He’ll Hatch

You Some Americans

From a Rabaul Correspondent On mountainous Watom Island off the coast of New Britain, and throughout the villages of eastern New Britain, the question which is still being asked is, “Did Tandy put all his eggs in one basket?”

TANDY is the 31-year-old native gaol escapee (he was serving three months for tax evasion) who fled from Rabaul to Watom Island early this year and set up his own sorcery cult.

In his alchemist’s den—an under ground tunnel which 19 years before had been a Japanese military forti fication—Tandy concocted a powerful powder from the ground-up teeth of one of his ancestors.

He also made magic charms of wood and grass, and spread the good word of how “the big men from America are coming soon to help us live a better life”.

Then one morning he told his fol lowers that a submarine had surfaced off the island and an American on board had handed him some eggs.

Tandy duly displayed the eggs, bedded neatly in a little basket decorated with magic charms. To the less credulous of his followers the eggs appeared to be of the ordinary hen variety—and neither very big nor very fresh into the bargain.

Magic Eggs

But Tandy maintained they were magic eggs, and that one day they would hatch out into fully-equipped American soldiers ready to take orders from the native people of the island.

A government patrol heard of Tandy’s claims and crossed to the island to investigate the position.

The patrol also wanted to recapture Tandy following his gaol escape from Rabaul, but they could only find the sorcerer’s apprentice, a native named Tolangoram. The patrol heard the weird story of how Tandy and Tolan goram had disinterred the body of an elderly man, ground up his teeth, and offered the powder as a “soul

strengthening medicine”.

Later a search of a cave recovered Tandy’s magic basket containing six ®ggs. Some of the natives said they believed there had been other eggs.

Talongoram went to gaol for three months after pleading guilty to a charge of having spread rumours dangerous to the maintenance of law and order. (PIM, Feb,, p. 130).

Since then extensive searching has failed to discover Tandy, although he had a close brush with the author ities near Vunadadir on the Gazelle Peninsula one afternoon.

Provided he didn’t have all his eggs in the one basket, he probably has a few left and is still waiting for them to hatch so that he can stir up the cult again.

But the average Tolai native of New Britain—who is a practical fellow, although prone to superstition

—has not taken Tandy’s cult very seriously.

“Maybe he is waiting for a hen to bring him some more eggs so that he can invent a new story.” said one.