WINGED EXPLORERS OF PAPUA

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 29, 4 February 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

WINGED EXPLORERS OF PAPUA

A Story Of The Great Dark Island

CHAPTER 111. : -r - v The Schooner Man Now Came to the Climax of His Strange Story. "At first we imagined," lie said, "that all this image-carving belonged to the dead past, centuries old perhaps. But we made an astounding discovery; it fairly- sent the" doctor crazy with delight. We followed the track round a corner of the Black Mountain one day, and there, in an almost circular valley, reached bv a narrow kind of gullv, we came upon the statue-makers at work. Wonder of wonders! There they were, six or seven of them, the last sculptors of the tribe. They were using big chisels and hammers of a flinty kind of stone, and sharp , knives and gouges .of obsidian; you know the volcanic glass you see in 'some parts of .Xew. /'ea'and. The images'.they were making were not huge 30ft ligures; they were more like life-size, a tall man's size iike themselves. Some were almost finished! one was just being chopped out roughly from the cliff behind.

By - -- James Cowan

"Well, you may imagine-;! how excited the.doctor was: he was.tsplut-. tering with delight, not able to get his words out quick enough. He was in his glory, away up in the tenth heaven of delight. . ''What will the society say now!" he yelled at me. He set to work photographing everything in sight. The, only pity was he had not a movie camera. I tell you I wag thrilled myself to think of it, and to see those silent, busy sculptors there, gravely going about their work, as their ancestors had done. . "This/' said the doctor, "was the one pure remnant of the ancient stock of artists, keeping to its mountain home, safe from the savage people of the swamps; an ancient civilised people, marooned in that locked-up Mystery Valley. In the Treasure Cave. "The old . priest or his granddaughter always went with us on our ' exploring and rummaging, and one day—but not until we had be.en there some weeks-rthe girl beckoned us to the Tear of the "principal statue. There was.a shallow cave in the carved rock that I had not discovered before, halfhidden by a wide-branching mountain palm, such as grew around plentifully. She pushed - this aside and revealed a chamber below, to which of narrow steps led. Down we went into this dark place. The girl had a torch of dry .twigs bound together. We wentvon. following our pretty torch-bearer," and-a short p'assage.took us to stone rooiii, ~ like: a cave, which must have been right under the centre of the group of

statues. At " the far end wn«» a : tapa cloth. The girl drew this aside, and what do you think we set eyes 011? It was a beautiful replica, a cop\* 111 miniature, of one of those big stone statues outside —but all in. pure gold! It was; a kind of kanaka Buddha, all proud and scorn fu 1-1 doking, it's eyes -staring out over our heads, though it was not quite five feet high. It was gold, native gold, no doubt about that —the same yellow gold'that the priestess girl's ornaments: were, made of. And its eyes—l never -saw the like. They were jewels of a kind I had never known: not unlike diamonds, but not sparkling, rather emitting a sort of radiance, a warm,glow that .seemed to suffuse everything around and that gave a. .luminous sheen to ;the gold statue. - -v;'

. "The girl went down on her knees before it and put her forehead to the stony floor and we could -hear her going through .some sort of low murmured. prayer. or incantation. Then she dropped the in pa curtain again, and we followed her" out, making the best use of our eves, though, 3*oll bet.

• "And tliat night the doctor and il could scarcely sleep for talking and thinking of what -we had seen—me wondering how I;.could get hol<l -of that Buddha and<hawk it off-.tpcthe coast, and the. doctor speculating on those strange r eyes. I suggested radium, but he .laughed and.said we'd be frizzled up, and the kanaka town too, if there was all that radium in that place. Anyhow, my notion set him thinking, and he said, as he turned in at last, 'Old man, I believe the statues are not the only wonder- j 'ful -things we'll! drop on round these i parts.'

"-The Sailor's - Return. "Well, tliere in that town of the Olcl Stone Men we stayed, the doctor having the time of his life, until the three months were nearly up . that we'd arranged-.-with the mate of tlie Doliii. The doctor, however, wouldn't thhik of; leaving. He-could spend a year there, he said, and hunt up something new every week. He gave me my sailing orders.

"The doctor packed up his precious | notebooks and photographs, to go I straight to his scientific society. .Everything was carefully covered with oilskin; it was the most valuable thing in the world, he said. lie grew very angry when I suggested kidnapping .that' kanaka: -Buddha, 'jewel eyes and, all, and packing it up in a tarpaulin- with the storey. • I doubt, though, whether I'd ever- have got oft the ground with it.

"So off at daylight one morning I I sails, with a.• tremendous good-bye from the villager, a nose prcs* from the lovely witch-priestess", and* tli'e good old doctor waving me his farewell from the stockade and calling to me to take good care of his package. Flying all day I reached the coast due south,, and; skirted; along until I sighted the schooner -riding there peacefully just inside Jthe little Hat -island. I had only:to".fly across theriver, the Merauke—veyy widoj there —and the sea channel, and my flying journey was ended. . •

"I -must have been flying too low or grew careless. At any rate, something came amiss with my propeller, as if a tree-top had caught it. It was just <lnsk, and there was a thin fog beginning to rise from the river and the swamps. Whatever it was, down I went into a big tree, smash

went the machine, ripping and tearing, and there ffdfi I, hanging for dear life on to a tree branch, with the river beneath. Some of the aeroplane tackle held, but the motor dropped out and went splash into the river, and so did the other traps. "The river was alive .witli. crocodiles; I could see their ugly snouts all over the place, like the ends of logs, sticking above the black water. Tile branch on which I hung broke away, and down I went on to another and sounder one. But in the fall I must have turned over, for my revolver and all the contents of my pockets dropped out, and with the other things went the doctor's precious package that I'd hung on to all through like grinr death."

"What!" Ye lost it after all? Losli, mon." exclaimed McCallum, "ye were a careless loon!"

"To my sorrow, yes," said the Schooner Man gravely, "and I tell you. gentlemen, that I distinctly saw it drop into the awful gaping throat of a huge' crocodile directly beneath mie. He was waiting for me, but he got the doctor's notes and the photographs of the most wonderful discovery ever made on God's great earth !"

The Schooner Man's tale was ended. The mess-room waited for the sequel, but* there was none. The narrator looked round the room with those narrowed-in keen eyes. His glance travelled from one to the other. "Well, I must be going," he paid. "So long"; and he stepped lightly up the companion-way and was gone.

Mr. McCallum was the first to break the solemn stillness of the mess-room.

"Well —well!" he said, "but yon Schooner fellow's the biggest leear that ever the Lorrd put breath into! His aeroplane and his statues and his golden images, and his brown witchgirl

"And lite • crocodile, Mac," said the Second Mate. Well, I wonder.