A Place Called Home (Cannibal Country Trilogy, Book 2) Page 10

  Safety was more important than speed and he picked his steps carefully, backtracking whenever there was the least chance that he had gone wrong. At about four o’clock he came to the edge of the swamplands and shifted along until he reached the edge of a fast running stream flowing down from higher ground. He walked uphill along the bank a couple of hundred yards until he found a big enough gum tree.

  He cleared lower branches from the tree and climbed up a few feet and wove them in to make a sleeping platform. He made a small camp site, clearing the kunai back a few feet and then scavenging dead wood to build a fire. He opened his pack to pull out a change of underclothing. He found no spare socks, he had forgotten them. He knew that his feet would blister, walking in swamp water and then in the tropical heat; dirty socks could kill him. He debated walking the six hours back to the plane and pulling Bob’s socks off his dead feet; the state his body would be in after a day in the sun deterred him – he would not want those socks.

  He boiled up some water and washed his socks, put them in the branches to dry.

  The rain clouds were close – it would pour during the night. The groundsheet would offer sufficient protection and he should be safe from snakes, definitely too high for crocodiles. He heated a tin of beans and made himself tea in the little pan and took quinine for the malaria that would probably be in him already.

  He slept heavily, was woken at dawn by the squawking of drongoes who evidently claimed his tree and objected to sharing it. He swore at the noisy black and white birds; they screeched back at him. He sat on his platform, groundsheet wrapped round his shoulders against the drips from the leaves. His chest hurt; examining himself as well as he could he discovered lines of bruises where the safety straps had been. He dressed, made tea, ate biscuits and bully and then emptied and refilled his water tins from the running stream. He checked his pocket compass and picked out a couple of hills behind him that should serve as landmarks and keep him more or less on line. He knew what to do, in theory, but the practice was new to him; he needed to learn, very quickly. He took up his load and walked slowly down and underneath the canopy of the swamp forest.

  It was muddy underfoot, the ground holding the water and covered with a rotting mulch of leaves and fungus. There was a smell of corruption and decay. There was no path, no sign that any local villagers ever came here. It was hot, even early in the morning, and he could feel the moisture seeping into his boots. Patches of bog became frequent and he skirted them to the south, seemingly the higher side. He doubted he was making a mile an hour in a straight line, but that was really not too bad. He rested a few minutes against a tree, opened a tin and ate half of the bully in it, threw the rest away – he did not dare keep an opened can of meat even for a couple of hours.

  The trees became thinner and bamboo started to replace them on the solid patches, the mud deeper and wetter in between. In mid-afternoon he found himself with mud on three sides and ten yards of open water to his front. There was firmer looking ground on the other side of the creek. He shifted back to the nearest clump of bamboo and cut a thick pole.

  Careful prodding to his front showed the water to be no more than four feet deep; it was black and stank of mud and sulphur and who knew what else, but there was no gain to going back, he had to reach the coast. He put Bob’s revolver high on his shoulder in its holster, hoped he would not have to discover whether it was true that crocodiles could be killed by a well-placed revolver bullet, and eased into the water, leaning on the pole. The bottom was soft and sticky and each pace took the better part of a minute, but he made his way across with the water barely reaching his chest.

  He stood on the firmer ground, filthy and stinking, but he had made some progress, he felt. He squelched to the next clump of bamboo, a big patch a good thirty feet across, cleared a dry space to sit and gathered dead stems and leaf to build a hot fire. He took his boots off and used a little of his water to wash his feet, then rinsed his socks through and hung them up in the hot smoke. Next stage was to cut a thick green stem and split it into thin needles which he burned, one by one, in the fire, using their charred ends to very carefully kill the leeches - when burned they let go and dropped off. He rubbed salt into his skin where he could not see, knowing that would also get rid of the leeches.

  He ate and drank his tea, believing that a hot drink was better for him than plain water.

  He estimated he might have made six miles from the site of the plane crash – there would be no air search so there had been no point to remaining there.

  On the third day he walked unbroken for ten hours and guessed he might have travelled two miles. He spent most of the day up to his armpits in water or thin mud, plugging slowly forward, never daring to stop, working from one hard islet to another, aiming towards a distant clump of bamboo, making it just before dark. He had kept his lighter in his hat, was able to make a fire and go through the routine of survival. He used the last of his water and refilled one tin from a branch of the swamp where there was the faintest trace of a current.

  He let the water settle overnight then decanted the top half gallon into the second tin, dropping in a pair of chlorine tablets in pious hope. He emptied out the first tin, sluicing out nearly an inch of sediment.

  The water was foul to taste, made awful tea, but he had to drink it, knowing that dehydration would kill him more quickly.

  The going was easier that day, the ground firmer. For the first time he saw snakes, realised that they would prefer to live where there was less mud. The frogs shrieked far more loudly in this section of the swamp, the bright green tree frogs whining like circular saws, unstopping in morning and evening, silent in the heat of the day. He stepped over a greasy channel in the mud, a yard wide, realised as he walked on that it was the way one of the bigger crocodiles habitually used going down to the water; it would be in the creek at this time of day, he supposed, but did not know enough to be certain. He transferred the big revolver to his belt again.

  Later on he crossed a smaller mud slide, wet and slimy as if recently used; he saw a trace of movement in the grass thirty feet away, stems shivering as something slid between them. There were no large mammals. It could only be a puk-puk. They ate infrequently, often going weeks between meals, or so he had been told, but they did keep larders, stashing food to get soft in the heat and make easier eating. He pulled Mick's heavy pistol from its holster, cocked it, empty chamber turned away and hammer pulled back and held under his thumb. He kept moving, slowly, watching all the time. It was stalking him, was shifting in a half circle to get behind him, to the flank. He must wait until it exposed itself - no point blazing away into the thick grass and reeds; he might well need all five rounds.

  The grass thinned and he was able to see it more clearly. Medium size, a ten footer perhaps, more than big enough to kill him but no more than half as big as the inland variety grew to. With a rifle in his hand he would be wholly confident.

  It was turning, possibly realised he had spotted it and that it must attack immediately or risk its meal escaping. It exploded into movement, from almost stationary to the speed of a running horse in a second.

  Two-handed, pointing into the head, shooting... one, two, three and it was past him, dropping, rolling, coordination gone, head torn open. George leaned over, pistol barrel an inch from the skull at the exact cross point of the aiming lines, fired his remaining pair directly into the soft patch. He stepped carefully back through the slippery mud, ejected the five expended cartridges, reloaded carefully, turned the cylinder so that the empty chamber was underneath the hammer - in case of accident, always better to be safe with these clumsy old handguns.

  He wondered whether he should skin it out, but he could not afford the extra weight. It must be wasted. He suspected that it would be eaten within a very few hours; crocodiles were happy cannibals. Better to get well clear - the noise and the smell of blood might easily have attracted attention.

  Late that afternoon he came to mangrove, knew he was close to the se
a.

  He retreated to his favourite bamboo – he would not spend a night in a mangrove swamp, the Tolai had taught him better.

  Leaving aside the certain presence of bush demons in mangrove – and George was open-minded on that proposition – they were the favourite homes of sea-snakes, which were far more venomous than the land variety; of various ill-mannered crabs; and of vicious and poisonous insects. A wise man kept out of mangrove entirely, but if he had to venture inside then it was in bright daylight only.

  George sat by his fire and contemplated his feet. They hurt and he had a strong suspicion that if he was to take his boots off he would never get them back on again. He was tired and thirsty, but he was not hungry. His head ached.

  “Bloody fever!”

  He took his quinine tablets, thought for a few minutes and then doubled the dose. He boiled water and made horrible tea; then he opened a pack of biscuits and a tin of bully beef. At ninety degrees the canned beef was very nearly liquid; he poured it onto the dry biscuits and forced them down; he would die more quickly if he did not eat. He refilled the empty water tin and set it down to settle out, then went about the process of leech hunting, all at slow speed; he did not have the energy to hurry.

  He pushed his way into the middle of the bamboo, climbing up and over the stumps, safe from the reptiles, and wrapped his ragged groundsheet around himself and gave himself up to a night of vivid fever dreams. He woke shivering in the morning, forced himself into his routine. He estimated that he had three more days before he would be unable to walk any further; then he would die.

  The pack was almost too heavy to carry, but he put it on – he could not survive without it. He inspected the mangrove, looking for a way through. The trees stood ten to twenty feet high above the mud, their multiple spindly black trunks spreading out maze-like under the olive-green foliage, almost impossible to thread through and covered with small oysters and mussels at their base, the shells razor-sharp. He peered left and right but there was no sign of hills, of cliffs leading down to the sea-shore; he had to go through. He picked the widest gap he could spot and began to wriggle his way from one footing to another. He came out half a mile and ten hours later, collapsing at the sea’s edge. He could see coconut palms and walked towards them, knowing the land would be drier there.

  He dropped asleep where he sat, woke in the dawn, hungry and thirsty and deciding this was his last day – he had over-estimated his reserves.

  He stood slowly and tried to decide where to go.

  There were mission stations to the south of Salamaua, days of walking distant. There was almost nothing to the north of the port, as far as he knew. He did not know whether he was to the north or south of safety. He looked up at the palm trees, several of them bent over, leaning out over the water. He had climbed palms almost before he could walk, wondered if he had the strength now – but he had to see.

  He took off his belt, looped it round the trunk of a tree, then stopped as he thought the matter through. A drink first, the water vile to taste. Then his boots off – his socks showing rotten and his feet white and wrinkled and stinking of fungoid decay. He took a deep breath then picked up the belt again, pulled it round the tree in both hands and walked his way up a yard; a convulsive heave and the belt was a couple of feet higher and he struggled his way up to it. He had been able to climb like this as fast as he could walk; he took ten minutes to get to the top this morning, very nearly fell.

  His first concern was to throw down half a dozen kulaus, green nuts full of liquid. Three or so miles north he could see a heavily forested spit of land jutting out and what might be the roofs of buildings glinting in the sun. Salamaua was located on a narrow peninsula. He was almost there.

  He hobbled into the station that afternoon, still on his feet, but only just, nearly a week after the crash.

  The missionaries welcomed him, congratulated him and hosed him down from a cautious distance. News of his survival was radioed up coast as they dosed him for worms and dressed his sores and painted his feet bright purple and fed him more quinine.

  They put him on a schooner for Lae next morning, told him he had done very well and wrote a report for their superiors in Rabaul.

  The mission headquarters learned that the inland area could not be as bad as they had believed if a boy of eighteen or so could walk out. ‘The gold miners exaggerated’ was their conclusion and their report went onto the Administration files and the coast became officially known as ‘accessible’. Japanese intelligence bought copies of the files as a matter of routine and informed their army that it would be possible to land at Salamaua and invade the Papuan coast overland, if ever the occasion should arise.

  Mick fell on George’s shoulder, welcomed him like the prodigal son and sent him off on two month’s leave, assuring him that Maria would still be there when he came back.

  The news that George was found reached Vunatobung before the formal notification that he was lost. The Administration in Lae sent a telegram to Rabaul and the officials there put a boy on horseback with the good news, far outstripping their dilatory notification of tragedy.

  “Bloody public servants, Jutta! They couldn’t organise a…”

  “Ja, my dear, I know. You have told me before. What can they not do now?” She thought it better to cut short his diatribes against the government – they tended to be loud-voiced, obscene and gleefully reported in the village.

  “It’s George. Looks like he’s been in a plane crash in the interior and walked out.”

  “He is safe? You are sure?”

  “’Happy to inform you… walked Salamaua… six days… uninjured… slight fever and exhaustion… Travelling Rabaul, expected 6th inst.’ What is an ‘inst’, Ned?”

  “This month.”

  “June is always an ‘inst’?”

  “No, public servants and the army find it a good way to confuse people.”

  “Ah, I see. Maybe.”

  “Tomorrow, I’ll pick ‘im up.”

  “Both of us shall.”

  “Right. I wonder what went wrong?”

  An hour later they received the formal letter, brought up on the plantation wagon from their Post Office Box in Kokopo, that George had disappeared on a flight from Bulolo after the weather closed in unexpectedly.

  “Looks like the boy was lucky.”

  “What of the others on board.”

  “Pilot only, I expect, and no mention of him – looks like he didn’t get out.”

  “I must tell Edina to make up his room.”

  “No need. They will all know already – they always do. Someone in Rabaul will have talked about it and will have been heard and the word will have gone out. One of the office cleaners will have got onto the telephone he ain’t supposed to know how to use and will ‘ave told a wantok up the line somewhere, and they’ll ‘ave talked the news up.”

  Jutta went in search of the housegirl, found her making up the bed in George’s room while the cook had a mix of chocolate shortbread biscuits ready for the oven.

  “They know, Ned, but I have told them about the plane – that will be a story for the village.”

  They took the light covered cart into town, an early morning trip, nearly three hours on the road round the bay. A single motor truck passed them in the opposite direction.

  “Ned…”

  “Yeah. We should, I know, I’ve been thinking about it for five years now. But the supply of petrol ain’t good; there’s no garage for repairs; we can’t get hold of spares without waiting two months for them to come up from South.”

  “You are an engineer – the best here.”

  “Time. I can’t spend hours on petrol engines which ought to go on managing the plantations. Anyway, you know what would ‘appen! Set up a workshop in my yard and there’d damn soon be a queue of other blokes: ‘Ned, ‘ave a look at this bloody thing for me, would yer, mate?’”

  She had to admit that was true – he would be expected to give a helping hand to his neighbours,
could not decently refuse.

  “I could possibly get a car, a sedan, a big strong one, next time we go on leave. Not much sense wiring down to the agent because he ain’t got no idea what it’s like up ‘ere, wouldn’t know what sort to get.”

  “Ja, I would like that. Next leave, Ned!”

  They reached the dust and smell of Rabaul, the familiar tang of sulphur reminding them that the volcanoes were still there. They headed straight to the New Guinea Club for coffee, news and the chance to freshen up. The notice board brought them up to date with the few details available of their son’s adventure – there was no newspaper but interesting items were posted there for general information. They accepted the shared relief of the other two Europeans present and awkwardly exchanged the social amenities demanded of the moment, withdrew rapidly to go down to the wharf.

  “Odd buggers, them two?”

  “If I was as rich as that bloke must be, I’d be odd as well, Blue. Been out since well before the War, and she was born here, of course. Never mixed much – I suppose it was a bit difficult, her being German, and then they never got into the habit of seeing people – and they’re a fair way out of town. No worry, though, if that son of theirs meets my Alice you won’t hear me objecting!”

  “Yeah – look like the boy’s got guts as well as an old man with money. Time for a beer?”

  “Too early yet, I never drink beer in the mornings. Have a whisky with me.”

  George’s island boat came round North Point on the tide, just before noon, crawling in the light airs, taking an hour to make her berth. George waited for a gangplank rather than jumping the three feet down to the quay and limped ashore, supported by a crewman. His feet were at their most tender, strips of skin peeling, the cracks between his toes erupting; a combination of fungus, nematodes, burrowing chiggers and foetid swamp dirt had come close to crippling him, would hurt for weeks yet.