Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [100]
Before they picked up the trail again, I fled. But if they are good they will have already found my prints, and with each word I put down in this journal they will be a footstep closer to their prey.
16 September 1835
Dawn. I can still see the thread of smoke rising from the embers of their smouldering fire. They have gained on me. I should have ambushed them last night, streaked into their camp wild and raging, just my bare fists flurrying.
If Naraqino has threatened them with his oven, they will not give up the chase until I am dead.
17 September 1835
Because they cannot read, I live. I led them higher into the hills, across streams and rivers, and then down into another valley, following a trail into a steep gorge until it narrowed into a path no wider than the shoulders of a stout man. Where the walls of rock were shaped well enough to be gripped, I climbed, hand over foot to the plateau above.
At the top I set about gathering the largest, heaviest rocks I could move, arranging them at intervals along the ledge so that they may be toppled over with the slightest nudge.
Then I waited, listening. Only when I heard footsteps splashing in the rainwater pools did I glance over the ledge, long enough to know which rock to drop first and when. Then I shoved over the boulder. No clack of rock on rock, only a scream and thud of breaking bone. It had staved in the skull of the lead man. In quick succession I heaved over two more boulders, and from the clatter below knew that both had missed their targets. The moment I put my head over the ledge a musket flashed, and the ball flew past my head so close that it singed a line through my hair. I ducked again when two arrows sailed up from the gorge bottom, loosed off so that they might fall down from a height and stick in my back. I watched them rise, turn, and descend, bouncing off the stone yards from where I lay. Two more shot into the sky, but this time the wind caught the flights and scattered them into a stand of palms. I crawled to the other boulders and again leaned over the ledge. The man with the musket had spilled his gunpowder, and grasped at the sprinkled charge.
The nearest archer, despite seeing me release the rock, had time only to raise his hand in defence. The weight of the boulder shattered his arm open at the elbow. He screamed. I swayed back from two more singing arrows and roared, ‘Surrender and I’ll spare you.’
I threw down two more rocks. None hit, but the man with the shattered arm screamed for me to stop. The warrior holding the empty musket struck the injured man. ‘We either die here or on Naraqino’s fire,’ he warned. ‘You heard him! Bring home his book or I’ll cut out your hearts!’
The book. They wanted the journal. They wanted the journal because the Rev. Thomas knew his sins had been recorded. Without the journal, history would be left in his hands, the fiction of how Fiji had surrendered to the good Lord.
‘No more blood,’ I shouted. ‘No more blood of Fiji for England.’
I moved in sight of the archers. ‘If you want the book, take it.’ They had their bows raised and taut with arrows. I reached into my satchel and felt around the back of the journal. I pulled out the bible and waved it so that they might see. Their leader, the man with the musket, hissed into the ears of the others, then called for me to throw it down.
I let the bible go. It fell through the air like a dying bird, the pages splayed and fluttering. When it hit the rocks below, the spine split. The archer quickly picked it up, as though it might suddenly take wing and flap away. None of these men had attended a reading class. None of them knew the difference between a printed and handwritten word. They fussed through the pages. The man with the gashed and broken arm shrieked, ‘This is it!’ He looked up and demanded I let them go. But again the man with the musket cursed. ‘And why would Naraqino think him killed without a head?’ Once