My first business now, was to try and find out the nature of the rapid and deadly disease from which the people were suffering, and with this object in view I consulted the priests of the Sacred Heart. The only London Missionary Society man in the district had just left for England. The priests were looking after his Samoan and Fijian teachers, who were all blue with funk, and were also supplying them with medicines. I believe four of the teachers died during the epidemic, as well as a number of the European members of the Sacred Heart. I soon came to the conclusion that the source of the infection was in the water supply of the villages, and ordered that all water for the domestic use of the villagers should be drawn from the San Joseph river, or other big streams, where pollution was practically impossible, instead of from pools near the river. Threats, punishment, persuasion, nothing was of any avail; still the people would persist in drawing and drinking the water from the pools to which they had been in the habit of going.

I rushed through the district with a flying patrol, and made the lives of the village constables and chiefs a burden to them; but still the natives died like flies, and still they drank from the pools. In each village I made the village constable give me a list of houses in which bodies had been buried, and then set the police to prod with their bayonets through the earthen floor until the corpses were discovered; whereupon, we made the householder disinter them and plant them in the cemetery; if there were no cemetery, I laid one out for them. I sent every householder off to gaol in whose house I found a corpse, until Basilio sent to say there would soon be a famine in the Station; then, to prevent this, I levied toll of food upon the villagers, and plundered their gardens if they did not pay. But still the people drank from the pools, and sickened and died.

I called a meeting of chiefs and village constables, and threatened and prayed them to stop the burial in the houses and the drinking of polluted water. “We can’t stop it,” they said; “you are strong and wise, tell us what to do.” I racked my brains, and at last I thought I saw a way out. “Take this message to your people,” I said: “I am going myself to poison every hole from which they draw water, except running streams, and they can come and see me do it; after that, I shall burn down every house in which a man is buried, and if I find five corpses in one village, I shall burn the whole village. In the meantime they are all to leave the villages, and camp in shelters half a mile away.” Then I wondered how I could make the people believe that their wells and pools were really poisoned; hunting amongst my supply of drugs, I found about half a pound of Permanganate of Potash, a few grains of which, placed in a bucketful of water, is sufficient to produce a red colour. “Ah,” I thought to myself, “now for a little sorcery.” I carefully filled up two wine glasses, one with Ipecacuanha wine, an emetic; the other with water, coloured by Permanganate to a passable imitation of it. Then I returned to my meeting of chiefs and village constables, carrying the glasses in my hands.

I addressed the meeting in this way. “You see these glasses? They contain a virulent poison, the poison I am going to put in the wells and pools. I am going to drink one glassful and Maina, v.c., the other; but the strength of my magic will save us from dying, though you will be able to see what a bad poison it is.” Maina was not at all keen on drinking his brew, but as his brother v.c.’s all told him to rely upon me, and I told him he would get the sack as a v.c., and gaol for disobedience of orders, if he did not, he plucked up courage and swallowed the nauseous draught with many grimaces. I then swallowed mine, passed round cigarettes, and awaited developments. In twenty minutes Maina asked whether I was certain of the efficacy of my protection against the poison I had given him, as he was feeling very ill. I explained that I was, and that he would be quite safe, unless at any time he had neglected his duties as a v.c.: should he have done that, he would be extremely ill for a few minutes, and then get quite well again. Somehow or other I think Maina must have been remiss in his duties, for in a few minutes he was most uncommonly sick, after which he rapidly recovered. The meeting then dispersed, fully convinced that my threat of poisoning the water was no idle one, and prepared to explain to the people the colour and nature of the poison I intended using.

Village after village I then visited, drawing from each well or pool a bucketful of water, which I coloured red with Permanganate and exhibited to the natives: after which, I made some hocus pocus passes with my hands over the pool or well, whilst I poured in the mixture, dismally chanting all the time, “Boney was a warrior, Boney was a thief, Boney came to my house and stole a leg of beef.” My voice, I may remark, is not a melodious one. At very big pools I constructed a little boat of leaves—like the paper boats made by children—and placing a little gunpowder in it, I focussed the rays of the sun through one of the lenses removed from my field-glasses, until it exploded in a puff of fire and smoke. Then, gazing severely at the village constable and assembled villagers, I would groan loudly, and explain that the poison devils I had placed in that particular pool were of the most malignant description, and I hoped that they would not be fools enough to allow them to enter their systems through the medium of the water. “Not much!” was the equivalent of their reply; “we are not going to risk magic of this sort. No! Not even if we have to walk miles for our water.”

I sent a report to Blayney describing the symptoms of the sick, and asking for advice. Blayney was a doctor, as well as R.M., the only one besides Sir William MacGregor in New Guinea. He replied, “I can’t come to help you, I am tied up by this infernal Treasury work; there is no doubt, I think, that the illness is enteric fever. Look to your water supply and drive the people out of the infected houses.” I had already done all this, so I merely continued patrols to make sure that the natives were carrying out my orders; the immediate effect being, that the sickness slackened and the deaths dwindled down to almost nothing. “Thank Heaven,” I thought, “I have got it under.” Suddenly a fresh outburst occurred, sweeping like a wave with awful virulence through the people, who were now mostly camped away from the villages.

At my wits’ end, I again assembled the chiefs and village constables. “What foolery are you up to now?” I asked. “Are you drinking the water from the poisoned wells, or burying the dead in the villages or houses?” “Oh no,” they said, “we have obeyed you most strictly; also we have carried out a precaution suggested by the sorcerers.” “What was that?” I demanded. “They have told us that when a death takes place, the body of the dead person is to be licked by all the relations.” Frantic with rage, I jumped to my feet and howled for the Station guard. “Strip the uniform and Government clothes off these men, and throw them into gaol, until I can devise some means of bringing them to their senses,” I yelled, as the police came running up. Pallid with funk, and loudly protesting that they were good and loyal servants of the Government, my village constables and chiefs were hauled away. Soon, from the villages, came streaming in the wives, friends, and relations of the imprisoned men, weeping bitterly and praying me to release their husbands, fathers, brothers, etc. Then I took counsel with Basilio. “The men are not to blame,” he said, “it is the sorcerers; you will do no good by punishing the v.c.’s and chiefs, who are trying to help you, merely because they are fools.” “Very true; but how can I catch the elusive sorcerer?” I remarked. “The v.c.’s are badly frightened now,” said Basilio; “scare them a little more, and they will drop a hint as to the whereabouts of some of them.” I had my v.c.’s brought back, and threatened and abused them alternately; they all—with one exception—squirmed, lied, and tried to excuse themselves, and all denied knowledge as to the whereabouts of the sorcerers. “How then did you receive the message from them, as to the licking of the bodies of the dead?” I demanded. Dead silence and more squirms.

Then I turned to the one man who had not lied and excused himself. “What have you to say for yourself?” “Nothing: if you choose to put me in gaol, put me there; but since you came, I have most strictly carried out the orders of the Government, and I have had no communication with sorcerers; neither have I had any deaths in my village since you closed the wells; also the people of my village have not licked the bodies of the dead.” Three minutes’ inquiry confirmed the truth of this village constable’s statement: whereupon, I returned his uniform, gave him a brass bird of paradise badge (the badge worn on the caps of the constabulary), and told him, that for the future he was senior village constable for the district with double pay, and when he visited the Station he should have the right to sleep in the constabulary barracks, instead of in the visitors’ house. The name of this man was Aia Kapimana, and on his leaving to return to his village, he called up a youth of about fourteen: “My son,” he proudly said; “I give him to you as a servant.” I didn’t want a servant, but not wishing to offend the man, whose feelings I had already most unjustly hurt, I said I would keep him for a while. The boy had the same name as his father, “Aia,” and was a nice smart-looking lad; I sent him to join Poruta.

This youth remained in my private service for many months, accompanying me afterwards when I left the Mekeo district to go to the South-Eastern Division; I found him to be always loyal and obedient. After he left my service and returned to Mekeo, he was engaged as a private servant by my successor, Amedeo Giulianetti, who was a man, like myself, very severe upon the sorcerers: unfortunately for him, however, he was never very popular with the constabulary. One night Giulianetti was sleeping in the house of the local London missionary on the coast, about twenty miles from Mekeo Station, while his police and Aia were sleeping in native houses some distance away. To Aia, came a sorcerer and said, “You are to shoot your master dead; if I could shoot, I would do it; but as I cannot, you must; and if you refuse I shall strike you dead.” Aia took a police rifle and, accompanied by the sorcerer, walked up to the Mission house; Giulianetti was sleeping with a lighted lamp on a chair beside his bed; Aia blew out Giulianetti’s brains, then, firing another shot at him, fled—as did the sorcerer. The sorcerer, in fording a stream during his flight, was seized by an alligator and severely mangled before he could escape from its jaws; believing then that the alligator was on the side of the Government and that escape was hopeless, he made no further effort to get away, and was secured by the police. Aia either gave himself up to them or was secured by the fathers of the Sacred Heart Mission. These, shortly, were the facts elicited at the trial of Aia and the sorcerer, both of whom were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

At the time the murder took place, I was stationed at Cape Nelson on the north-east coast, and amongst my constabulary were some of the men of the Mekeo detachment, who had been transferred to me there. I have no hesitation now in saying, that I am convinced that all the facts as to how Giulianetti was murdered were not elicited at the trial, and that I believe some of Giulianetti’s police were concerned in it. Firstly, it was not clear how Aia got the rifle and cartridges without the consent and knowledge of the owner; secondly, Aia swore that Giulianetti was sleeping with his mosquito net raised and a lamp burning, thereby allowing Aia a clear view of him. Now, it is utterly impossible for a European, in the Mekeo district, to sleep without a mosquito net; and to say that a man could sleep unprotected, in a room with a light attracting mosquitoes in myriads, is rank absurdity. If the mosquito net was down—as I am convinced it must have been—Giulianetti’s body would not have been visible to the man shooting at him, and some one must have raised it to allow Aia to aim. The shot, according to Aia’s statement, was fired from the doorway; this must have been true, for otherwise, the flash would have scorched the mosquito net or bed-clothes. Two shots were fired: now, Aia was a first-class shot, and had—according to his own statement—killed Giulianetti with the first; why, therefore, did he remain to reload his rifle and fire again, after the first shot had alarmed the house? That second shot came from a rifle other than Aia’s I am convinced. Another point to be considered is, that when the sorcerer first commanded Aia to shoot Giulianetti and threatened him with death if he disobeyed, why did he not appeal for help to the police, who were his friends, and some of whom came from his own village?

My own opinion is that Aia did tell the police, and that some of them were concerned in the murder. This view of mine was shared by my own police at Cape Nelson, and by nearly every member of the constabulary with whom I talked. Another reason I had for thinking that the Mekeo detachment—at that time—would not have been above making away with an unpopular officer was, that on one occasion, while they were under Bramell’s command, the whole lot had arranged to fire at him on the parade ground during inspection. When the time came, however, only one man carried out the plot by raising his rifle, firing, and missing him at about ten paces; Bramell had then deliberately walked up to the man, taken his smoking rifle from him and led him up to the police cell, into which he had shoved the offender, after which, he had resumed his inspection of the squad. Bramell punished the man afterwards, but, as he was in hot water at the time at Headquarters, did not report the incident for fear of—somehow or other—being blamed himself. The punishment he allotted to the culprit was a peculiar one, and one that I cannot say commended itself to me, richly though the mutineer deserved it. At that time there were in the Station two dark cells, one of which was never used, for the reason that on a previous occasion a man had hanged himself in it, and the police thought it was haunted by his ghost; Bramell gave his would-be murderer twenty-four hours in it, telling him that if he lacked company, he could call the ghost.

The police of Mekeo Station had a most extraordinary yarn of a strange happening there, on the night of Giulianetti’s murder (Amadeo, they called him). A group of them were sitting talking together, when one man jumped to his feet, pointed to Giulianetti’s house and exclaimed in surprise, “When did Amadeo return?” They all looked, and saw that the house, which had been in darkness, was lit up, and that Giulianetti, clothed in his usual white clothing, was seated in his chair in the open place between the rooms, looking across the parade ground. They all ran up to the house, to ask him how and when he had returned, and where his police were. As the men went up the steps of the house, it became plunged in darkness: puzzled, they called to Giulianetti and struck matches, and to their surprise could not find him; the lamp, which a few seconds before had apparently been burning brightly, was dead and cold. This story was told me by Sergeant Kimai, who was not an imaginative person.

The attempted murder of Bramell by his police was afterwards the cause of a serious quarrel between him and me, and for a time we were not on speaking terms, though we lived in the same house and dined at the same table. I did not know that Bramell had not reported the matter, and one day, in the course of casual conversation with the Government Secretary, referred to it. Mr. Musgrave pricked up his ears, asked me several questions, and then ordered me to put in a written report; I demurred, pointing out that the alleged shooting at Bramell by the police was all hearsay and Station gossip. Muzzy insisted; whereupon I made out a garbled version of the affair, to which Bramell had no difficulty in giving a flat denial. He, however, then took it into his head that I had been trying to get him into trouble, and “words” ensued, which resulted, as I have said, in a total split between us.

The quarrel ended in a funny way. I had a temporary Port Moresby boy engaged as a servant, who of course knew of the split between Bramell and myself; coming home one day unexpectedly, I found the young reprobate smoking one of my pipes and brushing his hair with my brushes, whereupon I cuffed him soundly. The boy whimpered, and I told him to shut up or he would get a little more; this had the desired effect, and I left. Mr. Musgrave at this time made pets of the Hanuabada boys, as they were called, and always came down like a sledge hammer on any officer who struck one, for whatever cause. After I had gone, the boy sat down outside, waited until he saw Mr. Musgrave in the distance, and then set up a terrific bellowing, as though he had been half murdered. Bramell heard the howls and asked the boy what the row was about; the boy said I had hit him, and he was howling to attract Mr. Musgrave’s attention: Bramell promptly cuffed the howler into silence, and kept him with him until the Government Secretary was safely out of sight. I heard of the incident from the boy, and when Bramell came home that night and went to his side of the verandah, I called after him, “Bramell, have a drink?” He came, had a drink, remarked that, “We were two fools,” and buried the hatchet.

After these digressions I must return to my epidemic and the Mekeo district. I released my chiefs and v.c.’s, after uttering the most blood-curdling threats as to what would happen if they indulged in any more corpse-licking. Again I raced through the district with a patrol, burying the dead and harrying the natives, as well as snapping up a sorcerer here and there. On an average, the patrol covered twenty miles a day, until the men and myself were as thin as catgut, and as tired as a sweated seamstress, from work and worry. We had our prisoners, sorcerers principally, handcuffed on to a chain; one evening, so tired out were we, that I commanded a halt in the middle of a grass patch and told the men to sleep where we stopped. Looking through my men for some one to take charge of the prisoners, I found they were all so utterly done up as not to be relied on to keep awake for half an hour. Aia was the only fresh person, he having sat in charge of our effects, while the constabulary and I worked. Calling Aia, I told him that, seeing the state the patrol was in, I meant to handcuff him on to the chained prisoners, in order that, if during the night they tried to bolt, he might alarm us. Aia protested, but handcuffed he was: in a few minutes I noticed that his hands were so small that he could slip them out of the handcuffs, accordingly I had one clasp of the handcuffs fastened to the prisoners’ chain and the other locked round his ankle, and I also lent him my heavy hunting knife—a most formidable weapon. Then we all slept, the dead heavy sleep that only a tired lot of men know.

Shortly before dawn, one of my men awoke and noticed that Aia and the prisoners had disappeared. He at once awakened the camp, and spreading out in every direction like spokes from the hub of a wheel, one of the men ran into the chain gang, who were soon secured again. They had watched us go to sleep, and had waited until Aia slept also, when they had suddenly seized him and gagged him with their belts—disgusting things those belts were too—then, muffling the clink of the chain with the remainder of their belts, they had slunk away, carrying Aia upside down with them. He had the extreme pleasure of hearing them discuss how they would cut off his ankle with my knife to release themselves, when sufficiently remote from the camp. This incident showed me clearly that it was high time we returned to the Station; for when a patrol is so worn out that it cannot find a man to mount guard, it is evident that its usefulness has ended.

At Mekeo it was my custom to spend a couple of hours on Saturday afternoons attending to any simple surgical cases, or broken bones, brought to me by the village constable. Sometimes I got one that was anything but simple. For instance, on one occasion a native came in with his shoulder all plastered up with mud and leaves; he told me that he had fallen from a cocoanut palm the week before and hurt his shoulder, and that it was so painful that he could not sleep at night and that he meditated suicide. In passing, I might remark that a favourite New Guinea method of suicide is to climb a cocoanut tree, and then drop head first to the ground. I examined the shoulder and found it badly dislocated, but apparently nothing broken. I struggled with that shoulder for a good hour, the man’s howls meanwhile alarming the country for a couple of miles around; then I gave it up in despair. “Are you not going to mend me?” he asked in an injured tone. “Mend you, yes,” I replied. “But I shall have to hurt you a bit, and you make my head ache with your howls.” “I won’t say another word,” he said. Then I sent to the whaleboat for blocks and tackle, which I attached to his arm, after lashing him firmly to pegs driven into the ground; in five minutes, by the aid of that tackle and some lusty police, the shoulder was back in position, and during the whole process the man did not give so much as a whimper.

Another native came in, and exhibited a lot of nasty long gashes about his arms, body and head. “How did you collect these?” I asked. “I got clawed by a bush alligator,” he replied. “Don’t tell me silly lies, there are no alligators in the bush; alligators live in the water,” I retorted. “There are water alligators and bush alligators,” he said; “bush alligators have sharp claws and climb trees.” “Do you mean iguanas?” I asked; “the reptile whose skin you use for your drums?” “No, I don’t,” he said; “the skin of the bush alligator is no good for drums.” I dressed the man’s wounds; and when next I met the Sacred Heart missionaries, I asked them whether they had ever heard a native yarn about a bush alligator. They had frequently heard of it, but had never seen the beast. Old Bushimai, chief of the Binandere, once showed me a lot of scars about his body, which he had got as a young man in an encounter with—as he put it—a devil. Bushimai and his wife were walking through the bush, he being unarmed (I may say he was an enormously powerful man); suddenly the wife, who was following, gave a yell, and, turning round, he saw her in the grasp of a beast strange to him; he got her away, but in so doing sustained the scars he showed me. Bushimai’s description of the beast was like nothing either on the earth, in the sea or sky; he was, however, perfectly satisfied with his own opinion—that it was a devil.

One day, whilst I was engaged attending to my patients, an old woman appeared, followed by a man hobbling along with the aid of a stick; the woman staggered under an enormous bunch of bananas, which she dropped at my feet. “There,” she said, “you cut my husband with your knives and cure him, and I will pay you these bananas.” I looked at the man, and found he had elephantiasis in one limb, which was swollen to an enormous size; I shook my head, and told the woman that I could do no good. “Yes you can,” she said; “I have heard of wonderful things that you have done. I suppose the payment is not enough, but we have nothing else with which to pay you.” Basilio at last made the woman understand that there were things beyond my power, and this was one; and, to make clear to her that it was not for lack of adequate payment, we made her presents of turkey-red twill, tobacco and beads, and also gave her husband an adze, the tool most prized by the Mekeo natives; but in spite of all, it was a very sad couple that went away. A leper once came to me, and he also had to depart disconsolately.

One of my difficulties at Mekeo was to make the natives keep the roads and tracks clean; each village was compelled by law to keep the roads throughout its own lands clean and open, and each village did its best to dodge doing so. One village in particular gave me a lot of trouble; say what I would, and do what I could, they would not clean their roads. Mohu was the name of this village. At last, in exasperation, I threatened, that if at my next visit the tracks were not cleaned, I should shoot the village pigs. Time went on, I visited Mohu again and found the roads worse than ever. I caught several of the prominent men, and cursed them; then I said, “You know what I told you last time, that I should shoot your pigs if you did not obey me; now I am going to shoot your largest and best pig, as a warning that I am in earnest. At the end of a week I shall return and kill the rest, unless you clean the roads.” The police drove out an uncommonly fine pig; I pointed it out to the chief and said, “I am going to kill that pig.” “Kill it, if you want to,” he said contemptuously. Shot the pig was, and I left the village, the chief and natives not appearing to worry much about the killing. Hardly had I gone a mile, before a fat Belgian brother of the Sacred Heart Mission came running after me. “For why?” he asked, “for why, Monseigneur, have you slain the pig of my lord the Bishop?” I sent humble apologies to the Mission, and offers of payment for the pig; the apologies were accepted, the payment they declined, telling me that they hoped I should succeed in making the lazy Mohu villagers clean their roads. Jumping with temper, I returned to Mohu, arrested the chief and all his most prominent followers, and sentenced them to a month’s gaol with hard labour. “We can only get three days’ simple imprisonment for neglecting to clean roads,” he complained. “Yes, you villain,” I replied, “but you are now getting a month’s hard labour, as accessory before the fact, to the stealing of a pig; and unless your roads are cleaned within a week, I’ll forget my judgment and make it six months.” Cleaned those roads were, within the week.

Mohu was a village that had always given a great deal of trouble; once it even went to the length of fighting Sir William MacGregor. A Station of the Sacred Heart was established near it, and the people, not caring about sending their children to school, tried to drive the missionaries away by depositing filth close to the Mission house. I cured them of that trick, by making the prominent men clean up, and carry away the mess, with their bare hands; they were all very angry, but one man especially so. Father Victor told me that one day afterwards, when he was walking towards the village, this particular individual slipped out in front of him from behind a bush, with bow bent, and arrow pointed straight at the father; he yelled at the man, who then apologized and explained that he thought the father was I. I sent for the man, and gave him three days’ solitary confinement on a pumpkin diet. “How do you like that?” I asked him at the end. He candidly said that words could not express his opinion of it, that he had never felt so lonely nor so empty in his life before. “Very good, then,” I told him, “don’t you play the fool any more with your bow and arrows, or you will get ten years of it.” Some time afterwards I made this individual a village constable, which position he filled in a very satisfactory manner.

Mekeo Station was absolutely the worst place for snakes I have ever known; they were there in all sizes, from pythons, that came after my fowls, to deadly little reptiles, that coiled up in bunches of bananas. If one sent a boy up a cocoanut tree, he had to beat at the bunches of nuts with a stick, before putting his hand in, to make certain that there were no snakes concealed. It is a fact, not generally known, that snakes climb trees in exactly the same manner that they go along the ground: they don’t coil round them, as picture books show, but I think they must grip the bark by elevating their scales; when they want to come down, they merely release themselves and fall like a wet piece of rope. I’ve only known two men in my life who really liked snakes: one was Armit, and the other was a camp-keeper he had, called Rohu. Once at Cape Nelson, I got my knee-cap knocked to one side, and went up by boat to get Armit, who was then stationed at Tamata, to fix it up for me. Rohu and Armit had half a dozen tame snakes, which used to crawl over their beds and chairs, in fact they were everywhere; if either of their owners wished to sit in a canvas chair, very frequently he had to pick a snake out of it first. To the contempt of the pair, I declined a bed in the house in favour of a bunk in the police barracks. “They are quite harmless,” said Armit. “That may be,” I remarked, “but if I must have bed fellows, I prefer constabulary to snakes.”

It was quite a common thing for the store-keeper on the gold-fields to have a small python—one eight or ten feet long—in his rice store, to keep down the rats; these pythons usually became very tame. I remember one big fellow, that my police caught in the Mambare and sold to Hancock, a store-keeper at Tamata. Hancock got this particular snake very tame; it would come to his whistle for a bowl of tinned milk, and it used to climb about the beams in the roof of the store. At that time, there was working in the Mambare district, a miner named Finn, whose habit it was to come in once a year, pay his debts, have a week’s wild drunk, buy a case of brandy and some hams, and return to his claim again; he then usually camped a few miles from the store, and lived on raw ham and brandy until it was done, by which time he was seeing horrors. One day, I was sitting writing at a table in Hancock’s store—he and I being the only men in it at the time—when Finn came in on his annual visit; he handed over his gold to Hancock, asked for his bill and a drink, then, seeing me at the table, came and sat down opposite, and said, “Give me a new Miner’s Right, Warden.” As I began to fill up the form, Hancock’s snake swung down from the rafters, and waved its head about over the table, looking for somewhere to alight. Finn’s jaw dropped, his eyes bulged in his head; then he got up, and, without a word, left the room, leaving his drink untasted behind him. I finished his “Right,” and Hancock, turning from his desk with Finn’s account in his hand, asked, “Where has Paddy gone?” “I don’t think he liked your snake,” I replied, “he seemed to think it wanted to kiss him.” Hancock waited for about half an hour, then sent up to the rival store to find out whether he was there, only to learn that Finn had called his native boys and gone straight back to his claim.

The Binandere or Mambare people are the only natives in British New Guinea who have no fear of snakes; I have seen them snatch up a poisonous snake by the tail, and crack its head against a tree.

Most of the Port Moresby snakes are harmless, but I remember one of Captain Barton’s men being bitten by a snake, and as a precaution he filled the man up with whisky, and ordered the remainder of the police to keep him walking about, and not on any account to allow him to go to sleep. Unfortunately he forgot to fix a time limit; the result was, that on the following morning, the feeble voice of a man bewailing a cruel fate was heard, and it was discovered that the constabulary had kept their unlucky companion walking up and down the whole night long. Upon the man recovering from the comatose slumber into which he promptly fell when released, he vowed that in the future—if he were bitten by fifty snakes—he would keep it quiet, as no snake bite could be half as bad as that cure.

At Mekeo I got my first taste of black-water fever, that strange form of malaria of which the cause is not known; and in which quinine—the sovereign remedy for ordinary malaria—is poison. I have never known black-water outside the Mekeo and Mambare districts in New Guinea; the name describes one symptom, another is a constant retching and vomiting of blood. Basilio and the police did all they possibly could for me, which of course, except for the constant attention, did not amount to much; hour after hour the constabulary relieved one another, holding my head and supporting me during the violent paroxysms of vomiting. One funny little interlude occurred, though. The sorcerers in the gaol inquired the reason of the silence and gloom over the Station, and were told by the warders that I was dying; whereupon they set up a loud chant of joy. The constabulary, sitting in a circle round my bed, heard the chant; several of them got up, went to their rifles, took out the cleaning rods, and paid a visit to the gaol, from whence soon came the wails of suffering sorcerers.

“What can we do?” said Basilio at last; “you die fast.” “Dig my grave under the flagstaff, where I can hear the feet of the men at drill,” I replied. Then appeared Fathers Bouellard and Vitali, whom Aia in despair had gone to fetch; they brought me white wine and bismuth. “You are in time for the funeral, Father,” I gasped out, “but that is about all.” “Oh, my friend,” said Father Bouellard, “I want but one little second at the end, and your soul is safe; but we are not going to let you die if we can help it; Sister Antoinette is very skilful with medicines, but as she cannot come here, we will take you to the Mission.” The police picked up my camp bed and carried me to the Mission house, where they nursed me back to life. When stronger, the police carried me to the Monastery at Yule Island, where Dr. Seligman, who was then visiting New Guinea with Professor Haddon’s party, came along and completed the cure, and also told me the name of the cheerful complaint from which I had been suffering. I had enteric some months later, but I call that an infantile thing alongside black-water.

After my convalescence, I was had rather badly one night by the Father Superior, who, by the way, was a most charming man, and was afterwards sent as Parish Priest to Thursday Island. The fever had left me very weak and with a terrific appetite, which the good fathers did their best to appease with all they had to offer. Having slept some time, I woke with a horrible sinking feeling in my tum-tum. “Faith,” I thought, “I should like a good stiff whisky and soda.” I made my way to the Father Superior’s room and, rousing him up, explained that I had a dreadful feeling of coldness in my tummy, and inquired if he could give me something to allay it. “Ah,” he said, “I know the very thing for you.” No sooner said than done, and he handed me a tumbler half full of a horrid tonic draught of iron and other beastliness, which I had to drink; then I slunk back to bed. Long afterwards I told Ballantine how I had aroused the worthy priest to get a drink, and received a bolus instead. He meanly told the Mission, for he said that the story was too good for them to miss. “Why, Mr. Monckton,” asked the Father Superior, “why, if you wanted cognac, did you not say cognac?”

When sufficiently recovered, I took passage in one of Burns, Philp’s vessels, the Clara Ethel, which Inman now commanded. At Port Moresby I reported myself to the Government Secretary, told him the tale of my adventures, and praised the priests of the Sacred Heart as a fine lot of men—my predecessor at Mekeo had always quarrelled with them. “I did not know that you were a Roman Catholic,” said Mr. Musgrave, when I had finished. “I am not,” I replied; “I am a Churchman, and a Churchman I’ll die; but if all Roman Catholics were like the members of the Sacred Heart Mission, there soon wouldn’t be any other Church in the world.” Muzzy was a dissenter of some sort, and regarded the Church of Rome with aversion. “Get away and report yourself to his Excellency,” he growled. I went over to Government House, and reported myself. Sir William told me to send for my things, and take up my quarters at Government House; then he said, “I had a cough like you once, a liver cough; I got rid of it. Captain Jones got one; he died. You should go away for a change, but I can’t spare you at present; you had better take a trip to Thursday Island in the Merrie England: she is taking the Judge west, and then going on there for coal.”

When the Merrie England sailed, I accordingly went with her, and the trip proved to be a truly dreadful one. We had on board one mid-wife and two domestic servants, who had been in the service of the wives of some of the Government officers in Port Moresby; as each of these women took up a cabin, and we were—with the exception of the Governor—carrying our full complement of people, the accommodation was limited. I occupied a settee in the cabin of Commander Curtis; a settee that, when we struck really bad weather in the Gulf of Papua, I abandoned for the security of the floor. No ship that I have ever known could roll like the Merrie England: one night, whilst we were at dinner, she rolled so prodigiously as to tear the saloon tables from their fastenings, and rolled tables, men, table gear, and food backwards and forwards across the cabin, nearly crushing the lives out of Judge Winter and myself, who happened to be on the lee side when the first roll came. The sea-sick white women heard the din, and thought the ship was sinking; accordingly, they rose from their bunks, attired merely in their night things, and rushed into the saloon, where of course they were promptly swept off their legs into the chaos of swearing men and smashing crockery. That night was the sole occasion upon which Judge Winter was known to use bad language; but I think even a judge is justified in making remarks, when he finds the edge of a heavy table, crowned by a dozen men, resting on his liver. At last we disentangled ourselves, dragged out the shrieking women, and shoved them back into their cabins. “Why the blank blank don’t you go and attend to those women?” yelled the skipper at one of the stewards, who was grovelling about amongst the mixture on the floor. “I’m looking for my teeth, sir,” he said. The unfortunate man had lost his false teeth in the excitement.

At Daru we found De Lange, Assistant R.M., carrying on Bingham Hely’s duties; Hely, R.M., at the time being on leave, and occupied in dying in a Thursday Island hospital. De Lange was afterwards drowned in the mouth of the Fly River, his whaleboat having capsized in a bad tide rip some four or five miles from land: his police started to swim for the shore, carrying him with them; but finding that—hampered by him—the police could not make headway against the tide and current, and that probably all would be drowned, he ordered them to release him, and, bidding them “Good-bye,” put his hands above his head and went down like a gallant man. Cruel, certainly, was the toll New Guinea took of her first officers.

Returning from Thursday Island, the Merrie England landed me again at Hall Sound, where, after having sent in to the Station for my police, I returned to my duties. On the first parade after I got back to the Station, I addressed my men as follows: “That you are a lot of rogues and villains, I am convinced, and also that you have got fat from idleness during my absence; but what steel instruments do you want most?” “Razors,” said some; “scissors,” said others. “Ah, you scoundrels, I can read your hearts even in Thursday Island.” Then solemnly I presented each man with a razor and a pair of scissors. “If ever you are sick again and the prisoners sing,” said Keke, “we will pull their tongues out.”