THE SECRET OF THE STONE OVEN COUNTRY
The Marquis and I sat on the hot black sand of Kara Bay and tried to
realize that we were shipwrecked.
It was not easy. There was the calm, blue, burning sea in front of
us, there was the ruffle of foam on the coral reef a mile or two out
from the beach. There were the sea-hawks hovering and veering just as
they had been doing an hour or two ago, when we had left the little
coastal steamer for a stroll on shore while some small trouble in the
engine room was repaired. And there――was not――the _Waiwera_. With our
own eyes we had seen her get under steam again, start to make a little
closer in shore before putting out her boat to fetch us off, strike the
ill-charted reef bow on, and go down in the deep water outside like a
tin can that fills and sinks in a well.
It was so quick that they had not even time to sling the boat out.
The reef, with its long knife edges, had ripped her open from end to
end. She was overloaded with ore from a new mine near Samarai. She
was a crank little boat at best, and as for water-tight compartments,
you might as soon have expected electric light, or cold storage, or
a satinwood grand piano made to turn into a high altar for Sunday
services――such as they have on the western ocean liners. There were no
frills of any kind about the _Waiwera_. When she hit, she went down and
made no fuss about it.
The Marquis and I saw the whole thing, there on the beach two miles
away. We heard the rattle of the engines as they broke loose and
plunged when she up-ended. We heard the piteous cry, thin and faint
with distance, that rose to an unpitying heaven, as the decks went
under water. After that there was nothing any more, just the blue sea,
and the burning sky, and the circling and hovering bronze sea-hawks,
busy with their fishing again.
“Is it real?” asked the Marquis, his hands flat on the sand, supporting
his huge body, his eyes staring, like the fixed eyes of a doll, out
to the empty sea. “Flint, what shall a man say when he sees a thing
like that? This is a devil of a country, where one may see twenty men
encounter death out there at one’s eyes and sit and look as calm as
this! My Flint, if I am mad, then you are it also, because you have no
emotion no more than me.”
“We’re neither of us mad, or bad either,” I said. “We’ll be sorry
enough when we’ve had time to realize that poor old Tommy Gregg is
gone, and Jensen and the rest; but we’re shipwrecked ourselves, and in
a bit of a fix, Marky, and that’s going to take all our thinking for
some time.”
“Where are we?” asked the Marquis, looking round. It was not a pretty
bit of scenery. Kara Bay is the sort of place a man might go to die in
if he felt like it, but it is not the sort of place any one would ever
want to live in. As a matter of fact, no one ever has.
The bay is like a black-lip shell, in curve and in color. The sand is
like powdered cinder to look at, and as hot as the innocent-looking
iron door of a furnace, to feel. Behind comes a belt of poisonous
painty-green low bush; behind that again, forest, so dark and tangled
that it looks black even at midday. The whole place has a deadly,
fungoid sort of look, as if it had sprung up in a night out of the heat
and rain and general decay, and never had been or could be natural and
normal in its growth.
I knew where we were well enough, and did not like the knowledge.
The _Waiwera_, on her voyage to join a North-German Lloyd boat at
Wilhemshafen, ran along a lonely and unfrequented coast; and the
loneliest, most unfrequented and most generally undesirable bit was the
bit where the Marquis and I had been marooned――here, in Kara Bay, with
a suit of clothes apiece, two revolvers, a few dozen cartridges, two
tins of meat and a paper bag of biscuits.
The Marquis, of course, did not quite understand how bad a fix we were
in. I did, and I had no time to spare for anything but consideration of
our case.
Kara Bay is a hundred miles or more from anywhere along the coast. The
sea-line is precipitous thereabouts; there is no easy beach to follow,
as in the western country. A boat is your only chance. But when you
have no boat?
The Kara River runs into the sea close at hand. It comes from the
Kiloki Range, a rampart of rock and forest eleven thousand feet high.
It is a succession of rapids and falls. I knew all about the Kara
River: no help there.
Behind the Kiloki Range you strike down towards country that is at
least known if not inhabited. There is a Government station there. I
calculated it to be something like sixty miles away from us in a direct
line――a fortnight’s journey over those mountains if we were lucky.
It seemed to be the Kiloki Range or nothing. We wanted about forty
carriers with food and tents and trade goods, and we wanted maps and
field-glasses and compasses, and rifles and shotguns and ammunition,
to take the journey as most people in Papua take such trips. But as we
were not likely to get any of these things on the black-sand beach of
Kara Bay, it was up to us to try what we could do without them; or else
stop there and die.
That was what I told the Marquis, not exaggerating the seriousness of
our situation, but not making little of it. He listened patiently and
sighed. I really do not think any one, even a man who knew him as I
did, could have anticipated what he would reply.
“Flint, my very good friend,” he said, twisting both ends of his
mustache at once, “that which I chiefly regret in the affair is that
it shall now be so many weeks that we shall see no white woman. And
look, on the Norddeutscher Lloyd, we should in three or four days have
been sitting on the feet of many beautiful ladies, and they should have
said politenesses――what do you say?――smooged us greatly, because of
the horrors we have encountered. I regret to lose that. Also, I begin
to feel that this sacred pig of a diamond has made us enough adventure
already.”
“You don’t suppose it was the Sorcerer’s Stone sunk the _Waiwera_?” I
said.
“I don’t know, but I think it’s confoundedly likely,” said the Marquis,
putting up his hand to the string that ran round his fat neck. “She
brought us adventure, yes, adventure, that diamond, and she brings us
more. And Flint, my friend, there comes the time, after all, when the
rolling stone maketh the heart sick. Don’t you think it?”
“I reckon this isn’t just the time to think it, if I do,” I said. “We
may get through this, and we mayn’t, Marky.”
“Is it so bad as that?”
“Just so bad,” I said.
The Marquis looked out at the sea, lying blue and calm above our late
companions’ grave. He then produced a large, white silk handkerchief
embroidered with a coronet at the corner, spread it between his two
hands and deliberately began to shed tears.
I was long past being astonished at anything that he might do. I
watched him, reasonably certain that my statement of our difficulties
had nothing to do with his emotion. He cried quite simply and
unaffectedly for a minute or two. Then he stopped, wiped his eyes and
face with the handkerchief and said:
“I have wept them who died. I am finished. Lead on.” Adding as an
afterthought: “It is a magnificent embroidery on that handkerchief. It
was made for me by a little beautiful who loved me. Shall I tell you of
her?”
“I’d be delighted, another time,” I answered. “Just now, we have to
think of how we’re ever going to get back again to the ‘beautifuls’ who
love us both. Marky, you and I have got to get up and travel right now.
Do you see those mountains up there?”
“That range of enchanting beauty? Yes.”
“I hope you’ll go on thinking it beautiful. We’ve got to cross it
before we die of starvation or fever. Our lunch that we brought from
the steamer is going to last us a good while.”
“We will depart at once,” said the Marquis, lifting his huge bulk
lightly enough from the ground and drawing himself up like a soldier on
parade. “March!”
* * * * *
It was the wild pig, I think, that saved our lives――and at the same
time nearly caused their loss.
We were three days from the beach, well up into the Kiloki Range, but
almost broken down with hardship and short commons, when we chanced
upon the brute in a gully, and shot it with our revolvers. We cut it up
and set a leg to roast; the savory smell spread far into the forest;
and, as we soon had reason to know, ours were not the only nostrils
that perceived it.
When the leg was done, we stuffed. No food could be carried far in that
climate, and the more we ate, the less we lost. We were both greasy
with the richness of the meat; our hands were slippery, our faces
shining, and, I think, our hearts felt stouter than they had done for
the last forty-eight hours.
“Another one, my Flint; make hay while the iron is hot,” counseled
the Marquis, filling his own mouth to speechlessness. He was sitting
opposite me as he spoke, and I saw his face grow suddenly swelled; the
eyes started out, the cheeks became puffy.... At first I thought he was
choking; then I guessed he was trying to say something; then I knew
that he had seen something and I turned round like a shot.
Behind us, looking, as savages in the bush always do, just as if they
had grown there instead of arriving, were ten or a dozen ugly-looking
heads standing quite still in the underbrush. The tips of a number
of spears showed up in the tangled green beside them. They were an
unpleasant crew; their foreheads sloped enormously, making them look
scarcely human; their hair was trained in greasy curls that fell far
back and increased the beast-like angle of the face. Their black and
white eyes looked steadily at us out of their brown faces, and the
look was that of savage man, near, yet ten thousand æons of evolution
distant. Across the gulf, what thought could travel?
We got up on our feet at once, and I spoke to the men in half a dozen
different languages――all the New Guinea tongues I knew anything
of――hoping to find some means of communication. I was lucky enough to
hit on one at last. When I got down to the Mambare tongue, one of the
faces showed signs of intelligence; the others remained blank.
I explained that we were great chiefs who had lost our way; that our
ship had sunk and that we desired to go to the Government station on
the other side of the range. If the men would guide us there, I said,
the Government would give them any amount of treasure――salt, tobacco,
knives and tomahawks, calico cloth.
The interpreter spoke to the others. They seemed dissatisfied, but they
came out of the brush into the clearing and we were able to see them.
“Marky,” I said, “we’ve got to keep our eyes skinned; these seem to be
Koiroros, and they’re among the worst cannibals in New Guinea. Probably
they’ve never seen white men before up here; it’s all unexplored
country.”
“Do you suppose we shall be eat?” asked the Marquis.
“Not necessarily. Cannibals aren’t always eating other people. We may
be able to make friends and get them to guide us.”
With a view to this, I collected any little trifles we could spare――a
tin match-box, a silk tie, a small penknife――and offered them to the
tallest man, who seemed, by his demeanor, to be something of a chief.
He was a splendidly made fellow, quite naked save for a bark
waist-cloth, and all hung over with shell and dog’s tooth ornaments.
I looked anxiously for any trade beads in his jewelry, but didn’t see
any, nor had any of the party steel knives or tomahawks. They were
armed, besides the spears, with stone-headed clubs and long daggers
made of human thigh-bone. It seemed plain that they had had no dealings
with civilized men; and this was so much the worse for us.
The chief seemed pleased with the gifts, and said something to the man
who could speak Mambare. It appeared that he wanted us to come to his
village, which was only a little way off. He said that he would give us
guides; but I noticed that he looked at the ground as he spoke and did
not face us.
“We had better go,” I told the Marquis. “I don’t like making friends
with natives as a rule; nine times out of ten it’s a mistake――but want
of tucker gives us no choice. We’ll try and get carriers there, and
some yams to take us on.”
The way proved to be very much longer than we expected, but, tired as
we both were, the sight of the village aroused us when it came into
view. It was certainly one of the strangest things I had seen, even in
strange New Guinea.
We were now in the midst of the high ranges, and there was no level
anywhere――not so much as one could use to lay out a tennis ground.
Every hill clasped hands with the next; torrents, foaming white and
furious among the ferny green, cut up the ranges into a gigantic
pattern of “ridge and furrow.” The mountains nudged and crowded one
another; their shoulders, their hips, their elbows were massed like
the shoulders, hips and elbows of a human crowd. The peaks ran up into
needle points like incredible pictures in geography books; they stuck
out battlements, roofs and buttresses into empty air; they sloped at
every angle, into every shape. It was the world run through a chopping
machine and thrown out at random. And in this place, without a spot
where you could set down the sole of your foot in comfort, men lived
who had not wings!
The village crowned the impossibility of the scene. It was exactly like
a clump of enormous brown toadstools, and it was bracketed――one could
not say set――on to the sides of a needle-point peak more like a church
spire than anything else. The houses were mere semicircular roofs of
thatch, placed upon bamboo floors that were stuck to the mountain by
piles in some incomprehensible fashion. Up the peak of this amazing
place we were guided by the Koiroros, who kept unpleasantly close
about us and seemed resolved that we should not get away from them. As
nothing unprovided with wings could have got away from the mountain men
in their own country, we did not think of trying, even though it began
to be unpleasantly clear that we were in reality not employers of these
people, but prisoners.
The Koiroros began to sing as they approached their homes, chanting
loudly and triumphantly, with an indescribable undertone of something
that――as we understand the word――was not human; something that harked
back the ages very near to them and very far from us.
The Marquis heard it too. Tired as he was, he managed to gasp out as we
toiled up the frightful slope:
“Flint, if you desire a proof that this Darwin of yours had reason,
listen then――listen to the wild beast howling over its preys!”
“We aren’t going to be any prey,” I snapped, being a little cross with
fatigue. “And anyhow, the less you talk, the better. They can guess a
lot from one’s tone.”
But I must say, when we got into the village itself, onto the slope
that seemed to take the place of its Plaza, or Place Royale, or Unter
den Linden, I began to feel that we were in a tighter place than I had
thought. For I saw something that I had not quite expected to see.
Dug out in the side of the hill and lined with neatly fitted stones,
were certain long, coffin-like holes that I knew at once for the stone
ovens of the main range people. They seemed to be nearly six feet in
length. Now there is only one kind of game that needs a stone oven six
feet long to bake it in――man.
Of course, the greater number of Papuan inland tribes are cannibals now
and then. I was accustomed to that sort of thing, and had even seen
human joints made ready for cooking――not, of course, the killing of the
game, which I shouldn’t have allowed for a moment. But cannibalism,
among most of the tribes, is not at all an every-day affair; it is the
sequel of a big, victorious raid or the end of some unusually bitter
private quarrel.
There are tribes, however, who eat man whenever and wherever they get
the chance; and it is those tribes who go to the trouble of building
big stone ovens, especially designed for cooking human beings. That is
why I was not too well pleased to find that we had got into the Stone
Oven country without expecting it. I wondered if we should ever get out
again. I trusted a good deal to our revolvers: firearms will go far
among men who have never seen them――but the mountain tribes are good
fighters, for Papuans, and I did not anticipate that it would be easy
to get away, if we had occasion to try it.
They led us into the largest house of the village, a ramshackle shanty
of a place, with spears and shields hung up on the walls and bamboo
shelves to sleep on. It smelled of unwashed nigger, old hay, damp and
rain; and you could see the mountain clouds curling and wreathing,
through the splits in the crazy floor――very much of the house
projecting right out over nothing at all.
Down the hill, like ants coming out of the top of a tall ants’-nest,
ran the people of the place, yelling with excitement at our arrival.
They had not a stitch of clothes among the lot; even the women were
dressed merely in a few small land-shells strung round the neck and a
handful of dogs’ teeth fastened like tassels into the hair.
“When we shall leave this place,” remarked the Marquis, “I will take
with me a complete costume of one of these women, to carry in my purse
all the time, so that I may show it to the delightful English misses
when I go to London, and hear them say, ‘Oooh, shocking!’ That is what
they love to say, my Flint.”
He looked about the ugly crowd again.
“They are not natural, these people; I do not love them,” he commented.
“See, then, how they are every one bended back from the waist like a
man who has a tetanus fit, because of the climbing they always do. When
we go away from here――――”
He looked about again.
“If we go away from here,” he amended, coolly, “you shall see that
I will give a lecture to the scientifics in Paris, a most blooming
learned lecture.”
“I hope you will, Marky,” I said. We were sitting on the bamboo
bed-place now, smoking a little of our cherished tobacco and wondering
when or if the Koiroros would give us something to eat. One of the
children――rather a pretty little chap of toddling age, who had been
half walking, half crawling, on the verge of an appalling precipice as
we came up to the village――made its way over to us and began touching
our clothes with childish curiosity. The older people watched it, but
did not go near; they seemed shy of putting their hands on us.
The Marquis, who was fond of children, caressed the little thing and
tried to make friends with him (rather foolishly, I thought) by taking
the diamond out of the case in which we carried it, and making it
flash. The child looked at it and then retreated, at a call from his
mother, striking at the stone as he went. It dropped and we both went
after it with a hasty exclamation, as the floor was full of holes. I
recovered it and fastened it up again in its case with a bit of string.
“I’ll take my turn now, Marky,” I said, hanging it around my neck. For
we had been carrying it day and day about, under our clothes.
“Look!” said the Marquis, making a small motion with his hand.
I looked and saw a Koiroro, whom I had not previously noticed,
literally glaring at me as I put the stone away. He was by a good
deal the tallest man in the village, and he had a very fine crown of
bird-of-paradise feathers on his head――among them the plumes of the
rare blue species that is worth almost what you like to ask for it in
civilization. It was evident that he was a man of some standing. I
suspected him to be the village sorcerer, as he had an ugly necklace
about his neck, made of locks of human hair, strung alternately with
some of the small bones out of the ear, and supporting a kind of trophy
made of double teeth.
“More trouble about the diamond,” I said. “That city brute has a mind
to get it if he can. A sorcerer, I reckon.”
There was some murmuring among the men, and they drew off into a corner
of the house by themselves, talking and looking at us, especially at
me. The inevitable evening rain of the mountains was coming down
now in a waterfall rush; the purple gorge beneath us, that we could
see through the open door, was filling up with a stormy sea of white
cloud. Without, precipices, tree-tops, clouds and plunging steps, all
drenched in roaring rain; within, a gloomy, damp-smelling house of
rotten thatch, white skulls gleaming through the dusk from the place
where they hung a-swing upon the rafters; shadowy men-things, more than
half brute, glowering at us from their corner.... And out upon the
hill-side, just a few yards away, the long stone ovens――waiting.
No, it was not a pleasant prospect, take it all in all.
For the moment, however, I thought there was no actual danger. I have
seen much of the Papuan tribes, and it did not seem to me that these
Koiroros had the blood-seeking mood on, that night.
“I don’t think they’ll attack just yet,” I told the Marquis. “But I’d
be as glad if they hadn’t seen the stone. They’re talking about it
now.”
“What do they say?” asked the Marquis eagerly.
“I can’t tell you that, but I can guess they’re telling each other all
about it. I’d be willing to make a bet it’s known to them. It must be
one of the celebrated sorcerer’s charms that go knocking about all over
the country, passed from one to the other.”
“And they will try to get it?”
“Yes, it and us.”
It grew darker in the chief-house, there as we sat on the bamboo
sleeping shelf, listening to the unvarying roar of the rain and
watching the excited waving of the head-plumes in the corner where the
cannibals held their conference――the plumes were all we could see now,
for a naked Papuan becomes rapidly and completely invisible, once it
begins to grow dark. The Marquis was very much quieter than usual, but
I do not think he was at all afraid. I think he reckoned on having a
fight by-and-by, and liked the idea. As for myself, well, a man with
any sense isn’t afraid in a tight place; it would be idiotic, because
you want all the nerve you have, to get out of it. And usually you are
much too busy thinking what to do to worry over what may happen if you
don’t do it.
A woman brought a torch in by and by, and said something that caused
great excitement. The men jumped about and clapped their hands and
made noises exactly like the noise a dog makes when it sees its food
in front of it. The Marquis and I both had our hands ready upon our
revolver butts, but we needn’t have troubled――it was only the pig that
had already had so much to do with our fortunes, coming in again. They
had been heating it up and were bringing it in for supper.
We all sat down on the floor then――and the meat was shared out,
together with a lot of sweet potatoes, hot from the ashes. The
cannibals gave us a liberal share and offered us a bamboo full of water
to drink out of. They tore and gnawed their food in a way that was not
pleasant to watch――remembering those long ovens on the hill.
“Sacred name of a camel, what a lecture I will give!” sighed the
Marquis, with his mouth full of sweet potato. “Look at their chests all
blowed out with the climbing, and their feet that have monkey toes, and
the cords on the insteps, and the nostril of the pig that they have!
See how they jump, they flitter, they are all the time nervous and
distracted! That comes of living on the edge of the cook-pot; if you
hold your finger up at one, and say ‘Hi!’ he should jump to break the
floor.”
“I hope you won’t,” I said, looking down at the velvet-black gulf of
vacancy that one could see between the slats of the flooring. “Don’t
you get too scientific, Marky; I warn you, that nervousness of theirs
is a bad sign. Also, their friendliness is a bad sign. Shove back and
finish your food with your shoulders against the wall, if you take my
advice.” I moved over as I spoke and the Marquis followed me.
We ate as men eat who do not know where their next meal is to come
from; we filled our pockets quietly, when we could swallow no more.
The Koiroros were so busy chattering among themselves that they did not
notice what we were doing. They did not molest us, though I could feel
there was trouble in the air.
I cannot say we passed a pleasant night. We kept watch in turns, and
got some sleep, through sheer fatigue, lying just where we had eaten
our meal, on the floor of the chief-house. The cannibals were sleeping
all around us, snorting and snoring like walruses. One of them lay
across the door, I noticed, and as it was hardly large enough to crawl
through, he guarded it efficiently.
Towards four o’clock in the morning (I found the time by feeling the
hands of my watch), the presentiment of coming trouble got hold of me
so completely that I resolved to make an attempt at getting away, cost
what it might. The more I thought about that liberal supper, the less I
liked it. The more I considered those long stone ovens on the hill, the
more likely I thought it that they would be filled on the morrow――if
we did not get away.
I felt for the Marquis in the dark; it was his turn to sleep, but he
was not sleeping. I put my mouth to his ear and whispered a little.
Then I got out my knife and began cutting away the flimsy bamboo
flooring. It was the time of the waning moon; I knew that we should
have light enough to see by, once we got outside, and that it would
last till dawn came up. By dawn we might hope to be out of the way.
It was easy enough to cut the floor without waking the Koiroros, since
all natives are heavy sleepers, and these men had fed full before they
slept. Getting through was more difficult; I gritted my teeth at the
creaking noise made by the Marquis’s weight as he lowered himself after
me. Where I had cut through there was sloping soil underneath; we got
hold of the supporting piles that were thrust into it, and holding on
by them, made our way very cautiously down the precipice to the place
where the trees and lianas began once more. The angle here was awful,
but we had plenty of hand-hold, and crept along securely enough in the
watery moonlight. The rain was over now and the river far below us at
the bottom of the gorge roared full-fed along its way.
Not a sound came from the toadstool clump of houses above as we crept
down the precipice. We were out of earshot before long, and able to
speak as we mounted the next great wall of rock, keeping always in
the direction of the far-off Government station, which I now began to
hope we should reach. By the lay of the land, I guessed we had forty
miles or more to go, and that might mean a week in this country of
precipices. Still, if we could find anything to eat on the way, and
if the Koiroros did not recapture us, it was――just――possible to get
through.
Dawn, rising red through the tableland of white cloud, like spilled
blood spreading on snow, came up and caught us sooner than I liked.
We were out of sight of the village, having crossed two ridges, but
our position, climbing up the bare rock at the side of a waterfall,
was dangerously exposed should any of the Koiroros be within sight. I
stopped where I was, on a ledge of stone overgrown with white butterfly
orchids, and looked over the tossing billows of tree-tops that lay
behind. There was small satisfaction in that. An army might have been
hidden in the bush, following us up. Still――considering the speed the
Koiroros could keep up in this mountain country when they chose――it
certainly did look as if they were not pursuing us. The Marquis was
jubilant.
“They are not spiritual, these people,” he declared, scrambling like a
cockroach in my rear. “By gum! I think their mentality is far back in
the scale of evolution; they are blessed idiots. They lock the stable
door when the milk is spilt. I can figure how they are saying injuries
to one another about our invasion, now we are safe away.”
I did not say anything, for the reason that I was not very sure we were
safe away――yet. There was something I did not understand about this
easy letting go. All the same, there was only one thing to do――go on as
fast as possible, and we did.
Towards midday, as we were crawling painfully up a perpendicular
forest hung out like a hearth-rug left to dry, over the side of a
three-thousand-foot cliff, I fancied the light ahead was growing very
clear. All morning we had been working along as one generally does in
the interior, right at the bottom of the forests, judging our direction
by compass and by the rise of the land, and seeing no more of the
country in general than if we had been crawling along in the depths of
the sea. But the light ahead and above looked as if there were a big
break-off somewhere. I pointed it out to the Marquis, to encourage him.
“I believe that’s the southwestern face of the Kiloki Range we’re
coming to,” I said. “If there’s a big drop there, and if we can get
down, it will give us a long lift on our way to the Government station.”
The Marquis paused to wipe his dripping face; it was atrociously hot
in there, sheltered from all cooling breezes. He cast a glance at his
khaki shirt and trousers, crumpled and stained and torn in many places.
“Has he a wife or a daughter, and is she beautiful?” he asked.
“Who? The R. M.? Don’t know who he is; but I should think it most
unlikely he has any womenkind up there.”
The Marquis sighed and was silent.
We were coming up to the light now, and it grew clearer and clearer.
There was evidently a big drop somewhere very near. And unless my ears
were much mistaken, there was also a big waterfall.
“Hear that, Marky,” I said, “that roaring sound? You’ll probably see a
young Niagara somewhere when we get to the top.”
Well, it was not a Niagara or a Victoria Falls, but it could have held
its own very well with any other fall in the world you might like
to mention. When we came out on the summit we saw that the whole
countryside was broken away under our feet and that the nearest thing
to us, as we stood up there on the verge of a mighty basalt wall, was
the feathery top of a forest so far beneath as to be half blue with
distance. And we saw that the whole of this immense rampart, greater
than any straight-down drop I had ever seen in my life, was taken at
one leap by a river that came down from a ridge above the one we had
been climbing.
The Marquis stood quite still on the summit, looking at the
indescribably magnificent view spread out below, for some minutes.
“To think,” he said, at last, “that it is ours alone――that no other eye
shall――――”
“Get your revolver out,” I said. There was no use making a fuss――I hate
fusses――but there was also no use trying to deny that our unlucky fate
had caught up with us again, and that the puzzle of the morning was
fully explained at last. There, on the verge of the precipice, standing
nonchalantly with their toes half over, as only a mountain native
can, were a dozen or more Koiroros who had slipped out of the bush
like snakes as the Marquis was speaking. From what I could see, they
must have taken a short cut, got to the precipice before us and been
comfortably waiting for our arrival.
This time there could be no doubt whatever about their intention.
They had surrounded us before you could say “knife”――not very close,
but near enough to be dangerous――and were creeping closer and closer,
poising their stone-headed clubs in an ominous manner. From the dense
wall of greenery behind, a spear came whistling out, excellently aimed
for the Marquis; it missed him by no more than an inch. Another went
into my hat and knocked it off.
We drew our revolvers and fired. The Marquis got his man clean through
the temple and dropped him as neatly as one could wish. Mine was hit
in the ribs; he fell over the precipice, and his cry, as he went down,
grew thin like the whistle of a train running away in the distance,
until we ceased to hear it. We had not much leisure for listening, in
any case. The Koiroros had bolted at the first shot, as natives usually
do; but they were busy throwing spears from cover now, and the Marquis
and I had to use more ammunition than we liked, firing at random into
the green, before we succeeded in stopping them.
They did seem to be driven off at last, however, and we began walking
along the edge of the precipice, to try and find a way down, for that
was now a vital necessity.
There was none.
We tramped and climbed and looked for half the afternoon. The sun got
down in the west; we ate a little of our food as we clambered about,
seeking endlessly, and drank from the pools made by the spray of the
waterfall. That waterfall! It blocked us like a wall of iron; we could
not cross it, or swim it, or get down alongside it. It was, in truth,
an efficient gatekeeper to the country of the Stone Ovens.
“Marky, I’m of opinion that they knew this all along,” I said. “They
played with us like cats with a mouse. They let us go just this far,
knowing we could get no farther. As to what I think of the beasts――――”
I said what I thought, without laying any restraint on myself. The
Marquis listened for a moment, and then jumped up――he had been sitting
on a stone――and gave a kind of howl.
“Look down!” he cried. I looked. Far, very far below I saw the figure
of one of the Koiroros, carrying a dead body on his shoulders, like an
ant going home with a grain of corn.
We were a good way from the waterfall at that moment, but the wall was
still unbroken, and I could not see any place where the man could have
got down. Still down he had evidently got, and the sight encouraged us
more than I could say.
“The sun’s failing us now, Marky,” I said, “but tomorrow we’ll find
that track or die.”
“I think you have reason; if we do not find it, we shall undoubtedly
kick the bucket in this out-of-the-road wilderness,” replied the
Marquis. “And if we were to finish like that, how many women of a great
beauty and a great kindness would pour tears for we two over all the
world!”
The sun was going down.
“Your watch first tonight, Marky,” I said. “And my turn for the
diamond.”
* * * * *
I had the stone around my neck next morning when it came daylight. We
were both pretty tired, with short sleep, short food and hard work, but
neither of us was anything like done, and I for one felt almost brisk
when the fresh wind of sunrise sprang up, blowing the ferns and orchids
about on the edge of the precipice and sending the spray of the great
waterfall flying out into the sun. The Marquis was sleeping just then.
I did not wake him, but got up to reconnoitre; this sunrise hour is the
clearest of all the day, and one can see the distant peaks and ranges
that are invisible once the eight o’clock clouds begin.
I did not particularly like what I saw. In all the wide expanse of
close-furred green before me there was not a break, not a suggestion
of a clearing or a station; only the wave on wave of primeval sea of
tree-tops that buries all New Guinea beneath its overwhelming flood.
Far in front the green lapped into a fold that suggested a river; that
was my only hope. As to these mountain torrents....
Was that a cough?
It sounded like one――the cough that a native gives when he wishes to
attract attention. I turned around to face the wall of bush, but could
see nothing, and I could not even be sure I had heard anything, for we
were not far from the waterfall and its thundering noise.
Well, if there had not been anything to hear, there was certainly
something to see――a green bough waving frantically, all by itself, as
if shaken by an unseen hand. The hand itself appeared by and by, and
now the bough was waved more violently than ever, while a voice cried
out in the Mambare dialect, “Let us speak!”
“Speak!” I answered, waking the Marquis with a push and telling him to
keep ready with his revolver.
“Is it peace?” continued the unseen native, whom I guessed to be the
Koiroro who had interpreted before.
“What do you want?” I yelled.
“We want the sorcerer’s great charm,” came the reply.
“Come out,” I said. “I will do no harm to you.”
Out they came, two of them――the interpreter and (as I had rather
expected) the big sorcerer man who had worn the crown of paradise
plumes. They motioned that we should lay down our arms, while they laid
down their clubs and spears, and this being done, the interpreter and
the sorcerer came forward.
“You have guns that bite badly in your belts,” said the interpreter.
“We thought you had none, because there were no long sticks such as
the white men’s guns usually have. But you have good guns; we shall not
fight you any more.”
“Very kind of you,” I said.
“All the same,” continued the interpreter, “we will not let you go
unless we like. There is a way down, but you will never find it if we
do not tell you about it. If we do not tell, you will stay here till
you die, and the wild pigs and dogs will come and tear your tongues out
and eat your throats.”
“What do you want?” I asked, guessing the answer before it came.
“This sorcerer, who is a very great chief, wants your charm. If you
give it you can go, and we will give you sweet potatoes to take with
you.”
“Get the sweet potatoes and we will talk more,” I answered, being
willing to gain time. The men disappeared.
“What do you think of that, Marky?” I said, translating.
“I think it is damn presumptuous cheek,” replied that nobleman, trying
to smooth his hair with his pocket-handkerchief and ruefully feeling
his bristly beard. “What a species of an object I shall be if we get to
that station!”
“Well, it does seem as if the diamond landed us in a fix everywhere we
go,” I remarked. “What on the living earth are we going to do?”
I took the stone out of its case and looked at it. All in the rough as
it was, it had some splendid rays when you got it into the sun. Just
now it shot out crimson, blue and green like a display of fireworks.
“Mark, it’s a beauty,” I said. “I don’t see myself giving it up to
a man-eating savage to make spells with; not much. But I don’t see
either――――”
“The Aryan races,” began the Marquis.
“Oh, don’t get scientific,” I begged. “I don’t feel as if I could stand
it this morning, somehow. Besides, I was discussing what we were going
to do.”
“Also I, if you would permit. The Aryan races――or, if you will be
impatient and make grimace at me, I will jump some thousand years. You
say you can not think what we shall do; it is solely because you are
of the Teutonic descent. It has courage, this branch, but nimbleness in
the mind it has not. The Latin races of whom I am one――――”
“Oh, cut it, Marky,” I begged. “I believe they’re coming back; we’ve
got to be serious.”
“I am everything that there is of serious, man with a head of a
cabbage! I myself will show you what it is to belong to the Latin. Do
you leave the negotiation to me?”
“Oh, you can do the talking,” I said. “You can do no harm, if you can’t
do good. I’ll pass on anything you say, and at the same time keep a
lookout for an ambush, which is just as likely as not.”
The Koiroros, it appeared, had brought the sweet potatoes with them,
and concealed them not far away, for there they were, back again with a
good load before the Marquis and I had well finished our discussion.
“Now,” said my companion, drawing himself up to his full height, “it
is for you to see what it shall mean to be of the Latin and not of the
Teutonic race. Behold! Tell them they shall not have the diamond.
“Tell them that I am a greater sorcerer than this man is and that I
know many wonderful sorceries.
“Tell them I will sell this man a sorcery that will make him king of
his tribe, you bet, if he will give us the secret of the path.
“Tell him to behold me and see!”
The two Koiroros, already much impressed with the lordly tones and
gestures of the Marquis, watched narrowly as he took a packet of
cigarette papers out of his pocket, looked solemnly towards the rising
sun, held up one paper to its rays and then bent his head over it,
muttering to himself.... I asked him afterwards what he had been saying
that sounded so impressive, and he confessed that it was merely the
French for “Twice one is two, twice two is four,” etc.
[Illustration:
_I cannot describe the extraordinary appearance he made there on
the mountain-top in the scarlet dawn, with the cannibals looking
on while he performed his incantations_]
When he had finished his muttering――the Koiroros now drawing back a
little in obvious fear――he lit a match and burned the paper, waving
his hands over it as it burned. I can not describe the extraordinary
appearance he made, there on the mountain-top in the scarlet dawn,
with the naked, feathered cannibals looking on while he performed his
incantations――his dirty, huge, bedraggled figure carrying a dignity all
its own.
At the end of these mummeries, he cast the ashes of the paper to the
winds, raised a terrifying shout, and taking hold of his (false) front
teeth, pulled them down to the level of the lower lip and let them go
again with a snap.
The two Koiroros turned tail and fled into the bush, actually leaving
their spears and clubs behind them in their panic. A long way off we
could hear them howling with fright. The Marquis and I had to call for
quite a long time to get them to return. When they did come back, the
sorcerer seemed to have recovered his nerve in some degree, but he
still looked uneasily towards the Marquis, whom he now appeared to
recognize as a superior in his own line.
“Tell them,” said the Marquis, “to show us the way and I will give them
the papers.”
“He says he wants one now, to do the trick,” I reported.
Solemnly the Marquis pointed to the rising sun.
“It is above the horizon――did he not see that it was not yet cleared of
the earth when I enchanted?” he said. “Say that he shall make the spell
at tomorrow’s sunrise, but never before again.”
The sorcerer, his eyes starting out of his head, half walked, half
crawled to the Marquis’ feet and accepted the cigarette papers,
trembling. He stowed them away in his charm bag and then made signs to
us to follow. We went after him along the rim of the precipice to the
very edge of the waterfall, and saw――――
Well, after all!
Only a six-sided column of the black basalt――the sort of thing you see
in photographs of the Irish Giant’s Causeway――that lifted out of its
place as neatly as a finger out of a glove and left a hole through
which a man might squeeze himself. And once squeezed through, a man
came out――behind the waterfall.
There it hung in front of us, as we passed, like a gigantic crystal
curtain, magnificent beyond all telling. And in the hollow at the back,
where the water had worn the hard basalt away, foot by foot through
countless æons of years, was the roughest of rough staircases, cut
by native hands and leading down the cliff. Slippery wet with spray,
perilous to the last degree and scarce passable for a white man’s foot,
yet, after all, it was not quite impassable, or so we found. In an hour
or less we were down at the bottom of the wall; the secret of the Stone
Oven country was told.
More than that, the sorcerer had informed us as we went down that the
Government station was a bare two days away, down the valley of the
river that we had dimly discerned from the height. And we had potatoes
enough to last us all the way. And the diamond was still ours.
“Heaven tempers the wind to the lame dog; we are well out,” said the
Marquis, looking up at the top of the ridge as we paused in the river
bed below. The sorcerer, far away against the skyline, was faintly
visible, feeling his jaw.
“I wager, on sunrise tomorrow morning, there shall be some sore teeth
in the chief-house!” said the Marquis, with a chuckle.
VI
HOW THEY BURIED
BOBBY-THE-CLOCK