EZEKIEL, MY CUSTOMER OF THE POUND NOTE and the talcum powder, is the best canoe builder on the island, and I engaged him to make me a craft. It turned out to be a beautiful specimen of native workmanship. (At present it is in the Bishop Museum at Honolulu, for a few years ago I sold it to an anthropologist from that place.) The joints were lashed together with a specially prepared sennit and were so perfect that no calking or putty of any kind was used; nevertheless, it was thoroughly watertight.

Each part of a Puka-Puka canoe, no matter if only a tiny piece of wood a few inches long, or the notch on the phallic symbol at the stern, has a name peculiar to the island. All the canoes are remarkably seaworthy; within the lives of some of the present generation, Puka-Puka canoes have safely reached Samoa, a distance of four hundred miles, and old legends are filled with references to journeys to Tahiti, Rarotonga, and other even more distant islands. One song legend tells of a journey to Rapa-Nui (Easter Island), a fact which should interest anthropologists.

Some five months after he had started work Ezekiel had my canoe finished – an unusual record, for Puka-Pukans usually spend years at such a task. The three villages were again repairing to their respective islets to gather coconuts, so I bundled Little Sea and her cousin Desire into my little vessel (with other necessary provisions for comfort) and sailed for Matauea Point. Sea Foam had given me the use of the mission’s hut there, and I was soon settled for two of the most idyllic and exciting weeks of my life.

Matauea was formerly the stronghold of a powerful village headed by two supermen; but for many generations it has been deserted by all but their shades. Sea Foam makes occasional sojourns there, for he claims not to believe in the apparitions of men who have never read the Bible. According to the natives, these spirit forms are often seen, and they have so impressed on me the fact of their reality that I have many times imagined that I have seen them among the trees or floating like reef spray along the wide stretches of beach. Little Sea and Desire had many a fright while we were on the Point, but their fears were somewhat relieved by the thought that no Puka-Pukan ghost would dare approach a white man, more particularly if he happened to be a cowboy.

The Point overlooks the reef and cloud-mantled sea on one side, and on the other a horseshoe-shaped bay much like the one on the main islet, but larger. Here the bay is more than a mile across, mottled with fragments of reef and coral mushrooms which divide water so deep that one can barely see the outlines of the coral bottom sixty feet below. The beach is of yellow and white sand, and coconut palms and pandanus trees grow to the water’s edge, the spring tides even washing about their roots. At the head of the bay are the brown huts of the copra makers; at night great fires are built there, and while I sit on the beach with a ground line, I watch the play of firelight on the water until my attention is engaged by a red-snapper that has taken my bait.

All the seafoods common to these waters are found in great abundance near the Point, and many birds nest in the trees by the outer beach, though for some reason they avoid the rest of the islet. But the great attraction of the place is its cleanness: no mud, dirt, dust – only the clean white sand over which blows the full force of the trade wind singing through the fronds of the palms with such regularity that, at the time of a lull, one stops to listen, feeling that something unaccountable has happened, not conscious at the moment that it is only that the wind has died away. But it is never for long: soon it makes up again, bringing refreshing coolness to the atoll dwellers.

For two weeks we lived there, fishing, eating, swimming, sleeping, playing, loving, with torchlight expeditions at night for coconut crabs and sea birds; with long swims across the bay from one coral head to another where we could rest and eat raw paua clams. Sometimes we did nothing at all, merely lying in the shade on the beach, sensuously enjoying the gifts of God.

One day Little Sea suggested that we go hunting. Taking my shotgun and a pocketful of cartridges, and with Desire skipping puppylike at our heels, we walked along the outer beach, scouting for sandpipers, for they were more abundant on Ko Islet than on Puka-Puka, where King-of-the-Sky had galvanised the inhabitants by shooting his one bird.

The trade wind blew unceasingly, cooled and cleansed by its journey over thousands of miles of empty sea and scented by its passage through the tamanu groves of Ko Islet. The wind and the scudding cloud patches cooled us as we crept from bush to bush, with eyes alert for the terrible sandpiper. Invariably one of the girls saw the birds first: long-legged, foolish-looking creatures, with patchwork feathers and a bill projection like an unsmoked cigar. They hopped about on the exposed lagoon coral near the beach, seeming to find any number of interesting things to fill their crops with.

I banged away, greatly to the girls’ delight, and presently had a round dozen, four apiece, just enough. While I had been stalking the birds Little Sea had found some coconut crabs – vicious-clawed brutes like gigantic hermit crabs minus their shells. Their abdomens are full of a fatty meat with a delicious coconut flavour. It is the richest food I have ever eaten, and for this reason I soon learned to partake of it sparingly.

We reached a high bank of coral gravel halfway round the islet, where Desire joined us with her arms full of clams. Close by, in a pretty little glade, the girls set to work cleaning the birds. Then they lit a fire and threw on it some husked sprouted coconuts to cook. In these sprouted nuts the water has been absorbed, and in its place is a ball of pulpy white substance which fills the entire cavity. It is delicious, especially when cooked in the nuts, for then much of the oil from the surrounding meat is absorbed by the pulp, or uto, as it is called in the islands.

Our meal was soon ready, and never have I relished a meal more than that one. It was spread on green fronds that Desire had plaited into a mat. There were broiled sandpipers and shearwaters, coconut crabs, baked clams oozing a succulent sauce, utos, drinking nuts, coconut-bud salad and, set before me as a special delicacy, a long fat sea centipede that Desire had unearthed while digging clams.

We ate like true savages, tearing the birds to pieces with our fingers, crunching the smaller bones and gnawing the flesh from the larger ones with grunts of satisfaction. And when our faces were smeared with the savory broiled fat we licked our lips with rotary sweeps of the tongue. The sandpipers were as plump and tender as squab, and far more savoury. Civilised cooks usually insist on spoiling the fine natural flavour of game by adding needless sauces, spices and herbs, so that a diner tastes a very palpable sauce but must rely upon his eyes to inform him as to the nature of the meat. To me the finest way to cook a fowl is to broil it over odourless coals, salting it to taste, and basting it betimes with good sweet butter. Give me this, and you may have your Neuberg fricassee, sage-dressed, curried fowls. To my way of thinking they are lifeless foods, reminding one of stews that have been warmed over until all the vitalising properties have been cooked out.

Having stuffed ourselves to repletion, we stowed the remaining food in frond baskets, stretched out under the trees, and went to sleep. Late in the afternoon we jumped into a pool by the outer reef for a swim and then returned to the Point. Desire skipped on ahead, Little Sea and I following in more leisurely fashion as befitted two lovers. Suddenly she stopped and grasped my arm. Then, with a laugh, she led me into the bush to a flat coral slab.

‘Do you remember the night you gave me the dress muslin?’ she asked. ‘Well, I hid it until morning, when everybody was asleep; then I slipped it under my pareu and sneaked out here, just like a cowboy, dodging behind trees so that no one would see me. When I reached this spot I dug a hole and buried the muslin, for I was afraid that people would see it and say that I was loving you for money.’

While she told me this her pretty hands were busily scooping away the gravel. Presently she uncovered another slab, removed it, and there below was my roll of muslin, none the better for a year of interment. She picked it up, saying that she would give it to Desire, but it broke into shreds in her hands.

We reached the Point just as a flood of sunset light was dripping from the heavens, staining the lagoon an ominous, sanguinary hue.

 

The next day the lagoon was lifeless, steely, reflecting each cloud and the littoral of the bay so clearly that, lying on the beach, I could easily imagine the real sky beneath and the reflection overhead. Towards noon curtain clouds formed high up, deepening gradually until the groves were almost as dark as night. On the reef great seas were pounding and countless sea birds circled about screaming plaintively.

Shortly before six the sun forced its way through the clouds, with its disc only a few degrees above the horizon. Instantly the whole cloud-dome was illuminated with a flaming red light, as bright to east as west. It was a sight to fill one with fear. The groves, the lagoon, the beach absorbed it until all other hues were lost in a blood-red effulgence that seemed to glow in the very air itself. When the sun went down, the light vanished by rapid perceptible degrees, and in a moment, it seemed, pitchy darkness had set in.

Still there was no wind. Crawling beneath the mosquito-net, we listened to the great seas bombarding the reef; they seemed intent on crumbling the tiny islet to powder and distributing it along the bottom of the Pacific. From time immemorial that insignificant crumb of land, with its banks of sand ostentatiously decorated with a few coconut trees, had broken the serene march of the great rollers on their way across the Pacific; now the time had come for reparation. The mighty combers crashed down with long echoing reverberations like the roar of great cannon, followed by the ominous swish of broken water rushing across the reef in mad clouds of foam and spray.

As I listened it seemed to me that the islet had become very small, had shrunk to a mere sand-bank which was being ravenously devoured by twenty-foot combers. Between the roar of the breakers I could hear the sea birds’ dismal, foreboding cries from the coconut palms, and the incessant hum of countless mosquitoes outside the net.

I felt light-headed; grotesque hallucinations materialised before me with startling vividness. I was afraid and found myself edging closer to Little Sea for relief. When relief failed to come I lit a lantern, set it outside the mosquito-net close to my head, and settled back to lose myself in Borrow’s Bible in Spain. I must have read forty or fifty pages when I came to the paragraph: I had no sooner engaged him, than seizing the tureen of soup, which had by this time become quite cold, he placed it on top of his forefinger, or rather on the nail thereof, causing it to make various circumvolutions over his head, to my great astonishment, without spilling a drop; then springing with it to the door, he vanished, and in another moment made his appearance with the puchera, which, after a similar bound and flourish, he deposited on the table; then suffering his hands to sink before him, he put one over the other and stood at his ease with half-shut eyes, for all the world as if he had been in my service twenty years. I laughed aloud. Little Sea grumbled in her sleep, while Desire, with wide-open, faunlike eyes, stared queerly at me. Closing my eyes I conjured up Antonio, the valet, in his bizarre guise:

I laughed aloud. Little Sea grumbled in her sleep, while Desire, with wide-open, faunlike eyes, stared queerly at me. Closing my eyes I conjured up Antonio, the valet, in his bizarre guise:

His arms were long and bony, and his whole form conveyed an idea of great activity united with no slight degree of strength; his hair was wiry, but of jetty blackness; his forehead low; his eyes small and grey, expressive of much subtlety and no less malice, strangely relieved by a strong dash of humour; the nose was handsome, but the mouth was immensely wide, and his under jaw projected considerably. A more singular physiognomy I had never seen, and I continued staring at him for some time in silence.

Suddenly I started, closed the book over my finger, and sat upright. Visions of Gypsies stealing forth on the ‘affairs of Egypt’ of maniacs, Andalusian orange venders and bloodthirsty robbers flashed through my mind, leaving it incapable of other thoughts. At first I knew merely that something unusual had happened: there was a new sound, like the hissing of a thousand snakes. I thought it might be the wind blowing in the fronds, but as there was still no wind, I conceived that it must be waves washing along the shore. But waves wash intermittently, while this was one long unbroken hiss. I wondered if the seas on the outer reef had increased to such an extent that they had flooded over the shallows and were even now washing across the Point. The hissing increased in volume until I imagined that a great wave must surely be rushing towards us. I sprang out of the net and ran to the door.

Complete silence; the hissing had suddenly stopped, and for a moment even the sea birds were quiet. Then a great comber boomed along the reef, sending a seismic tremor through the islet. A frigate bird squawked, and there was a buzzing in my ears, for the mosquitoes quickly found me out.

I returned to the net and reopening The Bible in Spain I read on to the point where Borrow whispers the magic Gypsy words in his fractious stallion’s ear:

The Rommany Chal to his horse did cry,

As he placed the bit in the horse’s jaw;

Kosko gry! Rommany gry!

Muk man kistur tute knaw.

We then rode forth from Madrid by the gate of San Vincente,

directing our course to the lofty mountains which separate

Old from New Castile.

Again the hiss, scarcely audible, reached my ear, coming as though from a great way off. The booming on the reef had suddenly increased to a deafening roar, but still I could hear the sibilant sound, a noise apart from the sea’s roar. With increasing agitation I closed my book and shoved it under the sleeping mat. If I had had a barometer my mental state would have been explained, for the glass would have registered ominously low. Little Sea and Desire, blessed, nerveless savages, were sound asleep.

Gradually the hissing increased until I again imagined that a great wave was washing across the Point to engulf us in the lagoon. Rushing outside once more, I listened for a moment and at last understood the cause. Strangely enough, although it was dead calm where I stood, the wind was rustling overhead, carrying with it the swishing sound of the water foaming over the reef.

Then, as though it had been gathering its forces far out at sea, it struck the islet with a yell of fury, screaming through the trees, hurling fronds and nuts through the air – a force of indescribable violence, bent on destruction. Its first impact sent me staggering into the house, carried away the roof as well as the frond sides, and tore the mosquito-net from its fastenings, to whirl it, spectrelike, across the lagoon.

Little Sea and Desire were safe. When I reached them they pressed their lips to my ears and shouted, simultaneously, ‘Uriia!’ (Hurricane!) They were not in the least frightened; on the contrary, they seemed to be enjoying it.

I was thinking of the flying nuts and fronds and listening to the intermittent crashes as coconut trees were snapped off and hurled to the ground. I remembered that a termite-eaten one was growing directly to windward, and no sooner had the thought come than, as though to warrant my fear, with a report like the firing of a dozen rifles the top of the tree was snapped off and hurled over our heads into the lagoon beyond.

My nerves were now keyed to a point beyond fear; nevertheless, I realised the perilousness of our situation. Matauea Point was not more than five feet above sea level and the highest point on Ko Islet did not exceed fifteen feet. What should we do when the seas started breaking over the land itself?

We huddled together in the middle of the house, or rather in the framework of the house, with the sleeping mat to our backs. Rain came in torrents, soaking us with the first downpour. With chattering teeth I thought how nicely a pint of brandy would go down. Little Sea and Desire dozed in my arms, apparently quite comfortable.

By four in the morning the gale was at its height, blowing with such violence that we could no longer sit with our backs to it but must lie flat on the ground. Nuts, fronds, and trees had ceased falling, for most of them had long since been blown into the lagoon, and the eaker trees had gone down in the first gust. No gale can break down or uproot a sound, mature coconut palm – it will bend its sixty-foot bole to the ground without breaking; but one log which rolled towards us with great velocity reminded me that the danger was not past. We could not see it, but we heard the crash it made when it struck a coconut stump to windward.

My mind wandered back to the story I had been reading in Borrow’s The Bible in Spain. I found myself muttering over and over: ‘“The Rommany Chal to his horse did cry,”’ and I saw Antonio standing before me with the soup-tureen balanced on his fingernail. He seemed to be smiling and winking at me in an incomprehensible manner. Then, yelling, he did a wild dance, tossing the tureen under his leg so that it made a turn over his head, and on the downward course he caught it in his teeth, grinning fiercely. Then, taking it on the palm of his hand he dashed it with all his strength against the stem of a coconut palm. It bounded back without a drop lost, whereupon he caught it on the bridge of his nose and balanced it there.

Little Sea was shaking my shoulder and screaming into my ear. I was roused from my wide-awake nightmare and at length grasped the meaning of her words:

‘The seas are coming! The seas are coming, Ropati!’

Dawn was breaking, a leaden, joyless dawn. I could dimly see the outlines of ragged palms with most of their fronds carried away, while the few remaining ones lay out horizontal and stiff in the mighty gale.

Then I heard a deafening roar as though the islet were being wrenched loose from its foundations and whirled to oblivion in one annihilating avalanche of water. The next instant what remained of the house was flooded two feet deep in a foaming torrent that rushed pell-mell across the Point.

‘The canoe! The canoe!’ cried practical Little Sea.

Knowing that the mast stays were in the canoe, I ran out and in a moment had moored it to a coconut palm. It was no sooner done than a second wave foamed over the Point, three feet deep. I jumped into a tree and watched the Pacific Ocean washing beneath me. Little Sea and Desire were clinging to another tree nearby.

I had not noticed in the excitement that the wind had abated and was even then diminishing by perceptible degrees. Within the next five minutes it was dead calm again. It is at such times that the seas rise, for during the height of the gale they are flattened by the wind.

The next wave took the skeleton of the little house, flooding the Point a good six feet deep. Fortunately, instead of uprooting the trees we were roosting in, it banked about two feet of sand over the whole length of the Point. But waves are fickle things, and as the next one might sweep away all the sand that had been brought in, and a good deal more besides, we took advantage of the lull between the third and fourth waves to run inland to higher ground.

It was an eerie experience watching those great seas piling over the islet, carrying debris, birds, fish and gigantic masses of coral which had been wrenched from the reef. The two girls took advantage of every lull to jump down and gather their dresses full of the fattest fish; but I remained where I was, not wishing to put to the test of a quick scramble up the straight stem of a coconut palm.

By midday the seas had given up their attempt to wash Danger Island into the marine ooze‚ leaving a tattered and torn Ko Islet strewn with dead fish, mangled trees, coral boulders and drowned sea birds. Then the three of us made our way slowly back to Matauea Point. I was conscious of something solid in my pocket. Pulling it out, I found that it was my copy of The Bible in Spain. I distinctly remembered putting it under the sleeping mat, and how it managed to get into my pocket is a mystery to me to this day.