C. A. W. Monckton

“ A few minutes later a steward, falling over the tangled heap of police and Kaili Kaili sleeping on the floor of my cabin, woke me up, wailing, “For God’s sake, sir, go to the Chief Engineer’s cabin; those blank savages of yours are killing him.” “Nonsense!” I said; but that wretched steward would not let me have any peace; so accordingly, cursing deeply all people who disturbed the sleep of the godly with vain alarms, I paddled along the wet deck to the Engineer’s cabin. ”

“ Bang went all the guns together, an awful series of shrieks went up from the smitten intruders, as they hastily hauled themselves back over the stockade, and fled howling into the night. At the same time the air was rent by fearful yells and curses from the barracks; the police, at the sound of the shots, had hastily jumped to their feet and rushed out; man after man tumbled over and tangled himself up with the line attached to the corporal’s toe, thereby nearly dragging off that much enduring member. ”

“ I ordered the police to start pitching camp and to take no notice of them, whilst I sat on the ground with Oiogoba Sara, and merely noticed the still very timid Agaiambu by chucking any man he induced to come within a few yards of us, a gift of some sort.
“What is this strange-coloured being?” they asked Oiogoba, “a man or a devil?” “A man, whom I now serve,” he answered; “he is very wise and very powerful, and, if you don’t offend him, very kind; if you wish to please him, bring fish and sago for his people, and he will pay you most generously.” ”

“ At Thursday Island I bade farewell to the schooner Myrtle; for she, having transhipped her cargo to a China steamer, returned to New Guinea, and I took up my quarters in one of the hotels, to wait with what patience I possessed for a south-bound steamer. Thursday Island is—or rather was—the centre of the pearling industry, and is one of the most God-forsaken holes I know of; there is absolutely nothing to do in the place to kill time. ”

“ I said; “Symons was your subordinate, and if you choose to give him entire charge of a district in your Division, you should have occasionally looked in there, to see how things were going; you know perfectly well that the R.M. is the person responsible for anything wrong in the Division, whether his fault or not, and to plead ignorance is the worst excuse you can make. It is clear to me, that you must have lost entire touch with the village constables in Milne Bay, for they are trotting in and out of Samarai every second day, and yet you have heard nothing.” ”

“ On one occasion, while following the blazed line along the top of a razor-backed spur, we came to where it narrowed to a crumbling knife-edged track, with a sheer drop on one side, looking down upon clouds, and on the other, the dull murmur of a river could be heard a thousand feet below. I am a fearful man, and I hate heights; my head always whirls on them, and my muscles become as flaccid as those of a pampered lap-dog. I gazed at that spot, and then said to Lario, “Surely Mr. Russell is not a tight-rope walker, or fool enough to go over there.” ”

“ At the Trobriands more outward and visible signs of respect were paid to the chiefs than I have met with in any other part of New Guinea. The old paramount chief never walked, but was always carried in a palanquin borne on the backs of men, and was invariably accompanied by his sorcerer and a sort of grand vizier. Before the old chief, women crawled on their bellies, and men bent almost to the ground. ”

“ A diver’s hands are the sole portion of his body outside the diving suit, the dress ending at the wrists, where thick india-rubber bands prevent the admission of water and expulsion of air. Should a diver meet a large groper, the only thing to be done is to either ascend twenty or thirty feet and drift out of the short-sighted fish’s range of vision or, if there is no tide or current, rise to the surface. ”

“ The Notu, who were a set of murdering blackguards themselves and a curse to the coast, told me that they had hitherto been on most friendly terms with the Dobudura, but that lately the latter tribe had been raiding them, and killing by torture any people they captured. “We don’t mind fighting,” said the Notu, “and we don’t mind being killed and eaten, for that is the lot of men, but we do object to having our arms ripped up and being tied to posts or trees by our own sinews, and having meat chopped off us until we die!” ”

“ The first thing to which I turned my attention was, as usual, the detachment of police: the Commandant, while there, had fallen them in with the travelling patrol, but in three minutes had dismissed them to their barracks in despair; they were all, with the exception of a corporal, locally recruited by Campbell and trained by him. They were an uncommonly clean and tidy looking lot, very polite and attentive, excellent body or house servants, and taught to salute on every possible occasion; a man could not even hand one a cake of bath soap without saluting as he gave it, and again when he left. ”

“ Only a brilliant brain such as that of Sir William MacGregor, or Sir Francis Winter, could have originated the scheme. Let me take an example: assuming a murder, or any serious crime, had taken place in a village of raw natives without a village constable or Government chief, and I heard of it; then, the arrest of the offender would be made by constabulary—strange armed men—and the whole community would be alarmed; the women, children and witnesses would all fly for the bush, and regard the whole matter in the light of a hostile raid by a foreign enemy. ”

“ No one, who has not undergone the experience, can possibly realize what a tropical rainstorm can be like; the water does not fall in drops, but appears to be in continuous streams, the thickness of lead pencils; it fairly bends one under its weight, and half chokes one with its density; and all this in a steaming atmosphere of heat that reduces one to the limpness of a dead and decaying worm. In Captain Barton’s case, his misery was increased by the spiky pangs of toothache and the slow gnawing of dysentery. ”

“ He had been taken to Samarai in the Mission vessel, and from there sent on to Thursday Island in the Merrie England.
From Dobu we sailed south and rounded Normanby Island finding everywhere, in likely pearl-shell localities, shell of a size and quality better than any other in the world, but water too deep for us to work it successfully. The shell always lay at a depth varying from twenty-eight to thirty fathoms; a depth that, however tempting the outlook, simply spelt suicide on the part of the diver volunteering to work it, and manslaughter on the part of the owner sending him below. ”

“ Several natives were hit, others jumped overboard from their canoes and swam for the shore. Every man on that ship, with one exception, then lost his head: Robinson grabbed his rifle and began wildly blazing at every canoe in sight; Jewell saw a man hit with a bullet, and promptly went into screeching hysteria; what the R.M. did, Heaven and he alone know; some of the European crew of the ship took shelter in the chart house and other refuges, and one of the officers, at least, got his fowling-piece and blazed away. ”

“ Saturday was the only New Guinea native that I ever knew who was anxious to go down in a diving dress, a wish on his part to which I sternly refused to accede.
The Goodenough Islanders are a somewhat remarkable race; of small physique, they speak a language peculiar to themselves; the men are liars, treacherous and subtle, but at the same time brave and capable of great attachment to any person for whom they have a regard. ”

“ The crashing, tearing and rending of that avalanche of falling timber then ceased, and from under the pandanus trees came the screams of a man apparently in mortal agony. “Cut him out!” I yelled. “Who the devil is it?” “Komburua,” was the reply, as fifty naked natives flew with their axes to the spot, and almost immediately turned tail and fled howling into the surrounding forest, while the howls of Komburua continued, containing if anything a still keener note of agony. “Curse it! Have the choppers gone mad?” I howled. “Forward the Bogi and Papangi detachments! Cut that man out at once!” ”

“ The sorcerers in the gaol inquired the reason of the silence and gloom over the Station, and were told by the warders that I was dying; whereupon they set up a loud chant of joy. The constabulary, sitting in a circle round my bed, heard the chant; several of them got up, went to their rifles, took out the cleaning rods, and paid a visit to the gaol, from whence soon came the wails of suffering sorcerers.
“What can we do?” said Basilio at last; “you die fast.” “Dig my grave under the flagstaff, where I can hear the feet of the men at drill,” I replied. ”

“ At dawn I marched inland in search of the Dobudura country, accompanied by Acland and Walker, and taking with me about seventy Notu armed with spear, club, and shield, to act as scouts and guides, twenty-five constabulary and village constables, and about sixty Kaili Kaili under old Giwi. The track, after clearing the coastal swamp, ran through alternate belts of tall forest and grass, and was well worn and defined; it showed signs of the recent passage of large bodies of men. The Notu marched in front, flung out as a screen of scouts, a position they were not at all keen on occupying. ”

“ I have spoken of pulling up a diver; this is not literally true, as a diver really ascends of his own volition, by closing his helmet’s air valve and thus blowing out his dress with air. The “pulling in,” when the water is calm, merely consists of taking up the slack of the air pipe and line and, when there is a tide or current, of hauling him along the surface to his vessel. Great care has to be exercised by him in coming to the surface, as, should his ascent be too fast, he may smash his helmet on the bottom of his boat or lugger. ”

“ The Archbishop, and the fathers that I knew, are now all dead; may their souls enjoy a peace and rest that their bodies never knew. “Let the Sacred Heart of Jesus be everywhere known,” was the motto of their order; rather should it have been, “Courage, mon ami, it is the will of the Good God,” the words for ever in their mouths in times of trouble and tribulation. I am not a Roman Catholic, but one of my most pleasant memories of the Mekeo district is of one occasion, when I had halted my men on a track, and the Archbishop and Father Bouellard passed by. “Stand to your arms!” ”

“ One of his most recent performances was the deliberate and cold-blooded murder of a child of ten years old, who was staying with its mother in his village. The old blackguard had some guests at a feast; he had plenty of pig, dog, and fish, but that wasn’t good enough; so he called to the unsuspecting woman to bring her boy up to him, and when she obeyed he dashed out the child’s brains before the mother, and added them to the menu. The woman knew it was useless going to Hislop, so she sent to me through Sergeant Barigi. I don’t believe the old reprobate is ever without human meat. ”

“ Bare Bare village was deserted, and apparently had been so for some weeks; it was approached by narrow winding tracts leading through a dense tall jungle of wild sugar-canes, which were well sprinkled with spear pits. We cut a wide straight lane through the jungle to the river, in order that our people might go and come with water in safety. The scouts found near here a new and much better ford than the one we had seen in the morning, and which our lying prisoners had said was the only one. ”

“ From all directions the men came tearing up, loading their rifles as they ran, and savagely striking out of their way any native in their path; while the excited natives gathered in clusters and jabbered, and spears appeared from nowhere. Poruta soon found out that Komburua’s attempt to split my skull was due to one of his sudden frenzies of rage, induced by my spank on his stern, and in no way concerned the other natives. ”

“ The shark at best is a most cowardly scavenger of the sea; much preferring, even when hungry, to gorge on carrion than to kill its own prey. And even when made bold by hunger, it is readily frightened away by the sudden emission of air bubbles from the valve in the diver’s helmet. A diver, when approached by a large shark, seldom troubles much, so long as the fish does not get too near to his air pipe. ”

“ Having an afternoon to spare on the day before we left Goodenough Island—while the police and the Siai’s men were engaged in chopping wood and carrying water to that vessel—I took the dingey, Poruma, Warapas, and Giorgi, and went shooting duck and pigeons up a small river. I got the most mixed bag I ever made in my life: pulling into the river, a hawksbill turtle suddenly rose about twenty feet in front of the boat; this I succeeded in shooting through the head, and Poruma retrieved it by diving; the turtle must have weighed about two hundred pounds when out of water. ”