‘That’s a duck, isn’t it?’
‘Where?’
‘It just landed on the water. Wait a minute. Now you can see it. Look, near that clump of rushes.’
The man lying on the ground raised himself on his elbow. His dressing-gown was open. Beads of water glittered on his naked chest. His hair was wet. An A.I.F. uniform lay folded beside him.
The youth was standing erect a few yards away from the man. He was wearing a pair of bathing trunks. His body was brown from the sun.
The swamp water threaded the thin grass almost to their feet. Broken stems of rushes were dark against the glitter. Farther out, between the clumps of lignum, the water became deeper. Behind these, stooped red gums, caught by the flood, trailed their leaves in the water.
‘Is there one or two?’ asked the man searching the swamp.
‘Two, I think. There are always two, aren’t there?’
‘Usually. I can’t see them. Where did you say?’
Straight across there.’ The youth pointed. ‘Now can you see?’
‘Yes, so it is.’
‘Is it a duck?’
‘It’s a duck all right.’
‘Doesn’t it look small?’
‘They always do when they’re swimming. Part of its body is submerged, you see. I can’t see the other one.’
‘There must be only one. I thought there were two. Will we go back and get the gun?’
The youth was excited. There was an appeal in the question.
‘Well—er—yes. We could do that,’ said the man slowly.
He watched the duck with increasing eagerness.
‘Doesn’t it seem interested in things? See how it turns its head. It looks at everything. It does seem a little duck,’ he added with wonder.
‘Will we get the gun?’ The youth was becoming impatient. ‘When we get back to town I want to tell them that I shot a duck.’
‘Let’s watch it a minute,’ pleaded the man. ‘I can’t get over how happy it seems. It’s like a man arriving home on leave. Did you see it land?’
‘Yes. It flew there. I saw it skid along the water. Will we go now?’
‘Strange, it being alone,’ murmured the man. ‘I can’t understand it being so happy when it is alone like that.’
‘It’d make no difference to a duck, being alone.’
‘Look, it’s coming towards us! Gosh, that’s funny! Isn’t it tame.’
‘Hurry up. Let’s go back and get the gun.’
‘All right,’ said the man resignedly. ‘You go and get it. ‘I’ll watch the duck.’
The youth slipped on a pair of sandshoes.
‘Don’t frighten it, will you?’ he said anxiously.
He moved quietly away, treading gently between the dry twigs that littered the ground beneath the river gums. The station homestead was on the crest of a hill overlooking the swamp. He began to run.
The duck flicked its tail and sailed among the swamp grass. It moved into the clear water between the lignum searching with quick movements of the head. It suddenly ruffled its feathers and trod water while it flapped its wings. It sank back contentedly and continued its eager voyaging.
The man had risen to his feet. His expression was rapt, yet some distant sadness had come to him and his lips were trembling. He watched the little duck with an intensity born of some vital need.
He wanted to hold it closely in his hands; to feel the warm beat of its heart; to sense the flow of life, the power that lifted it higher than a cloud. . . .
He had an urgency to cling to that which it held like a treasure—the something that was being torn from him.
It had the unknowing life, the untainted life, the life of smooth, windless pools encircled by lignum where there was no sound save that from peaceful things; where the pure sky had never screamed with terror, nor the sun glinted from steel.
It could see and hear and it was not afraid of what it saw and heard. It could lift itself into the singing of the sun. . . . Above steaming jungles. . . .
He clenched his hands.
Jim was beside him that night when the Japs came to New Britain . . . the chattering over the dark water. . . the green flare . . .the landing.
‘Let ’em have it.’
The screams. . . the shouting . . .
‘Sock it into ’em.’
Raluana beach and their machines guns sweeping the wire like rain . . . and Jim muttering, hell, hell, hell. . . . The dawn . . . the blood . . . the killing. . . . The red-browed waves tired with the weight of dead. . . . The rising and falling bodies—lifted gently, tossed contemptuously. . . . Barge after barge on rollers of flesh. . . .
The Japs were tangled in the wire. They raked them: they mowed them like wheat. And still they came—the living clambering over the dead; the dead piling into barricades behind which the vomiting barges ploughed into the sand.
The salt was in his mouth . . . the dry pounding of his heart. . . . Then the grunt and the doubling up. . . .
And Jim: ‘Where’d it get you? Hang on. Jesus!’
‘Ifs not bad. Fm all right.’
The staggering, crumpling Japs bridging the wire with their dead. They climbed on them: they trod them down. They came on like locusts in a plague.
Then the final burst. . . and the jungle . . . and the long struggle home. . . .
Oh! the killing! the killing! the killing!
He turned and saw the youth running towards him with the gun. He looked again at the duck.
It glided through the open water shattering the silver into sparkles of light.
He lifted a stick from the ground and hurled it so that it fell with a splash beside the bird.
The duck rose, trailing two furrows with its feet as it skimmed the water. It flew high and circled, banking against the wind so that for a moment he saw the full stretch of its wings each side of its brown body.
Far out over the water it landed again.
‘Well, that’s done it,’ panted the youth disgustedly. ‘We’ll never get it now.’
The man reached for his uniform.
‘No, we’ll never get it now,’ he said.