It was true: we had found a survivor from the lost Timothy S. Kakwe, he called himself, and he had come to Barange "long time before altogether." Two months, at least, we judged. In the attack on the schooner he had escaped by swimming. Himself a Papuan, of a different tribe and region, he had taken to the tree tops after the fashion of his own people, the painted monkey folk of Princess Marianne Straits—a facility to which he owed his life, it appeared, for he had since lived on fruits and nuts among the cockatoos, undiscovered.
This much we gathered from his gabble before Peters caught him up.
"But the others—them white fella?"
"All finish," said Kakwe bluntly.
"How?" cried Peters.
"No savee, me. Too much fright—walk along salt water—get to hell along beach, along tree. Me fright like hell!"
His account tallied with our own theory of the massacre, but he had seen no bodies brought ashore, could not identify the murderers, could not say where the native village lay or how to reach it, would not guide any one into that bush on any consideration. For the rest—this was a "good fella place" to get away from quickly.
"Ah," said Jeckol, sympathizing. "And that's a true word."
So indeed it seemed, and it is odd to think how close we were to giving up then. Aye, we were that close. We drifted out toward the anchorage and looked helplessly around us. The place was so huge, so baffling. Hopeless to search further among empty swamps and forests, to grope at large in this hushed wilderness, to coerce a jungle. The cruisers that have bombarded these same coasts on many a punitive expedition have learned how hopeless—against Papua, who keeps her secrets.