It was going to be a pathetic stand. The three pursuers were taunting her, raising their rifles and pointing them at her, then lowering them to make gestures of cutting her head off by drawing their fingers across their throats. She was angry and frustrated and was giving them what-for in the local language, not a word of which Josh could understand.
Such was the intense focus the men had on Penelope, Josh was able to walk up behind them. He waited for a moment for them to look over their shoulders and confront him. When they didn’t, he yelled at them. Still they ignored him, so he raised his pistol and shot two of them in the back. He didn’t like being a back-shooter, but he was too tired to resist temptation.
This policy at least gained him some attention. The two back-shot men dropped and died, and the third, a muscular man with an angry but intelligent look on his face, turned to look with some curiosity at Josh, as if wondering what had come over the white man to make him shoot his comrades. Josh realized this was the tall man he’d seen on the beach the day he’d arrived to talk to Whitman. That meant the two men lying dead were probably the same other two he’d met that day. He was about to exercise his pidgin as best he could to discover the truth of the entire odd state of affairs, but the opportunity was cut short, to say the least, when Penelope sprang at the man with her machete, her terribly sharp machete, and slashed the man’s tendons at his knees. With a shriek, he fell and clutched his bloody and useless legs, then rolled over and raised his rifle to shoot her. Penelope contemptuously kicked his rifle aside and wore her terrible blade across his face. He threw up his hands to hold his face together, blood spurting between his fingers, but she laughed and hacked his hands, one of which flew off. He rolled and cried and bled. “You belong devil,” Penelope said to the bawling man. “Die same.”
It is a terrible thing to see a man so horribly cut up and still be alive, but it didn’t last long. Penelope hacked off the man’s head with two hard cuts and then kicked it away, sending it tumbling down the hill. “Baho, Moga, and Coronga,” she said, pointing at each of the three dead men. Her eyes, dilated after her furious killing, gradually refocused. “They were my cousins. More will follow when these do not return.”
“Why will they follow? What does Whitman want with you?”
She studied him, as if observing him for the first time. The machete moved in her hand, and he started to raise his pistol to defend himself, but all she did was wipe the blood off the blade with a handful of grass. Then, without another word, she turned and loped up the hill.
Josh watched her, half supposing she would stop and wait for him, but she determinedly made her way through the tall grass until she disappeared. He followed her, but as soon as he stepped one foot inside the darkness of the towering trees and clutching vines and thorny bushes, he knew he would not find her. Josh did the only thing he could think to do, the thing he always did when he was lost, or confused, or unhappy in any way. He set his sights on the sea and made toward it. He did not see that there was another one of Whitman’s men, a warrior who was thick around the waist with stumpy legs and a bit of an indecisive mind. He was a dogged sort, however, and had tracked along the path that had been made during the pursuit. Having gotten very tired, he’d stopped to lean up against a banyan tree for a rest and a smoke. He was sitting there, smoking and resting, when Josh came across him. Josh had his pistol up and pressed against the warrior’s forehead before the man could make a move for his Enfield, which he had tossed carelessly on the ground more than an arm’s length away.
“Now you will talk,” Josh said. “Now you will tell me why you chase the girl.”
The warrior grimaced, showing teeth filed to triangular points and blackened by betel nut. Beads of sweat erupted on his brow and rolled down his cheeks. “She belong dead” was his only comment.
“Why?” Josh demanded, and cocked the pistol and pushed his knee against the man’s chest until the wind was expelled out of his nasty mouth. “Tell me or you belong dead just now.”
The man’s eyes were bugged out from the pressure of Josh’s knee but he stubbornly shook his head. “You look’m along pistol,” Josh snarled. “You look’m along me. You look’m along death in the eye. Tell’m or so help me I will pull this trigger.” He pressed the pistol so hard against the man’s forehead that it started to bleed, a trickle of blood running down around his nose. Yet the warrior stayed defiant.
“He wants to kill me because of who I am,” Penelope said, appearing almost as if by magic at Josh’s side. “You see, he believes I make Mastah Whitman weak.”
The fat warrior started to rise, as if he had forgotten that Josh’s heavy knee was against his chest and a pistol was indenting his forehead. Josh pushed him back against the tree. “Kill Toronga,” Penelope said, nodding toward the fat warrior. “Kill him and I will take you to Armistead in short order. I know what happened to him. I know the entire story.”
Josh was tempted, mightily tempted. Pull the trigger and, he supposed, Penelope would do exactly what she said she would do. But to his considerable relief, he discovered he could not kill in quite such cold blood, ignoring the fact he’d recently back-shot two men. He had always been quick to forget and forgive himself. It was a weakness, but a convenient one. Josh relaxed his knee and pulled back his pistol and took a step away from the warrior. “You tell me,” he told Toronga and nodded toward Penelope. “My word, you tell me or I will let her use her machete on you.”
The stream of blood from his forehead was now coursing in a rivulet down Toronga’s face. He looked from Josh to Penelope. Then he said something to Penelope in their native tongue. Penelope didn’t reply, although she flicked her machete, carving a little circle in the air. The hate between them was so fulsome, it felt to Josh as if it were a living thing. It was at that moment he realized that there was nothing that mattered to either Toronga or Penelope except this hatred. The Japanese and the Americans, battling across their island, were as inconsequential as the rain that, as it happened, was beginning to fall. Big drops pattered down from the canopy above, and within a few seconds it was a thundering downpour. A tree branch broke and came crashing down. It was then that Toronga made his move.
Josh would have undoubtedly shot Toronga except he was knocked senseless by the falling limb. The same limb also whipped across Toronga’s outstretched arm, breaking it just below the elbow. Only Penelope stood unscathed. She stuck her machete in the earth while the rain flung itself across the small clearing in great gray sheets. She lifted the limb off Josh and knelt beside him and smoothed his hair and sang a consoling song while the forest shook from the storm. Toronga, ignored for the moment, crawled to his rifle and clutched it with his remaining good hand, then tried to wedge it in his armpit to get off a shot. Penelope saw him and pushed his rifle away, as if he were as inconsequential as a flea. “Run, Toronga,” she said in a quiet voice.
Toronga dropped his rifle and got up and ran, only to slip on a wet root. He rose to his knees, holding his broken arm, which hurt something terrible, and then looked over his shoulder. Penelope stood watching him. She had retrieved her machete and was patting its blade in her hand. Toronga knew that if he ran, she was only going to come up behind him and slice him with that blade. He would have to kill her, or die trying.
He died trying. Josh came to his senses just in time to see Penelope standing with a bare foot on Toronga’s shoulder while she kicked his head away with the other. “Penelope,” he muttered through a pink haze, “you’re going to have to stop cutting men’s heads off if you want me to take you to Killakeet.”
Penelope knelt and took Josh’s head onto her lap. She sang, but it was not a song she had learned in Minister Clarence’s chapel. It was a song of the ancients. “What are you singing?” he asked when she was finished.
“It was a song to Toronga. He and I were not only cousins, but once we were friends. It was to remind him that death is more certain than life, that war is more certain than peace, that unhappiness is more certain tha
n joy.”
“It is a sad song,” Josh reflected.
“He was a sad man,” Penelope replied with a shrug. “There are ever so many sad men these days.”
“Penelope, take me to Armistead so we can get this over with.”
“Armistead,” she said, and it sounded to Josh as if her voice were coming from a faraway place. “He is the saddest man of all.”
“Not as sad as you are going to be, dearie,” came the voice of Whitman. Although the Australian could not be seen, the bush stirred and out stepped a phalanx of his warriors, their bayonet-pointed Enfields leveled, their faces painted, their hair powdered with wood ash, their grins scarlet and hideous. Whitman emerged from behind a tree and leered at Josh. “I must thank you, Commander.”
“For what?” Josh demanded.
“Why, for finding her, of course,” he replied, swinging his rifle toward Penelope. “My dear, sweet, loyal wife.”
37
After the Catalina could no longer be seen or heard, Kennedy set the course and took the wheel of the gunboat and powered the throttles full ahead. Kennedy was energized and fixed in his determination to push forward, to rescue Josh Thurlow and perhaps even find David Armistead. It did not matter that Phimble had dismissed the mission. Kennedy, filled with vigor, was on the hunt.
In fact, Kennedy could not recall ever feeling quite so happy and free. All his aches were gone, his stomach settled, his intestines accomplishing their functions as required. And no one on board gave a damn who he was or his father was or who his brother was. That was the finest thing! He was truly Kennedy, the terror of the Solomons, ace gunboat skipper and armed adventurer. He felt as if he could take on the entire Japanese Imperial Fleet if it came to it. The Rosemary was a fine craft, swift, deadly, with an efficient crew, and perhaps even equipped with torpedoes that worked. He grinned, his bushy brown hair blown back from his bright and determined eyes. If only, he thought, my pappy and brother Joe could see me now!
Ready, standing beside Kennedy in the cockpit, watched the lieutenant out of the corner of his eye and wondered about the grinning. The other boys did, too. “Mister Kennedy must be telling himself jokes,” Once said into Ready’s ear.
“Wish he’d tell me one,” Ready replied, just loud enough for Once to hear over the wind and the rumble of the great engines, now tuned to a fever after Fisheye had briefly laid his hands on them. Kennedy was not aware of his crew’s worry over his condition. He had moved on in his thinking to Felicity Markham. He could feel her watching him, and he glanced over his shoulder and found her sitting on the galley hatch cover, her legs crossed at the ankle, a pleased expression on her heart-shaped face, and he knew it was just for him. He pressed against the throttles, though they were nearly against their jams already, and was made all the happier when the Rosemary responded with the same joyful abandon he felt.
All afternoon, Kennedy kept the gunboat heading generally northwest, making Vangunu Island by dusk. New Georgia was ahead, but it was fifty miles long. Josh Thurlow, if he was still alive, was likely on the northern tip. Night came, the bright, twinkling stars and the silvery crescent moon unveiled themselves, and Kennedy knew the Rufes would soon be out looking for targets. He had no choice but to find a secluded harbor to hide until sunrise. Felicity recommended the village of Tevara for their refuge, explaining that it was on the island of Tetepare, which was just south of Rendova. “An easy run from here,” she said, “and well off the usual sea-lanes.”
Kennedy agreed, shot across Blanche Channel to Tetepare, and there found a palm-crossed beach with no evidence of habitation, save a few burned-out huts. “This was Tevara,” Felicity said in sadness and confusion. “At least three hundred people lived here.”
Kennedy joined her on the bow. “Where do you think they’ve gone?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe inland, maybe to other islands. Everything here is being changed by this awful war. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever know happiness again.” Her hand brushed against his. “Understand, Jack. I am the daughter of a Welsh coal miner. Poor as mice we were, never with a farthing to rub together with another one. Bryce was the son of the man who owned the mine. We met, we fell in love, and we were condemned for it by both families. So we ran here where no one cared who we were, and we made our own way. Is it any wonder that we fell in love with these islands and this way of life?”
“I envy you for the adventures you’ve had,” Kennedy said. “I’ve always had a taste for adventure.”
She took his hand. “Tell me about yourself, Jack Kennedy.”
Kennedy thought about making a quip, something clever about Choate and Harvard, but instead, for a reason that wasn’t clear even to himself, he told her something of his family, and of his father, and of his writing.
“Well, I must say it is a bit overwhelming to realize I am in such famous company.”
“I told you because I was afraid you would hear it, anyway.”
“You were afraid? Why, Jack, your accomplishments should be entirely a source of pride. Imagine. A best seller at, how old are you? Twenty-three?”
“Twenty-six.”
“I am thirty-six. There. We have that out of the way.”
“You are as young as anyone I have ever known.” Then, when he noticed that her face was flushed, he asked, “Do you have fever?”
“In a manner of speaking,” she replied, and looked up at him with her bravest smile.
Kennedy waited until sunrise, pulled anchor, and blew back across Blanche Channel, then turned west along the New Georgian coast. Felicity stood in the cockpit with Kennedy to point out the winding route that lay between the inner and outer reefs. She knew the way perfectly, having often gone to visit the various plantations of that coast. She called them off as they passed by their ruins. “There’s the Wagner plantation. Oh, look how horrible. So many fine trees going to waste. And their house, burned and gutted. And there, that’s the Conover place. Their house used to be just there. I can’t tell if it’s still there because it is all too overgrown. Ah, the poor cattle, bloated and dead. Missus Conover was so proud of her bossies. Oh, it is enough to bring me to tears.”
At last, they reached the deep lagoon where Thurlow had been put ashore. They found it empty of life but filled with death. Silently the boys of the Rosemary lined up to watch in horror. Felicity put her arm around the shoulder of John-Bull and Kennedy eased back on the throttles to allow the gunboat to glide parallel to the beach. Staked out on it were bodies, both American and Japanese, tied to posts that were driven into the sand. Each body had been mutilated and was surrounded by masses of black flies. The stink of the bodies and the buzz of the furious insects drifted across the lagoon. Felicity said, “If I could, I believe I would destroy the world, blow it up into little pieces, so such madness could never be repeated.” She turned and found Kennedy standing beside her. Impetuously she buried her face into his shoulder.
38
Kennedy led the party ashore. He had a Bowie knife strapped to his web belt, a forty-five pistol in his hand, his officer’s cap shoved on the back of his head, and his shirt open to his waist. He felt like a character lifted out of the comic strip Terry and the Pirates. Left aboard the gunboat were John-Bull, Millie, Stobs, and Again (he and Once had flipped a coin). Millie was put in charge with orders to move the Rosemary out of the lagoon if night came and the shore party had not returned. They were to defend themselves if attacked and to head home if it seemed prudent.
Felicity had insisted on going ashore. “Nonsense,” she’d replied forcefully to Kennedy’s objection. “I know this shore. I can be of great help.” She patted her Webley on her hip. “And I can take care of myself, Jack. Not to worry. Now, this bushman,” she nodded toward Pogo, “let him be our scout. You Pogo,” she said directly to him, “you find’m bad fella boys?”
“Yes, missus,” Pogo responded, looking out of the tops of his big round eyes at the colonial woman. He was wearing a green lap-lap and a simple neckl
ace of cowrie shells, but his face was painted with white finger streaks, giving him a most warriorlike appearance. A hawk feather was stuck in his hair and what appeared to be a yellow electrical wire through his nose. What might have been chicken bones were stuck through his earlobes. He carried an M-l Garand, just like all the boys except Ready, who carried a Browning automatic.
Kennedy eyed the diminutive native and wondered if he was up to the task. “Are you a good tracker?” he asked.
Pogo nodded. “I find’m,” he said. He pointed toward the bush and said, “These fellas not too many. We chase’m. Mastah Josh belong them.”
“How do you know?” Kennedy asked.
“Here Mastah Josh foot.”
Ready inspected the prints in the sand. “It’s a Raider boot track, and a heavy tread. It could be the skipper.”
“Is Skipper,” Pogo said stubbornly. “We chase’m.”
Kennedy was dubious. “We’re more likely to get ambushed.”
Pogo said, “Pogo walk’m easy. Kennedy, boys walk’m easy. Look-see bad fellas. Look-see Mastah Josh. No see Mastah Josh? My word! Pogo, Kennedy, boys belong beach double-quick!”
Kennedy looked into Pogo’s eyes and saw a reflection of self-sufficiency and confidence. Then he pondered the ghastly remains that were roped to the stakes on the beach. Whoever had done this awful deed, even if half of their victims had been Japanese, required punishment. “All right, Pogo,” Kennedy relented. “Go ahead.”