Kuku-Kuku Raid

By Jack O'Neill

rIE hut was small; no more than eighteen feet by ten. The walls were double rows of upright sap lings, lashed with split lawyer cane; the roof, bark stripped from a fallen pine tree. The doorway was narrow— like the walls, designed for defence.

It stood in the middle of a clearing; or rather, the mountain jungle had been ruthlessly cut down, but the stand of stately pines this revealed, though a dan ger to the camp beneath, had been spared. They towered a hundred feet and more above the hut and the nearby boys’ houses, dwarfing them into insig nificance. Here, a section of sloping ter race jutted from the steeper mountain side.

Inside the hut, a white man lay on the bunk, fully dressed, miserable in body, mind filled with the depressing fever fancies which, at such times, take advantage of a weakened will to insinu ate themselves. His smarting eyeballs made reading a too arduous means of escape—even if every book and scrap of paper had not already been read more than once.

There came a warning whisper. The cook boy spoke: “Master!” And, again; “Master!

Kanaka ’e come.”

The white man rolled off the bed and, in three strides, reached the door. At the lower end of the clearing were five stocky, dark-skinned Kuku-kukus. There was something furtive in their attitude as they stood there, close together as if for mutual support. One of them waved a couple of black, withered bananas above his head.

“Obe! Obe!”

The word is a comprehensive term for foodstuffs brought to trade; and, since trading is essentially a peace-time operation, it is recognised as a declara tion of peaceful intentions.

This time, the white man was suspi cious. The very attitude of the group, lacking that confident approach of un conscious innocence, shouted danger.

And those two miserable bananas! In Kuku-kuku country it is safer to be sus picious.

At a gesture from the white man, they advanced hesitantly, and took their stand on a fallen tree-trunk that was the recognised limit of approach to his camp. He stood in the doorway, eyes scrutinising the visitors. Familiar with his strictly enforced rule, they had not brought their bows. His eyes probed beneath the folds of the long, beaten bark capes suspended from the topnot of hair left on their cropped heads, for the tell-tale bulge of the more deadly stone clubs.

Satisfied, at last, that they carried only their light, adze-like native axes, he strode over and sprang up on to the log, crowding the nearest man. He was un armed, but in response to his warning to “watch out good”, the cook boy had taken the place he vacated at the door way. Within reach of his hand was his own shotgun, and his master’s rifle.

The white man was surprised to notice that the man nearest him was visibly trembling, and the others were obvi ously uneasy. Although he was not to know that they had come with the in tention of attacking a camp defended only by the cook boy, and that the trembling was the result of nervous tension, yet his suspicions deepened.

After ascertaining that they had not come to trade, he ordered them off and, still puzzled, returned thankfully to his bunk.

The boy resumed his bread making, twisting and thumping the stiff, rubbery dough.

TWO hours later, pandemonium shat tered the jungle peace. All the horrors of hell were being enacted in the mountain-walled gully upstream —so it seemed. Horrible shrieks, inter spersed with terrified shouting, were bandied back and forth from the crowd ing mountainsides, with startling effect.

Through the tumult, a reiterated cry forced its way, grew in strength. The cook picked it up.

“Fight e’ come up now.”

Before the white man had more than adjusted cartridge belt and snatched the

Winchester, worn bright from constant handling, the first of his terrified boys ran into the clearing, closely followed by the main body.

The kanakas had surrounded them under cover of the jungle, and suddenly had attacked, while they worked.

A count of heads showed one man missing, but they assured him, and a cry from up the creek confirmed it, that one of the armed boys, from number two box, had stayed behind.

With two volunteers, the white man hurried warily up the little stream. Soon they met the missing boy. The raiders had not come down even as far as the number two box;- he had waited there.

They went on, eyes flickering back and forth to the high commanding banks, the jungle on the mountainside, where a movement might betray an ambush.

The sound of their passage was smoth ered by the noisy little stream.

When they neared the last corner of high mud-stone “bottom”, the white man went forward alone, to peer through the crack between two big boulders. His rifle was half raised; there was a hun gry gleam in his eyes.

Nothing but the jungle and the stream. His eyes probed every tangled vantage point; picked out the larger trees for scrutiny; held the whole scene in an all-embracing stare, hoping to catch some fleeting movement. Nothing.

Water still ran unheeded through the abandoned sluice box. They went for ward, still expectant.

From there on, signs of the raid were evident in a trail of spent arrows; stuck in the tree trunks, in the banks, shat tered on the stones. In the bank, where the boss-boy had stood, at the head of the box, and where his shotgun still leaned, one stuck fast, buried a foot in the soil. It had sped between the boys arm and body; he hadn’t stopped for the gun.

One of the boys turned the water out of the box.

The raiders had got a knife or two, a tomahawk. What did it matter? The white man felt weak and tired in all his joints again. He leaned against the bank, while the boys collected the scat tered tools.

“How much kanaka come, Bulwa?”

“Plenty more, master. Bush full up.”

Patiently: “How much eye belong you, look ’im?”

The boy turned, finger pointing here, there, marking them off.

“Three fella.”

“Lulus, you look ’im how much?”

“Master, me look ’im two fella,” point ing, “here. Me run all-same dog.”

His big mouth split into a wide grin.

Old Bulwa cackled.