THE VALLEY OF LAGOONS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 57, Issue 116, 26 February 1937, Page 7

THE VALLEY OF LAGOONS

By A. E. YARRA. :: Copyright. ::

:: SERIAL STORY ::

CHAPTER XIX.

WHITE MAGIC AND BLACK MAGIC. A double line of washing was hanging out to dry over a natural giassj lawn, strung from a table-top a «£ to Eric Strong and his party had only been at the Valley of Lagoons sixty Sours? and already the womdntolk W CaptS' Dick’s pink nightshirt flapped defiantly m the bieez a flae nailed to the mast. Kitty than, with S a mouth full of pegs, was hanging out calico sunbonnets linen fronts, worsted stockings, print frocks. Elbow deep m a tub of soap suds, Elizabeth, at. a hastily made bench was rubbing and scrubbing m a clou of steam. Every little while she burst into cheerful song. „ The bullock teams were wearing - road from the sand hill, drawing pme locrs for the building of the first homestead The younger women and older children of the tribe, with Are sticks and piles of undergrowth vme burning down young The aged men and women chat' . like a flock of birds, as they gathered at a little distance and watched Cap tain Dick and John Blair and the assistants squaring the ends with axe and snigging the logs into P la «\™ a team of waggon horses, rolling the up with ropes and spiking them in position with wooden pegs in auger The walls were double, spear-proof, two feet thick. Four long huts were placed in the form of a square, with one entrance to the central courtyard, to be protected by a high gate which could be closed quickly and secuiely in the event of an attack. Already the sides of the big huts were up, and the place had every appearance of a fort in process of construction. Rifles were stacked in centre of the open square. Each man wore at least two revolvers. On the crest of the hill two men one white, the other black—did sentry go, armed to the teeth. . Bookboo'k, the “brother of Hnc Strong, the leader of the four elders of the council of the tribe, had taken Erie and Yettee with the hunters and warriors on an expedition to biing m a supply of game for the big corroboree and feast that was to celebrate the coming of the moon-faced men from the stars. _. , , Presently Mrs Louth, Captain Dick s housekeeper, emerged from the midst of the waggons with a big dish or camp bread and cold meat and a bucket of tea. All hands knocked- olf to sit down and partake of (refreshment. The genius of Eric Strong in handling the tribesmen showed here tor none of the aged blacks made any attempt to come across the line marked out with stakes as the camp boundary. This was as much for the peace of mind of the ladies as for the safety of the party, in view' of the tact that the clothing of the blacks was confined to a fur tassel, hanging like a sporran, a, few hair-string armulets, and some hair-ornaments. When “10 o’clock” had been eaten the men lit their pipes, Captain Dick took up the food that was left over, lumping to where the natives were squatting, he distributed it amongst them. To his surprise he saw an old man smoking a pipe. . “Burn and boil me, if here isn t Eric’s bulldog pipe stuck in the face of that old wooden idol over there, he shouted to his friends. “Come over here, Blair, and ask him how ho got it.” Blair approached, followed by the rest of the males in the party. Bysigns and a few words picked up from Yettee ho discovered that Jack Louth had given the pipe to the native, when Eric discarded it. Louth had supplied a stick of tobacco and showed tire old man liow to use it. “Sink me in 50 fathoms!” bellowed Captain Dick jovially, “he’s as much at home with a dudeen already as a bosun in the tap room of the Sailor s Arms.” The wrinkled old man, lean ot shank and shrill of voice, struck an attitude. Slapping himself on the chest he pointed to Captain Dick. He piped something in his childish treble: Then he limped up and down with a perfect imitation of Captain Dick’s walk, puffing furiously at his “dudeen,” the while. His companions roared with good-natured laughter. Blair exchanged signs and words with the smoker for a moment. Then —with a serious face, but with dancing laughter in his eyes, he explained: “As near as I can make out, he claims to be as good .a white god as you, Dick. He says ho can smoke a pipe and limp like you. I suspect that ho already believes you are a fraud merely mortal like himself.” Captain Dick’s face grew serious: “Insubordination, eh? tVe’ll have mutiny aboard next! I’ll scotch this now. Bring me a hammer and a nail bag, Betty.” Elizabeth brought the hammer and a leather pouch containing nails of many sizes. Captain Dick took them, _ and sat down on the grass. Ho motioned tho scoffer to approach. When the two were seated, side by side, tho sailor handed the grinning old native a piece of tobacco as an earnest of friendly intentions. Then ho took up the hammer and slowly and carefully drove three thin nails into his mahogany leg, below the 'knee and through tho trousers. With metrieulous care he hammered them right in to tho head, while .a gasp of amazement went up from tho squatting blacks, and the scoffer’s eyes swelled like small balloons. Calmly Captain Dick handed the hammer and nails over to the old blackfellow beside him. Ho jerked his thumb towards the skinny 7, naked shin, as though to say: “Now, you show me!” After tho first wave of .astonishment had subsided there were cries of de-

light and jeers of derision from the group. Tli© scoffer sat stupified, looking from the hammer in his hand to the heads of tho nails in Dick’s leg.

“Budjery! Burjery!” they shouted. Captain Dick made a gesture of contempt, which was plainly understandable to the scoffer and bis people, and rose to his feet.

“Tell ’em to wait,” bo said, rising and limping back to tlie tents hidden inside the barricade of waggons, where he disappeared. The blacks were still chattering excitedly about the discomfiture of tho scoffer with the white god’s magic, when they saw Captain Dick bopping back on one sturdy limb, tlie empty trouser leg flapping in tho wind. rio had left liis mahogany leg in his tent. . Coolly the sturdy old sailor bopped down to tho group, apparently unaware of the consternation his ability 7 to dispense with a leg at will was causing. It was only a sharp word of command from Blair that prevented a stampede of terror. Captain Dick popped pieces of sugar into the open mouths of half a dozen old men and women. He stared expectantly at the scoffer’s good legs of meat and bone, but that poor moita failed to take the hint. The captain hopped back to the waggon and reappeared presently limping on two legs. “Ai! Ai! Ai!” The cry of amazement brought a flicker of a smile to the face of the captain, as he (resumed his seat beside the abased scoffer, and magnanimously slipped a piece of sugar into his mouth. “I think I’m still commodore of,the fleet,” grinned the captain, as ho led his party hack to work. The blacks ran off noisily to tell their friends at the camp of tlie magic of the white god who limped. Eric and Yettee came in for lunch and heard of Dick’s triumph. “Come with us this afternoon and we’ll show yon tho black man’s magic,” invited Eric. So tho three white men and Yettee rowed Dick’s whaleboat up the shore of the big lagoon, and watched tlie hunters at work.

Eric and his party sat amidst tlie reeds. They saw two tall young blacks standing upright in a bark canoe, mother-naked, holding pronged spears poised, while they studied the tops of the reeds for signs of fish below. Presently the reed tops shivered ever so slightly. The shivering travelled along in the same direction as the fish below, as he brushed against the undergrowth. Gauging the direction and speed of the fish, and the depth at which lie was swimming by the movement of the reed tops, the spearmen threw their pronged weapons and seldom failed to find them afterwards floating in the water with a fat fish transfixed, to he added to the growing heap in the bottom of the canoe. At the marshy, tree-shaded junction of the two larger lagoons, whore the big, blue, water lilies floated in scores, three young stalwarts quietly poked thgir canoe around a great flock of ducks, keeping well away until they had gained their strategic point. Then they set up a terrifying noise, shouting and splashing the water with tlieir paddles. Tho ducks rose from the lagoon in a cloud, and flew towards the shelter of the trees on tho shore, taking their usual way homeward above tho marshy lane, where a clump of timber grew on each side of the narrow channel. As the birds were approaching the timber a young man, standing in a canoe, threw a boomerang into the air. The curved weapon sailed up over the birds, making a sound as it whirled round and round like the cry of a hawk. Instantly the flock of ducks dived in terror for the shelter of the timber, and into the wide-open nets of bark-fibre that were spread from tree to tree waiting to re- % ceive them.

That hawk-like cry, caused by a series of cuts on the boomerang witli a stone-flake for a knife, was the result of years of study and practice by successive boomerang makers in the centuries since the race had been shut off from Europe in its stone age, by the subsidence of land bridges.

Hoisting tho small sail in the whaleboat Captain Dick took them from place to place along the shores of the three lagoons under the guidance of Yettee, and they saw the master hunter of tlie stone age at liis best, using wooden spears cut with stone tools and tipped with stone points. On an open plain a party of young men were stalking emus, those giant birds roughly resembling ostriches. The hunter held upright a young green tree, which he had cut off at tlie foot, hiding with his spear behind the bushy top. When tho big bird, with her flock of gigantic chickens, was busy feeding, the hush crept towards her stealthily, on the sido from which the wind would not bring the danger scent. When the game grew suspicious the bush took root. As soon as she"resumed her feeding it prept forward again. When within range, tho dusky hunter dropped the bush, standing erect, and swiftly drove his spear through the bird’s body. In another place a hoy blocked the hole of a wombat with a piece of wood, a foot inside tho entrance, and then hid himself nearby. A second boy sought out tho small, fleet animal where he was feeding on a grassy flat, and chased him to Ins hole. With great bounds the little fellow easily outstripped his pursuer, hut while lie was frantically trying to remove the obstruction in liis hallway tho first black boy neatly speared him from behind. An so the hunt went on. Women carried home the “bag.” They cooked it in holes in the earth, on heated stones from which the fire had been removed, covering the meat with paperbark and banking soil on top.

Other women and children scoured the bush for snakes, goannas, edible flowers and roots, fat white witchedy grubs ; honeycomb, which they dug out of tho trees with stone axes; tasty insects ; honey ants, which are the sweetmeats of tho tribesmen, squeezed into the mouth for tho honey they hold. So it proceeded all day. Nothing was killed needlessly. When sufficient of one kind of game for the occasion was obtained the dusky hunter put up liis spears and went homeward to prepare for the night’s entertainment, leaving his “bag” for the women to collect.

In the meantime official messengers, or “runners,” had been sent out, carrying short sticks on which were carved mystic signs—authority for travelling beyond the borders of their own territory—to invito tho important men of neighbour tribes to the great cor-

roboree and banquet in honour of the visitors from the stars. In the dark of tho moon Eric sat next to his “brother,’ 1 Bookbook, chief elder of tho tribe, with Yettee, watchful, behind, and Captain Dick beside him, and watched the corroboree in his honour. . A hundred naked men, painted with stripes of pipeclay and red oclire, wearing wierd and frightful headdresses of feathers—masks that bore no resemblance to tlie human face — performed tlie dance of tho Men from tho Stars. . Bunches of hushes tied to thenankles rustled as they stamped in unison ; boomerangs clicked against spesurs as they chanted; a musician blew into a long, hollow tree-root, and pi educed a sound not unlike tlie bellow of a bull. Women sat at a little distance and beat time by slapping their bare thighs with their hands. Lights gleamed on hideously painted dancers, as a hundred small fires were fed by the male children. The theme of the dance was the killing of The Eagle with the magic of a rival magician from the plateau tribe “The Dingoes” (who had sent as a present an. enchanted rug of opossum skins to The Eagle) and his triumphant return to earth, white of skin and more powerful as a magician than ever.

The dead warrior’s journey to the country of the stars, his return to the Valley of Lagoons with his strange animals and liis stranger companions, his welcome by his old tribe, were depicted with considerable dramatic skill in continuous tableaux. The white men, assisted by a word here and there from the watchful Yettee, were able to follow the story by the actions and gestures of the dancers.

One stalwart young warrior played the part of The Eagle, indicating liis prowess by striking dead in pantomime all who attacked him. Another clearly showed that he was jealous of The Eagle’s reputation. With many incantations and tricks of sorcery he prepared the death rug, in which the magnificent warrior died in slow agony as The Eagle. Next, a sinister gang of avengers crept on the sorcerer and despatched him and his bodyguard, returning in triumph, to he welcomed as heroes. A party of women, entirely covered in pipe-clay, mourned for the death of The Eagle, pretending to gash their flesh with stone knives.

There was a period of nearly two years (Yettee explained) in which the tribe went on with its hunting and feasting and other activities of normal life. And then a messenger arrived with the news that two white gods had arrived from the sky, and were harrying the Dingoes on the Plateau (Jerry Stone and his mate Jed). The white men conjectured from this, portion of the dance that Jerry and his companion had shot the males in a hunting party, and then run down their women on horseback until they could catch them by the hair and ravish them.

The gusto with which the actors performed this scene was sufficient evidence of the ill-will they bore the Dingoes. There was another spell of singing and feasting. Then came tho smoke signal announcing tho approach of Eric’s party, and a life-long picture of the tribe, going forth in fear and wonder to meet the moonfaced magicians.

Men on all fours, with bent sticks in their hair for cattle horns, others with riders for the horsemen; still others in teams for the draught horses pulling the waggons; “star” actors taking the parts of magicians themselves with pipe-clay on tlieir faces to whiten them like the “moon-faces.”

Every peculiarity of tho white men was faithfully depicted—their smoking of pipes, Captain Dick’s limp., his magic in putting off and on his leg as ho wished. Kitty Blair’s shocked behaviour when the first hatch of practically naked young men and women approached her to make friends raised a gale of mirth —and it was faithfully done, even to her hasty scribbling in a notebook afterwards.

All through the night the corroboree and the feasting in alternate stages went on. When daylight broke the men and women and children of the tribe, gorged and lazy, stole away in groups to sleep off the effects in their gunyas of bark and their wurleys of bushes at tho camp by the lagoon’s edge. The white gods from the stars had been publicly acknowledged, if not as rulers of the kingdom, at least as great and powerful men whom it would pay well to propitiate and to serve, and whom it would be disastrous to hinder.

(To he continued.)