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unbearable. Added to this, he was suffering bad gastric problems from the barely edible native diet of kaukau sweet potatoes, dried river fish, wild rice and the warm, wine-red root brew that passed for beer. There was bottled water in the plane’s storage bay, and he ran the last fifty yards to get to it.
    In contrast, Banto felt fine physically: a lifetime of dawn-to-dusk hunting meant he never even raised a sweat on the trek. But emotionally he was a wreck. As they confronted the plane, the reality of what he was about to do had suddenly struck him. What the night before had seemed like a big adventure, was now overwhelmingly threatening. The man had made no attempt to converse with him on the journey, and his attitude to Banto had changed dramatically now that he had got his way. Gone was the encouraging smile and friendly manner; in its place was an aggressive, dismissive attitude that made Banto feel like a trapped animal.
    Having used the radio for a while, Chancey gestured for Banto to climb in the Twin Otter beside him. Banto, however, now had different ideas. Going with this man in the machine suddenly seemed a very bad move after all. Going to the big village he had described also seemed bad. He no longer trusted the man. His hunter’s instincts warned him of danger everywhere. ‘No go! Tidak , tidak pergit! ’ he shouted, eyes wide. ‘I stay.’ He slapped himself hard on the thigh in agitation.
    Chancey had been expecting something like this. Jumping down, he stood beside Banto smiling his friendly smile again. ‘Don’t panic. Let’s talk,’ he said.
    ‘ No talk. I no go!’ Banto was resting his hand menacingly on the hard-wood knife hanging at the side of the tanget covering his buttocks. His bow, long arrows and quiver of arrow-point holders were strung across his chest, and Chancey had seen for himself the lethal speed and accuracy with which the warriors could use them.
    Chancey was watching Banto very carefully, knowing that the native would have no compunction in killing him if the mood took him. ‘OK. Fine. You stay. Think about it some more, and I kam beck again soon. You my bikpela nambawan you know. Maybe you change your mind later. OK?’ Chancey held his arms open wide in a gesture of reasonableness. The pidgin English he used— tok pisin , talk pidgin—was common in PNG. It mimicked phonetically the language of the old colonial masters— mastas . So bikpela nambawan was his number one big fellow.
    ‘ No go,’ Banto repeated, seemingly placated. He understood less than half of what was said to him, but with that, and his highly developed skill in reading non-verbal signs—of men and beasts—he followed well enough.
    ‘ OK. But I’m in big trouble now with my masta . The big man. He’ll beat me planti for bagarap . If you no go, I have to take just one more. It’s Payback.’ He tapped his arm.
    ‘ No more take! No more!’
    ‘ Payback. Yes!’
    Banto went quiet for a while. His own tribal culture was steeped in this concept of Payback: a kind of bargaining to atone for causing almost any kind of pain or loss in others. This trade was simple. In return for him not going, he had to make Payback by letting Chancey take from his arm again. Then this man also had Payback to escape the beating from his master for not doing as he had promised. ‘You take,’ he agreed at last.
    Moving quickly, Chancey gestured for Banto to sit in the passenger plane seat. ‘I take your banaras . OK? They stay here, close. Yes?’ Very reluctantly Banto permitted the man to put his bow and arrows on the ground, keeping them in his sight-line. A warrior was never separated from his weapons. Then Chancey clicked on the seat-belt very loosely without him even noticing. Banto’s eyes widened in fear as he saw the hated wooden box containing the man’s small spear. But this time, instead of using the hypodermic to extract blood, Chancey was drawing into it the comatosic Bolitho had given him for exactly