by Graeme Kent
‘The bosun’s still heading into the wind,’ he said, ‘which means that he’s not too worried yet. If he was, he’d turn and run before the storm.’
‘Is The Spirit of the Islands fast enough to outrun the bad weather?’ Sister Conchita asked, hoping for a positive response.
‘Probably not,’ Kella said.
They heard the sound of footsteps running up the companionway to the deck. The ship began to rise and plunge in even greater parabolas. Water was coming in under the door of the cabin from the passage outside.
‘The crew is going up to lash everything down to stop it being swept away,’ Kella told her.
Dismayed shouts came from the deck. Kella frowned and stood up. He opened the door, allowing more water to gush in. He stood out in the passage, straining to hear.
‘Wait here,’ he ordered, and started running up towards the deck. Sister Conchita hesitated, and then, disregarding his instructions, followed the police sergeant closely. Mayotishi emerged from his cabin and joined the small group.
When they reached the deck, the ship was rolling and plunging deeply from side to side. The wind screamed in from the west. The rain was hurtling almost horizontally in solid sheets. For the first time since she had come to the Solomons, Sister Conchita was really cold. The seamen were milling around the wheelhouse. The usually imperturbable bosun had thrown the door open and was shouting desperately to the crew. With difficulty, Sister Conchita and Mayotishi followed Kella across the slippery planks of the deck. As Kella engaged the bosun in a dialogue in the Lau language, the fear was apparent in the older Melanesian’s tone.
‘What’s the matter?’ Sister Conchita shouted, above the noise of the wind and rain.
‘Apparently the magnetic compass has broken,’ said Kella. ‘There’s no course for the bosun to follow. We’re travelling blind.’
‘What’s wrong with the instrument?’ asked Mayotishi. He was wearing yellow oilskins. The Japanese seemed to have an outfit for every occasion.
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Kella said.
He groped for the rope ladder swinging against the side of the wheelhouse and started climbing. The ladder crashed against the wheelhouse in the wind, and the rain thudded down, but it was only a few spray-soaked and slippery rungs to the flat roof, and he was able to swing himself up on to his stomach. Pausing to get his breath back, he ran stooped against the wind across to the compass situated in a protective wooden casing next to the rail. It was illuminated by the flickering light of an oil lamp, mounted on one side. As he approached, he could see that the glass face of the compass had been shattered into hundreds of shards and that the magnetic needle had been wrenched off and thrown away.
‘What’s wrong?’ Brother John shouted from below.
Kella looked down at the group of worried faces staring up at him. ‘It’s smashed,’ he said briefly, climbing back down to rejoin the others.
‘Storm big too much,’ said the bosun, who had handed over the wheel to one of the seamen. ‘Compass himi bugger-up big time. No lookim long Tikopia. Me go turnaround quick time.’
‘What’s he saying?’ asked Mayotishi worriedly from the edge of the gathering.
‘We can’t find an island as small as Tikopia without a compass. We’d just sail into nothingness,’ said Brother John. ‘He wants to turn round and head back for Malaita. I must say that he’s got a point. If we return the way we came, sooner or later we’re bound to find one of the islands in the main group. If we go plunging on blindly like this . . .’ He shrugged.
Those members of the crew who understood English muttered their agreement. Shem shouldered his way through the crowd. He towered above the other seamen. He seemed to have changed since Kella had last seen him. There was a new air of purpose, almost of determination about the Tikopian.
‘We don’t have to turn back,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘I can guide you to my home!’
Murmurs of dissent spread among the crew. They faded away beneath the Tikopian’s imperious gaze. Shem turned his attention to the bosun. The Lau man hesitated, and then nodded reluctantly.
‘Try littlebit,’ he grunted, and went back to his wheel.
Shem took up a place in the prow of the vessel. He looked up at the stars, thought for a few moments and then pointed into the darkness.
‘That way,’ he said.
The bosun spun his wheel and edged The Spirit of the Islands round to its new course. Sister Conchita looked uncertainly at Kella.
‘Are we . . .’ she began.
‘We’re fine,’ Kella told her. ‘Shem’s guiding us home.’
He watched the nun and Mayotishi return down the companionway to their cabins. Then he walked over to the immobile hulk that was Shem.
‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked. ‘You don’t really want to go home, do you?’
Shem did not look at him. ‘It is my karma,’ he said.
Kella had not finished for the night. He moved between the slowly dispersing and still dubious seamen to Brother John, who was standing on his own by the rail. The big man nodded remotely when the police sergeant joined him.
‘For a man of God, you get on my nerves considerably,’ said Kella.
‘How so?’ asked the missionary.
‘Do you want to tell me why you did it?’
‘Did what?’ responded Brother John.
‘Smashed the compass on the monkey island, of course,’ Kella said.
Several moments passed before Brother John responded.
‘How did you know I did that?’ he asked.
‘You overdid it,’ Kella told him. ‘The magnetic needle had been torn sheer away from the face of the compass. Only three men on board would have been strong enough to do that – you, me and Shem. It wasn’t me, and Shem wanted to get home so badly that he’s just volunteered to go three days and nights without sleep in order to try to steer us to Tikopia. He says that it’s his fate to do so. That only left you. I assume that you wanted to delay us on our voyage, or better still abandon the trip altogether. Do you want to tell me why?’
‘It’s the mata matangi,’ said Brother John after a moment.
‘A ceremony?’ guessed Kella.
Brother John nodded. ‘It means the eyes of the wind,’ he said. ‘It’s a Tikopian pagan ritual to bless homes and possessions. It’s due to take place at the end of the week.’
‘I thought Tikopia was a Christian island now,’ Kella said.
‘Only in theory,’ said Brother John. ‘The last pagan chief died on the island in 1953, and everyone said that Christianity was now going to be the sole religion of Tikopia. But the pagan faith only went underground. Lately it’s been resurfacing in quite a big way. In the Melanesian Mission we’ve been afraid for some time that there might be attempts to bring the old religion back by force. We’ve kept our eyes on events and even infiltrated a couple of agents into Papa Noah’s breakaway church. What really concerned us was the number of Tikopians affiliated to the Church of the Blessed Ark on Malaita. I hear that Father Pierre noticed that as well. There’s plainly some link between Papa Noah’s group and the pagans on Tikopia.’
‘So you guessed that the date of this pagan ceremony – the eyes of the wind – might be used as an occasion to revitalize the pagan faith on Tikopia,’ said Kella. ‘You knew the date of the ceremony and feared that it might be dangerous if a group of strangers from the outside world were to turn up at the island at such an important time for the pagans on Tikopia. You hoped that without a working compass on board our progress would slow down considerably, or even be abandoned altogether. You didn’t reckon on Shem’s determination to reach home in time.’
‘You’re right, of course. The island’s on a knife edge and has been for the best part of a year. If the pagans take over, it will be years before the Melanesian Mission gains a footing there once more. That could mean a religious war on the island, persecution, and all sorts of trouble.’
‘What about your minister on
the island?’
‘That’s the problem. His name is Abalolo, and he’s disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
Brother John nodded. ‘Bearing that in mind,’ he said, ‘I think that we will have to be very careful when we make landfall on Tikopia.’
‘If we get there at all,’ said Kella.
20
THE SAVO MEGAPODE FIELDS
On a large, sloping patch of black sand on the tiny island of Savo stood a group consisting of a dozen fascinated, perspiring tourists from a cruise ship, Welchman Buna, the Legislative Council member for the Roviana Lagoon, and a tall, stooped, grey-haired man whose name was Sanders and who worked for the US State Department in a capacity never defined on his infrequent visits to the Solomon Islands but whose occasional presence in Honiara was always sufficient to cause awe and unease among the highest echelons of the government’s expatriate administrative officers.
The two men stood a little apart from the others. Both were smartly dressed. Sanders wore a tan lightweight suit while Buna’s dark slacks were sharply pressed and, despite the humidity, his white shirt hung stiffly at attention from his torso. The female tourists were in print dresses while the men favoured shorts and Hawaiian shirts. The launch that had brought them on the fourteen-mile journey from the capital across Ironbottom Sound was anchored a hundred yards off the white sands of the shore. A little way along the beach, four Melanesian crew members, now off duty, smoked roll-up cigarettes around the dinghy in which they had rowed the visitors ashore. The official tour guide, a cheerful Guadalcanal man, was wielding a megaphone with all the flourishes of a silent movie director.
The tourists were looking in amazement at the sight before them. On the wide patch of sand, hundreds of scrawny, big-footed brown and black birds about the size of chickens were scrabbling out holes several feet deep. When each hole was large enough, the bird would roll a recently laid egg into it with its feet and then start kicking sand back into the hole until the egg was covered.
‘The megapode birds – the ngeros – will never see their eggs again,’ announced the tour guide proudly. ‘They leave them here in the holes. The sand is warmed by the volcano in the centre of the island. This is enough to hatch out the young birds in about three weeks. They will dig their way up through the sand and start running about immediately. After an hour or two these young birds will fly away into the trees over there.’
‘The ones that aren’t killed by dogs or pigs or whose eggs haven’t been dug up for food by the islanders,’ murmured Buna.
‘Nature red in tooth and claw,’ said Sanders. He touched the other man on the shoulder as a sign that they should stroll away from the main group. ‘Could you tell me exactly what is going on with our mutual friend Sergeant Kella?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, as far as I know,’ said the politician, with a sinking feeling in his stomach. How was it that mention of the ubiquitous police sergeant never seemed to herald the onset of good news? ‘In fact, the last time I saw him he specifically assured me that matters were quiet over on Malaita. I did hear that he exorcized a ghost somewhere on Guadalcanal the other day, but that’s par for the course for our Ben. He can almost do it in his sleep. Why, what has happened?’
‘It’s complicated,’ Sanders said. ‘Well, complicated enough to bring me back to these islands. As far as we can ascertain, a professional murderer is at large on Malaita, and Sergeant Kella is trying to find him.’
‘It’s what he’s paid to do,’ Welchman Buna said.
‘Granted, but it seems that he hasn’t told his superiors what he’s up to.’
‘So what else is new?’ Buna asked. ‘You know Kella. His enquiry probably clashes with some tribal tabu, so he’s keeping things quiet until he’s got everything sorted and in harmony. Our Ben is very keen on getting things in harmony.’
‘Furthermore,’ went on the American, as if he had not heard the other man, ‘there are rumours that the killer is a Japanese survivor from the Second World War pursuing a private campaign on Malaita.’
‘Oh, dear God!’ said Buna.
‘My sentiments entirely,’ said Sanders. ‘My latest information is that Sergeant Kella has linked up with an official Japanese investigator and an Anglican priest called Brother John, and that they are looking for this soldier. There are some weird stories that a nun has gone with them as well. They’re all on a chartered vessel called The Spirit of the Islands. I don’t have to tell you what that could entail. The Japanese are looking for a way back into the Solomons big-time. They’re having an economic revival in the Pacific these days, and that worries my superiors. As we understand it, they’re considering starting logging and fishing industries in this part of the world. The people that I work for would rather they kept their distance. I would rather they kept away too. It would be most unfortunate if an iconic figure like Kella were to link up with the Japanese. Heaven knows what those missionaries are doing going with him.’
‘Kella fought the Japanese during the war,’ Buna pointed out. ‘As a teenager he was a scout with John Deacon’s guerrilla raiders. I can’t see him teaming up with his old enemies.’
‘Alliances are strange affairs. They can change direction with the prevailing wind,’ said the American, pausing under the shade of a group of palm trees curtseying with brief grace in the breeze. ‘As we both know, Mr Buna.’
Buna did not reply at once. He had been in the pay of the Americans ever since he had attracted their attention with his enterprising efforts to rescue the young John F. Kennedy after the latter’s PT boat had been sunk in the Roviana Lagoon in 1942. Along with several other prospects he had been selected for his potential as a big man in the islands and supplied by the Americans with enough clandestine money to embark him upon his political career. However, he realized that lately he had been worrying his backers with his signs of striking out for independence, culminating only recently when he and Ben Kella had combined to put three FBI operatives in hospital with serious injuries sustained on the island of Olasana. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.
‘Keep an eye on things and let me know what you find out,’ the American told him. ‘And keep all this under your hat. It’s strictly confidential at this stage. That’s why I wanted to meet you away from prying eyes in Honiara.’
‘Does Chief Superintendent Grice know what Kella is up to?’ asked the politician.
‘Apparently not. Just how bright is Grice?’
Buna remembered a favourite phrase of a salty American master sergeant who had trained his wartime guerrilla group. When the politician spoke, the words were at a variance with the prim, buttoned-up exterior he chose to present to the world.
‘I doubt he could pour piss out of a boot that had instructions printed on the heel,’ he said.
Down by the megapode field, things were stirring. The tour guide was leading his party down to the beach. The seamen with the dinghy were discarding half-smoked cigarettes and preparing to ferry the visitors back to the passenger liner moored at the Point Cruz wharf. In a rare show of conviviality, Sanders walked down to join the crowd on the shore. Buna followed at a slower, more contemplative pace. The most important factor in the information provided by the man from the State Department was not the hunt for the alleged Japanese killman. Rumours like that were always sweeping the bush and eventually reached the capital in a confused form.
What was much more interesting was the sudden grouping of three such disparate characters on the chartered ship. The missionaries on Malaita got on well enough, but they seldom united to work together on projects in the remote areas. There was little doubt in his mind that the nun Sanders had mentioned would be Sister Conchita from Ruvabi Mission. She was the only white sister on the island. Besides which, if anything interesting, untoward or possibly dangerous was happening in the remote jungle, the redoubtable young sister would be drawn to it like an ant to honey, to see if she could help.
With the tough and experienced Brother John of the Melanesia
n Mission, the idiosyncratic and driven Sergeant Kella, the pagan aofia, and this unknown Japanese official with pockets presumably limitless enough to be able to charter the rust-bucket that was The Spirit of the Islands, a very strange company seemed to be putting to sea. It was a group that would only band together under the most exigent of circumstances. Buna only wished that he knew what these were. One thing was certain. He did not envy them their prospective voyage, whatever its destination.
Unbidden, a fragment of poetry entered his mind, verse he had been taught what seemed a lifetime ago, after he had been identified by the Methodist church in the western islands as a potential academic high-flyer and fast-tracked as a student to the church’s prestigious Goldie College.
‘They went to sea in a sieve,’ he murmured.
Sanders’ ears were sharp. He glanced back. ‘What was that?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Welchman Buna, increasing his pace towards the dinghy. ‘I was just showing off my Western-style mission education.’
Sanders frowned. ‘I hope you’re not treating this lightly, Buna. My people would not wish Sergeant Kella any harm, but if he moves contrary to the interests of the USA, we might be forced to take extreme executive action against him.’
Buna surveyed the American almost with pity in his eyes. ‘That is your prerogative, Mr Sanders. All I would say in reply is that when, all those years ago, the council of tribal elders chose Ben Kella to be the new aofia, it wasn’t just because he came from a line of great Lau warriors and the signs indicated that he was destined by the gods to be the next custom-law enforcer on Malaita. He was also selected because they could see even at that early age that he was extremely tough and really smart.’