Horror in Paradise (17 page)

Now the interesting thing was this: everyone knows that cassowaries do not travel by night. Nor, for that matter, do the Papuans. There are too many dangers lurking on the rough mountain trails as they wind along the precipices, and even worse, there are the spirits of the forest. The notion that someone might be playing a trick on us was thus ruled out. Besides, the practiced ears of our guests, and even our own hearing, could not have deceived us. It was without doubt a cassowary.

“We were talking about Isidoro,” someone murmured in a strangely altered voice. “He must have heard us. He’s coming . . .”

At this point, it should be mentioned that Isidoro’s village, Hide, was beyond the main range of mountains, on the opposite side to its western slopes on which was perched the little mission station of Mondo. Thus, the journey from Ilide to Mondo, even for a Papuan, entailed a good five hours of steep climbs and almost vertical descents over a series of razor-backed ridges, plunging ravines, and narrow gorges, the whole way lying through dense virgin forest at altitudes varying from three thousand to nearly eight thousand feet.

We shrugged our shoulders. No one could possibly make such a journey by night, unless he took pains to light his way with resinous torches and advanced with great caution—a process which would stretch the traveling time to at least ten hours, instead of five.

Meanwhile, the sound of the cassowary drew rapidly nearer. Soon, we heard clearly the drumming of its massive feet on the clay floor of our small courtyard. Then, abruptly, it ceased. A few seconds later, our door was pushed open and someone entered. It was Isidoro.

“I heard that you were here,” he declared, all smiles. “I have become bad, but you are still my fathers. I have come to see you and to say your name” [i.e., to welcome you]. “Give me a little tobacco to eat”—[that meant, to smoke]—” so that we can talk comfortably together.”

He squatted down before us, shredded up with his nails the hard little wedge of tobacco I had given him, rolled it in a scrap of newspaper, then lit his cigarette with my lighter. We began to talk of one thing and another. Our Mondo friends, gray with fear, said nothing.

Isidoro, who appeared quite fresh and at ease, stayed nearly an hour. We did not, at any point, make any mention of the cassowary. Nor did he.

“I am paying a visit to Mondo,” he said, finally getting up. “I am going back there to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

We shook hands, and he departed.

Scarcely had the door closed behind him, than we heard once more the thudding of the cassowary’s feet and wings.

I leaped outside. The night was black as ink. I could see nothing, and my shout received no answer. But beneath the black sky with its sparse spangling of winking stars, under the loud rustling of the wakeful forest, could be heard, unmistakable and baleful, the dying thunder of the cassowary’s running feet.

It became imperative to throw some daylight on this mystery. Otherwise, the superstitious beliefs that held our villagers in thrall would only be confirmed and strengthened.

Without waiting further, we set off for the village of Mondo by lantern light: it was no more than five minutes’ walk from the mission station. There, we at once visited the communal hut where travelers are received, and then ruthlessly went into each smaller hut, questioning its inhabitants. We knew our Papuans and they knew us. They knew—and openly admitted—that we were not “whites just like the others,” to whom one could tell any tall story. I do not need, therefore, to go into details. We were quickly convinced of one thing: not only was Isidoro not at Mondo, but he had not been seen in the village for a long time, nor for that matter in the surrounding district.

We decided therefore to set off at dawn the next day for Ilide. We arrived there toward noon, panting, perspiring, and exhausted. The first person to greet us, wearing a broad smile, was Isidoro.

We were careful not to show the least trace of astonishment. The villagers themselves were certainly surprised by our unexpected visit, but we found some plausible excuse, and in the most casual way possible, pursued our detailed and rather anxious investigation. Even then, we were forced back to the conclusion: Isidoro had remained in the communal hut of the village on the preceding evening, smoking and gossiping, until “two pipes after the hour of the
ghelele
“—that is to say, until after seven, for it is at about six-thirty that the mountain cicada salutes with his strident cries the coming of twilight. He had said that he was going back to his own hut to sleep. Others had seen him enter it, but not come out again. Early next morning, he had appeared on the veranda of his hut in the usual way, yawning and stretching. There had, in short, been nothing unusual in his whole behavior.

The bare facts, however, gave rise to much more troubling conclusions. Isidoro had been in his village the previous evening until after seven o’clock. By about nine-thirty that same evening, he had been in our hut at Mondo. Let us recall at this point that it was physically impossible to cover the distance between these two points in less than five hours, above all at night. For the return journey, it is true, the time factor presented less difficulty. Even then, there are limits to human endurance, above all among the Papuans who, for lack of rich and sustaining foods, have little stamina. Even supposing he could have made the journey by night, which in itself was highly improbable, and counting the time he had spent with us, Isidoro would have had to accomplish in about nine hours a return trip which, by day, would normally take at least ten, and by night at least sixteen hours.

It was a complete mystery. However, the next day, while I was alone, Isidoro came to see me. I had grown weary of turning the problem over and over in my mind. Looking him straight in the eyes, I asked him bluntly:

“Where were you, the other evening?”

“With you, at Mondo. You know that. You gave me some tobacco. We talked. We talked about different things. We shook hands.”

“Yes, but you deceived me. You said you were going to sleep at Mondo. No one saw you in the village.”

“Oh! . . .” That was just an
av’ur’elafe
[a manner of speaking].”

“Yet the people here say that you were with them, in this village, until quite late that same evening, and early the next day again.”

“Yes—there they speak the word of truth
—av’akai.”

“In that case, perhaps you flew like the birds to come and see us?”

His face darkened and his eyes grew fierce. His mouth twisted into a grimace of smiling hatred that I had never seen before, as he said jeeringly:

“You, a priest, have powers to do extraordinary things. I wanted to show you that I, too, have such powers.”

And abruptly, he departed.

Robert Dean Frisbie

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Robert Dean Frisbie (1896-1948) left for the South Seas after World War I. After “going native” for several years near Papeete, he began twelve years of drifting about the islands. “Ropati,” as he was called, in 1924 became a resident trader on Puka-Puka or Danger Island in the northern Cook group. He stayed for four years, married twice, and by his first wife Nga had five children. Encouraged by his friend James Norman Hall, he began writing.
The Book of Puka-Puka
(1929) is his best known work.

In “Over the Reef,” Frisbie narrates a horrifying personal adventure among the coral-crusted, iron-toothed shoals of a surf-beaten atoll.

A FEW months ago, while surfboarding across the shallows near Windward Village, I was swept into a depression in the reet where a rapid current washed me through the breakers into the open sea. It was as much as my life was worth and I knew it.

The sun was just setting behind a heavy screen of storm clouds; half a gale chopped the sea to whitecaps; and between me and the shore was a line of gigantic breakers raising their backs twenty feet above the jagged coral, to crash with terrific violence the whole length of the reef. Even a Puka-Pukan would have considered it impossible to regain the shore.

I had clung to my surfboard, a piece of one-by-four planking, four feet long. It buoyed me up somewhat; otherwise I could not have survived three minutes in that frothy sea.

The news was yelled across the island and soon the beach was black with people; some of the stronger men were on the reef vainly trying to throw me pieces of wood. They watched me with morbid excitement, for they expected momentarily to witness my last agonies.

Three desperate chances were open to me. One was to swim round to the lee side of the island, a distance of about five miles. This was impossible; night was setting in and the gale increasing. Furthermore, my strength was rapidly ebbing in the fight for breath against the waves that constantly bashed against my face. Or I might wait for a canoe to cross the lagoon to the lee reef and come round to me. Only the largest of the canoes could have weathered that sea, and at least two hours would be needed to make the passage. I should be dead long before they could reach me.

The third chance was to swim straight for the reef, and this I did, without hope of getting across but with a strangely exhilarating determination not to give up my life without a struggle. I have sometimes had moments of absurd panic while swimming in deep water far out from shore, as when turtle-fishing with Benny; but now I was nerved by a sort of reckless courage and looked forward without fear to the coming fight, as though the combers were human enemies whom I should somehow injure before they crushed and buried me. When one believes that death is inevitable, one is indifferent to everything except a final splendid demonstration of one’s ego—at least, so it was with me that murky evening, a chip flung, buried, raised, derided by the relentless sea.

Coming within the grasp of the combers, I looked back again to see an immense wave about to hurl itself upon me. All my courage ebbed in an instant. The struggle was too hopeless; the contrast between that mighty wall of water and my puny self was too clearly apparent.

Then, strangely, my courage returned. I refused to lose this last opportunity for self-assertion. As the comber curled to fall, I dove straight into it as the only means of protecting myself from its impact.

I could feel the concussion as it hurled itself on the reef; the water became milky with foam, and I knew that I was being tossed about perilously close to the jagged coral.

Fighting my way to the surface, my head was buried in two feet of foam. I beat the water frantically, trying to raise myself above that layer of soft choking froth. My lungs were bursting when it had subsided sufficiently for me to gasp the fresh air.

I scarcely had time to empty and refill my lungs before another comber reared above me with the malice of a cat playing with a mouse.

Subconsciously I was fighting the greatest battle of all, suppressing an almost overpowering fear which prompted me to dive, fill my lungs with water, and put an end to the struggle. But consciously I was still exhilarated: I was ending my life with gusto, with almost sensual gratification.

The comber fell just as I was diving. Half-stunned, I was whirled around like a chip. I had a vague impression that my head had grazed the coral; in fact, as I afterward learned, a deep gash had been laid open half-way across my scalp. It now seemed that the end was at hand, for again there was the deep layer of light foam above my head. I held my breath, expecting to hear the peculiar hissing sound of the next toppling sea.

As the foam subsided, coughing and gasping for breath I exerted my last strength, making a few feeble strokes toward the reef, now but a few yards distant. Dimly I could see naked figures along the reef gesticulating frantically. I knew that they were warning me of the approach of the next breaker, but I didn’t turn my head. There was nothing more that I could do. In my own mind I was already dead, for I had been through the terror of dying, and the final annihilating stroke had only been delayed for a few seconds, that was all. On the beach I saw a hazy line that seemed to waver and melt into blackness as I watched it. I knew it was the villagers standing as close as they could to get to me, watching the end.

There was now less than a fathom of water beneath me, and even though I had had the strength, I could not have dived. I heard the roaring of the oncoming comber; lights flashed in the darkness, and in that second I saw, with uncanny vividness, the form of my mother sitting in her armchair, quietly knitting and gazing up at me with her thoughtful, compassionate eyes.

I lived, of course, but it was a near thing. The last comber had buried me, hurled me across the reef, and rolled me like a log to a spot where the natives rushed out to grasp me.

I remember little of what followed, although I have a faint recollection of people carrying me inland, and of the great little Ura waving his arms and crying: “He is a superman
(toa)!
A Puka-Pukan would have been killed by the first wave!” My pride is so strong that I remember his words more vividly than any other circumstance. He was right: a Puka-Pukan would have philosophically allowed the first wave to kill him, not being sufficiently egotistical to make a final grandiose gesture in the face of death.

That night old William and Mama, Little Sea and Desire sat by my mat. Little Sea had my feet in her lap, massaging them. Desire sat huddled in a comer, whimpering. Mama stroked my forehead, while the whole night through William repeated the story of the incident, adding details with each narration, so that, long before dawn, he had placed me in the same class with Great Stomach, who flew over the sea. It was annoying, to say the least, to have the one thing I wished to forget dinned everlastingly into my ears.