Gentlemen Of Papua

By Arthur Wyborn

I LOOKED at the buck as he came to the door of my office. He returned my look boldly.

“What do you want?” I queried, gently, as his beautifully-starched white pants registered themselves on my mind. He straightened his necktie, and his eye roved appraisingly over my cotton singlet and old khaki shorts.

“I wanta work here, boss; you very good man; that way I want!”

My grey matter simmered, as it usually does when a gentleman of that type tells me I’m a good man—especially when he

speaks from the depths of trousers and tie. However, I’m a strong, silent man, and controlled my emotions.

“What do you know?”

He didn’t take this as a request for the latest from the horse’s mouth, but replied impressively: “Taubada, I savi every somethink. Lorries, engine, carpen ter, I savi makem bread, washem clothes.

I savi too much! You pay me ten pounds one moon, alright, I work like ’ell! Savi too much, me!”

“Ten pounds, eh? Did you iron those trousers you’re wearing?”

“Not plurry likely, boss. My cookboy ’e do ’em!” and he pointed to another Papuan product who stood behind him, literally glowing with reflected glory.

He must have gathered from the glint in the mirrors of my soul that there was nothing doing, for he changed his tactics.

“Boss,” he whispered, confidentially, with an artistic glance round to see that no one was near enough to hear, “boss, I savi another somethink! I savi where gold he stop along ground!”

And he stepped back a pace to see the effect of his bombshell.

I listened coldly to his variation of our own old gold-brick yarn, and waited for the yarn of the Fiji uncle, or his Papuan relative. He didn’t appear, however; the buck may have decided that he was wast ing the sweetness of his eloquence, for he again changed the subject of his dis course.

“Boss, I gotta good canoe. You wanta buy ’im?”

I nodded, for I needed an extra canoe.

“Horright, I bring ’im to-morrow,” he said.

Next day he turned up with an canoe which he pulled alongside the bank of the river. It was made from a beautiful pair of logs, and I made an offer as soon as I saw it. I was peeved, because I had not offered less, for he accepted with alacrity.

I returned to the office, and was just going to get the cash from the safe, when my bossboy came to the door.

“You havem canoe tied up again, tau bada?”

In a flash, I saw the light. That adjec tive noun of a buck had pinched my own largest canoe from where it was moored up the river, re-tied it and disguised it a bit with planks stolen from my sawpit nearby, cut a few fancy marks on the sides of the logs, and nearly sold it to me.

Luckily, I had on my heaviest boots, and life was real and life was earnest for a few moments. It wasn’t on the Sands of Time that I left my footprints, how ever.

After the buck had fled, I was wearily wading through the Native Ordinances (which are framed to prevent iniquitous white men from taking advantage of the unsophisticated native) when the news reached me.

It appeared that, while I was dealing with the mastermind, his confederate had carefully cleaned up the clothes-line.

It would have meant three days’ walk to the local Government station to prose cute, and my time is fully occupied, so that the two products of young Papua ac tually won. The-iron entered into my soul as I realised it; enough to make a six inch nail, I imagine.

In the course of a tour of the Empire, Lord and Lady Baden Powell will visit Thursday Island in December next. Con tingents of native scouts from the Torres Strait Islands will assemble at T.L to greet their distinguished chief.