Drums of Mer. Ion Idriess
and hearing the story from the lips of the last of the Zogo-le, was fascinating work.
MacFarlane has toiled for many years among these Islanders, but it was only after years of sympathetic friendship that he gained the inner confidence of the old keepers of secrets. These at last, seeing the younger generation fully reconciled to the unconquerable changes which civilization had brought upon them told much of their secret history to MacFarlane just about the time I came along and reaped the benefit of it. A little later and old Maino, son of the great Kebisu, and old Passi of Mer, and other warriors of the grim old days, would have died with their people’s secrets unrevealed. (Passi died while this book was going to press.)
The names of native chiefs, especially Kebisu and his club-swinging friend Maros, were quite recently household names from Cape York Peninsula right across the Strait to New Guinea. The few pearling vessels mentioned are ships that helped to make history, lurid and otherwise, at the time when the Strait was growing her “eye-teeth.” Practically, the only departure from fact is in a slightly different timing of several chapters, due mainly to the difference between the native calendar and our own; and the difficulty, in what was then a new country and an isolated sea in the throes of its pioneering days, of pinning any episode strictly to date after the lapse of years. There is, also, a departure from the sequence of fact in Chapter XXII. Here there were actually two shipwrecks, not one; the incident of the monkey occurred during the looting of one ship, that of the looking-glasses on the other. But to describe each incident separately, would have lengthened an already long book.
My one conscious lapse into fiction is the treasure within the heart of Gelam. Even this may not be entirely fiction, for to this day old Spanish coins of gold and silver are occasionally dug up in the gardens of Mer, of Eroob, and Ugar. Jardine’s ill-fated schooner captain, in these same waters, found his coral-encrusted treasure chest of nearly £4000 worth of old-time silver dollars. On various islands of the other Groups, old-time coins are found after nor’-west storms have ravaged the beaches. Jack McNulty, of the Federal Hotel, Thursday Island, has a collection of such relics. An old Spanish coin of gold, dug from Mer, was bought by a resident from a native when I was last in Thursday Island.
As to Mer and the heart of Gelam, well, the old extinct crater is there, the rumour is there, the legend of the Spaniards and Las village is there, and since this story was written Nasana of Mer tells realistically of his trepidation on creeping into an underground cave which apparently runs in far under Gelam. The mummification of bodies of course, is fact, merely the custom, but recently faded into disuse. This treasure story is, so far as I am aware, in no relation to the mysterious English enterprise which searched gloomy Naghir Island some years ago, and so silently stole away. The Islanders tell of precious stones unearthed in years gone past, and the rest of the story seems to fit in rather uncannily.
If ethnologists are incredulous concerning the statement that the forefathers of some of these natives came from “Ekinpad” in northern Queensland, I can only say that the Zogo-le themselves definitely stated that they did.
I have to thank, too, Roddy Bruce, the nephew of that protector and great-hearted friend of the Islanders, John Stewart Bruce, Baba (father) of Mer, for giving me such intimate glimpses into the heart and mind of both the Islander and the aboriginal. Roddy Bruce, the first white baby born on Mer (and born under tragic circumstances) was mothered by a native woman and reared as a child of Mer.
As a guide to incidents from the white man’s point of view during the “white invasion of the Strait,” I was fortunate in having placed at my disposal while at Somerset House, Albany Pass, Cape York Peninsula, several volumes of Jardine’s diary dealing with that period. And later at Thursday Island I was loaned four cobwebby volumes of valuable official records, which had been unearthed from an old lumber-room in the Court House.
Jakara, is to a certain extent, conjecture. A very few white castaways have survived against all odds amongst those once fierce Islanders: Ned Mosby, for instance, who made favourable history on Massig Island, and whose sons are well established there now. And there have been occasional blotches on the white man’s escutcheon, such as that renegade Wini, “The Wild White Man of Badu,” who attained a power sufficient to terrorize both native and white. A parallel to Jakara’s romance is the fate of the four lonely lads, survivors of the wreck of the Charles Eaton. The castaways clinging to the rafts were clubbed and their skulls hung round the neck of the great Au-gud of Aureed Island. The boys, D’Oyley brothers, Ireland, and Sexton, were claimed as “Lamars.” Baby D’Oyley and young Ireland were the lucky ones, old Duppa of Mer claiming them as Lamars (living spirits) of his sons. Years later, the captain of the Mangles reported white castaways living among the savages of Mer. Eventually the New South Wales Government sent out the rescue schooner Isabella to rescue them, with the result that the younger D’Oyley and Ireland were bought from Duppa. The two other lads could never be found. MacFarlane and I often speculated as to their fate. On this subject, for some reason or other, the Islanders were very reticent to MacFarlane’s inquiries.
As to the mysterious booya, the stone which shed the brilliant flame, I can only say that the natives declare it to have been a luminous “stone.”
My thanks are due to Father Chester of Sydney, who allowed me access to the records and diaries of his father, Lieutenant Henry M. Chester, who established the seat of government at Thursday Island, and later hoisted the flag on New Guinea. The diaries of this well-known historical figure have helped me considerably in placing as authentically as possible, a number of incidents in this book from the white man’s point of view as well as the native’s.
As for the few white women mentioned in this story – well, the fate of several as here described is, alas, only too true.
For the photographs in this book my thanks are due to Messrs. G. Bright, N. N. Lyons of Murray Island (Mer); H. Hudson, formerly of Torres Strait; to Frank Pryke, leader of the Sir Rupert Clarke expedition up the Fly River, to John Sandes, Colin Simpson, and to the Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Strait (Cambridge University Press).
Ion L. Idriess.
CONTENTS
THE DANCE OF DEATH
PREPARING FOR. THE END
FORCING THE SECRETS OF HEAVEN
THE HEART OF THE PRETTY LAMAR
THE COMING OF KEBISU
WAR DRUMS OF MER
THE MASSACRE ON THE TWO BROTHERS
THE RETURN
JAKARA MAKES LOVE
WHEN THE BLOOD LUST CALLS
VELVET CLAWS
THE MENACE OF THE LAMARS
THE LEADEN FIST OF THE LAMARS
WITHIN THE CRATER OF MER
WOMEN
THE PEARL SHIPS OF THE LAMARS
THE DANCE
THE TROUNCING OF KEBISU
THE SAILING OF THE FLEET
THE LOOTING OF THE LAMAR SHIP
THE RAID OF THE TUGERI
THE PEOPLES OF THE AUWO OROMO
THE GREAT TRADE
THE BATTLE ON THE FLY
THE CYCLONE
A GIRL'S PLAN
THE DUEL
THE COMING OF GAREEB
IN WHICH GAREEB LEARNS THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLES, OTHER LIVES
VIRGINS OF WAIAT
PLANS AND COUNTER PLANS
AS IS WRITTEN IN THE COURSES OF THE STARS
GLOSSARY
IMAGES
CHAPTER I
THE