******
I had been closely watching the principal carrier of malaria, a lady mosquito of the Anopheles punctulatus tribe, and the odder varieties of flies and mosquitoes I had been sending to Dr. Francis Root, biologist of Johns Hopkins. Since quinine was malaria’s one known specific, I was rather fussy about teaching my inspectors to take their daily dose. I knew what a delirious wreck an attack can make of a white man in the jungle, and I had impressed upon my young inspectors that I would not forgive any carelessness about quinine—five grains a day as a prophylactic, and at the slightest symptom increase the dose until the temperature swings back to normal. Those were written orders.
Then as I worked down the coast on the last leg of my Papuan adventure, I came down with malaria, in spite of large precautionary doses of quinine which swamp and jungle conditions had made necessary. I was too miserable to laugh at myself when I got to the snug little settlement on Samarai, the eastern tip of Papua’s tail. I was a bilious wreck; I saw yellow. The neat British town was pretty as a bride, but I was in no bridegroom mood. One of my inspectors, a new one who had already proven shiftless, also showed up with malaria. I had to be restrained from throwing him downstairs. Why? Because he hadn’t taken his quinine, and had allowed himself to get sick. At the Widow Henderson’s hotel, the town’s only meeting place, I invited another fight. A one-armed planter and I sat in the barroom, the only possible place to talk, and were discussing a survey in his district when a dough-faced stranger poked his head between us and asked if the planter was afraid of him, or what? Instead of brushing him off I kicked over my chair and reverted to common Australian: “Open your mouth to say one word and I’m inta you, right now!” The stranger departed. A couple of days later the Widow Gofton, who served the bar, said: “When that man gets tough around here now I just say to him, ‘Look out, or I’ll call the Doctor.’”
I saw Samarai through jaundiced eyes, and biliousness gave me a sort of malign power when it came to an argument. However, I managed to be diplomatic when I found that Samarai was having a City Beautiful campaign and didn’t want its view spoiled by a row of over-water latrines. To the health officer, of course, that was nonsense; Paradise might be lined with those coquettish little shrines and he would call it perfect—at least, that was what the esthetes implied when I argued.
Swallowing bile, I combined architecture with diplomacy and devised some dainty palm-thatched sanctums to sit over the tide, with rustic bridges running out to them and clumps of croton to act as screens. I became an engineer and sketched out plans for deep pits to be dug into the coral and filled with rubble so that the contents would be sifted gently out to sea. I left too soon to find out whether or not they followed my plan. It was just another quarrel between Hygeia and Mrs. Grundy. In such a fracas Mrs. G. usually comes out the winner.
******
The two fights in Samarai were more than counterbalanced by two fortunate meetings. One night I came into Bob Whitten’s sheet-iron trading store and saw a figure quite out of harmony with the smelly hurricane lamps and piled-up canned goods. His smart dinner suit gave him a clubby look which stirred the old bile, for I had been out in the field and was a mass of dirt and scratches. He turned a wind-hardened business face and a pair of Scotch-gray eyes. “Are you Dr. Lambert?” he asked. I said that I was. “My name’s George Fulton,” he said. George Fulton was executive head of the powerful Lever Brothers firm, who bought and sold islands, controlled supplies and shipping, over a great watery empire. He began popping keen, intelligent questions at me, and I forgot his evening clothes after one exciting revelation.
“Know anything about Rennell Island, Doctor?” I had heard of it sketchily from a skipper who said that nobody ever went ashore, for fear of the natives, and that there was nothing worth trading for.
George Fulton said: “It’s just off the blue-black Solomons, but the people aren’t black. Nobody knows what they are. They’re primitive as monkeys, but rather superior humans. Sleep in caves, worship an invisible god, have traditions that may be either Polynesian or Caucasian. Since the white man came to the Pacific, there hasn’t been a landing party that’s penetrated Rennell farther than the beach. They simply won’t let strangers get in. Why? Maybe they’re protecting themselves against foreign disease, or maybe it’s the same old tabu. For ages they’ve been practically untouched.
“Missionaries tried it not long ago, and three of them got knocked on the head. I know more about this island than most. It’s a sort of lost world, terrible cliffs all around it, one small beach protected by a reef. Last year we were short on labor and thought we might recruit some of the men. Fine, strapping fellows—incidentally, the women are very pretty. Well, we picked up a handful of laborers, bribed them with hatchets and jackknives. They’re crazy for steel and iron. They do their carving with shells.”