon after dark, but to find anything but darkness, what with the blaze of HMS Durbah, lights ashore as for some fête, and Igulgul at half his fullness. The fête, it was revealed, was a treat being put on for the Mission by the Durbah, including a picture show. Prindy watched the pictures as one of the white-clad elite. Afterwards there was a teatotal supper at the Mission House. Then back to the cruiser and resumption of the status of ’Oiness to go to bed with, while watching through the portholes Igulgul, low over the mainland, swinging to the swing of the big ship to his Shade, the tide.
Next morning, old acquaintances, crowded on the sloping beach, had a grandstand view of how big for his boots a certain one of them had become, when, with General Sir Mark Esk, he was saluted off the Durbah’s pinnace, and came along the jetty past a line of sailors standing in a stiff row as you did only when Mr Tasker came to look you over. Mr Tasker himself was one of the watching crowd, and evidently so much impressed that he gave his hand readily this time. Not Mrs Tasker, however. Even if she didn’t mention the size of one’s boots with her mouth, she did with her eyes. Not that it mattered, when His Highness paid her as scant attention as he did the rest. The handshaking was in farewell. Almost at once the departing ones were whisked away to their aircraft.
VI
Fergus Ferris should have known better than to make the Cootes Expedition appear to be only a joke, the way he spoke of his observation of it from the air, when he himself had uttered the warning that, for all his seeming silliness, the Coot was really a shrewd fellow in getting what he went after. This was evident when the rendezvous was made with the party at the spot to which Fergus had suggested its members would have to be piggy-backed by the blacks, to find a situation so far from fiasco that General Esk was impressed not merely to the extent of congratulating the hero, but of agreeing to make official what the shrewd one described as the Appreciation he would be making of the Exercise. As Fergus remarked in an aside to Denzil Dickey, ‘Herewith the Coot lays the foundations of his military career.’
Fergus may have done better to try out the drollery on Major Maltravers, since evidently Denzil was still too preoccupied with ethnology and blinded by his temporary leader’s brilliance in that direction to see faults he had in any other. Not that Malters appeared to be any better disposed to Fergus. Still, obviously he had come no closer to Fabers, since he took no part in the lively discussion between this temporary leader of his and his proper chief on the subject of the utilisation of the inhabitants of the region in the event of war. Natural warriors, Fabers called the local tribesmen, still living much as of old, by virtue of their prowess with arms, disciplined to the limit by their own code, requiring only to be given an inkling of proper military discipline and to have rifles put in their hands, to make them the best guerilla force in the world. Denzil echoed this, almost hysterically.
Nor was it mere talk. Fabers put on a parade of a score or so of young men out of the hundred or so natives they now had with them, who, even if their uniforms were only nagas of flour-sack calico, performed with such guardsman-like precision in response to their commander’s quite professional parade ground barking that Fergus remarked to the General, ‘Can’t you get him busbies for ’em? They look kind of naked as they are.’ Esk smiled, but mostly out of politeness, so intense was his interest. He was even more interested when a demonstration was given of the squad’s adaptability to firearms, with use of the expedition’s only rifle. The target, a little tea-tree, was at three hundred yards, the limit of accuracy for the weapon. Each man was given but one shot. No need for more, when none missed the mark, and without one of the marksmen’s seeming to take aim. All that each man did when given the rifle was to raise it breast-high, and with the butt under his arm instead of at his shoulder — Bang! — the narrow trunk jumped and showered a little cloud of fragmented bark.
Fabers said the men had no idea of the use of the rifle’s sights. ‘Nor any need of’ ’em, by jove!’ the General commented. ‘The blighters are equipped with in-built range-finders. Marvellous, old man, marvellous!’
Further evidence of this adaptability was the camp itself, set up by his black squad, according to the Coot: bush-houses for accommodation, a mess, a cookhouse, no mere blackfellow humpies, but neat jobs done with the axe. Even the bark humpies of the others, hasty shelters from the rain of the other night, were placed with some semblance of order about the waterhole; although, as Fabers stressed, with due consideration for tribal convention. ‘To get maximum cooperation,’ he said, ‘we must operate with a minimum of interference with their way of life.’ He went on to say that the majority of the blacks were gathered for an annual Increase ritual concerned with the Booroolooloogun, or Nutmeg Pigeon Totem. A big corroboree was due to be held at a site at the foot of the Plateau, only five miles or so from here. It would already have been under way, only that he had induced the performers to wait for the coming of the Number-one Soldier Man, the idea being not merely to entertain him, but more importantly to win the people’s certain allegiance through showing interest in their ways, as opposed to the usual coercion to the whiteman’s.
When Esk expressed himself as delighted over both the compliment to himself and the cleverness of the move, Denzil, dithering with excitement in new knowledge, leapt into it: ‘If only we’d done this sort of thing in the early days of the Empire, Sah . . . in the Sudan, Somaliland, Afghanistan, everywhere, pretty well . . . so much unnecessary bloodshed, Sah!’
Esk chuckled: ‘If your gallant father heard you saying that!’
‘Sah?’
‘Might kill him. There’s still a lot of glory attached to that bloodshed, don’t y’know.’
‘But, Sah . . .’
‘Mainly jokin’, dear boy. I congratulate you on your modern outlook. Brains rather than blood and guts, what, Fabers, old man?’
; It was then the shrewd Fabers saw his chance to ask that his Appreciation be submitted to Army HQ: ‘To give me immediate status, in the event of hostilities . . . if you see what I mean, General.’
By the look that Esk gave him, he saw clearly enough the ambitious boy, but seemed no less impressed.
Then military business went by the board, at least as far as the ambitious boy was concerned, at mention of the fact that amongst what had been brought to reprovision the expedition was fresh stuff from the Mission and the warships: beef, vegetables and fruit, bread and butter, and — Fabers let out a whoop at the naming of it, ‘Boy, oh boy!’ — a pot of English raspberry jam, specially procured from HMS Durbah. He lost no time in preparing a large panful of steak and eggs and onions — for himself. As he explained to the General, when he found him staring while he wolfed it and Malters was cooking for the rest, ‘I always do my own cooking, when possible.’ He added with a greasy smirk, ‘I don’t know a better cook.’
Fergus remarked, ‘Should put some of the lard back on you, Cootsey, old piggy.’
It was a fact that the Coot had lost an awful lot of the upholstery that formerly had helped him to look Napoleonic. The flesh hung on him in sadly depleted bags. Had Bonaparte been truly depicted in that famous picture of his retreat from Moscow he must have looked rather like that.
Indeed, all four white members of the expedition looked much the worse for wear. Denzil and Malters were shadows of their former well-fed selves, their pink Pommyness in sunburnt rags. Professor St Clair, although as a bushman born less obviously battered by the wilderness, looked so wearied that Esk tried to induce him to give up and come back with him to civilised comfort. St Clair sighed; ‘I’ll be getting enough of that in a Public Servant’s chair. I’ll see it through. The least I can do is to get to know these people in their natural state, if I’m to direct their destiny. We’re lucky we fell in with these Pigeon People. I’d like to do an academic paper again, before I get caught up in officialdom.’
An example of the finesse demanded of anyone dealing with people they might be inclined to regard as simple savages, was almost immediately forthcoming in the matter of sharing the good things brought by the aeroplane. There was plenty for everybody: at least a hundredweight of meat, several sacks of flour, treacle, trade tobacco. The Coot, as the most knowledgeable, should have been equal to the demand. As it was, of course, he was preoccupied with his own belly at the time of the dole-out to the blacks, which he left to Denzil, perhaps as a kind of Anthropological Exercise. Nevertheless, had he been as wise as he pretended, he surely would not have indulged in roaring like any bullying kuttabah as a preliminary to settling the dispute over distribution, which, fortunately for him, was noisy enough to hide his faux pas from his fellow kuttabahs, at the time preoccupied with their turn at feeding. Thus he was able to lay the blame for it on Denzil, who seemed happy enough to accept it, the way he dropped knife and fork for pencil, to take down the clever Fabers’s dissertation on what he claimed were the Facts, delivered between nibbles at Denzil’s neglected bread and butter, plastered with raspberry jam.
According to the Coot, the cause of the dispute was that the black mob generally were bound to pay the Pigeon Totem People, the Booroolooloogun, for the right to conduct the ceremony and to gorge on their spiritual kinsmen during the season of their stay amongst them, and that the Booroolooloogun had decided to settle the matter of the fee then and there by taking all of the kuttabah’s largesse, while the others argued that it couldn’t be done with what amounted to foreign currency. It seemed that the parties already were at loggerheads over outstanding payments. Prindy helped with the translating, having some knowledge of the local lingo, while the disputants had practically no English and others not enough for subtleties. However the Coot failed to acknowledge this assistance in reporting back to his comrades, giving the impression that he had handled it pretty well alone. Thus he missed a very important ethnical point raised at the very end of the disputation, in fact the very terms of settlement. Prindy confided this to Fergus only. It was that unless granted what they demanded, the Booroolooloogun would immediately return to the coast, and thenceforth the others wouldn’t be able to eat a nutmeg pigeon without becoming mortally ill. Still, the Coot’s report was enough to show that but for his cleverness the whole thing might well have been cruelled, and to cause General Esk to say, ‘Thanks, old man. What you’ve done might prove to be of inestimable value in the event of military action here. To impress these people now with our generosity, friendliness, and tact, when they seem to be getting anything like it only from the Japs themselves, could be vital.’
Hence it eventuated that the Booroolooloogun, men, women, children, dogs, settled down to a great feast of charred steak and sod-centred damper and lashings of treacle, while the rest, empty-bellied and carrying nothing but their usual impedimenta, somewhat disconsolately broke camp and headed for the site at the foot of the Plateau. After all, their part of the ceremonial was due to begin in the middle of the afternoon, with the rising of Igulgul, while that of the Pigeon People would not be till night, when they would come to dance and cry in mourning for their totemic kinsmen, who by then would be digesting in the swollen bellies of those sitting around sleepily watching them.
The whites waited till about an hour before the appointed time, then set out for the green and red wall tha was the rainforest-hung northern escarpment, on horseback, and also taking along a couple of packs with camping-gear, because it looked likely to rain. They had been instructed where to go, but could have got there anyway, with Prindy leading instead of Generals Esk and Fabers, since it was that same spot where he had camped with Bobwirridirridi. He didn’t mention the fact to anyone.
The site was in its usual frenetic state for this time of day at this time of year, with cliff-hanging trees fairly heaving to the activities of the gobbling gossiping pigeons — Wallaka-woo, wallaka-woo — the blue air flickering with the manoeuvrings of the wheeling diving feathered predators, but with the addition of the human elements, the black crowd milling about on the sandy red earth, making no more show of stealth in their preparations for predacity than their counterparts above, preparing the piendi ovens, decorating themselves for ritualisation of the slaughter. If the pigeons noticed the additional menace, they showed no sign of it, wallaka-wooing away without let, perhaps accepting it as part of their existence. The miracle of it was that a species so indifferent to survival and burdened with such limitations for it, as the odd mode of feeding their young, should be in existence at all. This was the burden of the talk of the whitemen settling down to watch.
Fergus, knowledgeable in Australiana because of his greater mobility, told the others of how, in fact, with the coming of intense white settlement, the species had been virtually exterminated on the eastern coast, where it had been even more numerous by reason of the much greater rainforest areas and multiplicity of offshore breeding islets. An odd thing about the discussion was that, although there were three qualified Anthropologists and one half-baked in the company, it didn’t appear to occur to any one of the company that the difference between the situations, that is on North Coast and East, might be the very thing they were gathered to witness, namely, the Increase Ritual, long since unpractised on the East Coast, where the Aborigines had been the first of the indigenous species to be eliminated. Could not one suppose that, in dabbling in magic as these experts did, even if only out of curiosity, some sense of it in the scheme of things would not have rubbed off on them?
All this pother went on for about an hour, while the Sun, still holding off that cloud-mass drifting in from the northwest, got down into the tree-tops, so that by the direct light of it a scarlet glimpse could be had through the trees of the flat to eastward of a bare patch of escarpment where it swung northward in a bit of a bay. Still the preparations continued on the ground, the firing of the piendis and the gathering of baking clay by women and children, the painting of themselves and one another by the men semi-conceale
d amongst the rocks about the wide Ring Place. The kuttabah, not used to sitting about on rocks with nothing to do but outdo each other with airing of their knowledge, were becoming restless — ‘When’s the bloody thing going to start?’ Prindy relieved the situation, speaking for the first time, by announcing that the start must be imminent because the Moon was coming up. The others looked for the Moon, but could see nothing but trees and rock. Then they looked at him.
Fergus asked him how he knew. He swung his lips round the trees of the flat, which from having been drooping in a lull in the wind, were tossing again, and answered, ‘Wind change.’ Sure enough the wind, which had been blowing from nor’west before, was now sou’easterly.
The Coot remarked, ‘Well, it’ll blow the rain away.’
Fergus guffawed, ‘Balls, Cootsey! A thunderhead always advances towards the wind.’ He turned to Prindy. ‘Ain’t that right, mate?’
Although probably not understanding what was said, Prindy nodded gravely.
The Coot looked annoyed, snapped at Fergus, ‘Give the reasons for your theory.’
‘It ain’t no theory, man . . . it’s just plain meteorological fact.’
‘Well, state it as such . . . and not in the terms of an ignoramus.’
‘Aw, pig’s arse, Cootsey . . .’
What might have become a nasty argument was stopped by a sudden ululation from amongst the rocks — Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo! — which signalled movement on the part of everybody. The piendi attendants left their fires, to take up positions round the Ring, the Tjaina, while the men vanished, except for the musicians, some half-dozen, who with didjeridoos and minga-minga sticks came to squat on a flat expanse of rock beside the Ring.
For a short while there was no sound save the din of the pigeons. Then a distant shout. The musicians set to: Boombooloom, boombooloom, click-a-click, click, click, boombooloom, boombooloom, boombooloom, boo!
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