The Missionaries

by Owen Stanley

  About an hour before dawn, Fletcher awoke and crawled through the entrance to stretch himself outside and have a smoke. With the passing of the storm the night sky had gradually cleared, and when Fletcher emerged, the stars were shining and the air was scented with the rich odours of wet earth and rotting leaves. The valley was filled with white mists that lay utterly still, a scene of astonishing quietness and peace.

  When the sun was risen, the people of Dolivi and their guests set about bringing the pigs into the dance yard and pegging them out for slaughter, a task which occupied the whole morning. Many were huge brutes, covered in long, black, coarse hair, and long-snouted as ant-eaters, an ancient breed that ran half-wild in the forests. The men passed long poles between their tethered legs and hoisted them onto their shoulders, shrieking and kicking in their bonds, for the short journey into the centre of the village, where they were pegged by the feet to hold them steady when the time came for them to be clubbed to death. By midday the dance-yard was filled from end to end with two rows of pigs, about five hundred beasts in all, some comatose, some with heaving flanks and restless, twisting heads, some shrieking intermittently and kicking against the stakes.

  Meantime, the guests had assembled on either side of the dance-yard in expectation of the entrance of the chief of Dolivi, Marbek, and his warriors. From the forest came the distant shouts of furiously angry men that grew louder every second, and in a few moments the horde of Dolivi warriors, led by Marbek whirling his club Despair and Die, overwhelmed the stockade at the entrance of the village, uprooting and scattering the stakes, as the guests pretended to cower in fear, and ran down the carpet of pigs’ bodies to stand, each man on a writhing pig, club raised, shouting the war-cry of Dolivi, with the red juice of the betel nut running down their chins.

  Marbek, who was carrying a sack, was joined by Fletcher at the foot of the ladder and they both mounted slowly and with dignity to the platform. Fletcher sat on an ornamental bench while Marbek launched into an hour-long evocation of the glorious deeds of the fathers of Dolivi, with whose bones some of the guests had been dancing in string bags the previous night, a greatly coveted honour.

  Marbek was a squat man with a huge hooked nose, through the septum of which a cassowary’s wing-bone was thrust, and mutton-chop whiskers, a fashion started by the first Resident Magistrate in 1906. He was a man of immense self-confidence and bogus geniality, with a harsh, penetrating voice. His speech recalled the great days before the government, when Gaajok had led Dolivi to pillage and rape and kill from Laripa to Mivana, even to Niovoro; Gaajok, who never slept in his bed, but prowled and padded through the night, axe over his shoulder, his cold eyes piercing the darkness as he searched for living things to kill. Or Longar, who could always be counted on to contribute a note of hilarity to an afternoon’s slaughter by stuffing potatoes into the mouths of the dying, or cutting off their fingers and toes and putting them to cook in the ashes of the fires, with the sweet-potatoes, so that the survivors should find them when they came back to eat their evening meal, and weep again. Or Pagong, who had once pinned three children to a tree with a single thrust of his black-palm spear when he came upon them suddenly out of the smoke of their burning village. Things were quieter now, but the battles of land-dispute day, and the duels which Fletcher allowed for settling individual grievances, were some compensation, and had produced their modern heroes in every village, virtuosi of cudgel and shield, whose records and performances were eagerly debated by Morok youth.

  His speech was heard in rapt silence, interrupted only once by a village cur which began yapping querulously; it was instantly silenced with a club.

  Now Marbek turned to review the events of the last few months; the arrival of the Father of Nyikang; the vast quantites of cargo landed at Ungabunga; the strange new houses, and the red people who lived in them. He paid tribute to Tikame’s new friends, and to their wealth, and to Tikame for bringing them to share it with the Moroks, but underlying his words was the clear hint that, while Tikame was a great man, he was a hard man, and that for the time being, at any rate, they would do well to appease these new and gentler beings who for some inexplicable reason seemed to have more power at the moment. The present trend of events was clearly unlikely to last; it was said that the old fortress and gaol were to be demolished, doubtless to make room for much bigger and stronger ones, but while there was no fear of prison and the police, men could relax for a while.

  When he reached the climax of his speech he held up the sack, which clinked and rattled. Then, with a dramatic gesture, he whipped off the bag and revealed the contents—a brand-new gin trap, of a size that might have been used to capture lions. It was one of the traps sent in error to Elephant Island and now being zealously distributed by Tristram Daubeny to all the Moroks he could find at Ungabunga. This one had been brought only the other day by a prisoner just released from gaol, one of the expendable members of the Dolivi tribe, ingratiating, rat-faced, slinking and down-trodden by his kin; qualities that endeared him to Daubeny, but which ensured that his new possession was instantly wrenched from him as soon as he stepped inside his village.

  “O men of Dolivi, see what the Father of Nyikang hath sent me. He hath sent it as a gift, since he well knows that I am a great man, a chief, and the son of chiefs, and the begetter of chiefs, and it is fitting that chiefs should bestow gifts upon one another. He hath sent it that I may trap meat in the forests of my ancestors, to fill my belly, and make it hot with flesh. So what beast shall we trap, I and my kin, with this gift of the Father of Nyikang? For there are many beasts in the forest, and some are too small, and some are too swift for this trap, and others are too cunning, and yet others stink. But there is one beast which our fathers used to hunt, before the red men came and forbad them, which now runs free, and roots in our gardens; it cometh in the night, and maketh sorcery against us, and it is not too small, and it is not too swift, and it is not too cunning, and its flesh is sweet. This is the beast that I shall hunt.”

  This elaborate allegory—elaborate partly for the pleasure of it, partly out of politeness to Fletcher, who still represented government authority—confused no one. The hunted beast was to be Man.

  As Marbek finished his peroration, he flung the trap into the yard below with a clatter of iron plates and chain; it was the signal for the massacre to begin. With frenzied cries, nostrils dilated, the slaughterers leapt to assault the pigs with a hail of blows to their jaws and skulls, smashing teeth, dislodging eyeballs, and sending streams of blood from their nostrils. The spectators, maddened by the crack of clubs on skulls, the yells of the warriors, and the agonized shrieks of the pigs, lost all control over themselves, and began tearing down houses as well as the stockade to provide themselves with clubs to join in the butchery. Beating aside the village curs, which scuttled about lapping the blood trickling from the snouts of the pigs, they flung themselves on the dying animals.

  One pig, less securely tied than the others, managed to break free, and made a desperate rush to escape the agony of those smashing blows, darting and twisting, half-blinded, among the legs of the slaughterers and spectators. They turned on it with axes, spears, rocks and hut posts; within ten yards a back leg was nearly severed by an axe, and as it lunged for the shaded security which lay beneath the huts, a barbed black-palm spear ripped into its belly. It stopped, then wrenched itself free, spilling out yards of pearly-purple intestines from the gash, that trailed behind it in the mud.

  At Ungabunga, Prout and his colleagues had taken advantage of Fletcher’s absence to accomplish the destruction of the fort and gaol. An invitation had been sent to the three nearest villages to come and destroy the hated instruments of their oppression, and now like ants around the carcass of some fat insect, they were scurrying to and fro with the spoils. While they didn’t have the slightest idea why Prout had invited them to destroy the fort, they were not slow to take advantage of a free load of well-seasoned timber and corrugated iron.

  Prout and his wif
e watched, with benign satisfaction, the success of this first attempt at political education.

  “I think it’s wonderful what you’ve accomplished in so short a time, dear,” said Phyllis. “All the departments set up, the suppression of Fletcher and the police, and now this. You’re really a very remarkable man, do you know that?”

  He squeezed her arm tenderly.

  “No, dear, I really mean it.”

  “Well, we mustn’t get complacent. There’s a tremendous amount still to be done. This is just damping down the smouldering ashes in the ruins, disinfecting the bomb site. Now we must build. Clean, and fresh, and new.”

  They stood in silence for a while, watching a group of Moroks heaving on the timbers of the gatehouse in the stockade. Suddenly it collapsed on them, knocking several to the ground.

  “Gracious, I hope no one’s hurt,” said Phyllis.

  “I don’t think so. Thank heavens, they’re a tough people.”

  “I should think they need to be, after all they’ve been through from Fletcher. I wonder what they were like before the white man came?”

  “Very hard to say, dear. But obviously white rule has brought out the worst in them. When you have sadists like Fletcher encouraging them to fight, and denying them basic amenities, can you wonder that they do behave rather violently at times?”

  “Of course. Do you think that in their original state they would have fought at all?”

  “Humankind is naturally peaceful,” said Prout, with a didactic glaze coming over his eyes. “The main causes of war have been kings, who drove their subjects into battle for their own ambitions, and priestly superstition, such as the Crusades, but clearly there were no kings or priests here. While, as I have always maintained, the environmental stress and lack of protein would have stimulated some degree of violence, we realised at Manchester that all conflict in simple societies tends to resolve itself pretty quickly, due to something called “cross-cutting ties.” So of course there would always have been quarrelling, and some violence now and then, but a state of equilibrium would have been reached before it could go very far. Imperialism has been the basic cause of warfare in societies like this, of which Fletcher’s regime was a textbook case. And when you think of the appalling violence we Europeans have inflicted on each other, let alone on the colonial peoples, I should say that, relatively speaking, these were really very peaceful people, by nature.”

  “So it is the white man’s presence here that has disturbed the natural balance of the society, and led to so much violence today?”

  “Oh yes, we’ve got a lot to answer for.”

  The pigs had been gutted with axes at Dolivi, and the innards cut out for transportation by the women. The men who were dismembering the carcases were bloody to their elbows, very nearly as bloody as their long-handled axes.

  As soon as the pigs had been distributed, and the pork made ready for the guests’ departures, the last act of the drama commenced. Malek from Laripa, Abuk of Lavalava, Deng of Niovoro, and Matiang of Mivana stepped forward ceremonially to abuse their hosts with the most obscene insults their imaginations could suggest. Taking their bows, they began firing arrows into the principal men’s house while they expressed their utter contempt for their hosts; for their grudging hospitality, their stringy pork, their smelly women, and their tiny penises. They were backed enthusiastically in this by their men, and the warriors of Dolivi withdrew, growling and menacing their guests with spears, until they had formed up outside the village at the edge of the forest. The women of the guests had been making a rapid exit during these proceedings, scurrying off with their pork to a safe distance before matters became serious.

  Once the women of both sides were safely away, the guests began in earnest. Singing derisive songs, they dashed hither and thither with burning brands, hurling them into the two men’s houses, and thrusting them under the leaves of every hut. In a few minutes, dense smoke and crackling flames burst from the houses, as the fresh oily leaves were sucked up by the leaping flames. The great platform was torn down in a chaos of splintering wreckage, while other men, yelling like fiends, were uprooting the great trees, still thickly festooned with vegetables on their upper parts, and heaving them over so that they crashed into the blazing dwellings, sending up great spouts of smoke and sparks. When the village was well alight and truly devastated, the guests fled as if for their lives, because the men of Dolivi were descending on them from the forest with cries of fury that were almost genuine. As the guests legged it for the river, and the safety of the other bank, they were sped on their way by showers of arrows. One guest, a little too enthusiastic about his ceremonial duties, halted on a rock above the ford, and, bending down, began slapping his buttocks in contempt at the pursuing enemy. As might be expected, he got a swift arrow up the rump for his pains and skipped through the shallows hopping and yelling for help from his mates, who were safely in the shelter of the trees.

  Fletcher, who had left before the firing of the village, regarded the scene with satisfaction. Dance villages were filthy places after these affairs, and burning them was the best thing to be done. As he rode towards Laripa, threading his way among the files of guests, he brooded on the rumours of destruction at Ungabunga.

  Chapter VIII

  Arm Pit Creek was a small tributary of the Loma River, and the site of Ned Oakley’s mining camp, where he and a few Moroks spent their days shovelling wash dirt into the sluice boxes, removing and cleaning the riffles, panning the residues, and regulating the water flow from the dam. It was an old-fashioned method, but Oakley was in no hurry. The claim was not only unusually rich, but was also the last payable one left on the island, as far as he knew, and he knew every creek, having prospected for several years before lighting on Arm Pit Creek, or Amipiti, as the natives called it. The white quartz and brown ironstone rocks had been more than a nod to a blind horse, and the colors of his first dish had told him that his fortune was made.

  Having found his gold, the next problem was to keep it. Digging it out of the ground was just a matter of hiring a dozen or so native boys. The Elephant Island administration had always been short of cash, and the mirage of gold, another Edie Creek or a Yodda, had bewitched the brains of distant administrators in Queensland, Port Moresby and Rabaul, as they shuffled the responsibility for the remote and useless island between each other. The coastal population being too small, and the swamps too extensive to make copra an economic proposition, gold or perhaps osmiridium looked the only chance of lightening the financial burden of what Sir Hubert Murray in one of his despatches from Papua had once referred to as “one of our more tiresome dependencies, whose pacification is likely to be as fruitless for its inhabitants as it will be costly for us.”

  To make sure that the revenues from the vital, if elusive, gold should not slip through the palsied fingers of bureaucracy by some legal fumbling, it was early decided to make the Warden of the Goldfields a direct appointment of the King-in-Council, with the responsibility of imposing a 20 percent tax on all gold removed from the island that would be used solely to defray governmental costs. The Resident Magistrate was merely appointed by whichever Administration had been pressed by the other two into doing so. Their foresight had been amply rewarded between the wars, when a number of strikes had been made that covered the costs of administering the island a hundred times over.

  But tax was the least of Oakley’s worries. If news of the strike leaked out, the place would be flooded with diggers and worked to the bone in a year. So he needed a Warden who understood his problems and could be relied on to bring a fresh and unprejudiced mind to their solution. For fifteen per cent each, Fletcher and Oelrichs had agreed to suppress all news of the strike and officially represented Oakley’s output as a few ounces a month, as that was the minimum amount necessary to keep together the body and soul of a slightly crazy digger, and act as bait to keep him hooked to his claim, but not enough to attract the notice of prospectors anywhere else in Australia or the South Pacific. Flet
cher issued Oakley’s yearly Miner’s Right, for the sum of two pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence, payable within thirty days of the expiry of the last Right, and registered his claims as they were pegged. Since the total value of the gold so far extracted was in excess of seven hundred thousand pounds sterling, his clerical labours were rather well rewarded.

  The camp was a simple affair comprising tool shed, store, boy-house, kitchen and wash-house, and Oakley’s cabin. A rope was slung between this and the wash-house, on which an assortment of woollen underwear, tartan shirts, and denim trousers swung gently in the light airs, scattering a shower of drops on the dry, shiny stones beneath. Palio, Oakley’s cooky, returned to the stove after hanging the washing out and began to brew afternoon tea. He was a grizzled Manus Islander, who had carried for Shark Eye Park on the Edie as a lad, and had remained with a series of diggers as sluicer, boss-boy, general factotum, and cooky ever since. He knew only two basic dishes, “stiu,” which was a mess of baked beans and bully-beef, heated and beaten together, and “carri,” which was the same, but with some curry powder added. Luckily for him, Oakley was not a gourmet.

  Oakley’s cabin was a one-room leaf shack, with a verandah and a shutter in the side that could be propped open to let in light and air, and closed against the weather. In the room was a hammock, with some rather skungy blankets, slung along the wall opposite the window, and above it was a crucifix. Opposite the door was a stack of shelves filled with an assortment of books, including Capablanca’s “My Hundred Best Games,” Newman’s “Apologia,” a set of Dickens, and Sopwith’s “Assay Techniques for Precious Metals”; tobacco tins of assorted greasy nuts and bolts, and occasionally tobacco; torch batteries, cartridges, and some socks of dubious cleanliness.