A melancholy procession returned to that camp, even my shirt failing to add dignity to our march. I then heard that the mule driver had contrived to let his mules stray on the night of his departure, and was still engaged in hunting for them. I sent a letter to Captain Barton, conveying a blistering curse concerning all punts, and asses who drove mules; and asking him to forward me some fresh rifles and clothing for the police, as well as some clothes and boots for myself. Whilst awaiting their arrival, I met with afresh misfortune; for in moving about the camp, I jumped with my bare foot upon a rusty nail, fixed in a piece of board belonging to an old meat case left by Russell, and ran it clean through my foot. I feared tetanus; but hunting in a medicine chest at the camp, I found sticks of lunar caustic, and decided to cauterize the wound with it. Calling Keke, I showed him how to poke a probe through the puncture; and when he apparently understood, I took a small piece of caustic and shoved it into the hole. “Now then, Keke, shove it through,” I said, as I lay on my stomach and elevated the sole of my foot in the air. Keke gave a gentle push, and then—as I gave a howl—stopped, the stuff burning like hell fire. “Shove it through, you blank blank idiot!” I yelled. “Oh, master, I hurt you too much, I am frightened,” said Keke. My howls, however, attracted Ade, who, grasping the situation and my foot at the same time, rammed the caustic through with the probe. “Keke,” I remarked, as I cooled my injured foot in a bucket of water, “if you had not hauled me out of the river, I’d break your thick head.” “I am a lance-corporal, not a doctor,” said that injured individual; “if there is any more of this, Ade can be doctor.”
A few days later my rifles and clothes arrived, also the missing mules: again we took that awful punt up the river, this time successfully, though the amount of labour we expended upon it would have transported the stores three times over.
The day after we quitted the river to strike over the mountains, Lario, a Malay, who had been in charge of a log fort for Russell higher up, came in with a large number of time-expired and more or less worn-out carriers. Howls of dismay went up from these unfortunate natives when they learnt that they were to turn round and go back with me. Much “moral” suasion had to be used by the police before they would “volunteer”; some did succeed in sneaking away and making a bolt for the coast, but our watch was so strict that few of the volunteers escaped. Lario was a splendid chap, loyal, brave, and full of resource; and I was more than pleased when he, though time-expired, consented to turn round and accompany me as second in command. I went carefully through all the carriers with Lario, in order to cast out—for return to the coast—all those who were unfit for service: very, very sorry I felt for the poor wretches (though I did not dare show it), as man by man they were examined; some happy ones being cast for return, to the open envy of their companions. They were all Mission boys from the Mekeo district, flat country men, non-swimming, and singularly ill-adapted for the work in which they were engaged. That night—through Lario—they asked my permission to hold a prayer meeting; afterwards Lario told me that they prayed that the hearts of myself, Lario and the police, would be softened towards them.
Day after day of climbing over awful country passed, we following a line cut or blazed through the bush by Russell; at intervals we came to log huts or forts, containing a couple of police and a few carriers: these I added to the expedition, both for purposes of speed and also in order to bring the biggest possible force to Russell. 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.” “I don’t know,” said Lario; “the blazes lead to it, but I’ve not been here before.” The carriers swore that Russell had not been that way, but I did not believe them, as they were always full of reasons why we should turn back. As for the police, so long as I went over, they would follow—even into the nethermost pit. Fine men, were the old New Guinea constabulary.
“It is no good looking at it, Lario,” I said at last, “I am half-paralysed with funk, but here goes.” Then, afraid to look down, I walked as far as I could, with the cold sweat of fear streaming from me; then I sat, straddled that fearsome spur with my legs, and slowly—leap-frog fashion—began to work my way across the thirty feet of the worst part, the stones and dirt I dislodged falling so far that their impact sent up no sound. Half-way across, my thin cotton khaki breeches began to tear badly with the stones; as I went, I suddenly felt as if ten thousand red-hot pincers were tearing at the portion of my anatomy exposed by the torn garments; I stood the agony for a second, then—unable to bear it any longer—leapt to my feet, and ran like a tight-rope walker across that narrow crumbling ridge. Reaching safety and a wider part of the spur, I sat down and tore a score of bull-dog ants from my skin; I had worked my way clean over a nest of the malignant little beasts. Then I turned and looked at Lario; his teeth were chattering and his knees knocking together. “Oh, my God, sir,” he wailed, “you did frighten me.” “Come on, Lario,” I replied; “if I spend the remainder of my life in the mountains, nothing will take me over that place again.” Lario set his teeth, walked as far as I had done, then sat down and started my leap-frog method of progression: suddenly he stopped, his eyes bulged, and he jumped to his feet and ran to where I was standing, when he also began to tear those infernal little pests from his person. Curiously enough, though the carriers were flat country men, they did not mind heights nor did they suffer from vertigo; and after one of the police had walked out, and swept the ants into eternity with a leafy branch, they marched steadily across.
When I met Russell afterwards, I asked him what on earth took him over such a place, and how he expected it ever to become a road across the island. Then I found that he had not crossed it; he had cut his line up to the bad spot, then, retracing his steps some miles, had found a good road down a side spur, which we had missed, and had ascended again further on. There are many sorts of funk: some men fear sickness, some fighting, some spooks, some drowning, and some cats; every man has his own particular abhorrence; but the worst kind of helpless fear is the sort I suffer from—fear of a height.
At last our journey ended. One afternoon we marched into a large clearing, in which stood a log hut, surrounded by a ring of natives camped at a safe distance from Russell’s men in the hut, but closely investing it; it was the last post Russell had placed, before disappearing across to the Yodda. We soon swept away the surrounding natives, who had been patiently waiting until the men in the hut were starved into the open. As the rattle of our rifle fire died away, in marched Russell from the other side, covered on his rear by a wide-flung patrol of mine. Russell had been having a very rough time: he had by degrees broken up his force, leaving them in log huts to guard his line of communication, in order to ensure the safety of his sick and returning carriers; eventually he and Macdonald (head gaoler) had penetrated into the Yodda, so weak in force that they were easily driven out by hostile natives. When I came up, he was falling back upon a weak camp surrounded by hordes of savages; his stores were exhausted, and most of his ammunition spent. Replenished with fresh police, stores and ammunition, I left him, taking with me all the sick and exhausted carriers and worn-out police back to Port Moresby. Russell remained for a week, to complete some survey work. I took my sick by easy stages, and at the Laloki camped for three days; spending the time in shooting game of all sorts, and gorging my charges on meat, until they were a happy and contented lot of men.
A lagoon at the Laloki, which simply teemed with duck, was also inhabited by an enormous alligator, which had recently seized a Government horse by the nose, while drinking, and dragged it off. The Government offered a reward of five pounds for the destruction of the reptile. Whilst I was camped there, the lagoon happened to be very low: Lario was engaged stalking a flock of ducks, when he came suddenly upon the alligator; it opened its mouth, and he promptly emptied both barrels of his gun down its throat, whereupon it rushed into the lagoon. Lario yelled his discovery to the camp, and police, carriers and I rushed down; we could locate the beast on the bottom in three or four feet of water and about thirty feet distant from the bank, by the bubbles and discoloration caused by the reptile’s uneasy movements. “Oh, for some dynamite!” I sighed; but dynamite there was none. The police, however, and a large number of carriers, rose to the occasion: cutting poles about nine feet long, they sharpened them at the end, waded out and formed a semicircle on the far side of the alligator. Then cautiously walking up to the bubbles, half a dozen men struck suddenly and savagely at the spot; the immediate response was the appearance of a head and pair of snapping jaws. I promptly sent a Snider bullet through the head, and it disappeared again, while the men crowded together watching keenly the track of the bubbles. Once more they stirred up the beast, whilst I shot him again; half a dozen Snider bullets I must have put into various parts of its anatomy before it apparently gave up the ghost and remained quiescent under the stabs of the police. Then a man stood on the carcase, whilst others went to cut vines with which to haul it ashore. There still, however, was a remaining flicker of life in the beast; for the standing man gave a yell of fright and vanished under water, as the alligator rolled over on its side, dead at last.
The beast having been hauled ashore, I was surprised to find embedded in its skull, six inches of the point of a heavy spear, which had rotted, and round which the bone had grown. The carriers ate the brute: by New Guinea hunting custom, however, the carcase—or in this case the reward—belonged to the man who had inflicted the first wound, or “first spear” as it is called, no matter how many men might have taken part in the actual killing. Lario did not get the reward, though I told him to apply to the Treasury, and afterwards had a fuss with Ballantine about it, as Ballantine held that he was a Government servant and killed the alligator in the course of his duty. Stories about the toughness of an alligator’s hide are all bosh. A bullet from a common fowling piece will penetrate them anywhere; but they are wonderfully tenacious of life, and, however badly hit, usually manage to wriggle into deep water. I have never seen one killed instantly by a single shot, though doubtless the reptile would afterwards die from the effects of it.
I left that abominable punt at the head of the Brown River, never wanting to see the beast again. Russell and Macdonald, on their return journey, tried to descend the river in it, and lost all their personal effects as well as being half drowned, whereupon they abandoned the thing. Later Mr. Musgrave, who had an affection for the child of his brain, wanted it recovered for future use; but Sir George Le Hunte said, that as it had already nearly cost the lives of two of his officers and the head gaoler, he thought it was better left where it was.