St. Crispin's Day At Taskul

service and more; they’ll steady them up if they start to get excited.”

He pointed to a couple of grizzled old police who’d grown grey in the service.

“With a couple of those old blokes, I’d go anywhere!”

They certainly looked formidable, and I felt a shiver of sympathy for the Tsoi Islanders. I hoped they would go quietly when they were arrested.

By this time the sun was setting, and we walked through the dusk to the armoury, threading our way through the little groups of grinning policemen. The inspector fired off the weapons he would take the next morning.

He even had an ancient and asthmatic Owen sub-machine gun, which I personally wouldn’t have trusted in a battle with a mouse.

Still that was what they had given him, along with a few riot guns and a couple of boxes of tear gas bombs.

After that we went back up the hill to the patrol officer’s house to dinner, a rather nervy game of Five Hundred, and bed.

The Fatal Day I would like to report that I was awake at dawn on the fatal day; but the fact is that everyone was nearly ready to leave by the time I crawled out of bed.

The Administration men had pistols strapped round their waists, and the police inspector was in full regalia as if he were taking a Governor-General’s guard of honour.

Everyone was businesslike but silent as we threaded our way down the hill to the wharf, where the 40 police in their tin hats were squeezed onto the workboat.

The Administration men climbed on to the cabin roof, and sat in four collapsible chairs set up for them, and the workboat chugged off into the pearly morning, leaving your reporter alone on the wharf.

The Administration had decided it might be expensive to compensate my relatives if I got in the way of an irate Tsoi Islander while the party was engaged in the struggle! I was to follow the course of events in the Government trawler which would arrive in a couple of hours. The trawler finally came, but we just sat by the radio and waited through the forenoon and into the early after noon.

Then, at last, came the dramatic

message: Stand by to take off 20 prisoners from the Tsoi Islands!

We tore off, and hove-to half a mile off shore, anxiously watching the little islands through binoculars, trying to make some sense of all the movement among the coconut palms.

At last, one of the ADO’s appeared, accompanied by a lone cop and two dejected-looking New Guineans in dirty sweat shirts and lap-laps. Surely this couldn’t be the fruits of the day’s action?

It was.

“Nothing much happened really,” said the ADO.

“When they saw us arrive, a lot of them moved down to a village a few hundred yards off; we cornered them there and told them to get out their tax money.

“The first 20 we called up refused to pay, so we charged them. But when they saw we were serious they all pulled out their money. They had had it in their lap-laps all the time, and they were just seeing how far they could push us.

“Don’t ask me why these two didn’t pay up,” added the ADO, in dicating the two hard-core des peradoes with him. “Anyway, once everyone handed over their money, we dropped the charges against them.

By rights we should have gone on with it, but they’ve given in, and that’s the main thing.”

And so, in the gathering dark, we headed back to Kavieng, our two criminals sleeping soundly on the crew’s mess table at the stern.

At Kavieng, the District Officer was waiting at the wharf with a radio message from Taskul saying that one of the prisoners had turned out to be exempt from tax anyway, but had been too half-witted to mention it at the time. The relatives of the other had stumped up the money, so he was to be returned to New Hanover by the next morning’s boat.

The net result, then, was no prisoners at all. In fact, it turned out to be a positive gain for one of them, the tax-exempted man. When it was discovered he was suffering from a hernia they whipped him up to the Kavieng hospital and gave him a free operation. Now that he’s fit again, they might even get £2/10/- tax from him next year.

I believe they still like Lyndon B and Ladybird over on New Hanover (in fact, elsewhere on New Hanover they have since gaoled a few of the lads for not paying their taxes), but officially the cult is now “dormant”.