Long Way Place (Cannibal Country Trilogy, Book 1) by Wareham Andrew

Author:Wareham, Andrew [Wareham, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Publisher: The Electronic Book Company
Published: 2015-02-22T05:00:00+00:00

For three years life was rich and the living was easy and Ned was able to step away from who and what he was. The hard choices of the gutter were so far behind him he had almost forgotten them. He worked and built up his little harbour and the wharf and warehouse that went with it, planted his trees in proper straight lines, set out flower beds and a shrubbery of hibiscus and frangipani and drew little pictures of the orchids and other, unnamed, blooms. Not great art perhaps but sufficiently accurate representations that a couple of visiting botanists were pleased with them and took some away for their universities and said that he would be named in a footnote to their learned papers. Hani stayed at his side and in his bed, happily it seemed, but flat – there was no child, which worried her, she would have liked Ned’s son, she thought. He was offered his leave but postponed it for a year or two, he did not need it, he said.

A mission boat came in to the wharf mid-morning, early in the Dry Season, deposited two bedraggled lay brothers at the RM’s door. Jasper came at the run to Ned’s bungalow ten minutes later.

“Police business, Inspector Hawkins! They’ve chopped the missionary down coast from us, and his family, the boys think – they ran, sensibly, but they don’t think any of them got away. The two boys got into the swamps and made their way along the shoreline, managed to wave down the schooner before it got to the station. Four days ago, so it’s not rescue, there’ll be none still alive. I’m sending a message to Moresby for a detachment to come down to us. That will take another four days and when they get here you will take command and bring them down to me. I’m going with my twelve this afternoon in my whaler, just to have a look, which I must do although it’s pointless. I’ll pull back when it’s clear there’s no reason to suppose there’s any survivors, and will expect to meet you at the edge of the swamp, about ten miles this side of the station.”

The RM had an old ship’s boat at his disposal, single-masted but reliant as much on oars as wind power. He rarely ventured outside the reef in it.

“Rations, Jasper?”

“The detachment will bring their own bully and biscuit but will need drinking water. A couple of barrels would make sense. Otherwise, make sure the ammunition bandoliers are filled – and counted!”

Hani had heard nothing, the village did not trade with the clan at the mission station, the old ways having lapsed. It seemed, she said, that they had used to send boats down to trade for greenstone to make axe blades, the villagers ‘down there’ being in contact with a clan of the Orokaiva up in the mountains and providing them with salt and shells in exchange for top-quality stone, but the missionaries had not

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