STALKED BY PIGMIES
Smith had noticed before leaving Palmerston that the wind had risen
and was blowing steadily from the north-west. He was very anxious not
to miss Port Moresby, the principal harbour in British New Guinea, for
he hoped, in spite of what the Resident at Palmerston had said, to be
able to replenish his stock of petrol there, knowing very well that
among the smaller islands of the South Pacific the places where petrol
was kept must be very few. He determined, however, if he should fail
to make Port Moresby, to steer straight for Ysabel Island. If it
turned out to be impossible to obtain petrol, he would have to resign
himself to the inevitable, return to Australia on the gunboat that had
been dispatched to relieve the castaways, and endure as
philosophically as he might the consequences of overstepping his
leave.
His course lay across the head of the Gulf of Carpentaria. By
daybreak, if he were able to keep up full speed through the night, he
should have passed the northernmost end of the Yorke Peninsula, and it
might then be possible to take his bearings by the group of islands in
the Torres Straits. On leaving these islands behind him he should soon
come in sight of the mountain chain running from the middle of the
Gulf of Paqua to the south-eastern extremity of New Guinea. He might
expect to sight these mountains from a very great distance, and in
particular, if he could distinguish Mount Astrolabe, the square,
flat-topped mountain lying behind Port Moresby, he would have no
further anxiety about his position.
The engine was working as well as ever, and by keeping over the sea,
Smith was able to avoid any gusts or cross-currents of air that might
be set up by irregularities in the conformation of the land. Taking
turns as usual with Rodier at the wheel, he was able to get a few
hours of sleep; about an hour and a half after daybreak he descried
the strange shape of Mount Astrolabe towering nearly four thousand
feet into the sky, and in less than a quarter of an hour afterwards he
came to the coast, a little to the west, as he judged, of Port
Moresby.
The aspect of the coast was far from inviting. There were long
stretches of mangrove forest lining the shore, from which unpleasant
exhalations arose, affecting his sense of smell even at the height of
a hundred feet. Beyond rose limestone hills, very scantily wooded,
with a plentiful crop of rocks and stones. There was scarcely a patch
of level ground to be seen. He came almost suddenly upon the port,
lying in a hollow of the hills, and for some time looked in vain for a
suitable landing place. The aeroplane, circling over the harbour, was
seen by the sailors on the ships and the people on the quays, and its
appearance brought all work to a standstill.
At length Smith discovered at the north end of the little town a spot
where landing was just possible if the descent was not endangered by
the wind. He felt more nervous than at any other time during his
voyage, and was on the alert to set the propellers working at the
first sign that the wind was too strong for him. To his great relief
he came safely to the ground, with no other misadventure than
collision with a huge eucalyptus tree at the edge of the clearing.
Without loss of time he made his way down to the town, and accosting
the first white man he met, asked to be directed to the residence of
the Administrator.
"You're a stranger, I guess," said the man, who had not seen the
aeroplane. "Come from Sydney?"
"No, from Port Darwin."
"Gosh! We don't often have vessels from there. How's my friend Mr.
Pond?"
"I don't know him."
"Well, that's real strange. I thought everybody knew Dick Pond; he's
lived there fifty years or more. Say, what's up?" he asked of a man
hurrying in the opposite direction.
"It's down. Didn't you see it or hear it?"
"Hear what?"
"The aeroplane."
"An aeroplane! You don't say so."
"It's a fact. Wonder you didn't hear it. It made a noise like a
thousand humming birds, and came down not half-a-mile over yonder.
Some German fellow, I shouldn't wonder, from Constantine or Finsch.
Hope we're not in for trouble; I'm off to see."
"So will I. Go straight on, stranger; you see that constable there?
Well, turn down by him, and you'll come to the Administrator's in
about five minutes."
Smith had taken off his overalls, so that his appearance attracted no
more than a passing glance from the sailors, clerks, merchants, and
natives whom he met hurrying towards the spot where the aeroplane had
descended. He found the Administrator's house without difficulty. Not
having a card, he gave his name and rank at the door. The
Administrator was at breakfast with his family when Lieutenant Smith
was announced. Imagining that a war vessel had unexpectedly put in at
the harbour, he rose and went to the door to greet his visitor and
invite him to his table. A look of disappointment crossed his face
when he saw a dirty, unshaven object before him, dressed in stained
brown serge, offering no resemblance to the trim spick-and-span
officer he had expected to see.
"I'm sorry to trouble you, sir," said Smith, "I'm in need of some
petrol, and--"
"I don't keep petrol," said the Administrator shortly. "You've come
here by mistake, no doubt. There's no petrol for sale in the port, to
my knowledge."
"That's awkward. I'm afraid I must go on without. The aeroplane
uses--"
"The aeroplane! What aeroplane?"
"I've come from Port Darwin in my aeroplane, and am going on at once
to the Solomon Islands. I think I can just about manage it, so I won't
detain you any longer, sir."
"Come now, let me understand. You have come from Port Darwin--by
aeroplane! Where is it?"
"About half-a-mile beyond the town, sir."
"But--from Port Darwin--across the sea?"
There was nothing for it. Once more Smith retailed the outline of his
story, the Administrator listening with growing amazement. In the
midst of it a young Englishman came up, out of breath with running.
"Good morning, sir," he panted. "An aeroplane has just come down;
people say it is a German. What had we better do?"
"Keep our heads, I should think," said the Administrator. "Mr.
Williams--my secretary--Mr. Smith. The aeroplane is Mr. Smith's, and
has come from Port Darwin in ten hours. Just run down to the harbour,
Williams, and tell Captain Brown to send up all the petrol there is in
the launch, and a few gallons of machine oil as well. Be as quick as
you can."
The secretary opened wide eyes.
"Where's it to be taken, sir?"
"To the aeroplane, as quickly as possible."
The young man ran off, looking as though he had received a shock.
"This will give us excitement for a twelve-month, Mr. Smith," said the
Administrator. "It's lucky I can help you. I have just returned from a
tour of inspection, and there are a few gallons of petrol in my
motor-launch: not very much, I'm afraid, but better than nothing. I'm
afraid I was rather short with you just now, but you'll admit that
there was some excuse for me."
"Don't mention it, sir."
"It's the queerest thing I ever heard in my life; in fact, I'm only
just beginning to believe it. Come in and have some breakfast; it'll
be an hour or more before they get the petrol up, and I'd like my wife
and youngsters to hear about it from your own lips. You'd like a wash,
eh? Come along."
He led the way to his bath-room, turned on the water, arranged the
towels, and bidding Smith come to the first room downstairs on the
left when he was ready, he went off to prepare his family for the
guest.
Smith was by this time used to the exclamations of wonder, the volleys
of questions, the compliments and gusts of admiration which his story
evoked. He came through the ordeal of that breakfast-table with the
coolness of a veteran under fire. His hostess asked whether sailing in
the air made him sea-sick; her elder son wanted to know the type of
engine he favoured, the quantity of petrol it consumed per hour, and
what would happen if he collided with an airship going at equal speed
in the opposite direction. The younger boy asked if he might have a
ride in the aeroplane; the girl begged Smith to write his name in her
album. The governess sat with clasped hands, gazing at him with the
adoring ecstasy that she might have bestowed on a godlike visitant
from another sphere. Presently the Administrator said--
"Now get your hats on. We'll take Mr. Smith up in the buggy and see
him off."
When they reached the aeroplane they found Rodier demolishing some of
the good things provided by Mrs. Martin, the centre of an admiring
crowd of curious white men and wonder-struck natives. Two Papuan
constables were patrolling around with comical self-importance. The
petrol had arrived. When it was transferred to the aeroplane the
Administrator insisted on drinking Smith's health in a glass of Mr.
Martin's beer, and then called for three cheers for the airmen. His
daughter had brought her kodak and took a snapshot of them as they sat
in their places ready to start. The natives scattered with howls of
affright when the engine began sparking, the constables being easily
first in the stampede, one of them pitching head first into the
eucalyptus. The engine started, the men cheered, the women waved
handkerchiefs, and as the aeroplane soared up and flew in the
direction of the coast the whole crowd set off at a run to gain a
position whence they might follow its flight with their eyes.
For some time Smith steered down the coast, intending to cross the
Owen Stanley range as soon as he saw a convenient gap. After about
twenty miles, however, he ran with startling suddenness into a
tropical storm. It was as though he had passed from sunlight into a
dark and gloomy cavern. Rain fell in torrents, and he knew by the
extraordinary and alarming movements of the aeroplane that the wind
was blowing fiercely, and not steadily in one direction, but gustily,
and as it seemed, from all points of the compass. For the first time
since leaving the Euphrates he was seriously perturbed. It was true
that the force of the wind did not appear to be so great as it had
been before his meeting with Monsieur de Montausé on the Babylonian
plain; but his situation was more perilous than then, for he was
passing over hilly country, and the vertical wind-eddies were
infinitely more difficult to contend with. To attempt to alight would
be to court certain destruction; his only safety was to maintain as
high a speed as possible, trusting to weather through. He judged by
the compass that the wind was blowing mostly from the south-east,
almost dead against him. Fearing lest the enormous air-pressure should
break the planes if he strove to fly in the teeth of the wind, he
decided to swing round and run before it for a time, in the hope that
it would drop by and by. As he performed this operation the aeroplane
rocked violently, and he thought every moment that it must be hurled
to the ground; but by making a wide circle he got round safely, and
keeping the engine at full speed he retraced his course, soon seeing
Port Moresby again, far below him to the left. He had no means of
exactly determining the rate at which he was now travelling under the
joint impulse of the wind and his propellers; but from the way in
which the landscape was slipping past him he thought the speed could
hardly be less than two hundred and twenty miles an hour.
It occurred to him now to increase his altitude, with the idea of
rising above the area of the disturbance. But he found that the
mountains on his right hand rose higher than he had supposed. In
proportion as he ascended, they seemed to rise with him. He saw their
snow-clad tops stretching far away into the distance, and became
conscious of a great difference in the temperature. He began to feel
dizzy and short of breath, and presently his eyes were affected, and
he saw everything as in a mist. When Rodier shouted that he was
feeling sick Smith at once checked the ascent.
The aneroid indicated a height of 8000 feet, and it was clear from the
greater steadiness of the machine that it had risen out of the stratum
of air affected by the storm. But Smith's satisfaction at this was
soon dashed by the discovery that there was something wrong with the
engine. It missed sparking, recovered itself for a minute or two, then
missed again. Smith looked anxiously below him. The nearest ground was
about a thousand feet beneath; on his right the mountains still rose
hundreds of feet above him, blocking the way to his true course.
Hoping that the failure in the sparking was only temporary, Smith
swung the aeroplane round, in order to take advantage of this calm
region of air and at least fly in the right direction. At the same
time he looked out anxiously for a spot to which he might descend if
the defect in the engine proved persistent.
In a very few moments it was clear that to continue his flight would
be no longer safe, and he prepared to glide. While he was searching
for a convenient landing place the sparking ceased altogether. The
whole country was rugged; below, almost wholly forest land as far as
the eye could reach; above, bare rocks or scrub, and at the greatest
altitude, snow. The aeroplane flew on for a little by its own
momentum, and Smith wasted a few painful seconds before, despairing of
finding level ground, he began to descend in a long spiral.
As he neared the ground, Rodier's quick eye detected a little river
cutting its way through the forest, and at one spot a widening of its
bed, due, probably, to the action of freshets. Here there was a narrow
space of bare earth, the only clear spot in the landscape, and even
this was surrounded with dense woodland. He pointed it out to Smith.
There was no room for mistake or misjudgment. Smith knew that if he
did not strike the exact spot the aeroplane must crash into the
forest that lined both banks of the river. Never before had so heavy a
demand been made upon his nerve and skill. But the severe training of
the Navy develops coolness and judgment in critical situations; his
long apprenticeship to aerial navigation enabled him to do the right
thing at the right time; and, thanks to the calmness of the air in
this lofty region, the machine answered perfectly to his guiding hand,
and settled down upon the exact spot he had chosen, the little open
stretch on the right bank of the stream, within eight or ten yards of
the water.
His hand was trembling like a leaf when he stepped out on to the land.
The teeth of both men were chattering.
"Mon Dieu!" cried Rodier. "That was a squeak, mister. Le diable de
machine! It seem I do nothing at all but clean, clean, all the way
from London, and yet--"
"And yet down we come, 'like glistening Phaethon, wanting the manage
of unruly jades,'" quoted Smith. "Still, we're safe, and I've known
men killed or lamed for life getting off a horse."
"But with the horse you have the whip, with the machine you have only
the rags to clean her with. Ah! coquine, I should like to flog you, to
give you beans." He shook his fist at the engine.
Smith laughed.
"Beans would suit a horse better, Roddy," he said. "Let's be thankful
the breakdown didn't happen while we were in the storm. That would
have been the end of us. Come on, we'll soon put things to rights.
This loss of time is getting very serious."
They set to work to discover the cause of the failure. As they
expected, the sparking plugs were completely clogged. Smith took these
down to the stream to give them a thorough cleaning, while Rodier
overhauled the other parts of the machine. When, after half-an-hour's
hard work, everything appeared to be in order again, they sat down to
snatch a meal, leaving the plugs to be replaced at the last moment.
While thus engaged, Smith scanned the surroundings with some
curiosity. The stream, in cutting its way through the hillside, had
hollowed it out in a gentle curve. The channel itself threaded the
base of a huge natural cutting, most of which was covered with trees,
only the middle part, where the torrent had laid bare a path, being
comparatively clear. All around were trees large and small, tall and
stunted, leafy and bare. As Smith's eye travelled upward, he noticed
about a hundred and fifty yards distant, almost at the top of the
gorge, a small ape-like form flitting across a part of the forest that
was a little thinner than the rest.
"See that, Roddy?" he said.
Rodier looked round.
"What, mister?"
"An ape, I fancy, perhaps an orang-outang. I know they infest the
forests of the Malayan archipelago, but I can't call to mind that
they're natives of New Guinea."
"All the natives of New Guinea are apes," said Rodier viciously. "At
Port Moresby they came round me like monkeys at the Zoo."
"There he is! Do you see him?"
Smith's hand stole mechanically to his hip pocket, where he kept his
revolver. Then he smiled, remembering that the chances of stopping an
orang-outang with a revolver bullet were about one in ten thousand.
"I don't see him, mister."
"He has disappeared. But, my word, Roddy, there's another, and
another--four or five; look at them, in the undergrowth yonder. I
don't like this. They're savage beasts if offended, and if they attack
us we shall be in rather a tight corner."
He rose, keeping his eye on the spot where the ape-like forms had
shown themselves for an instant, to vanish again. As his eye became
accustomed to the gloomy depths of the forest, he became still more
alarmed to see a number of black, apish faces at various points among
the thick undergrowth surrounding the clearing. Another form flitted
across the thin open space in which he had seen the first.
"By George! he's got a bow in his hand. They're men! This is worse
still. The orang-outang is bad enough, but he avoids men, I believe,
unless interfered with or alarmed. These forest savages are dead shots
with their arrows, and they'll look on us as intruders. If they're as
spiteful as most of their kind we shall have trouble. Get your
revolver ready, but we must pretend we haven't noticed them. You've
got to replace those plugs; do it as quickly as you can. Don't look
round; I'll keep guard."
He saw several of the savages pass across in the same direction as the
first, and now he noticed, what had escaped him before, that they were
diminutive creatures, certainly not more than four feet high. He had
clearly stumbled upon a settlement of forest pigmies. From what he had
read of pigmy races he knew that it required extreme patience and a
great expenditure of time to win their confidence. That was out of the
question now. His first impulse was to hail them, and try to make
friends of them by offering some small present; but he checked himself
as the thought flashed upon him that a movement on his part might
startle them and provoke a discharge of their tiny arrows, which were
probably poisoned. He could not doubt they had seen him long before he
had seen them, and had been for some time playing the part of silent
spectators, being kept at a distance, perhaps, by the aspect of the
strange object which they had observed descending among them from the
sky. It must be sufficiently alarming to their untutored eyes. But
after a time their dread seemed to be overpowered by curiosity or
hostility, and Smith saw, with alarm, that the little figures were
gradually drawing nearer, flitting silently as shadows from tree to
tree, and hiding themselves so effectually, even when they came to
closer quarters, that nothing but the flicker of a brownish form among
the undergrowth, or a round black head projecting from tree or bush,
betrayed their presence.
"Nearly done, Roddy?" he asked, without turning.
"Pretty near."
With an outward calmness that corresponded little to his inward
sensations Smith lit a cigarette, racking his wits for some means of
keeping the pigmies at a distance without provoking a cloud of arrows
or a dash in force. The half-circle was gradually becoming narrower.
He fancied that their silent movements were checked when he began to
smoke, and this suggested to him that an appeal to their curiosity
might hold them intent or awestruck until Rodier had finished his
task.
"How much longer, Roddy?" he asked quietly.
"Three minutes."
Smith did the first thing that occurred to him. He took a letter from
his pocket, tore it slowly into small pieces, and let the fragments
float away on the breeze. This device appeared to be successful for a
few seconds; but when the scraps of paper had disappeared or fallen to
the ground the pigmies resumed their stealthy silent advance. Smith
had another idea. Whistling the merry air of the "Saucy Arethusa," he
took two backward steps towards the aeroplane, seized a half-empty
petrol can, and strolled unconcernedly with it to the bank of the
stream, which at this point formed a slowly moving pool. As he went he
unscrewed the stopper, and on reaching the brink, he poured some of
the petrol into the water. Then taking two or three matches from his
box, he struck them together, and flung them into the petrol floating
on the surface.
The effect of his stratagem was immediate. The spectacle of water
apparently on fire was too much for the simple savages. For the first
time they broke their silence, and were seen rushing up the wooded
slope, uttering shrill cries of alarm. Only then did Smith become
aware how numerous they were. The whole forest seemed to be alive with
them.
"Done, mister," cried Rodier.
Smith hurried back to the aeroplane, noticing as he approached several
small arrows sticking upright in the ground close to it.
"They shot at you when you turned your back," said Rodier. "Shall we
fire at them?"
"No; leave them alone. I think they're scared now. But it's lucky I
thought of setting fire to the petrol, or they would certainly have
been upon us, and there's such a crowd of them that we might have been
done for. Set the engine working. The noise will keep them away."
With some difficulty they turned the aeroplane round to face down
stream, where there was a fairly level stretch of a few yards for
running off. Vaulting on board, they started, and in five or six
seconds the aeroplane was humming along a hundred feet above the
trees.