Bird of Paradise

They travelled eastwards in a sweeping arc tempted by Bangkok and Hong Kong, places that left David with scattered images of sampan rivers, picture-book temples and the pungent stench of dried fish. At Hong Kong, after completing the tourist roundabout to the junk harbor at Aberdeen and commuting on the Kowloon ferry, the day he remembered most was a bus ride through the duck farms of the Northern Territories to the Chinese frontier where small boys rented out large binoculars and he looked over a river lined with red flags to a feudal world beyond.

Even when they reached the South Pacific they didn't stop but with the aid of island trading boats and the tiny airplanes of SOLAIR explored the Melanesian Archipelago. Weeks passed as they dawdled patiently around Tulagi, Malaita, San Cristobel .Yet for all this dedicated travel these South Sea islands and atolls that appeared and vanished over the limitless horizon withheld their secrets and David who had been expecting gaity, grass skirts and 'lays' of coloured flower felt a little cheated. 'It's the Polynesians you're thinking of,' Jim explained. 'The Melanesians are very different. Much more serious.' Not very encouraged David sat cramped in the three seater plane returning to Guadacanal. During their flight over the Coral Sea the Australian pilot trying hard to live up to his 'wako' reputation pretended first to fall asleep and then to have a heart attack and later put down on the sea to dodge a storm and have a 'breather.' But Jim who was as much at home in airships and biplanes as the more modern varieties was chiefly concerned in case their reaction should be considered less than adequate. 'Perhaps he should try his antics in a Jumbo 747,' he suggested.’ More chance of an appreciative audience.' In Guadacanal David's sense of exile continued until one day lying by the river beyond the mission station he had the idea of building a hut and he immediately ran back to the bungalow to fetch a machete and start work. Struggling for light the two room bungalow stood pitched amid an overgrown orchard of guavas, paw-paw trees and banana suckers, all competing for space. In the rusty shower-cum-loo full of fleeing cockroaches stood a machete which Samuel, their house-boy, used to clear paths, cut grass, dig holes, extract nails, scrape copra out of coconuts, gut fish, chop meat- anything you could think of.

Brandishing this piratical weapon and tucking his lava-lava securely around his waist, David trotted past the coconut plantation bordering the nearby village and through the clearings that the mission children cultivated along the river bank. David watched them with curiosity, fascinated as much by their skills as their appearance. All shades of colour were represented from honey gold to jet, with mops of fuzzy hair that were blond or black. 'Nothing to do with inbreeding,' Jim had assured him. 'Weren't enough Europeans to bastardize the whole islands. Anyway, what genetic vanity to assume you only get blond hair on white skins!' Singing and laughing as they worked ,the upturned faces watched him for a moment; girls in 'mother-hubbards'-the long smocks the missionaries had imposed for modesty,-scraping copra and roasting casava tubers big as gourds. Boys in tatty shorts mending thatch on the hut roofs, bringing fish up from the river or squatting searching each other's hair for lice, while their more idle 'one-talk' friends , dived off the steep banks and rode logs downstream for fun. It was a desire to become a part of this that excited David about making his own hut. For David, in an island of forty different languages was nobody's 'one-talk' but his own. One-talk implied friend, because friends shared the same language. Pidgin didn't count. Everyone on the coast spoke pigin-english; the Chinese in Chinatown, the Polynesians from the Gilbert Islands and even some of the Europeans. Beyond the clearing a narrow path led through the forest to an overgrown bluff beside the river. Here David decided to build his hut and straightaway set about digging holes, chopping down slender trees and creating a sturdy frame. He worked ambitiously, pestered a little by mosquitos, and when he became too hot he

cooled off in the river. He worked until clouds massed the sky and rain attacked in a sudden afternoon ambush that slashed at his skin as he raced homewards through the clinging undergrowth. As dramatically as it had begun the rain ceased. The trees dripped, the path steamed. A shaft of late sunshine blazed low across the sky and when he reached the coconut grove he heard the mission gong (An empty gas cylinder slung from a tree near the chapel), banging out the supper call. Daylight fled swiftly away and the grey dusk remained. Waiting for him under the bungalow porch squatted Samuel in vest and shorts with his usual garland of paradise-bird feathers around his neck. David went inside, tore off his soaked lava-lava, tucked on a dry one, toweled his hair and told Samuel about the hut.

Samuel guessed he was about the same age as David although no one bothered about ages in these islands. Birthdays were neither recorded nor remembered and the same happy-go-lucky attitude affected family life. A brother could just as easily be a cousin and a cousin might not be related at all. Even parents were exchangeable and children could adopt others if they didn't get on with their own. 'Adopt your own mum,' considered Jim. 'Has a certain appeal wouldn’t you say? I suppose there would even be charities for unwanted dads.' In these generous circumstances it was hard to understand

why no one wanted Samuel. Even if he did have leprosy it wasn't something that showed. Jim had explained that it was under the skin, was not infectious and was being cured, but the islanders had such a terrible fear of the disease that even the children of the mission shunned him. And he had a limp. It wasn't such a bad limp but he had been born with a twisted foot and no one had thought about straightening it. Despite this Samuel managed very well hopping on his good foot and skipping on his bad but it excluded him from most games and he became a solitary, discovered in unexpected places at unexpected times away from everyone else. Perhaps it was being outcasts that brought them together. One-talks without a common language, for because David couldn't succeed in getting his tongue around pigin most of what they wanted to say to each other they didn't try. Nevertheless Samuel had no doubts. 'Iu-mi one-talk,' he confirmed to David as they walked across to the mission and David who had been under the impression that it was he who had befriended Samuel was surprised to discover it was the other way about. All the children of the mission were converging on the food hall. The boys demonstrating with their friends a happy disrespect for age and height; huge six-footers chummed to kids ten years younger, walked together fingers linked. The girls were more gregarious; cheerful gaggles bright with smiles and patterned mother-hubbards stepping barefoot over the spiky grass. In their hands everyone carried tin plates and spoons and their fuzzy hair, decorated with red hibiscus flowers, served as a useful place to poke away pencils, pens, and rulers. Everyone squeezed up the steps into the wooden hall, lined at the hatch for portions of squash, tunny fish and boiled yams and found a place at the long trestle tables. One of the seniors called for silence to say grace and then the bedlam of communal eating broke out although it was always at these meal times David noticed how Samuel remained apart and ignored between the battling elbows.

After tea when many of the children returned to the rooms to study Samuel walked back with David. Overhead the stare shone in the clear cool night like a million fire-flies and beyond the pale trace of the river dark jungled hills smudged upwards against battlemented mountains where thunder and lightning played about the highest peaks. 'Papamanchua.' Samuel solemnly announced, 'long wea Gods blong olketa (live together).' David was more concerned looking down for coconut crabs. By day they lived in holes riddling the sandy soil under the palm trees and emerging by night in ferocious toe-devouring hordes, an armada of outsize waggling claws. The game was to disable one with a rock and watch (from a safe distance) the others tear it to pieces. 'Papamanchua,' said Jim as they stood outside the bungalow watching the distant rumbling explosions. 'By the sound of it they have more family squabbles than Zeus ever had to put up with on Mount Olympus,' Their own accomodation was illuminated less fancifully. The mission generator shut off after tea and they made do with the glow of storm lanterns. The bungalow consisted of two plain rooms. One with netted beds and a cupboard for clothes to grow mould in. The other with a table, upright chairs and a stove. Food hung from hooks or was stowed in tight tins to escape the cockroaches. The only refrigerator was in Father M's bungalow and worked sootily off kerosene. David avoided this ever since the day he asked a villager (by sign language) to sell them a chicken, pluck it and leave it in the 'fridge. Unfortunately he omitted indicating the essential 'chop chop' and to their surprise they discovered the indignant featherless bird shivering in its goosepimples when they came to collect their supper. Every other morning Samuel brought them a loaf of bread and every afternoon two girls came to tidy up and giggle. They came in pairs for their own safety- something Jim found rather flattering. Now in the lamplight David told him enthusiastically about the hut he was building and how Samuel would help him.

Jim nodded approvingly. 'I must tell you something about Samuel. It's not the leprosy. Father M wanted you to know that Samuel has had epilepsy and he must not get over-excited. Now don't look so indignant.' 'But how can you stop someone getting excited if they want to.' grumbled David, and the injustice brooded between his dreams throughout the restless night. Each morning, all too soon, the village drum started booming. Even before a glint of daylight cracked the sky the hollow-tree drum resounded to monotonous clubbing.

David clawed sleep from his face and yawned his way to the stove to put the kettle on as Samuel came trotting in with the bread. 'Today Friday,' he announced cheerfully. 'Olketa go tu Honiara weit Mister Jim.’ For Friday was the day Jim drove Samuel to the hospital for his treatment and they did their shopping. First they went across to the mission church for the morning service. The church stood in the middle of an open meadow. There were no walls. You could see into it as easily as look out which was just what David was doing when his daydreams were punctured by Father M

repeating the name Samuel. Paying attention he realised it was simply his biblical namesake. All the boys were Moses or James or Barnabas just as the girls were Ruth, Mary and Elizabeth. 'The Lord called Samuel again,’ read aloud Father M. 'but he did not know it was the lord because the Lord had never spoken to him before.' This raised a titter in the audience for Samuel's habit of failing to answer his name was well known. In fact even now when David glanced around the crowded rows for the young prophet, Samuel looked too preoccupied with his own thoughts even to have heard his name mentioned. The hospital was only seventeen miles from the mission but with seven rivers to cross and long stretches of track under water, it took at least an hour to get there. 'One less river an dat's de one dat'll nab us!' sang Jim in fine 'nig-ro' spiritual style as the jeep bounced over the pot-hole track along the coast. In fact most of the rivers were bridged and only two had to be forded. A line of trucks waited on the bank nudging forwards into the water one by one. In their case because the jeep was low-slung with the distributor idiotically placed behind the radiator they had to be even more careful and Samuel stepped ahead to gauge the depth. The ‘plimsol line' was his knees, and when these remained uncovered Jim eased out the clutch and cruised slowly across swerving on the slippery stones. Leaving the forest behind they drove beneath tall coconut palms with the sea shining beyond. Dugout canoes lay hauled up on the beach and thatched huts stood on stilts along the shore. Rattling over the loose boards of a 'bailey' bridge they emerged into open grassland with the wartime landing strip of Hendersen Field on their left still retaining its original wooden control tower, Honiara, the principal settlement of the Solomon Islands was another war-time invention. Starting at Chinatown it squeezed its way between wooded hills and the sea to end graciously at Government House guarded by carved totem heads and bearing the war memorial to men doomed to get no further than these lonely island beaches of the Coral Sea.

The whole of Guadacanal lay littered with more tangible mementos of that struggle; warplanes rotted in the jungle under a shroud of creepers. Guns and assault craft rusted into the seashore. Outside Honiara beyond the polynesian settlement an orderly group of thatched huts with the small sign 'Site of the Japanese Army Headquarters', proclaimed orders only to visiting groups of fellow-countrymen with their records and plastic bags and an accompanying shinto priest to bless the skeletal remains they took back to their homeland. The hospital stood outside the town opposite the rugby field where modern tribal wars took place in the name of sport each Saturday, and the Anglican Cathedral where peace and brotherhood was just as vigorously proclaimed the day after. Samuel vanished into the complex of neat, prefabricated hospital huts for his treatment. The previous week David had suffered toothache and Jim inquired after the dentist. There was only one for the whole six hundred miles of islands. Since he was on walkabout somewhere else islanders had been camping outside his surgery for three weeks nursing their jaws. David's toothache took one look and disappeared. 'Had all mine taken out at twenty,' Jim announced proudly and grinned to show a row of unblemished dentures. 'Much the best thing-or at least it was then. Now if you'll invest in a decent pair of pincers in Chinatown perhaps I could help you.' Chinatown sold everything from pins to bicycles and most of it came with the label of the Peoples Republic of China. Here they bought a glass of orange juice and pottered about looking at things they didn't need before they went shopping in the island market for things they did. An air of listlesness lingered among the pineapples and the paw-paws. Men with flowers in their hair ignored the chinese cabbage. pumpkin top and snake bean they were selling. Infants with runny noses and busted pants hovered beside heaps of soft-

shelled turtle eggs and old ladies with scrawny breasts smoked rolled tobacco leaf. Further on the island's only supermarket sold tins of most things you could think of. Mamalooloo the Prime Minister came shopping here on his bicycle and once David met him contemplating the baked beans. 'Which are better,' he asked David, hitching up his lava-lava, 'Heinz or Cross and Blackwell?' But once David gave his opinion he couldn't stop worrying whether it had been the correct choice. Deciding for a Prime Minister was a heavy responsibility. 'No fears for democracy,' said Jim,’ When the P.M. rides around on a bicycle with a shopping bag.'

Half way along the hundred or so tin-roofed huts that made up the town Honiara slipped sideways into the sea. A few notices in pigin promoted trading boats sailing to islands on no very regular time-table. While along the warf the islanders waited in easy-going idleness. On the way back having collected Samuel at the hospital they turned off to the Seventh Day Adventist Mission where you could buy fresh milk and lettuces from their market garden. Far more exciting for David and Samuel was the rusting collection of warplanes that they scrambled over, climbing into the

perspex cockpits and taking off with their fantasies amid the mouldering leather, corroded controls and dials registering improbable altitudes. Despite these attractions the mission never seemed very happy, although it may have been because Friday was the Adventists sabbath when no one was allowed to do anything but pray. Not even smile - a considerable sacrifice for Melanesians. Samuel was impressed. 'Olketa holy pipol.' Jim understood David's disappointment. 'I'm sure if you go into the interior you'll still find a few cannibals about.' 'When mi father himfella boy,' said Samuel. 'Olketa blong cannibal pipol. Chop-chop enemi fo eat-im, fo mekem olketa strong. Now samfella olketa kristyan, pipol. No eatin enemi.' 'Quite right to,’ agreed Jim.' I'm only a recent convert myself. When I was five I tried to eat my cousin but he screamed at my first bite and I was sent to bed in disgrace. Probably for the best really. Eating your neighbour is a habit that's rather frowned on in Oxfordshire.' 'But the old Gods,' David pleaded that afternoon as they rested in the river shallows after building the hut. He pointed to the mountains.’ They still live up there don't they?' Samuel frowned. 'Paramount Chif himfella kristyan. Samfela sai no tok-tok desfela Gods no mores.' But later as they worked on the roof overlaying the fronds of thatch-palm he admitted, ' Some oldfela pipol talk long disfela Gods. Samfela spik tok-tok fo ancestor.Tok-tok fo spirits, tok-tok fo fish, tok-tok fo birds.' At once David was back among the wine dark seas of Greece pouring libations of wine on the waves to placate Poseidon. The same feeling he had in Anti-paxos of being close to the ancient Gods. He stared beyond the jungled hills to the peak of Papamanchua and the idea took hold in him to go there to actually climb into the home of the Gods.

Samuel shook his head doubtfully. 'Custom telem na go long thia bikos pipol long forest makem chop-chop,' He made a gruesome gesture of being speared and nearly fell off the roof.(Custom was local law. the code told from one generation to the next of what you could and what you could not do. )David was always coming up against the blank wall of 'Custom', and it irked him. Each day the hut improved. Sometimes other children came to watch and sometimes to help. After thatching the roof they thatched the walls and weaved split canes and pandamus fibres over the raised floor. They cut out steps down to the river and built a thatched shelter for a cook-fire. They came each day after school and worked busily until the afternoon deluge. Now with the hut almost finished they could outstay the rains, and roast on their cook-fire casava tubers and sweet potatoes, while in their blackened pot they boiled river fish in coconut milk or grilled them over the embers on sticks. 'Olketa mission hav him big feast,' Sammy informed David one day as they walked along the river bank looking for a log suitable to ride downstream. 'Chop chop pig. Chow chow pudding.' He patted his tummy. David watched the river mesmerized by its power. After three days of unusually heavy rain it surged past tossing uprooted trees about like matchsticks. Samuel strode blithely ahead unconcerned at the collapsing bank or logs that suddenly opened their mouths and magicked into leering crocodiles. Eventually Samuel found the uprooted tree he was seeking. Only a few desperate tugs were needed to set it free and on they jumped David clinging to the tangle of upturned roots while Sammy capered along the trunk like a monkey. Watched by calculating crocodiles, birds screeching applause overhead. Gaudy butterflies fluttering together in exotic courtship they lurched and careered along oil-smooth currents and stampeding cateracts towards the coconut groves and the village near the river mouth. This uncontrolled progress bothered David for river mouths were notorious places for

sharks that waited to dine off refuse that floated down and were not indifferent to the opportunity of a snap meal of negligent dog or paddling infant. At the mission a boy called Barnabus had been attacked by a shark after his canoe overturned and with amazing presence of mind had shoved his head into the shark's mouth. Spat out he struggled bleeding ashore but still wore the scars of that encounter, a ribbon of buried teeth marks around his neck

Fortunately for David's peace of mind their log ran firmly aground on a sandbank. The coming feast occupied the spare-time enthusiasm of the mission. After school the children gleaned their gardens for casava that the girls pounded and mixed with coconut milk to make puddings, while the boys built a big fire on a great nest on stones collected from the river. Two hefty pigs which had been fattening for months were slaughtered and chopped into small portions. These, like the puddings were wrapped up in banana leaves and bound with fibre preparatory to roasting. It was only now that the rumour spread from one long face to the next that

their was not going to be enough food. The singing and gaity ceased. Only Samuel remained undismayed. 'Mister,' he asked Jim. 'Iu mi helpem. Go long village blong mi. Old grandfather man, himfela tok tok fo fish.' 'Anything's worth trying,' Jim said as they drove off in the jeep. 'It was getting as sad as a welsh sunday.' Sammy's village was only a few miles along the coast but although the jeep gamely struggled through dense forest from one quagmired track to the next finally they had to proceed on foot. Jim stepped briskly through stagnant pools in his baggy khaki shorts and dripping sandals, gaudy parrots screeched in the tree-tops and even a bird of paradise swooped down to inspect, dazzling them with its flying colours . The forest thinned to gardens of casava and yams around a deserted clearing. A few huts stood raised amid patches of flowering shrubs. Samuel insisted he would remain here to await the old man and David and Jim returned to the mission by nightfall only to be woken early next morning by the excited news that everyone was hurrying to the beach. On the shore a silent crowd stood watching a cluster of canoes out at sea and over the milky calm came the faint noise of chanting and the clapping together of rocks. Suddenly one of the canoes broke away from the rest and paddled energetically for the shore. Whooping an energetic roar of approval the crowd chased after it grabbing for sticks as they ran. It was an amazing sight for even before the canoe arrived a turmoil of fish broached the shallows where the mission boys clubbed them senseless and hauled them ashore by their gills, 'Miracles will never cease,’ mumured Jim. David's eyes no longer riveted on the suicidal charge of the fish were watching the departing canoes and trying to make out if Samuel was aboard or not. Rigged onto long poles the fish ware carried back to the mission, chopped up, wrapped in leaves and placed with the pigmeat and pudding under the hot fire stones where they remained, slowly cooking for the rest of the day and the night.

David spent the afternoon out at the hut. Twilight came. He lit the coconut lamp and was sitting in the doorway watching the last daylight retreat off Papamanchua when Samuel finally appeared. 'Why didn't you tell me you could talk to fish,' he demanded. 'You can talk spirit language, can’t you?' Sammy sat beside him looking at mountain. 'Grandfather tok-tok spirit tok. Himfela very old, Sit blong spirits long burial place.' In the unsteady flare of the coconut lamp Samuel looked strangely intense. 'Himfela help mi tok tok fish, animals, spirit fo wild pig, spirit fo river an forest an

mountain. Samfela walkabout often long Papamanchua in spirit and call me. Often long dreamtime himfela callem mi. "Samuel, Samuel." Sometime soon mi fly long grandfather. Tell iu-mi truth ,mi fly two times. Number won time very good.' His eyes gleamed, 'Fly over trees an river an missions.' "And the second time,' asked David impatiently, Sammy chuckled. 'Number two time mi crash.' 'Did I ever tell you about the time I tried to walk on the water.' said Jim at supper. David looked at him. Jim shrugged noncommittally. 'It wasn't altogether a success. Rather like the first canoe I built with the seat in the far end. The editor of that Boys Own magazine should have been made to walk the plank.' The next day, Easter Day, after church the feast began, the hot stones were re-moved and the cooked packages placed within the circle where they all sat opening the leaves and gorging what was inside. David's first lucky dip turned out to be a lump of yellow grease with a few stiff hairs but things improved after that with fishmeat and pudding all washed down with sweet swigs from young coconuts. In the afternoon there was a game of rugby resembling scenes of ancient warfare from which David retired with a badly stabbed toe. He limped back to the hut to nurse his sore foot. Later he announced to Samuel. 'I am going to Papamanchua. If you won’t come with me I’ll go alone.' Sammy watched him quietly. 'Iu-mi one-talk. Iu-mi go walkabout Papamanchua fo luk-luk, no worry.' Samuel's prestige had increased considerably after the fish-calling. The social stigma of leprosy seemed to be set aside and he had no difficult raising a force of eight other boys to join the expedition they planned for the three week holiday period following Easter.

Jim in the meantime had more gloomy news from Father M. The last expedition to Papamanchua had been an ill-fated attempt fifty years before in which two Europeans were speared to death by tribesmen. A more recent initiative by government surveyors ended when their guides refused to take them any further. David made light of these difficulties. Surely all they had to do was climb and clamber for rather less than forty miles and they would be there. Watching the mountain from the river he could almost trace a way up. The mission kitchen provided a sack of sweet potatoes and some tins of tunny fish. Jim bought a quantity of bread and sausages for them in Honiara and with cook-pot and blankets the expedition set off, first up the coast road in the mission truck and then striking off inland along a path through open country towards the river they would follow to penetrate the mountains rising behind. They toiled through the ho, humid day reaching the river just as the rains fell and sheltered in the huts of a small village with a quite different personality from the coastal settlements. Here the men had shells through their noses and girls wearing only brief lava-lavas decorated their faces in red and white daubs. It was encouraging at least to know they had got beyond the mission belt and when the rain stopped they forded the river and entered the dense undergrowth of the tropical forest. The path slipped muddily between tangled spiny creepers. The liquid air dripped leeches, and mosquitoes settled over them in black clouds. It was a relief when they zigzagged back across the river but a relief short-lived when David saw the crocodiles along the bank yawning and slithering heavily into the water as he struggled waist deep against a stiff current and slippery stones. Samuel tried to encourage him. 'Olketa cowards, olketa pretend.' David meanwhile straining against the current and with both hands cupped over his essentials concentrated on nothing beyond gaining the further bank without having Samuel's theory put to the test. On the far bank they passed an abandoned village with thatch fallen in and collapsing timbers rotted by termites. Giant creepers strangled the sky. Alternating between jungle and river they cross-crossed up the valley spending the first night on a sandbank with fires burning to warn away inquisitive intruders. All next day they continued into the uplands blundering back and forth across the river. There was no path anymore and they just followed the most practical route they could choose, edging along the precipitous banks or hacking short cuts through the

tangled morass of undergrowth with their machetes. The others were out of sight ahead when David came around a large tree to find himself face to face with a warpainted savage brandishing a long spear. He watched David through a mask of white clay and red feathers with a large shell-curving through his nostrils and David's heart froze at the prospect of instant disembowelling until to his immense relief he realised this warrior was simply waiting for him to pass and he rewarded him with the most grateful smile of his entire life.

A dozen huts occupied the overgrown clearing where children and pigs scuttled about naked without much distinction. The men, mostly decorated with nose shells and clay daubs, parlayed with the boys from the mission seeking a common speech and making it clear that David was the first living specimen of white man they had seen. Considering his body was a mass of scratches, insect bites and leech scars and his hair tangled with mud and leaves he doubted he was an edifying object to look at, although as Jim suggested

afterwards, perhaps it was a good thing he appeared less appetizing. There was no doubt they had stumbled on a stone age community and David noticed in practical use objects that on the coast had become mere ornaments; barbed wooden arrows , decorated bowls, throwing spears, stone knives and clubs. But for all that, these people were no different from themselves. He noticed how they counted on their fingers, how their eyebrows created the same complexity of expressions, their hands the same gestures. Dressed in their elaborate colours and symbols they were as articulate and skillful as jet-age man, or as Jim would say 'Homo CocaCola'. Unfortunately the expedition had arrived at an unlucky time. A child died of virulent malaria while they were there, and later some men returned with the slain body of a hunter who had been slashed through the groin by a wild boar. 'Na walkabout long dark,' Samuel advised David when they settled to sleep. 'Pipol hea telem white pipol ia spirit fo dead pipol. Telem chopchop olketa white spirit an spirit pipol no trouble weitem.’ Next morning the mission boys joined the hunters setting out to find the savage boar. Starting at the place they had discovered the dead hunter they tracked the boar into a rocky defile where they could hear it snorting furiously from dense undergrowth. David rather shamefacedly looked about for safely but the forest trees rose indifferently a hundred feet or more before bothering to branch. Afterwards he remembered Jim telling him from his days of hunting in the Diplomatic Forests that if a boar attacked you had to lie very flat so that its curved tusks wouldn't get underneath to rip, but at the time he just watched with fearful fascination as the hunters moved slowly forwards their wooden spears raised. There was no doubting their bravery. David wondered if even Ysar would have hunted a wild boar without his rifle. Then the curtain of undergrowth crashed open. The boar charged and so many simultaneous reactions besieged David that only later could he pierce together the sequence of images.

The boar, huge by any account, magnified by the red hatred in its eyes, in its stinking breath and in those razor tusks ,raged among them disembowelling the toppling sky and jerking the earth wide apart with its desperate lunges while the yelling hunters , capering like some ceremonial dance, thrust in their fire-hardened barbs, leaping and piroetting clear. Stuck and bleeding, shrieking in fury the boar in all its awful magnificence surveyed them with a menacing eye, stumbled heavily and collapsed, its lower teeth laid bare in a barbaric grin. Cheering enthusiastically

the hunters embraced touching the boar in wonder before lashing it on poles to carry back to the village. The expedition did not stay to celebrate this kill and for the rest of the day and the next they continued upstream, the river plunging from one waterfall to the next while the forest soared above them clinging to precipitous gorges, shutting out the sun and burying them alive among the roots of these great mountains with no indication where they were going except upwards and that with increasing difficulty, the way blocked by cliffs and cateracts and their ears bandaged by the roar of water. Unprepared for anything extraordinary them stumbled upon a waterfall so high it felled their imaginations while the force of the downdraught plucked them off their feet and tossed them into the struggling undergrowth. Grasping stems and creepers for support they pushed into the thundering mist until suddenly the wind ceased and they stood behind the cascading wall of water. A diagonal fault suggested a route up the rock face and they inched up behind the plunging water-wall until the crack ended and they had to retreat. Later some of the boys found another way up beside the falls but they all knew that without ropes they would never be able to haul up their supplies or get safely down. Although it didn't rain the boys quickly constructed shelters of leaves to protect them from the drifting spray and broke dry wood out of sodden logs to start a fire. Papamanchua had won with such an easy imperial gesture that David knew the immortals dwelled there. Patching his leech bites with salt and listening to the boys singing by the fire he was almost pleased the Gods had won. 'Papamanchua telem no,' Samuel told him. David nodded. After all, who was he to try to get into the home of the Gods uninvited.

Two days after their return from the interior while they were lounging on the beach smoking tobacco rolled up in school exercise paper Samuel asked David if he would like to go to the other end of the island. 'Mi brother, himfela waka thea fo gavman para-medical pipol. We go go walkabout long Iambi, wea dis ealan finish. Mister Jim go too fo luk luk.' 'Can we swim there?' 'Swim good. Reefs long aelan end. No sharks. Iu- mi take canoe an go go fo turtle. Tugeta iu-mi go long Tsavo aelan in outrigger.' The reason David asked about swimming was the killer sharks. Some people claimed as a result of the last War, the sharks had developed a taste for human flesh but the fact remained even paddling children had been dragged out by their ankles, devoured and only their heads washed up. Guadacanal might look a paradise island but, according to Jim, between the crocodiles in the rivers and the sharks in the sea swimming was not the national pastime. They set off in the jeep next morning and after purchasing food in Honiara continued along the coast under the shady coconut groves looking for somewhere to eat lunch. Finally they stopped near a river mouth. A wrecked warship straddled a sand-bar fifty yards out from the shore and while the fish they had bought simmered in coconut milk and Jim sketched, David and Samuel risked swimming out to the wreck where within the open hold they discovered all sorts of exotic fish and colourful corals. It was only when they hopped over the sun-scalded deck that David was horrified to discover a twenty foot shark basking in the shade below the far side. 'himfela sleep,’ whispered Sammy when they had retreated to the safety of the open hull. 'Himfela okay.' David looked longingly at the safety of the shore so tantalisingly close, and finally after assuring himself the shark hadn't moved and reluctantly abandoning his hesitation he made a dash for the beach chased by unimaginable horrors of snapping teeth and instant bisection, never pausing until he raced out of the warm shallows and lay trembling with relief in the white sand. Fish, rich and creamy from the coconut milk had never tasted so good.

All afternoon the track continued along the coast half buried in flowering shrubs and dazzled by enormous butterflies. They forded rivers and passed villages propped up in the sand while the sea broke over long inshore reefs cradling lagoons of softest azure blue. Finally the mountains rushed the shore and the island halted in an enclosed bay bounded by reefs and rocks and tumbling down forest. A stream babbled over polished stones, a lofty tree protected a green meadow and on the far side of the bay a hut and some canoes marked the location of the paramedical team.

Samuel's brother, Mark, had the responsibility of leading this team to remote coastal villages on the far side of the island to spray huts against malaria and treat the sufferers, but it didn't seem to daunt him. Just now the outboard engine for the big dug-out was broken and they were waiting for spares. They had been waiting some time. This didn't seem to daunt them either. Absence of hurry was an infectious if sometimes irritating aspect of island life. Recently even the controller of the island radio transmitter had gone on walkabout taking the key

with him and halting all broadcasting until he bothered to return. Now at Lambi after the para-medics had recovered from an afternoon of doing nothing, everyone gathered for an impromptu game of cricket in the patch of meadow, using the tree as a wicket and a broken paddle for a bat. Samuel's attention on the outfield was diverted by seeing crayfish in the stream and between overs he and David sneaked off to catch them .That night after Jim had retired to his camp-bed under a net beside the jeep, Samuel suggested they went turtle hunting. Leaving their clothes on the beach and taking only an underwater torch they paddled the dugout across the dark bay towards the reefs Sammy singing and David anxiously watching the surf breaking ahead of them. In the lee of the swirling reef they slipped underwater following the torch beam down among darting fish and seductive anenomies until looming unsteadily into view came the pale shell of a turtle. Grabbing the rim between them they steered it to the surface and hoisted it struggling over the dipping side of the canoe. Avoiding several imminent capsizes they got back inboard, David paddling furiously for the glimmer of shoreline and Samuel clutching the turtle and crooning the tuneless island dirge. 'Are we really going to kill it,' asked David. Singing to it first seemed a bit like the Walrus and the Carpenter inviting the oysters to tea. 'Sing long himfela spirit. Telem spirit not die. Spirit bicam free long other aelans. Telem spirit be happy go go from turtle body.' After several days of settled weather, no rain and a steady south breeze they decided to take the outrigger canoe over to Tsavo island. The outrigger felt much more stable than the dug-out and David paddled confidently driving it forward beyond the swirling waters of the reef until the whole ocean lay before them. Into this vast expanse they dissolved, a floating speck in the folds and valleys and rolling downs of the waves until land became only a memory on the horizon and the ocean swell bore them away beyond time and interference.

'I thought we were going to Tsavo island?' said David, noting in a detached sort of way that it was slipping far behind. Sammy grinned.' Iu-mi go long mi friend, luk!' Far ahead he saw nursing the waves dolphins leaping and curving out of the sea. One, two, in pairs, in dozens skimming the surface, plunging and soaring came an armada of acrobats. David was delighted by the sight until he realised they were indeed coming for them, charging the frail outrigger, shadows streaming just below the surface, swerving and diving, racing away and returning. 'Thea cum long luk-luk iu,' said Samuel. 'I telem luk-luk iu.' Being inspected by a hundred or more dolphins dismayed David. What were they making of him? Did he come up to expectations? What should he do? Smile, wave? 'Thea cum fo telem iu hallo,' said Sammy, smiling happily at his enthusiastic audience. 'No one would ever believe it,' thought David, but even that no longer mattered. He didn't have to prove or convey this to anyone. Samuel was singing again, beating out the rhythm with his paddle. 'I telem iu-mi one-talk. Dolfin gudfala. Himfala sa-savee. Dolfin happy spirit, free spirit. Dolfin help pipol.' 'Samuel,' said David when they returned to the bay and lay salt streaked and tired out in the warm sand. 'You don't belong this world.' Sammy grinned. 'Bicos dolfin mi one-talk. Sapos iu no blong this world!' He lay looking up at the sky. 'Mi spirit blong aelan god, sea god, paradise bird. Mi spirit luv dolfin spirit. 0ne taem pipol hungri long Malaita. Chif telem grandfather fo savee help. Grandfather go go long outrigger, go raon telem dolfin.' He counted three hundred on his body. 'All dolfin swim long Malaita an pipol hungri no more.' 'How can you kill dolphin if they are your friends.' 'Dolfin savee. Spirit beautiful, spirit gud. Dolfin luv grandfather. Trast im. Giv up dolfin bodi fo hungri pipol.' 'Sometimes people die to save animals,' said David,

'Long wea?' asked Samuel disbelieving. 'England,' he said. 'Jim told me.' Samuel nodded thoughtfully. 'Very strange pipol. Inglish pipol.' It had not rained all the time they passed at Lambi on the island-end and when they drove back to Honiara they noticed how the river levels had dropped. The mission school was still closed and David and Samuel lived out at the hut passing the days on the beach or by the river. David wanted to visit Samuel's grandfather, but Samuel said he saw no one these days.

'Wia iu cum long Solomon Aelan's,' Samuel asked one day. They were bsy carving in miniature the totem figure heads of the war-canoes, filing down pieces of mother- of-pearl from the inside of conch shells to make eyes and teeth. 'Wia iu cum long hea?' Samuel repeated. David frowned. It was not an easy thing to explain. Not knowing what it was he was looking for but occasionally coming up clues. Beyond the river he watched the

inaccessible mountains. 'Trying to find where I belong, I suppose. Only I wonder sometimes if I'm not hundreds of years too late.' He glanced at Samuel. 'I don't think I belong to this century at all.' 'Iu go go raon fo luk-luk your tribe, your one-talk.' Sammy smiled 'I very happy iu mi go go blong same path olketa.' Every day they went to the bungalow to see Jim and work in the garden collecting yams and fruit. By night they slept in the hut and David who nowadays slept soundly on the thin matting lulled by the flowing river remembered afterwards how on two occasions he had been woken up by Samuel asking with strange excitement. 'Wia iu cal mi. Wa iu wan?' ‘I didn't call you. Sammy,' he replied half asleep. But the next time this happened Samuel suddenly stiffened and fell back into a restless swoon that had David running through the night to the mission dispensary to wake the australian nurse. 'He just had a slight epileptic fit,' explained Jim after Samuel had been carried on a litter to the sick room. 'He'll be fine.' And certainly next day Samuel was as bright as ever and remembered nothing of his recurring dream. For several days a dense cloud had hidden the peak of Papamanchua and thunder rumbled more ominously than ever. 'Family squabbles I expect,' said Jim The holidays ended and the mission truck went twice to Honiara to pick up children arriving by boat from the islands. David trotted around helping Father M get things ready and was too busy to notice anything until even Father M stopped to mop his brow and remarked how stifling the air felt. All afternoon the brooding storm threatened the island. Sammy was on kitchen duty and David was cooling off alone in the river when the first rain drops fell, hissing like hail as he grabbed for his lava-lava and raced for cover.

The deluge came with such a sudden gale of wind that he was bowled clean over into the floundering bushes. Around him branches crashed to the ground and palm fronds flew away like sails. In an open clearing a hut was instantly plundered into a dust of straw and sticks. Protecting his head in his hands David struggled forwards dodging the whiplash branches and clambering through tangles of felled trees. Shoved and buffeted by the shrieking wind, his eyes reduced to slits against the pelting rain he forced a way back to the bungalow where Jim waited at the door, storm lantern in his hand. He had toweled himself down vigorously and the two of them were drinking mugs of tea at the table unable to hear each other for the noise outside when the earthquake struck. It was such a novel experience that David thought he was fainting. Table, walls, floor pitched and swayed around as they both clutched to hold on. Above the noise of the storm added the roar of demolition. Everything fell over. The lantern tipped and went out, pots and plates cascaded over the cement floor. A tree crashed onto the roof and David prayed tensely for preservation. How long it lasted he had no idea but when it stopped the aftermath of violence took over. Thunder and lightning split the island, a fresh onslaught of rain pelted the shattered roof and the whole blasted world outside lit up in detonated flashes. Suddenly the door flew open and Father M rushed in with Barnabas to see if they were all right. There had been a great deal of damage, he told them, but just now he was more concerned counting heads than worrying about that. 'Sammy he long hia?' asked Barnabas. 'When storm come he ran off kitchen duty telem he go luk-luk fo if you okay.' 'He must be out at the hut,' said Jim and Father M added quickly, 'I expect, he'll be all right. He will know what to do, but you'd better go up there with Barnabas.'

Nervously David pulled on a plastic raincoat and set off. It was an eerie sight. The whole forest had fallen flat. They crossed the ruined cassava gardens to the river boiling past like a waterspout and rising by the minute. Clambering along the broken bank they aimed towards the hut David hoping that some how it could have withstood the storm and that they would find Samuel sheltering inside. But he was far from the hut when Barnabas stumbled on him, half in, half out of the river, his vest torn off, his head cradled between rocks.

Barnabas gently raised Samuel's broken head in his hands and started crooning, rocking himself slowly to and fro while David squatted beside him wide-eyed and numb of feeling, amazed only at the fateful impulse that had brought Samuel out here alone instead of having him check the bungalow, and then battered the life from him on the rocks. He hardly noticed how the storm had died away. Samuel seemed so close that at any moment he could have returned to his body, sat up and smiled. Touching him David felt the garland of feathers wet against his skin. He shivered.

Barnabas had stopped chanting. 'Samuel go now,' he said. ‘Him okay. He go long home.' It was true. Samuel no longer hovered nearby. It was as if he had flown suddenly clean away. David stood up. He wanted to wave or whisper something like farewell, but instead all he could say with a rueful grin at the memory was. 'No crash landings this time, Sammy.' He felt just a little envy at the journey Samuel was making. He knew he wouldn't want to come back. Inland over the silent peak of Papamanchua burst a single explosion of light and thunder. 'He go long Papamanchua,' repeated Barnabas. 'He go home.'