The boy explorers in darkest New Guinea

by Warren H. Miller

They abandoned collecting for the time, as the canteens were running low and water was getting to be a problem unless they expected to live on what could be poured from the air plants that grew profusely in the dry jungle. A small ravine running downhill looked promising, and they climbed down into it. After half a mile it grew swampy, and soon a small, clear stream of fresh water developed. They were filling the canteens at the nearest hollow when voices came through the jungle, the chatter of a child and the deep cackle of an old man, both speaking Papuan. Sadok and Nicky waited. Presently both appeared, coming down to the brook. The man was an almost naked, mop-haired Aru native, carrying a bow and quiver; the pickaninny wore only a string around his fat middle, and had a tiny bow in his hands. Both jumped and dashed back into the jungle, with grunts and squeals of fear, at sight of Nicky.

The latter laughed and called after them reassuringly. Presently the pickaninny appeared, climbing a sapling trunk like a small tree frog. He stopped, peering around the trunk at them curiously, his feet dug into the bark with bunched-up toes, his sinewy little hands wound around the trunk, while his inquisitive face looked at them with a half-fearful expression.

Nicky smiled at him and dug into his pockets. He fished out a small bag of beads and held out a few of the sparkling trinkets in his palm. The youngster’s eyes snapped. They could see the old man peering at them through the underbrush, arrow on bow, afraid to come out at all.

Nicky beckoned to the boy and motioned to give him some. He finally descended the tree, and with many advances and retreats ventured out to clutch the beads in his small paw. Then he dashed back into the jungle, where a childish yell and the sound of a slap told that the old man had seized him and rifled him of his beads.

Nicky called out the pickaninny and gave him more. Then the old man poked his head out, and Sadok spoke to him in Malay. He knew that tongue enough to talk, and presently they were exchanging news. With much coaxing he was finally got out where Nicky could pour him quite a handful of the green, blue, red, and yellow trinkets. Much impressed, he jerked his thumb over shoulder and invited them to visit their village, which, he said, lay a short distance on.

They followed up what appeared to be something of a trail, and soon the jungle cleared and a blue arm of the sea lay before them, with a large island offshore. Nicky took it to be Varkai, but his attention was soon called to the village itself. It was of two palm huts, built on piles about seven feet above the ground, and the place was crowded with natives, most of whom gave one astonished look at Nicky and then bolted for the jungle.

The old man called them back, and presently the orang-kaya, or chief, came toward him, holding out his hand for more beads. It was not long before Nicky was the center of an excited throng of chattering Papuans, who fingered his clothing and pranced around him with characteristic native merriment. Nicky was a whole circus in himself, he began to appreciate. Men, women, and children never seemed to tire of standing and gazing at him, after which they would usually do a somersault or roll on the ground with explosions of boisterous laughter. To them he and his clothes were the funniest thing they had ever looked at.

As it was growing late, Sadok arranged for a night’s lodgings. A space about ten by twenty feet at the end of one of the huts was cleared off and turned over to their use. Here they laid down their few belongings and sat down on mats to watch the strange life around them. A clay floor behind a partition served for a fireplace, where Sadok set about cooking the kangaroo meat. The rest of the hut was jammed with natives talking and laughing incessantly, only ceasing when their eyes were fully occupied in staring at him.

In the midst of it all, a yell, “Bajak! Bajak!” (“Pirates! Pirates!”) arose, and everyone tumbled out of the hut and poured down to the beach. Great guard fires piled up along shore were lit, and their lurid glare lighted up the whole scene; the proas of the natives hauled up on the beach, the warriors dancing along the shore, brandishing their bows and spears and yelling defiance, and the two huts back a short distance, with the black wall of the jungle behind them, made a wild picture that long remained vivid in Nicky’s memory.

Nicky and Sadok had come down, eager to be in the fray, and it seemed to the boy that never had he been in so savage a spot on the earth as in this forgotten corner of Aru, with native warriors around him and a pirate ship from the New Guinea coast somewhere out there on the sea.