While so engaged, Murray came out and said “good-morning” to Weaver, a salutation that was received with a glare and a grunt. Then Murray—who still possessed the finicking airs and graces of the exquisite of the Bachelors’ Club—took out a dainty little cigarette case, and proffered a cigarette to the clay pipe and strongest of tobacco smoking Weaver. Weaver thought it was another insult of the small boot variety, and before his stream of lurid blasphemy, Murray fled indoors. I soothed him, and went on buying cabbages. Out then came the Governor, asked me who Weaver was, and in his genial way shook his hand and asked after his health. “Another blanker!” groaned Weaver. “None the blanky better for your asking,” said that courteous person; and his Excellency fled. “There appear to be some very peculiar people in this country, Monckton,” remarked the Governor at breakfast. “Very true,” I said, “and when you, sir, have completed your term of service here, you will think, as I do, that the whole country is a weird compound of comic opera and tragedy, with a very narrow margin between them. I have been buying cabbages for you this morning; Heaven only knows where you will send me, or what I shall be doing next week.”
When we first arrived at Port Moresby, we found that Ballantine was away in the hills with a relief expedition for H. Stuart-Russell, who had been sent to survey a road over the Owen Stanley Range to the Yodda valley gold-field in the north-east; a gold-field that, at the time, could only be reached by ascending the Kumusi River to Bogi, and then doing a ten days’ march inland. Stuart-Russell had sent out word that he was in hostile country, and had run out of supplies.
One morning, the Governor called me to his room and said, “Ballantine has returned, having failed to connect with Russell: I am getting very anxious about him, and intend to dispatch another relief expedition with you in command. The Government Secretary has been instructed to make all arrangements, and you should be able to leave to-morrow morning: here are your minutes of instructions.” I glanced at my orders, and my heart sank: first of all, Muzzy to organize the expedition: as well have a well-meaning hen-wife; then, when I did find Russell, I was to place myself under his orders; Russell, whom I knew to be a surveyor, and ignorant of anything else. Wending my way to the Commandant, I worried him about the personnel of the constabulary I was to take, and at last got him to include Keke and Ade in the lot; he had been detailing for me all the rotters and recruits in barracks. My next interview was with Mr. Musgrave, who I found had provided a most elaborate equipment of stores, etc.—a collection that would take about six hundred men to carry—and had engaged the Hanuabada natives and a mule team to carry it to the Laloki River, which was about seven miles distant.
The Hanuabada (Port Moresby) carriers were the most pampered lot of lying, lazy loafers in New Guinea; they were to receive in pay one shilling per day, the ordinary Government pay was twopence, and a heavy ration of rice, meat, biscuit, tea, sugar, etc.; as well as to be equipped with blankets, tents, cooking utensils, and all the rest of it, for this one night’s camp at the Laloki; and this, too, on a warm tropical night. When I looked into the arrangements made by Muzzy, I felt inclined to sit down and cry. First, I had the awful Hanuabadas as far as the Laloki; then in some mysterious way I was supposed to transport my stores to the Brown River—Heaven only knows how. Muzzy, however, suggested I should bribe the Hanuabadas, by double pay, to go on there; then, I was to pick up Russell’s time-expired and worn-out carriers, and “induce” them to return with me to the Main Range. Muzzy had had a flat-bottomed, square-ended, bull-nosed brute of a punt built, and placed upon the Brown River: a thing calculated by him to carry about five tons, which I was instructed to take to the head of the Brown; this was by him fondly supposed to solve the transport difficulties.
“Look here, sir,” I said to Mr. Musgrave, once I had grasped the full beauty of his arrangements. “I understand speed is the very essence of this expedition. Let me chuck all arrangements at present made; give me twenty constabulary, forty fresh and strong carriers, allow me to spend twenty pounds in meat extract, pea flour and cocoa, and follow my own road; then I will guarantee to fetch Russell out in a fortnight.” “Mr. Monckton,” said the Government Secretary, “Mr. Chester, Mr. Giulianetti and I, have given a great deal of thought to this expedition, and our arrangements are perfect; you are to carry them out.” I did not dare tell Muzzy what I thought about it all. “Supposing, Mr. Musgrave,” I said, “Russell’s carriers refuse to return with me, or that they are sick and exhausted, what am I to do?” “I have made the most elaborate arrangements,” said Muzzy, “it is for you to carry them out.”
Accordingly I sought out the driver of the mule team, and led him to the pub; after I had loaded him up with whisky, I asked, “Could you get that team of yours on as far as the Brown River?” “Yes,” was the reply. “Could you and the team work for twenty-four hours at a stretch, if necessary?” “Yes, if it’s made worth my while, and the mules are fed,” he said. I then saw my way out of the difficulty of getting from the Laloki River to the Brown; accordingly I told the driver I would give him half my month’s pay, and steal the Hanuabadas’ rice for his mules. “Put it there,” he said, spitting on his hand and holding it out for me to shake. “I won’t take your pay, it’s poor enough; take a bottle or two of rum with you, and I will work my blanky mules until their eye-balls start from their heads and play marbles along their back-bones.”
In the early morning, accordingly, I made my start; and half a mile from Port Moresby abandoned the biscuits, blankets and sugar of the Hanuabadas. From the Laloki, the carriers returned to Port, and I went on to the Brown River accompanied by my police and the mule team: there I at once stationed a picket to catch Russell’s returning carriers, who were drifting down in threes, fives, and tens. The police and I then loaded the punt with stores, ready for the ascent of the river, which is a rapid mountain stream, full of whirlpools, rocks, snags, and rapids. From here, I sent back the mules to bring up another load of stores, and sat down to await their return. One day passed, two days passed, still no sign of the mules; I sent some police off in search of them, and then—with such carriers as had by now come down from Russell’s party—I began to haul that infernal punt up the river. The punt at once started to go to pieces: it was built of the heaviest timber, fastened together with trumpery flimsy wire nails; the planking of the bottom, instead of running lengthways, ran across, and therefore, whenever we began to haul her over a rapid, the edges caught on the sharp rocks of the bottom and opened up—making the thing leak like a basket. A ring had been fixed on one end, with a rope tied on it for hauling on; this ring was attached to a plate fastened by two one-inch screws, which were fondly supposed, by its architect, to withstand the strain of large numbers of men hauling a dead weight of five tons up a rapid. After one hour’s experience of this ark, we dragged it ashore, plaited vines all round it to keep it together, caulked it with strips of blanket, and made a rope cradle all round to haul on. Then we went on again.
THE LALOKI FALLS
The carriers, I was now using, were men recruited from Mekeo; their time had expired, and they were keenly anxious to return to their homes. It was only by a vigorous use of cleaning rod that we could “induce” them to work, and we had to keep them under perpetual guard, lest they should desert; also they could not swim, so that when we came to a deep crossing we had to haul them through on a rope, and, in addition, forcibly tie them to the rope, as the procedure was not one they relished. Mile by mile we fought our way up that awful river; the constabulary and I stripped naked, hauling, sweating, swimming, and swearing, until at last we came to a whirlpool under a rapid. The police were swimming alongside the punt, the carriers hauling on the rope, I was steering the ark by a rough paddle, when suddenly a swirl of the current carried her into the whirlpool. I yelled at the carriers to slack the rope, but they lost their heads and pulled harder: punt, stores and I, accordingly disappeared into the swirl, and then those mutton-headed carriers let go the rope altogether. I am a bad swimmer at the best, and was about done in the swirl: the police were doing their best to stem the current and get to me. At last Keke managed to crawl out on a bank and, running along, dived from a rock, caught me round the waist as he swept past, and carried me to a sharp-edged rock, upon which he tore his feet badly in climbing out. I lay on a rock, and coughed up about half the Brown River. Rifles, stores, clothes, all were gone; mother-naked stood the constabulary and I, with the exception of one flannel police shirt which had washed ashore, and which I promptly annexed. Nothing now remained for us but to return to our first camp, get fresh stores, and start again.