Fear Drive My Feet

by Peter Ryan

  This arrangement pleased the Mari boys immensely. Now they would be able to sleep the night at home, and not in a foreign village. Kari lined them up to receive their pay, and I dropped a shilling and a stick of tobacco into each outstretched hand. By accepted New Guinea standards this was substantial overpayment for half a day’s work, but it was important for them to be satisfied and in good temper. On their homeward journey down the Erap, it was quite possible that they would meet a party of Japanese and if they felt I had cheated them they might revenge themselves by setting the enemy on our trail. As soon as the last man had been paid, the six of them disappeared silently through the trees, stowing their shillings safely in their ears as they went.

  ‘How are you off for tobacco?’ I asked the luluai as I squatted on the ground beside him, waiting for the men to return with the cargo. (I spoke in pidgin, of course.)

  ‘Not very well,’ he replied. ‘We do not grow very good brus at Bivoro. It is a long while since I had a piece of newspaper to roll my smoke in, too,’ he added hopefully.

  I gave him a stick of trade tobacco and several sheets of newspaper.

  ‘Divide the paper up for the men, and I will give them a little tobacco when they bring the cargo up,’ I told him.

  He spread the paper on the ground before us and carefully tore it into strips.

  ‘Look,’ he said finally, ‘there is one piece bigger than the others. I had better keep it myself, so as to avoid any dispute.’ And the old rogue tucked into his string bag almost a whole sheet of paper.

  In less than five minutes the women had packed all their belongings into the bilums, as the string bags were called, and the men had returned with my cargo. We were on our way once more.

  The luluai walked beside me, carrying my haversack, and I asked him about the route we were to follow. He said that it would be necessary to cross and recross the Erap at least half a dozen times before we got to Bivoro.

  ‘The river turns about and about so much,’ he explained, ‘that if we were to follow the one bank it would take us till tomorrow to get there. The water gets very swift as we go up, too, but we will help you to cross.’

  We emerged from the patch of jungle and regained the kunai. It was terribly hot, and the sun was reflected straight back into our faces from the stony ground. I kept hoping that no enemy reconnaissance planes would fly over, because there was not a scrap of cover for several miles ahead. When we next came to the bank of the Erap I realized that even if there had been a Jap plane about we would not have heard it for the roar of the water and a dull rumbling sound which, Kari explained, was caused by rocks and boulders that were being swept along the bed of the stream.

  ‘This stream is not deep,’ he told me. ‘The danger lies in those rocks, which could easily break a man’s leg, and in the force of the water. I hope you are strong in the water, because if you fall over in crossing you will be lucky to get out much this side of the Markham, though the water is seldom deeper than your waist.’

  The truth of this was demonstrated at our first crossing. The luluai had wished to hold my hand and assist me over, but foolishly I would not hear of it. ‘If an old man like that can do it, so can I,’ was my thought, and I plunged into the stream ahead of the carriers. The water caught me, and immediately I was struggling to keep my balance on the uneven stony bottom, though I was not even in the fastest part of the stream. The luluai, seeing I had learnt my lesson, thrust out his stick and hauled me to the bank.

  He looked at me reproachfully, and explained that it was impossible to stand still and keep one’s balance, because the stones rolled away from underfoot. It was necessary to keep running as fast as one could, never leaving the feet on the bottom more than an instant. In this way it was possible to cross the stream without falling. Having delivered his little lecture he grasped me firmly by the hand and led the way.

  As soon as we entered the water we broke into a run, bobbing up and down in the current, with the water sweeping us downstream almost irresistibly. Without the assistance of the old man several times I would have fallen. By the time we had covered the twenty yards’ width of the river we were at least fifty yards downstream from the point where we had entered the water on the opposite bank.

  I took off my shirt to wring the water out, and watched the carriers, who were preparing for the crossing by rolling their loincloths up round their waists to leave their legs unhampered. Holding his load high in the air, each man plunged in and started running, jumping up and down as he went. My patrol-box, the only double load of the cargo, was carried by two men. Lashed to a pole, it swayed wildly to and fro between them as they held it clear of the water. I watched them anxiously, for the box contained all my essential possessions, including the precious map I had obtained from Bill Chaffey. In the course of several journeys up and down the Erap I never ceased to wonder how the carriers managed the distance without falling, with that awkward load jolting about between them. When I expressed my admiration for their agility they merely grinned, and twisted the water from their loincloths. ‘Something – nothing, master,’ they said. ‘This river doesn’t often become too flooded for us to cross.’ And they went on to explain a phenomenon of the Erap – that as soon as it was seen to be raining in the mountains they knew they could safely cross the river, for the flood would not reach the flat for some time.

  ‘When the flood does come, though, it is like a wave, and there is no hope if you are caught in midstream,’ said the luluai as the men picked up the loads and set off again.

  We walked fast, and without stopping to rest, across the stony ground, with the heat growing fiercer all the way. When we crossed the Markham ‘road’ – a faint dusty track that led down to Lae – Kari and the other boys could find no sign of its having been used recently. Certainly there were no footprints of Japanese to be seen.

  Fast as we walked, however, the hills seemed to recede with every step. Even by two o’clock they seemed no nearer for our hours of marching across the plain. Then, about half past three, the Erap’s banks suddenly became higher, and the stream took a more defined course. The hills all at once looked less blue, and quite close. Within half an hour we were well inside the Erap Gorge, its steep walls rising ever higher as we went. Kari said that another half-hour’s walk and one more crossing of the river would bring us to Bivoro. A few stunted banana-plants were clustered here and there, and we passed one small garden of taro where people had recently been working.

  Confined in this ever-narrowing bed, the Erap became even more swift and turbulent. The luluai called to us to hurry. There were signs, he said, that the flood was coming, and if we did not reach the crossing swiftly we would be forced to camp in the open for the night. He rushed to the water’s edge and called to me to follow.

  ‘We can cross here,’ he said.‘You come with me now.’ And for what seemed the hundredth time that day we were struggling through the water. Actually, I think we had crossed the river fifteen times in all since leaving Kirkland’s.

  Once across, the luluai started to shout and wave his arms madly to the carriers, who had arrived at the water’s edge; and they, in turn, gesticulated and pointed upstream. I could see that they too were shouting, but their voices were drowned by the roar of the river. Then, suddenly making up their minds, carriers, women with children, and the two police dashed into the water and s
truggled across to us.

  They were just in time, for they had barely reached the bank when the level of the water started to rise. Within two minutes we were deafened by the roar of the stream and the rumble of the boulders. Nothing could have survived the boiling yellow swirl of water that rushed away to join the Markham.

  We were close to Bivoro village now. It came into sight on a small area of flat ground near the junction of the Erap and one of its tributaries. I halted the carriers and squatted in the kunai, searching the houses with my binoculars. The village had all the appearances of a normal native settlement – a few men sitting smoking under the raised grass-thatched houses, women attending to cooking-fires and the preparation of food, and children running about playing among the banana-plants that encircled the houses.

  I asked whether Bivoro boasted a house-kiap, or rest-house. (The pidgin name for the government patrol officer was kiap, and in peacetime it had been the custom for most villages under government control to build a rest-house of native materials, where the officer could spend the night.) The luluai indicated a large grass house a little apart from the village, and Kari drew my attention to a fire burning in front of it. I examined the house carefully through the binoculars. It consisted of two rooms with an open veranda between them. Hanging on the veranda, in full view, was a strange-looking sub-machine-gun of a type I had never seen before.

  This seemed conclusive evidence that the Japanese were in the place, so I called to the carriers to remain hidden, and asked Kari and the luluai their opinion of the situation.

  The luluai was positive that there were no Japanese there.‘We have heard of the Japanese, and are afraid of them. Long ago, we all agreed that if they came to our village we would run away, but you can see for yourself that even the women and small children are there. Would they be sitting round like that if the Japanese were in the village?’

  While I admitted the force of his remarks, the machine-gun could not be explained. Kari examined it with the glasses and agreed that it was very different from any used by the Australians.

  We moved back into the kunai a little, to consider the best thing to do. The luluai offered to go in and investigate the situation himself, and bring us word. Although he seemed a reliable old fellow, I decided against this. If he were, by some chance, playing a smooth double game with us and the Japs, it would be better for us to surprise them ourselves, rather than have them tipped off and prepared by the luluai.

  Then again, there was no imperative reason for us to go in to Bivoro at all. We could sleep in the bush and push on next morning, having skirted the place altogether. I did not want to do this, however, because it would leave a grave uncertainty hanging over us the whole time we were in the Wain. We would constantly be wondering whether or not the Japanese were sitting near the end of our trail, waiting for us to come out.

  The only thing to do was to investigate for ourselves at once, and we hastily planned our move.

  Kari and I were to approach the house, while Achenmeri, concealed in the kunai, was to cover us with his rifle. The backward glances Kari kept throwing over his shoulder indicated that he felt the same misgivings as I did about Achenmeri’s covering fire. I hoped it would not result in an accidental bullet in the back for either of us. We moved quietly down upon the rest-house, feeling confident that the owner of the gun was unaware of our presence, and anyhow would be dead before he reached it if he did realize we were coming. How we would deal with any other occupants of the rest-house was not so certain, but in the absence of a sub-machine-gun I relied on the hand-grenades, and both Kari and I had one ready.

  We had almost reached the house when we heard a movement in one of the rooms. I raised my revolver, and out of the corner of my eye saw Kari’s rifle fly to his shoulder. Then a fair curly head appeared in the doorway, and a voice shouted to a cook-boy to prepare some hot water for a wash. To our intense relief the voice was unmistakably Australian, and with a loud ‘Hullo!’ we hurried across the open space to meet the stranger.

  He was so surprised that he almost fell off the veranda, and his relief when he recognized us as friends was almost as great as ours had been.

  ‘Well, I’ll be buggered!’ was all either of us could say at first as we shook hands warmly and went inside the house to make introductions and explanations. Kari meanwhile shouted to Achenmeri that all was well, and told him to bring the others into the village.

  The stranger sat down at once on the edge of his bed-sail, and I noticed that he looked pale and sick.

  ‘Fever,’ he explained briefly.‘I got here yesterday and I’ve felt pretty crook since. It’ll pass, though,’ he added. He had the philosophical attitude towards his sickness that characterized most of the men who had had many attacks of malaria.

  He told me his name was Les Williams, and that he was a member of a special party sent up from Australia on a secret mission into the Huon Peninsula.

  ‘Do you know about Jock McLeod being in there?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure. I’ve met up with him already, and I’m just on my way to rejoin him. My chief is in there with Jock now.’

  ‘Who’s in charge of your show?’

  ‘A bloke called Ian Downs. He’s a lieutenant in the Navy now, but he was a New Guinea patrol officer in peacetime.’

  Stacked at one end of the rickety bamboo floor was Les’s patrol gear. A couple of the boxes looked as though they might contain a radio transmitter and receiver.

  ‘Can you tell me some more about your set-up?’ I asked. ‘Or is there too much of the cloak-and-dagger hush-hush?’

  ‘Seeing you’re here, you might as well know. You’d pretty soon find out,’ he added with a grin. ‘Anyhow, I expect we’ll all work in together, Jock and Ian have been co-operating.’

  He shivered, and lay back on the bed, pulling a blanket over him.

  ‘Before you go on,’ I said, ‘tell me about that sub-machine-gun. It had me tricked.’

  ‘That’s easy – it’s only a Sten gun. They aren’t on issue generally to Australian troops yet, but some special parties like ours are being equipped with them.’

  Outside there was laughter and chattering as Kari and Achenmeri got acquainted with the natives of Les’s party, and the luluai and his men told the rest of the inhabitants how astonished I’d been at finding another white man here. We stopped to listen for a moment, and then Les went on to give me more details of his plans.

  It appeared that Ian Downs had established a base camp south of the Markham, at the native village of Tungu, on the Watut River. There he had a powerful radio set manned by signallers. The boxes on the floor with Les’s patrol gear contained, as I suspected, a radio set, a small one intended for sending messages to Tungu, whence they could be relayed to Port Moresby or to Australia, but unfortunately it was out of action. Les had brought it to Tungu to see whether it could be repaired, but it needed some new parts, and he had arranged to have these sent after him. Our only means of communication, at present, therefore, was by runner, either to Bob’s or to the Tungu base camp.

  Ian Downs’s party was collecting as much information about Japanese activities in this area as possible, as a prelude to a projected full-scale attack on Lae later in the year. Apparently Land Headquarters in Melbourne had had no idea of Jock McLeod’s
movements, and Ian had been astonished to find him on the peninsula.

  Les was now on his way to rejoin Jock and Ian, after bringing the radio to Tungu. He had made his crossing of the Markham higher up than Kirkland’s, moving across country to Bivoro.

  Since he had been to Jock’s camp near Gain, and expected to find him still there, we decided to make our way to Gain together.

  Although next day Les felt better, he was still not well enough to travel, and we spent the day reading, yarning, and smoking, and drinking innumerable pots of tea. I took some pidgin English lessons from him, and though I was at last beginning to make some headway, I still found it hard to understand more than a fraction of what the natives were saying, because they spoke pidgin so rapidly.

  At nightfall Les announced that he felt quite fit again, so we summoned the luluai and told him to have enough carriers ready in the morning to take our combined equipment – about a dozen boy-loads in all.

  Before eight next morning we had packed our gear and were on the road. It was necessary to cross the Erap for the last time just opposite the village. The water was not running as swiftly as it had been two days before, and we got over easily enough. Once across, we found that the river swung away to the north-west, while our path lay in a north-easterly direction. We caught only one glimpse of the Erap after that.