Читать книгу Capricornia - Xavier Herbert - Страница 5

ALTHOUGH that northern part of the Continent of Australia which is called Capricornia was pioneered long after the southern parts, its unofficial early history was even more bloody than that of the others. One probable reason for this is that the pioneers had already had experience in subduing Aborigines in the South and hence were impatient of wasting time with people who they knew were determined to take no immigrants. Another reason is that the Aborigines were there more numerous than in the South and more hostile because used to resisting casual invaders from the near East Indies. A third reason is that the pioneers had difficulty in establishing permanent settlements, having several times to abandon ground they had won with slaughter and go slaughtering again to secure more. This abandoning of ground was due not to the hostility of the natives, hostile enough though they were, but to the violence of the climate, which was not to be withstood even by men so well equipped with lethal weapons and belief in the decency of their purpose as Anglo-Saxon builders of Empire.

The first white settlement in Capricornia was that of Treachery Bay—afterwards called New Westminster—which was set up on what was perhaps the most fertile and pleasant part of the coast and on the bones of half the Karrapillua Tribe. It was the resentment of the Karrapilluas to what probably seemed to them an inexcusable intrusion that was responsible for the choice of the name of Treachery Bay. After having been driven off several times with firearms, the Tribe came up smiling, to all appearances unarmed and intending to surrender, but dragging their spears along the ground with their toes. The result of this strategy was havoc. The Karrapilluas were practically exterminated by uncomprehending neighbours into whose domains they were driven. The tribes lived in strict isolation that was rarely broken except in the cause of war. Primitive people that they were, they regarded their territorial rights as sacred.

When New Westminster was for the third time swept into the Silver Sea by the floods of the generous Wet Season, the pioneers abandoned the site to the crocodiles and jabiroos and devil-crabs, and went in search of a better. Next they founded the settlement of Princetown, on the mouth of what came to be called the Caroline River. In Wet Season the river drove them into barren hills in which it was impossible to live during the harsh Dry Season through lack of water. Later the settlements of Britannia and Port Leroy were founded. All were eventually swept into the Silver Sea. During Wet Season, which normally lasted for five months, beginning in November and slowly developing till the Summer Solstice, from when it raged till the Equinox, a good eighty inches of rain fell in such fertile places on the coast as had been chosen, and did so at the rate of from two to eight inches at a fall. As all these fertile places were low-lying, it was obviously impossible to settle on them permanently. In fact, as the first settlers saw it, the whole vast territory seemed never to be anything for long but either a swamp during Wet Season or a hard-baked desert during the Dry. During the seven months of a normal Dry Season never did a drop of rain fall and rarely did a cloud appear. Fierce suns and harsh hot winds soon dried up the lavished moisture.

It was beginning to look as though the land itself was hostile to anyone but the carefree nomads to whom the Lord gave it, when a man named Brittins Willnot found the site of what came to be the town of Port Zodiac, the only settlement of any size that ever stood permanently on all the long coastline, indeed the only one worthy of the name of town ever to be set up in the whole vast territory. Capricornia covered an area of about half a million square miles. This site of Willnot’s was elevated, and situated in a pleasantly unfertile region where the annual rainfall was only about forty inches. Moreover, it had the advantage of standing as a promontory on a fair-sized navigable harbour and of being directly connected with what came to be called Willnot Plateau, a wide strip of highland that ran right back to the Interior. When gold was found on the Plateau, Port Zodiac became a town.

The site of Port Zodiac was a Corroboree Ground of the Larrapuna Tribe, who left the bones of most of their number to manure it. They called it Mailunga, or the Birth Place, believing it to be a sort of Garden of Eden and apparently revering it. The war they waged to retain possession of this barren spot was perhaps the most desperate that whitemen ever had to engage in with an Australian tribe. Although utterly routed in the first encounter, they continued to harass the pioneers for months, exercising cunning that increased with their desperation. Then someone, discovering that they were hard-put for food since the warring had scared the game from their domains, conceived the idea of making friends with them and giving them several bags of flour spiced with arsenic. Nature is cruel. When dingoes come to a waterhole, the ancient kangaroos, not having teeth or ferocity sharp enough to defend their heritage, must relinquish it or die.

Thus Civilisation was at last planted permanently. However, it spread slowly, and did not take permanent root elsewhere than on the safe ground of the Plateau. Even the low-lying mangrove-cluttered further shores of Zodiac Harbour remained untrodden by the feet of whitemen for many a year. It was the same with the whole maritime region, most of which, although surveyed from the sea and in parts penetrated and occupied for a while by explorers, remained in much the same state as always. Some of the inhabitants were perhaps amazed and demoralised, but still went on living in the way of old, quite unware of the presumably enormous fact that they had become subjects of the British Crown.

That part of the coast called Yurracumbunga by the Aborigines, which lay about one hundred and fifty miles to the east of Port Zodiac, was first visited by a whiteman in the year 1885. By that time the inhabitants, having only heard tell of the invaders from survivors of the neighbouring tribe of Karrapillua, were come to regard whitemen rather as creatures of legend, or perhaps more rightly as monsters of legend, since they had heard enough about them to fear them greatly. When one of the monsters, in the shape of Captain Edward Krater, a trepang-fisher, suddenly materialised for them, they thought he was a devil come from the sun, because they first saw him in the ruddy light of dawn and he was carroty. Krater was a man of fine physique, and not quietly carroty as a man might be in these days of clean-shaved faces and close-clipped heads, but blazingly, that being a period when manliness was expressed with hair. When the Yurracumbungas discovered that he was mortal, they dubbed him Munichillu, or The Man of Fire.

Ned Krater wished to establish a base for his trepang-fishing on a certain little island belonging to the Yurracumbungas and called by them Arrikitarriyah, or the Gift of the Sea. This island lay within rifle-shot of the mainland and was well watered and wooded and stocked with game and sheltered from the roll of the ocean by the Tikkalalla Islands, which lay in an extensive group along the northern horizon. The tribe used the island at certain times as a Corroboree Ground. Krater had already visited it before he came into contact with the owners. They first saw him when, waking one morning from heavy sleep following a wild night of corroboree, they found his lugger drifting up the salt-water creek on which they were camped. He was standing on the deck in all his golden glory. They snatched up their arms and flew to cover. One of Krater’s crew, who were natives of the Tikkalalla Islands and old enemies of the Yurracumbungas, told the ambuscade at the top of his voice who Krater was and what would happen if it was with hostile intent that they hid, then took up a rifle and with a volley of shots set the echoes ringing and the cockatoos yelling and the hearts of the Yurracumbungas quaking. Krater then went ashore. After spending some hours sneaking about and peeping and listening to and occasionally answering the assurances shouted from time to time by Krater’s men, the Tribe came back shyly to their gunyahs, among which the Man of Fire had pitched a tent.

Thenceforth till a misunderstanding arose, the Yurracumbungas stayed in the camp, staring at Krater and his strange possessions, and learning from his men all they could tell about whitemen, who were, it seemed, not mere raiders like the brownmen who used sometimes to come to them from the North, but supermen who had come to stay and rule. And they learnt a little about shooting with rifles and catching fish with nets and dynamite and making fires by magic, and came to understand why witnessing such things had disorganised and demoralised the vanquished tribes of whom the islanders spoke. As the islanders said—How could one ever boast again of prowess with spear and kylie after having seen what could be done with rifle and dynamite? Far from hating the invader, the Yurracumbungas welcomed him, thinking that he would become one of them and teach them his magic arts.

The tribes of the locality were divided into family sections, or hordes. When a man or men of one horde visited another, it was the custom to allow them temporary use of such of the womenfolk as they were entitled to call Wife by their system of marriage. Because they regarded Krater as a guest and a qualified person, the Yurracumbungas did not mind his asking for the comeliest of their lubras, though they did not offer him one, perhaps because they thought him above wanting one. But they objected strongly when his black crew asked for the same privilege. The islanders were definitely unqualified according to the laws. The granting of such a privilege to them would mean violation of the traditions, the weakening of their system, the demoralisation of their youth. Thus the Yurracumbungas argued. The islanders said that the old order had passed; and to prove it, one of them seized a lubra and ravaged her. The violent quarrel that resulted was settled by Krater, who hurled himself into the mob, bellowing and firing his revolver. Then Krater ordered the Yurracumbungas to give his men what they wanted.

The Yurracumbungas were struck dumb, appalled by their impotence. Night fell. They sat by their fires, staring at Krater and his men. They stared long after Krater had retired to his tent, long after they had relaxed to their own mattresses of bark. Hours passed. All of Krater’s men, except two who dozed over rifles before the tent, fell asleep, gorged on a great meal of fish.

The headman of the horde was Kurrinua. He had argued fiercely against violation of the laws. He was a man as big and hairy as Krater. In the middle of the night he nudged the man next to him and whispered. His neighbour passed the whisper on. Before long the whole camp knew of his intention. No-one stirred till the tip of the old moon appeared above the bush and splashed the inky creek with silver. Then the man next to Kurrinua crawled without a sound across the clearing to the scrub.

A tiny casuarina nut, shot out of the scrub, struck one of the dozing guards and roused him. He looked about. The camp was silent but for snores and the sigh of the wind in the trees. Then a slight sound in the scrub drew the guard’s attention. He listened intently. Again he heard it. Tiny crackling as of a foot treading stealthily on leaves. He rose, and with the movement roused his mate, who whispered. Both listened, heard a peculiar pattering sound, and went rifle in hand, with backs turned to the camp, to investigate. Louder crackling. Kurrinua and young Impalui rose with stones in hands and sped towards the guards like shadows. The guards were knocked senseless without a sound. The horde rose to knees, women and children and ancients ready to fly, warriors in arms. Kurrinua and Impalui snatched up the rifles, crept to the tent. Kurrinua was crouching at the flap of the tent with rifle raised when—BANG!—a bullet tore through his body, through the tent, crashed into the fire. Impalui had fired accidentally. Kurrinua fell into the tent.

Uproar! Spears whizzed. Rifles crashed. Men roared and howled. The horde rushed, fought fiercely for a moment, wavered, turned and fled. A few of the islanders rushed to the tent, which was collapsed and sprawling about like a landed devil-fish. They pounced on it and dragged it clear of the men beneath, dragged Kurrinua free of Krater’s grip.

Kurrinua rolled over and over like a sea-urchin in a gale, got free of clutching hands and kicking feet, rose, and with blood spurting from his back and belly, plunged into the scrub, followed by a hail of bullets. His pursuers lost him. They spread, passed within a yard of where he lay with thigh-bone snapped by a bullet. He crawled towards the isthmus that lay between the creek and sea, bent on reaching the canoes. He heard cries and shots as other fugitives were found. He was in sandy hillocks out of the shelter of the scrub when the hunters, now carrying torches, rushed on to the beach. He rolled into a hollow and buried himself to the neck.

The night passed, slowly for the hunters, all too swiftly for the hunted. No hope now of escaping by canoe. The hunters had dragged the vessels high. But Kurrinua might swim if he could not walk, swim by way of the sea to the passage and the mainland. Surely he had less to fear from crocodiles than from Munichillu and his men. Still he dared not leave the hollow while the hunters prowled the beach, because they would find the wide track of his crawling before he could reach the creek. They splashed along the water’s edge, crashed through the scrub, crept among the hillocks, never went far away.

The dark creek silvered. The hunters’ torches paled. Birds stirred in the bush. A jabiroo flew in from the sea on great creaking wings, swerved with a swish and a croak at sight of the hunters. Jabiroos were gathering at the Ya-impitulli Billabong for the nesting. The Nesting of the Storks. It was the time of the great Corroboree of the Circumcision, for which the men of Yurracumbunga were gathering.

Swiftly the sky lost its stars and the scrub found individuality. Footsteps. A shout when they found the blood and the track of crawling. Footsteps pattering. Kurrinua looked his last at the gilded skyline. Another shout. They danced around him, pointing, kicking sand in his eyes. Soon Munichillu came, and with him the light of day, as though that too belonged to the like of him. At his appearance the east flamed suddenly, so that the sand was gilded and fire flashed in his beard. He looked at the face in the sand, grunted, raised his revolver.

Kurrinua’s heart beat painfully. His eyes grew hot. The pain of his wounds, which he had kept in check for hours by the power he was bred to use, began to throb. But he did not move a hair. He had been trained to look upon death fearlessly. To do so was to prove oneself a warrior worthy of having lived. His mind sang the Death Corroboree—Ee-yah, ee-yah, ee-tullyai—O mungallinni wurrigai—ee-tukkawunni—BANG! Kurrinua gasped, heaved out of the sand, writhed, shuddered, died. Ned Krater spat. In his opinion he had done no wrong. He did not know why the savages had attacked him. He thought only of their treachery, which to such as he was intolerable as it was natural to such as they.