Papua by Peter Watt Page A

them. They met little resistance from the shocked villagers. One of the porters did not see the headman until it was too late. His rifle lay in the grass beside him as he shackled a young man. Pierre saw the chief’s stone axe cleave his head and fired a shot that threw the luckless chief back from his victim. He had chambered a second round and approached the fallen man with great caution. The chief lay on his back moaning from the pain of the bullet, which had entered below the collarbone and smashed a hole through his back. O’Leary strode up to Pierre and glanced at the dead porter. Without a word the Irishman lifted the shoulder butt of his rifle and smashed the fallen chief’s face. Again and again O’Leary hammered the man’s head with the brass plated butt until the man’s head had split open.
    He turned and surveyed the carnage. At least ten villagers lay dead or dying. Many had gained their senses and fled to the village. Even the warriors who had not been wounded fled after their people. Here they could regroup to hunt the killers on their trek south across the rolling hills of tall grasses. But this would take time as they had been denied their leadership with the killing of the best warrior amongst them.
    O’Leary did not give them time. With his prisoners secured and the young girl bound he ordered half his men to advance on the village. They shot at anything that moved and the people fled even further into the surrounding forests to watch helplessly as their village was put to the torch. O’Leary knew that by doing so, the idea of hunting him would take second place as the warriors recovered as much as they could from the ruins of the smouldering houses.
    When he was satisfied that he had eliminated the threat to his rear the Irishman moved out. By the time they reached the planters in the south he knew that his prisoners would have lost all resistance to marking the paper that legally indentured them to the European planters. And the young girl would prove to be a pleasant diversion at night in his bed. It was a pity she would not live to see the bright lights of Port Moresby, he mused, as he watched his men push and shove the shackled prisoners into a column for the march. As they approached the township he would simply cut her throat one night and leave her in the bush to be eaten by the scavenging wild pigs.
    Jack Kelly stood at the bow of the Burns Philp steamer gazing at the Port Moresby shoreline. Not much had changed since he was last in the frontier settlement in 1915. It was still a small town of prefabricated houses with corrugated tin roofs embraced by the bare, brown hills and the homes of around fourteen hundred Europeans. From the bay he could see the dusty streets and the long wharf jutting out from the land. The thin strip of sand of Ela Beach was lined with tall trees and the town dominated by the Burns Philp tower that marked the company’s trading place in the almost forgotten Australian territory and its capital. Hopefully his old friend would be waiting on the wharf after receiving the telegram he had sent from Sydney weeks earlier.
    It was mid morning and a haze of smoke hung over the land. The natives were burning off, as was their tradition in the dry season, and the town could have been in outback Australia.
    ‘It does not appear to be as I imagined,’ George Spencer said as he joined Jack at the bow. ‘I was expecting green jungles and coconut trees.’
    Jack grinned as he lit the cigar he had been hoarding to celebrate his return to the mysterious island north of Australia. ‘Lot of people think that. But not far from here, around the coast, you will see just that.’
    George leaned on the railing and peered beyond the town. ‘They don’t seem very imposing,’ he said gesturing to the hills. ‘I was under the impression that they blocked the way inland.’
    Jack sucked on the cigar and watched the blue grey smoke whirl away on a gentle tropical breeze. ‘A bit