Fear Drive My Feet

by Peter Ryan

  Leaving this elderly native detective at his post, we hurried along the track through the thickening fog. Luxuriant green vegetation crowded upon us from either side, cold and dripping with moisture. The tops of the trees faded to invisibility behind swirling grey wisps of cloud. Sometimes, on downhill stretches, we broke into a jogtrot, and I think something of my own excitement at the prospect of meeting Jock spread to Buka and Buso, for I heard them urging the carriers to go faster and faster.

  When we reached Samandzing the fog was so thick that twilight seemed to be approaching, though it was only about half past four. I could not see the more distant houses, but the village seemed a large one, with well-built grass houses laid out in neat rows. There were a few men strolling about, and I called the nearest one over and asked him which house Jock was using. He stared at me for a few seconds, blank and dumb, then shook his head and slunk away. The other people, too, seemed to be avoiding us, and I was glad when Buso, who had been walking at the tail of the line, came up. He would know where Jock had set up house.

  ‘Master Jock ’e sleep long house-lotu,’ he answered promptly to my question, and together we made our way quickly to the big church house which dominated the village. Inside it was gloomy, but there was enough light to see that the building was deserted. There was no sign of Jock’s patrol gear. I sent Buso to find the luluai, while Buka and I kept a sharp watch about us, rather disturbed by Jock’s unexpected absence.

  Buso returned in a few minutes with a reluctant luluai in tow. As soon as the luluai appeared outside the church I knew from his surly face that he would be small help to us.

  ‘Master ’e go where?’ I asked.

  ‘ ’Em ’e go long Bilimang, lik-lik place close to.’

  He was telling me that Jock had moved to the small nearby village of Bilimang. Further inquiries established that it was in the next valley, a couple of hours’ walk away. The luluai obviously wanted us to go, for he kept assuring us that we could reach Bilimang shortly after nightfall if we hurried. Come what may, he was determined that we should not sleep in his village of Samandzing.

  But I felt too tired to go any farther that night, though I wanted badly to see Jock. I knew he never spent many days in the one place, so it seemed reasonable to suppose that the luluai was telling the truth. To make sure Jock did not leave Bilimang before I arrived, I scribbled a note to say I was following, and asked the luluai to send a lad at once to Jock with the message.

  I was a bit dejected, for I had come from Kasenobe at great speed, buoyed up by the prospect of Jock’s company that night; now I felt rather let down at the thought of spending another night alone, not knowing what had happened to Ian Downs and wondering whether the Japanese were even then hunting us.

  I could see that Samandzing was under strong mission influence, for the churches and schoolhouses were almost as numerous as the dwellings. The people were unfriendly, and when I asked the luluai to sell us sufficient food for a meal he replied with a smirk that it was Sunday and that his people could not possibly break the Sabbath by digging food. His response had me floored for a moment – until, through the mist, I caught sight of a number of women toiling up the hill from the gardens, laden with bilums of food and bundles of firewood. Apparently the Sabbath Day’s rest from labour did not apply to women! I hinted gently that if he could not supply me with a few vegetables in return for payment it might become necessary, however undesirable, for the police to shoot and eat one of his pigs – without payment. The threat was sufficient: after taking one uneasy glance at the gusto with which Buso and Buka unslung their rifles and looked about for a pig, the old scoundrel shouted to the people in ‘talk-place’. Within minutes plenty of food was laid out at our feet. There was no house-kiap, so I had a cooking-fire lit on the earth floor of the church, and slept as I had at Kasenobe, perched up on the dais.

  By ten o’clock next morning I had put most of the zig-zag track from Samandzing behind me and was clambering down the last hill to Bilimang village – a hill so steep that we should have had parachutes and jumped.

  Jock was lounging against the side of a hut waiting for me. He was a big tough-looking man. Above his ruddy face his dark hair was close-cropped, almost shaven. His deep chest and broad shoulders were scarcely covered by his too-small shirt, and his massive legs, bare below the shorts, were disfigured by ugly running sores. These were tropical ulcers, which start from the smallest scratch and need months of persistent treatment if they are ever to be cured. On his feet was a pair of dirty old sandshoes.

  He sauntered forward to meet me, hand extended.

  ‘I got your note,’ he said with a grin. ‘I don’t know how the hell you made it. They must have gone completely nuts to send you out here alone! Anyhow, I’m glad to see you. Come inside and have a cup of tea.’

  We bent double and squeezed through the doorway of the tiny native hut. It was almost dark inside, and we could barely stand upright without banging our heads against the smoke-blackened roof. Still, it was the only spare house, and much warmer than camping out.

  Over the tea Jock continued to grumble about the stupidity of headquarters.

  ‘I don’t think the silly bastards have woken up about the war!’ he fumed. ‘It was bloody well criminal to send you through that country by yourself! In this letter you brought, I’m ordered to instruct you in routine patrol work. Christ Almighty! Do they think I’m just sitting happily here on my arse, seeing the kanakas keep their villages tidy? Hasn’t anybody told them about the Japanese yet?’

  He gulped the scalding tea, and tossed the dregs out the door.

  ‘Did they give you a radio set?’ he asked at length.

  I shook my head. ‘I mentioned it, but they just laughed. I thought you must have one.’

  ‘Hell! Here we are, just behind the Nips’ main base, and they won’t give us a radio! If we find out some red-hot news we have to send it by runner, five days to the nearest radio at Bob’s. The intelligence is stale when it arrives! And what about the risk the poor bloody police-boy runs, going up and down the Erap! But a radio? Hell, no! Those bludgers in Wau and Port Moresby might find it too hard to get the Randwick starting-prices if they gave away too many radios!’

  ‘There’s certainly not much point in staying here without one. Let’s hope Les Williams can get his set going.’

  Jock grunted. ‘It’ll help, but we should all have one. We might get scattered from one end of the Huon Peninsula to the other. One set wouldn’t be much use then.’

  He sat looking moodily out the door. Rain was falling now, and cold gusts of wind rushed into the dark little hut.

  ‘How about food?’ he asked more hopefully. ‘Surely to God they realized I was just about out of kai-kai?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. I’ve only got about a week’s food for one man.’

  Jock’s anger flared high again. ‘The bastards! No comforts. That’s all right – you can’t expect comforts on a job like this. No food. That’s not too bad either – you can always get hold of a bit of sweet potato or pumpkin or something, even if you have to pinch it out of a native garden. But no radio! We’d do more good drinking ourselves happily to death in a nice pub in Australia!’

  He made one last effort. ‘How about trade goods? Did you manage to get a decent supply?’r />
  ‘Not much. I’ve got a few pounds of salt and a few dozen sticks of tobacco. There’s an odd newspaper or two, and that’s the lot.’

  Jock laughed, instead of raging as I had expected.

  ‘Well, we know the worst now,’ he said. ‘No use worrying at this stage. It’s only when you’ve felt hopeful that you get wild like that. Let’s talk about something else.’

  ‘Tell me about Ian Downs,’ I said. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. He’s somewhere in the mountains of the Momalili country, having a rest. I reckon we can expect him back in a day or two. At least, I hope so. There’s one thing that’s got me a bit worried, though.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well, there’s a track that leads up from the coast between here and the Momalili country. If the Nips get wise to it they might cut him off before he gets here.’

  ‘Do you reckon they will?’

  ‘I’m not really frightened about it. Up till now the bastards have stayed pretty close to the coast and the main tracks. They aren’t keen on the bush and the mountains.’

  ‘I don’t know that I blame them,’ I cut in. We both laughed.

  ‘No. They show more sense there than we do,’ Jock said.

  Until we saw Ian we could make no definite plans for the future, but Jock mentioned several possible patrols that might yield valuable information. Jock himself was keen to cross the Saruwaged Range over to the north coast, to see what was happening there. As far as we knew, no white men had been there since the war started. Another suggestion he made very much intrigued me: he said that the Japanese were holding prisoner in a compound near Lae the whole peacetime Chinese population of the town. They had been captured when Lae fell, and put behind barbed wire. From time to time some of these Chinese – the tradesmen – were taken into Lae to do work for the Japanese. It was certain therefore that they would have vital information about enemy installations, the strength of the garrison, and the effects of our increasing air raids. However, Jock thought that the sensation caused by Ian’s appearance on the beach at Hopoi would make the Japs very careful for a while, and it would be much too dangerous to attempt to visit the Chinese compound just now – for a few weeks, he thought.

  At lunch, it did not surprise me when Jock’s cook-boy produced porridge made from crushed army biscuits. It was a common dish in those days when rations were short. But at tea-time, when he brought more porridge and said that Master Jock always had a dish of it, I was puzzled and asked Jock the reason. Surely no-one could like the gluey stuff that much!

  Jock laughed. ‘It’s the only way I can eat those bloody slabs of concrete. I haven’t got any teeth of my own, and I lost my false ones over the side of a ship in Townsville. You’d better tell the cook you don’t want a side dish of porridge every meal yourself. He probably thinks I have it so often because I like it.’

  Jock had a few books with him, among them a cheap and battered edition of Winwood Reade’s Martyrdom of Man, which we dissected and discussed late into the night. When we came to the passage which described religion as a force that commonly softens the head and hardens the heart, Jock told me of some of his own peacetime experiences with some of the missionaries. On one occasion he remonstrated with a missionary who was making some sick natives work in a garden.

  ‘Mr McLeod, you do not understand!’ retorted the indignant missionary. ‘We are not interested in the miserable bodies of these people, but in saving their immortal souls.’

  All next day it rained. We sat on the floor, wrapped in blankets, our backs to the little doorway so that the faint light would fall on our books. From another hut a few yards away came the monotonous drone of a mouth-organ as one of Jock’s police-boys played ‘Auld Lang Syne’ over and over again.

  Late in the afternoon a native lad ran into the village through the gathering gloom and rain and handed a wet, crumpled scrap of paper through the doorway to Jock. It was a note from Ian, saying simply that he had arrived at another hamlet about half an hour’s walk away, higher up the mountain, and was camping the night there in an empty house. Jock at once rolled up his blanket and bed-sail and went to join him, leaving me to arrange for the packing and carrying of all our gear next day.

  Ian was squatting on the veranda of a little native house when I arrived. He seemed fairly fit, though his legs were badly cut about. He was a stocky, fair-haired young man. The old sea-boots into which his feet were thrust were one obvious relic of his past years in the Navy.

  We all crowded into the house to escape the cold wind. There was hardly room to move, but we sat shoulder to shoulder, and plunged at once into a discussion of what we should do. The many things to be considered, such as our lack of food, tenuous communications, danger from Japanese patrols following Ian’s betrayal at Hopoi, and so on, took some time to discuss, and evening was approaching before we had worked out definite plans. What we decided was this: Jock was to cross the Saruwaged Range and find out what was happening on the north coast; Ian was to return to the Wain country, somewhere near Boana Mission, and rest for a while; I was to return to Bob’s with all speed, obtain as much food and trade goods as possible, and rejoin Ian and Les Williams in the Wain. For his journey over the range, Jock would take all the stores we now possessed, and Ian would arrange by radio message to Australia for further supplies and a wireless set to be dropped by plane on the north side for Jock. This meant that he would be able to travel light on the difficult crossing, and take very few native carriers.

  Accompanied by Buka I set out at first light next morning on the return journey to the Markham. As Jock had taken over my stores I needed only a couple of men from the hamlet to carry my bed-roll and patrol-box. I intended to sleep at Bungalamba that night, or, if we made particularly good time, to camp under one of the abandoned houses at Dimini. Jock and Ian were still in camp. Because Ian could still travel only slowly, they were going to make a leisurely day’s walk of it to Samandzing. Next day Jock would go to Bungalamba, there to start his journey across the mountains. When I said goodbye they merely grunted, half asleep under the blankets, and turned over to snore again.

  As we wound our way up the tortuous track nearing Samandzing, Buka suddenly stopped and pointed to a tiny figure far above, coming down the track towards us. Even with the naked eye we could see that he wore the police-boy’s peaked cap and was carrying a rifle, and I whipped my binoculars from their case and focused them on the track above.

  ‘Well, I think I know who it is,’ I said. ‘See what you think.’ I passed the glasses to Buka.

  At once a grin covered his broad black face. ‘Master, me savvy this-fella man! Achenmeri!’

  We sat down at the side of the track to wait, wondering what news Achenmeri would bring from Les.

  When he came round the bend in the track about twenty minutes later, puffing and blowing, Achenmeri told us that he had seen us from a distance, and that he had put on a spurt to reach us quickly. He handed me a letter and flopped on the ground nearby to recover his breath.

  Les’s letter said that the runner with the spare radio-parts had not arrived, and that he himself was making a flying visit to the Tungu camp across the Markham, to try to get the set working.

  We had counted on Les’s radio to send the messa
ge requesting the supply-dropping for Jock, so I decided to wait for Jock and Ian to see how Les’s going to Tungu would change our plans. We walked steadily on to Samandzing, where I set up house again in the church, obtained food from the kanakas for the whole party, and had the billy boiling for a mug of tea when Jock and Ian arrived about midday.

  I stayed the night with them at Samandzing, and we slept side by side in the church. The natives treated this larger party with more respect than they had shown me, but they were still far from friendly. We posted a sentry to watch the village, and Jock advised me always to do so in future.

  ‘You never can be too sure of these kanakas,’ he said. ‘If they reckon the Japs have won the war, they’ll all be on their side, just as they abandoned the Germans to come over to us thirty years ago.’

  ‘Would they change as quickly as all that?’

  ‘Why not? What chance would they have of resisting the Japs with bows and arrows? Anyhow, all these years, some of the Lutheran missionaries haven’t done anything to make them loyal to the Australian government. The Germans used to boast openly that the Australians would be chucked out of New Guinea. One of them actually told me that Hitler would soon sweep through here like a fire. He didn’t seem to care a bit that I was a government officer.’

  ‘Why weren’t the missionaries interned, or deported?’

  ‘God knows! Everyone here knew what was going on! Look, you’ll hardly believe this: right at the end, when the government just had to evacuate them, and the steamer was pulling out of Lae, some fat-arsed fraus lined up at the ship’s rail and heiled Hitler!’