One day, whilst I was busily engaged with my police in the erection of our Station buildings, I being, as I thought, the only European within miles of Cape Nelson, I was told that a diminutive whaleboat, with a white man and a native woman as its sole crew, was crawling up to the Station; and soon Mr. Ernie Patten, late ship’s boy on the Myrtle and prisoner at Samarai, appeared. “What the devil are you doing here?” I asked. “This coast is no place for solitary traders.” “Trading for bÊche-de-mer and black-lipped shell with a tribe called Winiapi, just south of the Cape,” he replied, “and been doing well.” “You are mad,” I told him. “I have no village constable at or near that point, and the Winiapi are particularly unsafe at present. I cannot guarantee you even the slightest measure of protection there; in fact, I have a large bone to pick with them on my own account.” “I go at my own risk,” he said, “and there is no law to prevent me.” “Very true,” I answered; “if you are determined to commit suicide, I can’t stop you. I’ll send a message to the Winiapi though, that if you should happen to get killed by them, I will bring all the constabulary, Kaili Kaili, and Mokuru, and fight them at once; the trouble is, that they think they are safe among the gorges, rugged hills, and spurs of Mount Trafalgar. That is the best I can do for you, and I warn you that it is a poor best. Now, what do you want with me? I presume this is not a social call.” “A divorce from my wife,” he replied. “Who married her to you?” I asked. Patten told me, and I looked up the name of the man, and the Gazette notices of those empowered to celebrate marriages, and found it. “The Governor, Council, and all the Courts of New Guinea can’t undo that marriage,” I told him; “or, so far as I know, any Court in the world. In the Royal Letters of Instruction, granting our Constitution, it is expressly stated that no Ordinance permitting divorce shall be passed by Legislative Council. You had better fix up things with your wife, or tell me all about it; has she been going wrong?”

“It was like this,” said Patten. “My wife went ashore in a small canoe we had got from the natives to cook our dinner, and took my revolver with her; she was a long time, and suddenly I noticed that she had gone to sleep alongside the cooking fire. I yelled at her, and threw a piece of ballast that got her in the ribs.” “What did you say to her?” I asked curiously. “I said, ‘You black daughter of a bitch, come and get a hiding.’ She said, ‘You ——! ——! ——! ——!’” (Here some awful language came.) “I got a rope’s end and showed it to her, then I started to pull up the anchor to shove the boat ashore, when she said, ‘You ——! ——! Stop it!’ and ups with the revolver and lets fly at me. I dodged below the gunwale, and every time I put my head up, she lets go at me again; she kept me like that for hours, until I swore that I would not touch her.” “How did you swear?” I asked, wondering what sort of oath this interesting couple would consider binding. He told me; it is not fit to be set down here, being a weird compound of blasphemy and obscenity. “Fetch your wife, Patten,” I told him, and he did so. “Mrs. Patten, what do you mean by potting at your husband?” “I am tired of being hided on the bare skin with a rope’s end,” replied that injured lady. “Well, Patten,” I remarked, “the only thing that I can see for it, is to shove you both into gaol: you, for licking your wife; her, for shooting at you. I can make you both very useful; but, of course, you will occupy separate cells, and will not be allowed to see one another.” Patten and his missus gazed dismally at me, then at one another, and then jawed rapidly together in Suau, a language I don’t understand. At last Patten said, “We want to make it up, please let us off.” Mrs. Patten also clamoured to be let off, and turned on tears. “All right; clear out, the pair of you,” I said; “but don’t let me hear any more of rope’s ending or revolver practice.” Patten then asked me to store the collection of shell and trepang he had already got, and also to lend him some trade goods. The reunited couple then left, to resume their dangerous trade.

The next thing I saw or heard of this pair, was their re-appearance, some time later, in a very distressed condition. The Winiapi had one day seized, tied up and beaten Patten, outraged his wife, and, after plundering his boat, turned them adrift in her; they had then fallen in with a Kaili Kaili canoe, whose crew had assisted them to make my Station. The Winiapi had not killed them, for fear of my vengeance; but had decided that, if they were merely ill-treated and looted, I should not bother my head about such palpably poor and unimportant people.

I was on the point of starting with Patten for Winiapi, when the Merrie England hove in sight, with Sir George Le Hunte and Barton, the Commandant, on board; and his Excellency decided to come with me. I took a couple of Kaili Kaili with us to act as interpreters, and, upon our arrival at Winiapi, induced the Governor to allow me to go first into the bush with these two men and endeavour to get into communication with the people, before they skipped for the hills. I had gone some distance inland, when the Kaili Kaili said it was not good enough, and refused to go without the police; accordingly I sent one back with a note for Barton, asking him to send on my detachment. He, Captain Harvey of the Merrie England, and all the constabulary, followed at once, leaving the Governor behind, as the country was too rough and hilly for him; Patten also came with them to point out his assailants. At last I, or rather the remaining Kaili Kaili with me, induced a number of Winiapi to come and talk, while the police silently sneaked up; Barton, Harvey and I, having got the natives engaged in conversation, Patten appeared and indicated about six of the offenders among the crowd. At the sight of Patten they tried to make a bolt, but too late; one of Harvey’s sailor fists shot out and took the man nearest to him in the eye, knocking him over, whereupon Harvey sat upon him and pounded him into submission; several others were caught by the police. War horns now blew and drums beat; but though there was a large crowd of natives at a short distance, they were apparently not inclined to try conclusions with us, and at length we departed, with our prisoners, unmolested. Patten, who had suffered a severe fright, now decided, much to my relief, to confine his trading operations on the north-east coast to localities such as Capes Nelson and Vogel, where village constables were established; but I continued my feud with the Winiapi, after the Merrie England had departed with the Governor and Barton.

They retaliated for the capture of the men responsible for the Patten outrage, by murdering in cold blood an Arifamu man who was friendly to the Government; I then chased them over their hills and looted their gardens, but could not catch a single man, for they were much too smart to meet me in open fight. This time they had their revenge by killing and eating some Mambare carriers, whereupon I seized and destroyed as many of their canoes as I could lay my hands upon; they then built fresh ones and hid them. At last I seized their fishing grounds and boycotted them; threatening with severe punishment any tribe, living to the north or south of Winiapi, whom I might find trading or having any relations with them, and offering a reward for any Winiapi native caught outside his own district and brought to me. The result was, that they became afraid to venture forth in small parties to fish or visit other tribes, lest they should encounter a village constable from an adjacent tribe, who would most assuredly have summoned help and hauled them away to the Government Station. After being thus bottled up in their own district for some time, the Winiapi tribe became rather tired of this state of affairs; and they soon sent their principal chief, with about one hundred followers, to promise to obey the laws in the future, and to request that the chief’s son should be made a village constable.

About this time, April, 1901, I received loud squeals and complaints from the Maisina; they said in effect, “You have broken us and prevented us from fighting other people, but we have lost over thirty men by attacks from the Doriri in the last few months, and very many people by them before that; if others are to be protected from us, surely we should be defended from our enemies.” I was now placed in a very awkward position. The Maisina’s appeal for help was a very natural one: if they were forced to obey the laws and behave themselves, they were quite justified in requiring the power forcing them into that position, to see that others also complied with the same conditions; but I had only fifteen constabulary to police a large Division, and I had no assistant officer, or responsible person, to leave in charge of my Station. The Doriri were a mere name, in so far as Government was concerned; no one knew their strength, the locality they inhabited, or anything else about them. All we knew definitely was that a previous expedition, under Sir Francis Winter, Captain Butterworth the Commandant, and Moreton, R.M., had utterly failed to reach their country or deal with them, and left as a record of its sole result, a surmise by Sir Francis Winter, “that the Doriri were a tribe inhabiting the Upper Waters of the Musa River.” This was a very vague geographical definition, for the Musa River split into three widely divergent branches, namely, the Adaua, the Domara, and the Moni; the Doriri, therefore, might be five, ten, or twenty days’ journey inland, over uninhabited country.

Still, something had to be done, if the prestige of the Government was to be upheld; and I knew that every tribe was now watching to see what that something would be. “I will soon go to the country of the Doriri and break them,” I told the Maisina, “but you must find me carriers.” “If you go to the land of the Doriri,” was the unbelieving reply, “we will find you carriers.” “Yes,” I said, “and you will bolt at night, leaving me in the lurch, as you did when Sir Francis Winter trusted you. Now, you are distinctly to understand this: when I go after the Doriri, I am going to find them and fight them; if you people desert and prevent me from finding and fighting them, I shall come back and fight you instead, and anything the Doriri have done to you in the past will be as nothing in comparison to what I shall make you suffer.” “We will see,” said the Maisina, “when you go after the Doriri, instead of talking.” Shortly afterwards the Merrie England came in, with the Governor, Sir Francis Winter, Captain Barton, and a strong force of constabulary on board. I went to Sir George Le Hunte, taking with me a list of the more recent Doriri outrages. “Something must be done at once, sir, to stop these marauders; I can go with my men, but I am not strong enough; also it is work requiring a second officer,” I reported. His Excellency and Sir Francis Winter discussed the matter, and then the Governor said, “You can have Captain Barton and his police, for the Doriri apparently require attention urgently. Discuss the matter with the Commandant.” “What are you going to do when you find the Doriri, Monckton?” asked Barton. “Demand the surrender of the men responsible for the more recent murders,” I replied. “I won’t bother about anything that took place more than two months ago.” “If you don’t get them, what then?” asked Barton. “Shoot and loot,” I answered laconically. “I don’t think we should do anything of the sort,” said Barton. “I think that we should warn the people that they must not raid the coastal tribes.” “Rats!” I said. “They would regard us then as fools, and promptly come and butcher a score or two more of people living under my protection. The only way you can stop these beggars hunting their neighbours with a club, is to bang them with a club.” Sir George and Sir Francis sat silently listening to our conversation, and afterwards in our official minutes of instruction I found this embodied: “In the event of your finding the natives, and their opposing you, you will take such steps as may be necessary to bring them into submission; if they do not show opposition, you will use your best efforts to bring them into friendly intercourse, but in any case you will arrest or require the delivery of the principals concerned in the recent murders of the Wanigela natives (nine people). I have carefully considered the different views I have heard expressed as to this, and I am satisfied that, under the circumstances, the right course is to exercise the power of the Government by doing its duty in bringing them to trial if possible, whatever views may subsequently be taken of their having been accustomed to make their murderous raids without knowing that they were breaking the laws of a power of which they knew nothing ... it will produce a more lasting effect than merely telling the natives that they are not to do it again and returning without any visible results.” “Thank the Lord for that,” I remarked to myself, as I read the instructions; “if we had gone in and been defied by the Doriri, as we inevitably shall be, and then had contented ourselves with telling them to be good children, I should have been the laughing-stock of every tribe on the coast, and especially the Maisina.” This was my first experience of Barton’s extremely humane and, as I thought, mistaken feelings. “Is it not better,” I once urged him, “that a blood-thirsty cannibal should be hanged, or some of his crime-stained followers shot, than that a peaceful district of husbandmen should be raided, their houses burnt, and men, women and children slaughtered and eaten? Not to speak of the indescribable suffering and torture, both mental and physical, that the wretched victims often undergo.” Barton agreed, but it did not alter his nature: he was a man who instinctively shrank from inflicting suffering in any form; if he had been a surgeon, and a patient had come to him suffering from cancer, rather than cause him pain by using the knife, he would put off the inevitable until too late to be of any material benefit, and thus the patient would have died.

The dispatch of the expedition was now decided upon; the only questions remaining to be settled were, firstly, the route to be followed, and, secondly, its transport. At first I was decidedly of the opinion that the best route would be the one previously followed by me through the Kuveri District, when escorting the miners, and then to strike, from the end of my cut track, north-east towards the head waters of the Musa; this route, though longer, would avoid the swamps which I believed, at the time, entirely surrounded the coastal district of the Maisina and Collingwood Bay. From later inquiry, however, among the Maisina, I found that they knew of a track which led from their principal village of Uiaku, and which would in one day carry us clear of the swamp, and effect a very considerable shortening of the distance. This route was accordingly determined upon. The next question was one of carriers: though the Maisina were freely offering for the work, I had my doubts as to whether they would not desert me, as they had Sir Francis, if I got into a position of difficulty or danger; and an expedition in New Guinea, deserted by its carriers, much resembled the position of a stage coach without its horses.

I now wanted advice, and wanted it badly; but the advice I wanted I knew could only be supplied by my own people, and not by the Governor, Judge or Commandant. Accordingly I sent for Giwi of the Kaili Kaili and Paitoto of the Mokoru, and, with my sergeant, called them into consultation. “You know the Doriri,” I began, “they are bad people?” Giwi and Paitoto said in effect that the wickedness of the Doriri was beyond belief, but that they were uncommonly good fighting men. “Well,” I remarked, “I am going to smash the Doriri and make good people of them; but it is essential that when I find their country, I have full supplies, and my constabulary in first-class fighting order: to ensure that, I must have men I can rely upon to carry the camp equipment, stores, and ammunition; the constabulary can’t fight if they are burdened with that. Can I rely upon the Maisina for the work?” “No,” was the unhesitating reply; “but you can upon the Kaili Kaili and Mokoru; the Maisina are too much afraid of the Doriri to be reliable. Take fifty men from our people for the actual work among the Doriri, and the Maisina can carry as far as the borders of the Doriri country and then be sent back. Our people can’t bolt, if you get into trouble, for they will have nowhere to run to.” “Very good,” I said, “pick me out about fifty good men from your tribe to come with me, and I will fill up from among the Maisina.” Then Giwi said, “I am getting old and too stiff for such work as you have on hand, but I will send my son, Mukawa, and some chosen men with you.” Paitoto said, “I am neither old nor stiff, and can well use spear and war club, and go with you. I, myself, will lead my men; but for my greater honour among my people, give and teach me how to use the fire spear of the white man.” “Good,” I said, “you are two brave men; it shall be as you say. Sergeant, give Paitoto a rifle and detail a man to teach him to shoot.”

Accordingly, on the 5th April, 1901, Captain Barton and I marched out of Uiaku village in Collingwood Bay, in quest of the Doriri, at the head of 159 men, 20 of whom were regular constabulary, 6 village constables (armed), and about 50 Kaili Kaili and Mokoru, the balance being composed of Maisina and Collingwood Bay natives. I think that, up to this date, this was the best organized and most carefully thought-out punitive expedition that had ever been dispatched by a New Guinea Government. In one respect, however, we were handicapped, and that was that, owing to the non-arrival of the s.s. President with stores for the expedition, I was obliged to purchase a quantity of rice from the miners (to whom I have previously referred as being left in the Kuveri District, and who were now abandoning their quest), and this rice, instead of being packed in fifty-pound mats, was contained in sacks weighing altogether seventy-five pounds, a cruel load for one man, and too little for two carriers; unfortunately we had no extra mats or bags to divide it up into again. The Kaili Kaili, however, came to my rescue, by expressing themselves as able and willing to carry the heavy bags, until they were reduced by daily consumption. The Kaili Kaili and Mokoru were from first to last ideal carriers, never grumbling or complaining at hard work, and quite prepared to follow anywhere or do anything, and forming a pleasing contrast to the Maisina, who began to suffer from nerves the moment that we had fairly set our faces towards the country of the Doriri. We purposed sending back the Maisina as soon as the food they carried was exhausted, and then to rely entirely upon the Kaili Kaili and Mokoru.

The Maisina guided us by a winding and villainous track, across a pestilential sago swamp, humming with mosquitoes; the track in places was like a maze, for the purpose of confusing the Doriri when attempting to follow it to the coast; it was set at intervals with deadly spear pits, i.e. deep holes, the tops of which were masked and the bottoms studded with firmly fixed, sharp-pointed spears—pleasing contrivances arranged by the Maisina for the benefit of their Doriri visitors. At length we emerged into solid country of jungle and forest, and camped upon the bank of a narrow, rapid, and clear river. I regret to say that, in his official report, Captain Barton subsequently referred to my carriers as “crude savages of the wildest kind!” They certainly did yell and dance, and indulge in mimic warfare, half the night, until at my request they were rudely thumped by either their chiefs or village constables; but that was merely light-heartedness! Upon the following morning we resumed our march, the constabulary now cutting our own track on a compass line through heavy jungle and forest, until we came to a river bed of some two hundred yards in width, down the middle of which a rapid torrent flowed. This we forded by extending a long light cotton rope, and all hanging on to it together, until the expedition resembled a straggling long-legged centipede. Upon the other side, we found our track-cutting much obstructed by masses of fallen trees, that had been blown down by a whirlwind. In the early afternoon, we struggled out of the tangle of timber on to the banks of a watercourse, that was much wider than the last, and were here told by the Maisina that we could not reach any further water before night; we accordingly camped, in order to have a clear day in which to cross the supposed waterless track. This statement afterwards proved to be a lie on the part of the Maisina, who were beginning bitterly to repent having been fools enough to consent to venture near the Doriri, and wanted to prevent us from going any further. I think though, that we should have been forced to camp in any case, as Barton had developed some colicky pains in his tum-tum, which later turned into a mild attack of dysentery.

The river we were camped upon, the Wakioki, is a most extraordinary stream: its waters are of a greyish milky colour, and highly charged with some fine substance which does not precipitate when the water is allowed to stand; the consistency of the water was that of thin treacle, and not that of water in which a man could swim. A private slipped in his leg and foot, withdrawing them immediately, and the water dried upon his skin like a coating of whitewash. This was the point at which Sir Francis Winter was deserted by the Maisina, in his attempt to reach and deal with the Doriri. The country here was full of wild pigs, cassowary, wallaby, and the enormous Goura pigeon, a bird nearly as big as a turkey; duck and pigeon of all sorts were plentiful, and the Kaili Kaili carriers spent a happy afternoon hunting. Grubs, snakes, pigs, etc., all were game to them, and vanished down their ever-hungry gullets. The Maisina hung about the camp, listening with apprehensive ears to every distant sound. Two of the constabulary, who had gone scouting in advance, returned at night and reported having discovered fresh human footprints; these, the Maisina said, certainly belonged to the Doriri, as no Collingwood Bay native would venture so far inland; and, from the nearness to the coast, they thought the Doriri must be bent on mischief.

Here was a pretty pickle! What were we to do? If we went straight on, and there was a Doriri war party in the neighbourhood, they would probably fall upon the Collingwood Bay villages, from which we had drawn the best of the fighting men, and generally play the devil, while we were laboriously wending our way to their country. At last we decided to follow the footprints found by the police; and, in the event of their leading us to a Doriri war party, fall upon and destroy that party, or at all events drive it from the vicinity of Collingwood Bay, before proceeding on our journey. Much of the country here showed signs of extensive periodic inundation. Next day we struck camp at dawn, and marched for the point at which the police had found the footprints, Barton’s tum-tum being better, having been treated with brandy, and lead and opium pills. Late in the afternoon, after marching over rough, well-watered country, we came to a stream running into a much larger one, and upon the banks of which we discovered a freshly erected lean-to bush shelter, such as are used by travelling natives, and a large number of newly cut green boughs of trees, which had been used for making crude weirs for catching fish. From the bush shelter, there led away in a westerly direction—the direction of the land of the Doriri—a plainly defined hunting track; this track we followed, until it was time to camp for the night, finding everywhere signs of the recent prolonged occupation by natives of the country through which we were passing. As we pitched camp, we sent out some constabulary scouts, and they returned after dark bringing with them some burning fire sticks, and reported that upon the bank of the Wakioki they had discovered some large lean-to shelters, only just vacated, and with the cooking fires still burning in them.

Upon the following day we marched for this spot, and found the shelter, as described by the police, situated at the junction of the Buna and Wakioki Rivers. Here, by the size of the shelter and the number of footprints, we came to the conclusion that it had contained about thirty Doriri, who were probably attached to a much larger party. We discovered here a curious and most ingenious contrivance, in the shape of a litter, for conveying a sick or wounded man. It consisted of a pole about eight feet long, passed through three hoops or circles of rattan about two feet apart, the hoops being thus suspended from the pole when carried on men’s shoulders; round the inside of the circumference of the lower semi-diameter of the circles or hoops, longitudinal strips or battens of finely split palm were lashed, forming a soft and springy litter, upon which an injured man could suffer very little from jolting on the roughest track, or from out of which it was impossible to fall, or, with any precaution at all on the part of the bearers, sustain any injury; the central hoop was made to unfasten at the top, plainly as a means of placing a man inside with least effort to himself. I have made a rough sketch of the contrivance, which is decidedly superior to any form of hand ambulance I have ever read of.

The Maisina now said that the Doriri had undoubtedly gone down to the extensive sago swamps surrounding the Collingwood Bay villages; but careful scouting, and full examination of the direction of the Doriri footprints, which we now found to be very numerous, all showed that they led up the Wakioki towards their own country. We were now of the opinion that possibly the Doriri had discovered our presence, and were retreating upon their own villages; in any case, they were moving in that direction. Pursuit, and that by forced marches, was now the order of the day. With far-flung scouts, endeavouring to locate the Doriri ahead, we began the chase, straining the endurance of the carriers to the last ounce; the rear-guard of six constabulary and four village constables mercilessly drove on the skulking Maisina, or helped the truly failing Kaili Kaili with his load.

The bed of the Wakioki, up which we were now proceeding, is of a most remarkable nature. It varies in width from 300 to 600 yards, the banks being difficult to define, owing to the dense overgrowth of young casuarina trees, through which many channels flow. Gaunt, dead and dying casuarinas of huge size reared their enormous bulk from the torn, boulder-strewn bed of the river; huge tree trunks and lumps of wood, the bark stripped from them, and polished by eternal friction, lay everywhere. In one place, where Mount MacGregor descends to the river, the foot of the mountain was cut sheer off, as though cleanly severed by the axe of some superhuman giant. It was evident that the floods, which overwhelmed the country, fell as rapidly as they rose, for light and heavy tree trunks were deposited at every point, from the highest to the lowest; the fall of the watercourse, where we first met it, was about one foot in two hundred, and it increased in steadily growing gradient as we ascended. We came to the conclusion (the right one, as I afterwards ascertained on the second Doriri Expedition) that the floods and inundations were due to enormous land-slips or avalanches, comprised of hundreds of thousands of tons of rock, earth, and timber, suddenly descending from Mount MacGregor into the narrow gorge of the Wakioki, which skirted its spurs, thus blocking and damming the river, until its growing weight and strength burst the barriers and swept in one devastating wave over the lower country. The colour and consistency of the river were due, I found out later, to a wide stream of clayey substance, flowing from Mount MacGregor, between rocky walls, into the river.

Early in the afternoon, we reached a point near the gorge from which the Wakioki emerged; and there the track scrambled up a loose boulder-strewn bank about thirty feet high, up which we likewise clawed. Here we found, that though young casuarinas were growing there, it yet bore signs, in the shape of boulders, drift-wood and tree trunks, of being the bed of the river. We found many Doriri shelters, that had only just been vacated, and still had the fires burning in them. Here we pitched camp, right under the magnificent Mount MacGregor, and gazed at the mountain pines on its spurs, towering high above the surrounding tall forest trees. Our day had been an interesting one: sometimes we were marching over huge loose boulders, sometimes wading through a wet cream-cheesy sort of pipe-clay, sometimes making our way over a hard-baked cement of the same stuff, full of cracks, and throwing off a dry and penetrating dust under our feet, which clogged our sweating skins and choked our panting lungs; over all of which came the distant angry voices of the likewise sweating rear-guard, as they “encouraged” the labouring carriers to keep up with the column.

Shortly after our pitching camp, a violent thunder-storm rolled down upon us from the mountains; streaks of vivid fork lightning being succeeded by instantaneous claps of thunder, the whole being followed by a torrential burst of rain; the river rose rapidly, and the grinding roar of the enormous rolling boulders, swept before its flood, made a din indescribable. The carriers whimpered with funk, and I called in the sentries, feeling that that awful storm and night were more than mortal man, standing at a solitary post, could be expected to endure. I was also firmly convinced that no human being, Doriri or otherwise, would be fool enough to be abroad on such a night. We struck camp very early the next morning, only too glad to get away from such a storm-torn, uncanny spot. After marching a few miles, we found a Doriri track leaving the Wakioki, and leading across the Didina ranges towards the Doriri country at the head of the Musa River. The Maisina were now blue with funk, and we greatly feared that they would bolt; but curses from us, threats from the constabulary, and jeers from the Kaili Kaili, who told them that if they left us, they (the Kaili Kaili) would make them the laughing-stock of the coast as a set of women and weaklings, made them pluck up their courage enough still to follow us. We found growing on this track an extraordinary tough climbing bamboo, of a vine-like nature, which, when cut with a knife, oozed from each joint about a wineglassful of clear sweet water.

A severe march went on all day. Barton, who had now added a very bad toothache to dysentery, was in command of the advance, and feeling hard with his scouts for touch with the Doriri party ahead; I was in charge of the rear-guard, and was severely driving the fearful Maisina carriers. Night was closing in, the head of the line had halted to camp, when back to me came an orderly, with a message from Barton. “Hurry up; we are within touch of the Doriri.” The Maisina, on hearing the magic word Doriri, rushed like scared rabbits for the camp. Upon the rear-guard coming up with me, Barton told me that the scouts ahead had seen a man up a tree, who was calling to a party of Doriri ahead of him. The Maisina now fairly collapsed with fright, and begged us to go back, saying that we should all be eaten if we stayed. Barton and I consulted as to what was to be done with them: to send them back was our best course, but then, if by any remote chance there happened to be any Doriri left in the country we had traversed, they would stand a good chance of being cut to pieces, as we could not weaken our force, on the eve of a fight, by detaching constabulary to escort them. They, however, settled the question for themselves. Fearful as they were of going on with us into the land of the dreaded Doriri, they were still more afraid of leaving us and having to follow a lonely road back; finding that we were determined to go on, and that the constabulary and Kaili Kaili apparently treated the Doriri with contempt, they quaveringly said they would follow.

We felled trees, and made our camp as strongly defensive as possible; needless to say, the Maisina required no pressing to do their share of this work, but toiled like veritable demons, clearing scrub and dragging trees into a stockade, long after the order had been given, “That will do the camp; post the night guard.” Everything now pointed to the one conclusion, and that was that if the party, on whose heels we had followed all the way from Collingwood Bay, did not include the actual murderers by whom the murders of six weeks ago had been committed, it undoubtedly consisted of the tribe by whom innumerable murders had been done previously, and who had kept a whole district in a state of tension and misery for years. We were now right on the borders of the Doriri country, for during the day we had ascended the summit of the Didina Range, which formed the watershed between the streams of Collingwood Bay and the Musa River. We had then crossed a fine plateau and descended a small stream flowing towards the Musa, which suddenly fell, by a series of cascades, over a precipice into a valley; the track made a difficult circuit round this cascade, and when we had descended into the valley we found the bottom covered with stagnant water, forming a veritable quagmire, impassable to our heavily laden men, although the Doriri had somehow or other gone through it. Round this, we found it necessary to cut a siding, which led us to the banks of the Ibinamu, the most eastern affluent of the Musa River, which rose in Mount MacGregor and was now seen by Europeans for the first time. The Maisina guides had long since left the country with which they were acquainted, and in any case would have been quite useless from fright.

While in camp that night, Barton and I consulted together. There appeared to us to be very little doubt, that the party just ahead of us must be now quite aware of our presence in their vicinity, and be laying their plans accordingly; as a matter of fact, we found out afterwards that they were in a state of blissful ignorance. It never for one moment entered the heads of the Doriri that any possible danger could come to them from the cowed people of Collingwood Bay, and Government or police they had merely heard of as a sort of vague fable; of the effect of rifle fire they knew nothing, and with spears they had never as yet met their match. “What are we going to do now?” said Barton. “Capture or entirely destroy the party ahead,” I replied. “I hate scientifically slaughtering unfortunate savages, who are quite ignorant of a sense of wrongdoing,” said Barton. “By every code in the world,” I said, “civilized or savage, the people who commit wanton and unprovoked murder can expect nothing else than to be killed themselves. Besides, our instructions are plain and our duty clear.” The Maisina spent the night in a miserable state of apprehension and fear, having quite made up their minds that the cooking pots of the Doriri would be the ultimate fate of the whole lot of us; the constabulary and Kaili Kaili were in a great state of joy at the prospect of a fight, and the scroop-scrape of stones on the edges of the Kaili Kaili tomahawks, the nervous chatter of the Maisina, and restless prowling of the constabulary went on all night. Poor Barton was writhing in agony from toothache, and begged me to keep my “infernal savages” quiet; but it was a hopeless task.

Dawn broke, and no time was lost in striking camp, and resuming our march down the river in the direction of the voices heard by the scouts on the previous day, and towards the Doriri villages. Barton and I had an arrangement by which we took alternate days in advance or rear, as the rear-guard work was fatiguing and disagreeable in the extreme; on this day it happened to be my turn in front. I saw plainly that unless something was done soon to give the Maisina confidence in us, and in the power of the constabulary to protect them, they would all knock up; they were sick already from funk and want of sleep. First went the four scouts, comprising two constabulary recruited from the Binandere people and two village constables of the Kaili Kaili, hawk-eyed men, oiling their way silently in advance, feeling for an ambush or touch with the Doriri, and marking the track to be followed. Then I came, with the advance-guard composed of my own men; next the Kaili Kaili, then the Maisina, with village constables and constabulary scattered at intervals among them, in order to hearten them; and last, Barton and his police. The carriers had strict orders, in the event of fighting in front, to rally on the rear-guard.

While a difficult piece of walking was causing the carriers to straggle rather more than usual, and thus delaying Barton and the rear-guard, two of the scouts came back and reported that they had discovered men, how many they could not ascertain, in the bush on one side of the river. These men were, in my opinion, the party whom we had been following all along, with possibly others; and from their silence, I concluded that they had either laid an ambush, or still more probably formed a portion of a body of men coming round on to the flank of our extended line. I dared not risk sending the scouts out again, with a probability of their falling into the hands of a strong party of Doriri, and should I delay to communicate with Barton, and lose time in waiting for the rest of the police and carriers to come up, I might allow time for an attack to develop on our dangerously straggling line, with an absolute certainty of a stampede on the part of the Maisina on top of Barton and the rear-guard, and a possible bad slaughter before Barton knew what was occurring or could clear his police. I therefore hastily detached seven police; and ordered the others, with the village constables and Kaili Kaili carriers who were nearest to the front, to draw out into the clear river bed and there wait for the Commandant, who I knew would be steadily coming up. In the meanwhile I, and my seven men, made a detour into the scrub on the exposed side of our line, with the object of both intercepting any attack that might be coming, so as to allow of a better fighting formation being adopted, and to come out on the rear and flank of the men seen by our scouts.

After we had crawled and forced our way for some distance under a dense tangled undergrowth over marshy ground, we suddenly emerged upon a couple of bush shelters, from one of which a Doriri sprang up in front of us with a frightful howl of surprise and alarm, and armed with spear and club. In response to a hasty order from me, the man was shot dead and a rush made upon the shelters, from which three more men leaped, all armed. Two of these men were at once knocked over by the police, and secured uninjured; a fourth, who fought most desperately, frantically dashing about with a club, leaped into the river, and though evidently wounded in half a dozen places, still stuck to his club and made his way across to the scrub on the opposite side of the river, hotly pursued by two police. Never have I known a man so tenacious of life as that Doriri. I myself sent four ·303 solid bullets through him as he bolted, and yet he ran on. We found him afterwards dead in the scrub, quite half a mile away. On gaining time to look round, I saw about a dozen Kaili Kaili, who, in defiance of my order that they were to remain on the river bed and wait for Barton, had thrown down their loads and were rushing to join the two police chasing the man across the river; while tearing, like devils possessed, through the tangled undergrowth towards me came the remainder of the Kaili Kaili and Mokoru, under the leadership of old Giwi’s son, Mukawa. They afterwards explained that they were coming to the help of the police and me. Knowing the awful job Barton must be having to keep the Maisina together when the firing broke out suddenly in front, and still expecting at any moment to see a rush of Doriri on our now demoralized line, I recalled the police and proceeded to collect carriers in the bed of the river, while Barton, with the remaining carriers, was getting up to us.

When Barton finally arrived, I found the poor old chap had undergone a dreadful time. Firstly, his toothache had prevented him from eating any breakfast; then, as he had painfully struggled over the rough track shepherding the terror-stricken Maisina, the roughness of the track and his empty condition had brought on a recurrence of his dysentery. Halting, he had removed his revolver and belts, and was in a helpless state, when suddenly the crack of rifles came from the front, and his personal servant rushed at him and endeavoured to buckle on his discarded accoutrements; the Maisina were howling with terror and crowding all round him; his constabulary, fairly foaming with impatience to be in the fight, were endeavouring to make a break for me and took him all his time to hold; while the Kaili Kaili threw all restraint to the winds, as they cast their loads on the ground, and, flourishing their tomahawks, flew to the sound of the firing. “Their own white master and their own police” were fighting, that was enough for the Kaili Kaili; they should not lack the assistance of their own people, be hanged to the Port Moresby police! Kaili Kaili into the fighting line!

Three Dove Baruga men had accompanied the expedition as carriers; they had been staying with the Kaili Kaili just before we started, and, as they came from a village situated on the lower Musa, the Doriri prisoners could understand their language; therefore I used them as interpreters. The prisoners, upon being questioned, said that they had formed a portion of a large party returning from Collingwood Bay; and in response to a possibly not quite fair question as to who had killed the Collingwood Bay people a few weeks ago, they proudly said that they had themselves, or rather the party to which they belonged. The remainder of them had gone down the river to their village early that morning, and were quite in ignorance of our presence in the valley. So accordingly we started in pursuit.

The river bed had now widened to a bare boulder-strewn watercourse, along which we could march in a close column instead of the long straggling line of men in single file. About four in the afternoon, during a period of intense still muggy heat, a rolling crashing thunder-storm descended upon us from Mount MacGregor, worse even than the last we had experienced. Fork and chain lightning struck the boulders of the river bed, while balls of blue fire rolled among them. “Better extend the men,” said Barton; “a close column of men on the march gives off an emanation that is said to attract lightning; and one of those flashes among our packed lot might play hell.” I watched the course of the storm for a moment, and then pointed out to Barton how the lightning only seemed to strike among the boulders of the river bed, and not among the forest trees bordering it. “I am all for camping in the tall timber,” I said; “when the dry electrical disturbance has passed, the skies will probably open and let go a veritable lake on top of us.” “It is said,” remarked Barton, “that the neighbourhood of tall trees should be avoided in a thunder-storm; but I’m hanged if I don’t think they are safer than this place.” The Doriri prisoners were the only natives with us at all apprehensive of the lightning, they knew the peculiar beauties of their own storms, and were greatly relieved when they found us wending our way to the trees; the Dove Baruga men had by this time told them that we were a peculiar people, who did not kill prisoners nor eat the bodies of the slain.

Before we were safely in camp, and during the operation of pitching the tents, down came a torrential downpour of rain, soaking us all to the skin. No one, who has not undergone the experience, can possibly realize what a tropical rainstorm can be like; the water does not fall in drops, but appears to be in continuous streams, the thickness of lead pencils; it fairly bends one under its weight, and half chokes one with its density; and all this in a steaming atmosphere of heat that reduces one to the limpness of a dead and decaying worm. In Captain Barton’s case, his misery was increased by the spiky pangs of toothache and the slow gnawing of dysentery.

Tents were pitched at last, rain and storm passed, leaving a cool and pleasant evening, camp fires burnt cheerily and cooks were busy preparing the evening meal. Barton had stopped his toothache by dint of holding his mouth full of raw whisky, and eased his tum-tum with a prodigious dose of chlorodyne; pyjamas had replaced our sodden clothing, the Kaili Kaili were gaily chattering, and even the Maisina were plucking up their spirits, safe as they all thought in a ring of watching sentries, when bang went a rifle some distance away. I ran down to where a couple of sentries had been posted, at the mouth of a stream leading into the camp; they had vanished. I whistled for them, thinking that they had merely moved a few yards away, and were concealed in the scrub; Barton heard my whistle, thought that I wanted assistance, and came to me with a number of constabulary. We then hastily dispatched half a dozen police to find out what had become of the sentries; they did not return until after dark, and then appeared bringing the missing men and another private of constabulary with them. The latter bright individual had quitted the camp without leave, and run into half a dozen Doriri, at whom he had promptly fired; the Doriri decamped, as the sentries deserted their posts and rushed to his assistance. The sentries were told in chosen language exactly what was thought of them, and fearful threats made as to the fate of the next men who left their posts without orders. The roaming private was “punished,” as the Official Report put it; as a matter of fact, he was soundly walloped on the bare stern by his sergeant with a belt, a highly illegal but most efficacious means of inducing him to see the error of his ways.

That night we had a little conversation with the Doriri prisoners, and learnt that their villages were small and widely scattered, and that their food supplies were none too good. They really made their expeditions to Collingwood Bay in order to hunt game and make sago, and the killing of the people there was only a supplementary diversion, though of course the bodies of the slain gave them an agreeable change of diet. “Will your people fight?” I asked. “Yes,” was the reply, “of course they will; but those fire spears of yours are dreadful things to meet. If it was the Maisina, now——” Here they stared contemptuously at those unhappy people, who wilted accordingly. “Never mind the Maisina, they are my people now,” I cut in; “will the Doriri fight us?” “Yes, once,” was the reply, “until they have learnt all about those fire spears.” “Yes, what then?” I queried. “They will bolt for the hills, where you can’t find them, and starve there, for we have little food.” “Monckton,” said Barton, “you are not going to be callous brute enough to starve those unfortunate devils in the hills?” “No,” I answered, “but I am going to break their fighting strength, and teach them the futility of resisting a Government order before I leave.”

The carriers now put in a request to me that they might be allowed to eat any future Doriri killed; urging that, if they did so, it would not only be a great satisfaction to them but also a considerable saving to the stores of the expedition. “Really,” they urged, “there was no sense in wasting good meat on account of a foolish prejudice.” “You saw what happened to the disobedient private to-day?” I said to them. “Yes, he was most painfully beaten on the stern by the sergeant,” they said. “Quite so,” I replied. “Well, the carrier, be he Kaili Kaili or Maisina, who as much as looks with a hungry eye upon the body of a dead Doriri, will first be beaten in the same way by the sergeant, then by the corporals and lance-corporals, and then by the privates, until his stern is like unto the jelly of baked sago.” This fearsome threat curbed the man-meat hunger of the anthropophagi. After this we put in a peaceful and undisturbed night; even the Maisina sleeping soundly, happy at last in the belief that the dreaded Doriri would meet their match in the constabulary, and that the chances of their going down Doriri gullets were quite remote.