an Adventurous Duck

A True Tale of an Adventurous Duck

By Peter England

DO you know the Schouten Islands? All small islands, of course, have something remantic about them. When they are tropical small islands, and when they have as pleasantly sinister an aspect as those of the Schouten Group off NE New Guinea, their charm is irresistible.

Wokeo. Koil, Blup-Blup, Kadover, Bam. All volcanic, and with the exception of low-lying Koil, all mountainous, steep-to, no harbours, and only the narrowest ledge of holding ground falling away into un fathomable depths within a few yards.

They lie between Wewak and the mouth of the Sepik River, at dist ances ranging up to forty-five miles from the mainland, and they are inhabited by a hardy race of seamen and fishermen who think nothing of braving the intervening space pf fickle seas and changeable winds in their fragile dugout canoes.

Black and frowning, with hungry breakers snarling round their ragged buttresses, they are frightening— but completely fascinating.

Well, this is a story of Blup-Blup, and it started one morning when I went down to the Angoram wharf (Angoram is 25 miles up the Sepik River) to meet the ketch Taynna, just pulling in. The boat was hardly secured—Jack Pert was still giving orders as to the disposal of lines and springs—when an enormous drake climbed awkward’y over the gunwhale, up onto the wharf, and looked around. When I say enorm ous I don’t mean just very big He was at least twice as big as any duck Id ever seen before, and also twice as dignified and superior.

He gave a couple of superior asthmatic coughs, waddled across the wharf, looked left, looked right and then wandered off down To bacco Road towards Chu Leong’s trade store.

By this time Jack had come ashore. We exchanged greetings and he gave me a bunch of Bills of Lading. I said: “That’s some duck you ve got there. What did you do —mate his mother with an emu?”

Jack laughed. “Yes, he’s a bit of nL he? 1 Picked him up on Blup-Blup. He swam there!”

“He what?”

Well that’s actually what this colossal old duck had done. What happened was this: Every month or so the May-flies swarm on the Sepik River. When they do —swarming,

touching the water, and then float ing down with the current in frothy ribbons—all the natives in Angoram race down to their canoes and out into the stream to gather the harvest.

Only seconds behind, all the ducks in Angoram p l unge into the water and paddle out into midstream for a good feed. Sometimes they get so absorbed in gastronomy that they forget that the Sepik averages four knots, and presently frantic owners have to forget May-flies to race down-river and round up their errant poultry.

Well, Jack’s drake was the One That Got Away. Obviously a gross feeder, he had kept his beak down to business until, 24 hours later, he had looked up to find himself far from land and with Blu-Blup straight ahead. With an odd May fly still to be got for the picking, no doubt, the old cove just paddled along in leisurely fashion, and hav ing covered the 30-odd miles of blue water, stepped ashore on Blup-Blup.

On Blup-Blup, so Jack told me, there are no ducks, but there is a very considerable popu’ation of domestic fowls. When Jack arrived at the island, Sinbad (as he soon called the web-footed beach comber) came down to the landing to meet him, escorted by a bevy of adoring hens. Even in these idyllic surroundings a beachcomber some times yearns for home—local reports said he had already been there for 1 8 m onths—and so Sinbad sailed with the Taynna, leaving behind him broken hearts in every poultry yard on the is’and.

I would like to make this a moral story, with a reformed hero settling down to respectability in Tobacco Road, occasionally telling the story of his travels and adventures to an open-mouthed audience of chi’dren and grandchildren, and winding up with a warning against the dangers of gluttony. s alas! A few minutes before the Taynna sai’ed, Sinbad came waddling along the road, pushed his way through the idlers on the wharf, climbed carefully down on to the ship, selected a comfortable position in the shade of a packing case on the main hatch, gave a dis interested glance at the spectators, and said, in all but words, “All right, lets go!” * * * Last I heard of him he was do ing very well at Kerosene Island, Madang.