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Title: Lost Island
Author: Hall, James Norman (1887-1951)
Date of first publication: 1944
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Garden City, New York: Sun Dial Press, 1945
Date first posted: 13 November 2016
Date last updated: 13 November 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1374

This ebook was produced by Al Haines, Cindy Beyer,
Mark Akrigg & the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital format,
we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.
All of the author's original text has been included.






                          JAMES  NORMAN  HALL

                                  LOST
                                 ISLAND



                         THE  SUN  DIAL  PRESS
                        Garden  City,  New  York





                                  1945
                           THE SUN DIAL PRESS

                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                   To
                      CARL BEECHER, ALAN SEABROOK,
                WALTER G. SMITH, _and_ J. FRANK STIMSON




                              LOST  ISLAND




                                   I


Chance, in a benevolent mood, had consented that the pathways
of three old friends and former comrades in World War I should cross for
the first time in twenty years. The boon deserved to be enjoyed at
leisure, and they had gone from San Francisco, the place of the
unexpected meeting, across the bay to Berkeley, where Philip Marsh,
Professor of History in the University of California, had his home, high
up in the Berkeley hills. After dinner, Mrs. Marsh, an understanding
woman, had left her husband alone for the evening with his guests, and
now they were seated in the library whose great west window framed a
magnificent panorama of the bay to the Golden Gate and beyond. The
bridge between the heads, clearly etched at first against the afterglow,
faded slowly from view until it could be seen no more.

All three men were in their middle fifties. Professor Marsh was a tall
spare fellow somewhat frail in appearance, but the alert keen glance of
the gray eyes was that which his friends remembered in the infantry
lieutenant of a generation before. Charles Webber, a New Englander, had
recently come to the West Coast to fill a post in a federal office
connected with civilian defense. George Dodd, the only one of them again
in uniform, was an officer of Engineers. He was sturdily built, slow of
speech and slow of movement, and he had the odd habit of frequently
passing his open fingers over the top of his bald head as though to
ruffle the hair he had forgotten was no longer there.

Webber, slumped comfortably down in his chair, was speaking with a kind
of wry humor of his share in the second phase of a world war that seemed
destined never to have an end.

"A fifth wheel," he was saying; "rolling around to no conceivable
purpose so far as I can see. Thousands of my kind have been set in
motion from Washington, and the lot of us are not worth one of the fifth
wheels clamped to the rear end of a motorcar."

"Don't be so modest, Charlie," Professor Marsh replied. "I'll bet you
think no end of yourself and of what you're doing, if the truth were
known."

"No," said Webber, with some heat. "Honestly, I can't see that my work
has the slightest value for anyone, anywhere. It's mere busyness without
a justifiable end in view.... George, what kind of a wheel are you,
if it's fair to ask? An essential part of Juggernaut? Crushing and
grinding to some purpose?"

"I'm supposed to be," Dodd replied.

"And yet you don't seem particularly happy about it."

"I didn't know that happiness was concerned here."

"Of course not," said Webber. "But satisfaction is--a kind of grim
satisfaction, if one has something essential to do." He turned to
Professor Marsh. "Phil, you have a try. See if you can break through
this engineer's iron reserve. Have you noticed? All through dinner he
edged away from any mention of his part in the war effort. Shouldn't
wonder if the engineer's insignia were pure camouflage. He's probably
connected with the F.B.I."

"What _are_ you doing, George?" Marsh asked. "Engineers, surely, have
nothing to be reticent about."

"Loafing, for this one night, at least," said Dodd. "I'm down from
Alaska for a few days. I've been out there, too," he added, with a vague
wave of the hand to the westward.

"'Out there'!" said Webber. "How hard it is to pin the man down! 'Out
there' has large dimensions in a planetary war. What particular part of
it are you concerned with?"

Dodd was silent for a moment. "'Were,'" he corrected, with a touch of
grimness. "That job is finished."

"That's where men of your profession are so lucky," said Webber. "You
always have something definite to do, with clear-cut beginnings and
ends. Well, what job? Why not tell us and be done with it?"

"You don't know what you may be letting yourselves in for in asking that
question," the other replied, slowly. "Of course, I could tell you the
whole business in half a minute... but in that case I'd have to leave
the significance out. And that's all this experience had, as I see it:
significance. There's no story; at least, none of the kind to make you
say: 'Go on! What happened next?' No one killed, or torpedoed and cast
adrift on a raft. And what _was_ killed would not be considered worth
a two-inch obituary in any newspaper. Whether you'd be interested or
not..."

"We're willing to chance that," said Marsh.

"Yes, fire away," said Webber. "If you bore us we'll stand on no
ceremony in letting you know about it."

"Don't scare me off before I start," said Dodd, with a faint smile. "I'm
no raconteur. I'll be obliged to fumble and grope my way along. I tell
you, I learned something on this assignment. It opened my eyes to...
to what the whole world may be coming to if we go on as we're going now.
And how are we to go otherwise? I see no possibility of turning back or
changing direction. But... well, after the war I'd like to see parts
of the planet walled off, so to speak: out of bounds to engineers and
all their allied tribes. Above all, out of bounds to machines. And I
don't see that coming," he added, soberly. "The Atlantic Charter had
nothing to say of that kind of freedom unless it was implied in freedom
of worship. Leave worship aside, if you like. Call it freedom to enjoy
life on the human scale, on a planet not wholly wrecked and desolated by
machines. Queer talk, isn't it, to be coming from the lips of an
engineer? But, as I say, I've had my eyes opened. I'm not the fellow who
went out there just a year ago this month. I was away six weeks. The job
I was sent out to do required scarcely half the time."




                                   II


I'm going all the way back to boyhood for the start... not
of the story, such as it is; for _my_ start, our start, the three of us
sitting here. Phil, you were speaking at dinner of the so-called lost
generation, the post-World-War-I generation that left its teens, or was
about to leave them, just as the century was leaving its own. They made
quite a noise about being lost, those youngsters; it became a kind of
profession for them. But it strikes me that men of our vintage--women
too for that matter--now in their late or middle fifties, have a better
claim to the doubtful distinction of being lost. We were in the unhappy
position of passing boyhood in one era and manhood in another, with a
gulf of change between the two such as, I believe, has never before
separated the youth and manhood of individuals in all the history of the
human race. Who could have guessed, say around eighteen ninety-five, how
soon and how swiftly the change was to come? We had another ten years to
know the land of life our fathers and grandfathers had known. Call it
fifteen years. Centuries are never clear-cut divisions between eras. The
nineteenth, as I see it, ended at the close of the first decade of the
twentieth. Our roots were firmly embedded in the soil of the nineteenth.

I don't mean to lament here the passing of "the good old days." As a
matter of fact, there never was a young man more content than myself to
see them pass. Miracles in the worlds of physics, chemistry,
engineering, mechanical achievement of every sort, were happening all
around us. We were, as you know, in a state of perpetual awe, wonder,
delight, and expectation. It was at this time, nineteen twelve, that I
graduated from the engineering school at Massachusetts Tech. I'd passed
my boyhood on a farm in Michigan. Detroit wasn't so far away, and it was
natural that I should want to return to that growing expanding heaven
for engineers, draughtsmen, and machines with internal-combustion
engines. And so I did, but the boy of the eighteen-nineties, of the
horse-and-buggy age, came too. He hadn't much to say, and he had less
and less to say as time went on; but he was still there.

Enough about the past. All I need to add is that, with the exception of
the year the three of us spent in France during the last war, Detroit
has been my home.

It was in March last year that I left for San Francisco and points
southwest in the Pacific. No need to remind you of what was happening at
that time. Hong Kong had fallen, Manila had fallen, Singapore had
fallen. MacArthur was still holding out on Bataan Peninsula but the end
of that resistance against hopeless odds was in sight. The position of
the stouthearted Dutch in the East Indies had been equally hopeless;
they could receive no effective aid from us, after Pearl Harbor. It then
seemed by no means impossible that the sea route from Canada and the
U.S.A. to Australia via Honolulu, Samoa, and Fiji would be lost as well,
or, if not lost, rendered so dangerous as to be all but useless until
such time as the U.S.A. could build up strength to hold and protect it.
An auxiliary route across the Pacific had to be planned and prepared
for. A glance at a large-scale chart will show you how that improvised
lifeline would have to run, and by what islands and archipelagoes ships,
planes, troops, and supplies would have to be routed should the other
more direct sea lane be lost. There were vast water gaps that few planes
could cross, under their own power, but this problem was to be met in
ways I forbear to mention.

I was one of many, I suppose, sent out on this work of hasty
improvisation. Actually, there was not a day, not an hour to be lost. I
had been a captain in the Eighth Engineers, National Guard, for some
years. First thing I knew I was kicked upstairs to a colonelcy and sent
on my way at six hours' notice. This advance in rank was merely a matter
of expediency, to give me standing with the authorities in the place to
which I was being sent; but I was told to fulfill my mission in civilian
clothes so as not to attract undue attention to the military aspect of
it.

There was nothing political in the assignment; that part of the business
had been taken care of in advance. My job was an engineering problem of
a quite simple kind. A certain island, a coral island well south of the
Equator, was to be transformed into a naval and military base. Upon
arriving at this place I was to have a clear two weeks to make my survey
and perfect plans against the arrival of the freighter which was to
follow loaded with men and equipment to begin work. The freighter was
already lying at a pier in Oakland, ready for cargo, on the day I took
off by sea plane from the Treasure Island airport.

There was something faintly comical about our hasty departure from San
Francisco. Ominous, too: one felt in an almost physical sense the
pressure of disastrous events. The plane for the special mission had
been commandeered from the Pan American Line; apparently, there were no
Army or Navy planes available at that time. There were eighteen
passengers. I could detect in the manner of most of them something of
the surprise and incredulity that I myself felt at being sent
airpost-haste to hitherto unheard-of or undreamed-of destinations.
Nearly all of us were last-minute arrivals and the plane had to be held
over twenty minutes for the latest comer, a leather-necked Middle
Westerner from St. Louis who came by taxi from the San Mateo airport. He
had the seat across the aisle from me, and just as we were taking off he
leaned over to say: "Guess I was the last of us visiting firemen to
come, wasn't I? Damned if they would even give me time to go home for my
toilet kit! I'll have to buy a new one in Honolulu."

I was mighty favorably impressed by my fellow passengers. No confidences
as to our particular jobs or destinations were exchanged, but there was
a tacit taking it for granted that we were all going out on the same
general kind of emergency war work. "Visiting firemen" about hit off the
situation, I thought. We were being sent out into the widespread
conflagration flaming up at scattered points all over the Pacific; not,
to be sure, to help extinguish fires already raging, but, if possible,
to prevent them from spreading. I had the feeling that these fellows
would prove equal to whatever tasks were assigned to them. They appeared
to be men used to meeting emergencies, the kind that can be depended
upon to make quick decisions and get quick results. I hoped that I was
half as competent as all of them looked. However, I wasn't worrying
much. I knew what was expected of me and that I was well equipped to
handle the job. Only one thing gave me concern: ordered off on such
short notice there had been no time to learn anything of the outfit that
was to follow by ship. I had been assured, though, that all these
matters were in competent hands and that the freighter would carry
equipment for whatever kind of engineering problem we might have to cope
with.

I didn't know why I had been selected for this job. I had done little
engineering work outside the U.S.A. and Canada and had never set foot in
the tropics. I decided that there was a kind of providence in the event.
All my life I had nursed a secret longing to visit the islands of the
South Seas. I'd never confessed this to any of my fellow Detroiters.
Maybe I was a bit ashamed of it as too romantic a dream for an engineer
to cherish. But the dream was always there, under the surface of
consciousness.

Strangely enough, at this time I was not at all concerned about the
island itself and what was to happen to it. I didn't even try to picture
it except in a vague way and never so much as wondered whether it would
be inhabited or not. I must have assumed that it was uninhabited, a sort
of Wake Island, or Midway, as these had been before the coming of the
Pan American Line. Coral islands had played no part in my life. All that
I knew about this one was that it had an excellent passage through the
reef, wide enough and deep enough to accommodate any ship in the U.S.
Navy. I also knew that the lagoon was so many miles long by so many
wide, with various islets scattered along the encircling reef. In the
mind's eye I saw the place merely as so much reef, land, and water, to
be converted for the first time in history to a practical use. I call
this curious because of those romantic dreams of islands. I suppose it
was the boy of the eighteen-nineties who had indulged in them. The
engineer on assignment completely forgot them.

This was my first oversea plane journey. I gained for the first time, so
vividly, a sense of the rotundity of the earth: the ocular conception as
opposed to the imaginative one, and I began to feel how small the planet
really is. I've heard men who have done vastly more traveling by air
than I have say that flight only increases one's sense of the vastness
of the globe. I don't find it so; least of all did I find it so in this
seventy-two-hour journey during which, with various stops en route, I
was carried from San Francisco to what is, veritably, one of the ends of
the earth. No, I had a growing, sobering realization of limitations.
Little more than a century ago the seas were walls months high, even
years high. Now they are intervals between lunch and dinner, or
breakfast and dinner, shrinking visibly as one looks down upon them like
the spaces between the numerals upon the dial of a watch as the minute
hand moves from one to the next.

Honolulu was our first stop. There we deposited four of our passengers,
all those in uniform, and took on three more. We stopped only long
enough to change planes and plane crew; then we were away again. Both
arriving and departing we had a clear view of Pearl Harbor. It was an
appalling sight. I wondered what had become of those watchdogs, Kimmel
and Short. In fact, I'm still wondering, together with some one
hundred-odd millions of other Americans. But it's just as well, perhaps,
that no scapegoats have been chosen to bear the guilt of what happened
at Pearl Harbor. If one is to be selected let it be Uncle Sam himself.
All of us Americans, from the greatest to the least, are responsible for
that disaster.

I soon lost my sense of direction except in a general way. During the
next twenty-four hours it seemed to me that we had zigzagged all over
the eastern Pacific, on both sides of the Equator. Our cargo of visiting
firemen thinned out: we dropped one here, two there, another somewhere
else. I remember vividly the desolate island where the last of my fellow
passengers was left. It was nothing more than a sickle-shaped sandbank
about half a mile from end to end, protected by fringing reefs, with
clumps of starved scrub making shadows black as ink in the midday sun.
The fellow from St. Louis was the one to be left there. As we circled
over the place in preparation for a landing, with the shadow of the
plane circling beneath like the ghost of some prehistoric flying
monster, my companion said: "I might have spared myself the trouble of
buying that toilet kit." I thought so, too. Water would be far too
precious to be used for shaving and brushing his teeth. However, he was
furnished with two twenty-five-gallon drums of it from the plane, as
well as with a small tent and some cases of food. He was to be picked up
again in a week's time. A lonely figure he looked as we took off,
standing by his little heap of stores in the blob of shadow made by his
broad-brimmed hat. He was the right sort, that fellow. He didn't even
bother to turn and wave to us but set out at once to look over the
place. A moment later we were miles away.

Six hours after leaving the sandbank we reached my destination. I was
not, in fact, set down at the actual destination but at an island some
four hundred miles from it. I was to go on from there by sea.

I'll not identify the island. All that need be said here is that it did
not seem to belong to our exploited, blasted, war-wrecked planet. If
you've done any high-seas flying you will remember how rapidly an
island, or group of islands, takes on form and distinctness as you
approach at a speed of two hundred and fifty miles per hour. At one
moment it is a faint bluish blur against the empty sea, scarcely to be
distinguished from the sea itself. The next moment, there it is beneath
you, outlined in the most exquisite detail: mountains, deep
shadow-filled gorges, reef-enclosed lagoons with every shoal in them a
splotch of vivid color. You've not had time to prepare yourself for the
incredible sight. A wafer-like film of cloud hung over the very center
of this island with the peaks of the two highest mountains thrust
through into the clear air above. They gave the impression of floating
detached, in a sea of golden light, above the greater island beneath. We
passed directly above them, and I had a picture of lonely beauty, of
unsullied primitive wildness, that I shall treasure in memory to the end
of my days.

The sun was near to setting as we lost height in a long descent out to
sea; then we banked to come in over the little port town. We circled it
twice and turned once more to skim over the barrier reef that looked so
close to the land from high above, so far distant at this near view. The
pilot set the plane down as gently as a wild duck settles on a Wisconsin
lake; then we taxied to a mooring buoy half a mile from shore to wait
for the port doctor.

You know the sudden change in point of view at the end of a journey by
air. As the land rushes up to meet and enclose you, the impersonal
detached feeling of being a mere spectator of earth, outside the lives
and interests of your fellow men, is immediately lost. You are again
caught and enmeshed with them, one atom amongst the millions that people
the earth. Five minutes earlier the island had looked scarcely large
enough to stretch one's legs over in an after-dinner stroll. Now I was
gazing up at mountains that looked remote and immensely high, rising as
they did so abruptly from sea level. They hemmed in the little town with
its strip of foreshore, fronting the lagoon. I had a happy sense of
strangeness, of "otherness," so to speak, due to the fact that I had
traveled in so brief a time from a great continental city to a crumb of
land lost in the midmost Pacific; to a little world as different as
possible from anything I had ever known before. Twenty or thirty
schooners, cutters, and other small craft were moored along the sea
wall. It was a charming place, what I could see of it from offshore,
with the fronts of scattered shops, public buildings, warehouses and
dwellings, all in various pale colors, taking the westering light. I
caught glimpses of old-fashioned horse-drawn vehicles: carts, buggies,
surreys, and the like, moving slowly along beneath the trees. It gave me
the feeling of having flown straight back to boyhood. The sound of a
clear-toned bell, striking the hour from a church tower hidden amongst
the trees, was as golden as the air it traveled through.

One of the co-pilots came back to open the door in readiness for the
doctor, and we stood together, looking toward the beach.

"Guess we're making quite a stir here, Mr. Dodd," he said. "Look at the
crowd along the waterfront!"

I asked if he had called here before.

"Never," he said, "and I don't know any other pilot that has. This place
is away off any transpacific air lane. Shouldn't wonder if we're making
history. This is probably the first plane that's ever landed here."

"Did they know we were coming?" I asked.

"Yes, but not what day; not even what week. We wirelessed them a couple
of hours ago; our orders were not to wireless until we were two hours
off. But they've got aviation gas here for us. That was arranged for
well in advance."

I gathered from this information that the preparations made from
Washington were not as hasty as I had thought, at first.

"Are you spending the night here?" I asked the pilot.

He shook his head. "You're the lucky one. What a pretty little place! I
suppose this is the way Honolulu looked in the old days.... No, we've
got to go on as soon as we fill up and give the engines a quick
once-over."

"Where to?" I asked.

"I said, 'on,'" he replied, with a grin.

I was sorry to be leaving them. I'd gotten well acquainted with the
plane crew that had taken over at Honolulu; both plane and crew were
still of the Pan American service. There were two pilots, of course, a
navigating officer, and one engineer. We even had one of those engaging
little stewardesses, as pretty as she was competent. All of them were
mere kids in comparison with myself, but they had a maturity that
impressed me, owing, I suppose, to the nature of their work. But it
seemed to me that they had lost the faculty for wonder. This
far-reaching special mission could have been no routine flight for them,
but they took it all as a matter of course, as young people take
everything in these days. However, I may be wrong about this. They
carried a burden of responsibility that was off my shoulders. They
lacked the free mind I had to wonder and enjoy. Now they were away again
for Lord knows where, but the pilot said they would reach the place a
little after daylight next morning. They were to have a real "spell"
there.

It did look as though all the population of the island had gathered at
the waterfront. About ten minutes later a skiff put off to us from the
landing steps. The man at the oars was a husky native; the other two
were the doctor and an aide to the governor of the place. The medical
examination was a half-minute formality; then I said good-bye to the
plane crew and got into the skiff to go ashore. The governor's aide
informed me that the governor had gone to the far side of the island and
there'd not been time, after receiving the wireless from the plane, to
get word to him. He was expected to return early next morning.

The crowd by the landing steps opened up to let us through. They were
natives, mostly, with a sprinkling of whites and Chinese. They thought I
was somebody all right, the only passenger in a huge plane like that. I
shouldn't wonder if they considered me a special envoy of President
Roosevelt himself. I could see, from the expressions of astonishment on
all their faces, that the arrival of the plane was an extraordinary
event here. The face of the governor's aide fairly shone with reflected
glory as he conducted me along the street to a near-by hotel. We chatted
there for a moment or two; then he took his leave, saying he would call
for me a quarter of an hour before the time set for the meeting with the
governor next morning. It would probably be at ten o'clock.

The hotel was just what I thought it should be for that far-off island.
It didn't belong to the twentieth century. I got a great kick out of the
place and the landlord who ran it. There were wide verandas upstairs and
down running the length of the building with spacious high-ceilinged
rooms opening upon them. I was the only guest and the first one, the
landlord said, in more than a year. The war had stopped all tourist
traffic long since. I had my choice of rooms and selected one opening on
the front veranda having a glorious view across the lagoon to the
westward. The landlord brought up his battered old hotel register,
dating from 1902, for me to sign, and in the next ten minutes he gave me
a large slice of his family history, going back nearly a century to the
time when his great-grandfather, a Scotchman, had settled in the
islands. I could see that there had been a bounteous infiltration of
Polynesian blood since those days, but the landlord seemed as proud of
his Scotch ancestry as though he had been born at Inverness.

My room contained a lumpy double bed, a marble-topped washstand with a
bowl and pitcher on it, a built-in wardrobe, an old-fashioned bureau,
two chairs upholstered in faded green plush, and a strip of matting on
the bare floor. Over the bed hung a large oil painting of a stag against
a background of wild heathy mountains. I got a whiff of genuine emotion
from that painting, and the inscription on a brass plaque beneath it
stirred me even more:--

                 The stag at eve had drunk his fill
                 Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,
                 And deep his midnight lair had made
                 In lone Glenartney's hazel shade.

There was another vivid reminder of boyhood days. "The Lady of the Lake"
had been my first unforgettable introduction into the world of poetry.

The hotel was as clean as it was bare, but floors, walls, and ceilings
had been so riddled by termites that little more than the paint was
holding it together. As I walked gingerly down the back stairway to the
shower bath I more than half expected the building to collapse gently in
a heap of wood dust with me in the middle of the heap.

Except for morning coffee no meals were served in the hotel, so I went
along to a restaurant for my dinner. The street was quite deserted now,
everyone having gone to the wharf where the plane was refueling. The
restaurant was a frame building built on piles over the lagoon. It was
somewhat past the dinner hour but there were still half a dozen people
at their meal. All of them, it seemed to me, had an unmistakable island
stamp upon them. The peace and quiet of that lonely place seemed to be
written upon their faces and their movements were those of people who
have never known what it is to hurry.

I had a table by a window giving a wide view of the harbor. I've often
read, and heard, that night comes swiftly in the tropics, but it was not
so here. The sun had set a good half hour before but the afterglow was
still glorious. When I thought it was dying away, came a spectacular
resurgence of light as though the sun had changed its mind about setting
for good. Wisps of ribbed cloud high in the west and the sky between
them took on again the most gorgeous coloring. I had never before seen
such an amazing renewal of the afterglow. It was due, I suppose, to some
peculiar atmospheric condition.

Just as I was finishing my soup came the roar of the motors of the
plane: first one, then another, then all four together, ripping the
silence of that peaceful little place into a thousand shreds. I felt
suddenly awestruck, and the thunder of such mighty engines is in all
truth an awe-inspiring sound wherever heard. Even when accustomed to it
one can scarcely grasp the ominous fact that man has been able to
harness such power.

The pilots had wasted no time in refueling so that they could take off
while there was still light enough to see by. The huge plane moved
slowly away from the wharf and when just opposite the restaurant turned
westward; then they gave her full motor. I thought the restaurant would
be blown right off its foundations. Hats, tablecloths, napkins, and menu
cards flew every which way in the powerful backwash from the propellers,
and they had scarcely settled to the floor when we saw the plane far in
the distance, a black silhouette as it rose swiftly across a band of
ashy crimson light. Then it was gone.

There was an event in the history of that crumb of land in the
backwaters of the Pacific: an event of evil omen, but I did not think of
that at the time. From the abashed glances thrown in my direction by the
other diners, you might have thought that I was the man who had dreamed,
invented, perfected, and super-perfected that great bird; and I was
human enough and American enough to enjoy the moment. However, I went on
with my dinner with commendable modesty for such a great man. I had a
dish of excellent fresh-water shrimps with French dressing, and roast
pork with baked bananas and breadfruit to follow. I didn't know what the
latter was until the waiter enlightened me, and at the first taste I
wasn't sure whether I liked it or not; but doubt vanished with every
additional mouthful. It went very well indeed with the good pork gravy.
Then I had my first heart-of-palm salad with a mango for dessert. Of all
the tropical fruits I've eaten, give me a grafted mango for preference.
I certainly enjoyed that first one. I had a double portion sliced from
either side of the flat oblong seed, and I ate both down to the rind.

By the time I'd finished dinner the place was empty except for one man
seated at the table next to mine. I'd noticed him looking me over pretty
closely during the meal and when the others had gone we fell into
conversation.

"No need to ask if you came by the airship," he said. "Couldn't have
been anyone else."

"Airship" gave me an added sense of remoteness from the world I'd left
three days earlier. I was reminded of a time that seemed to belong to a
previous existence, when Santos-Dumont was making such a stir in the
world by his flights in the first crude dirigible, and "airship" began
to have some currency in common speech.

"Are strangers here as scarce as that?" I asked.

He nodded, without speaking again for some time; then he said: "My
name's Boyle. I'll be seeing you at the governor's tomorrow. It's my
island you're going to."

I pricked up my ears at that, but expressed only polite interest. You
wouldn't have set him down as being the proprietor of anything much,
least of all an island. His suit of white drill was clean, but collar
and cuffs had been frayed with long use and both coat and trousers had
been patched and darned in many places. He looked like a superannuated
bookkeeper, and he spoke in a slow, hesitating manner as though he found
it hard to collect his thoughts even for a simple statement. I judged
him to be in his late seventies; his hair was silvery white with a
yellowish tinge, and face and hands had the waxen pallor of a man who
has aged badly. He rarely gave me the direct glance but when he did I
had the impression of vitality slowly and painfully gathered up to be
shot out in the fraction of a second when his eyes met mine. His were as
blue and cold as polar ice.

"I'm an American, too," he volunteered, presently. "Been out here
forty-five years. Don't know as I'd want to see another forty-five; or
even five more. Looks to me as if this was the end of things as I've
known them."

"The end? How's that?" I asked.

"That airship... What do you think, yourself? No place too far for
'em to go, is there?"

"No; not in these days," I said.

"Won't they be flying all over the Pacific in a few more years?"

"It strikes me as likely," I replied. "Wouldn't you like that? Suppose
you want to go to San Francisco: you can have your dinner here in the
evening and land at the Oakland airport in time for breakfast next
morning."

"Don't know as I'd relish the breakfast much. I'd be thinking of all the
tourists and trippers flying this way at the same time, leaving their
Sunday newspapers and lunch boxes and paper napkins all over the place.
This is the only world we've got. I don't believe in makin' it so
small."

"Well," I said, "I'm afraid there's nothing you and I can do about
that."

When he spoke again, his voice had more heat in it than I had supposed
his dry old carcass contained.

"No, we can't," he said. "That's the hell of it!"

A moment later he gave me a curt nod and went out.

A lamp with an old-fashioned china globe stood lighted on the bureau
when I returned to the hotel. I was tired after my long journey but upon
examining the lumpy bed with the springs making hillocks of the thin
mattress, I decided to sit up for a while. The painting of the Stag at
Eve looked even more beautifully romantic by lamplight than it had by
daylight. I don't know whether it was an original or a copy, but whoever
the artist, he had worked with love and deep feeling. My thoughts went
traveling farther and farther away from the present moment; all the way
back to boyhood. I saw our sitting room at home, as it was in those
days, lighted by the hard-coal burner and just such a china-globed lamp
as the one before me; the family seated around the table, my mother
darning stockings, my brothers and sisters reading or studying next
day's lessons. I saw myself with my father's fine illustrated edition of
Scott's Poems on my knees as I read "The Lady of the Lake" for the first
time.

        Harp of the North! that mouldering long hast hung
        On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring...

Nothing read in all the intervening years has ever stirred me as those
lines stirred me in boyhood. Then, in the curious instantaneous way in
which one memory calls up another, I saw myself at school with Tilson's
Geography open on the desk before me. "Atoll--a Coral Island," the
inscription read, and the engraving above showed such an island as it
was supposed to be. A perfect circle of reef-connected islets were
geometrically spaced around the enclosed lagoon, with clumps of coconut
palms growing here and there and sea fowl skimming over the breakers
piling high along the reef. I don't believe that I had once recalled
that sketch since boyhood days, but here it was again, floating bright
and clear on the surface of consciousness. And not only that. A moment
later another entrancing landscape came into view, an illustration for
the lines of a poem in Appleton's Fourth Reader, I think it was: either
that or McGuffey's:--

        Great wide, beautiful, wonderful world,
        With the wonderful waters round you curled,
        And the wonderful grass upon your breast,
        World, you are beautifully drest.

        You friendly Earth, how far do you go
        With your mountains and plains and the rivers that flow;
        With cities and gardens and wonderful isles
        And people upon you for thousands of miles?

I'm not sure that I've quoted exactly, but the wording isn't far off. I
doubt whether the children of these days have that feeling of awe and
wonder and delight, when they think of Mother Earth, that was common to
us as kids. They know only too well how far the planet goes, or doesn't
go, and the precise number of hours and minutes needed to reach any part
of it. These memories thronging back so unexpectedly gave me a strange,
confused emotion, happy and unhappy at the same moment. I'd been too
busy with engineering problems; with life as it was, and is, and, I
suppose, as it will continue to be, only more so, in our industrialized
world, to think often of life as we knew it in boyhood. It was on this
same evening that I became uneasily aware of the thickness of the shell,
or crust, I'd grown after thirty years of engineering. It was a crust
composed of oil, cement, emery dust, steel filings, rust,
carbon-monoxide gas, and all the soot and thick greasy smoke belched
from the chimneys of hundreds of smelters and refiners. It had been
proof against any vivid memories of the past. Perhaps it was Monan's
rill glittering in the moonlight that washed this first channel through
it.




                                  III


I will pass briefly over the next morning's conference with
the governor. As I've said, all arrangements for taking over the island
had been made in advance by our State Department; my talk with the
governor concerned only the practical details of the business. He was
courteous enough, but I could see that he was far from happy over this
intrusion demanded by the harsh necessities of war. However, he was
extremely businesslike and had everything down in black and white, even
to the smallest details. It was a kind of leasing arrangement for the
duration, and I was given full authority to make whatever changes might
be necessary for converting the island into a base. When the war ended
it was to be returned, and all installations such as wharves, hangars,
barracks, machine shops, electric power plants, and the like were to be
handed over to the government having sovereignty there. Boyle was at the
conference, and I learned that he was, in fact, the sole owner of the
island. He stood to profit handsomely by the arrangement. A schooner was
ready to take me to my destination and I was told that I could leave the
same evening if I wished to.

Boyle and I came away from the conference together. He was a curious
fellow; I couldn't make him out. There were, naturally, all sorts of
questions I wanted to ask about the island, but he put me off with the
briefest of replies or none at all. I had taken it for granted that he
would be coming too, but he soon made it clear that he had no intention
of doing so.

"No," he said; "no more traveling for me till they take me to the local
boneyard."

The conference had tired him and when we reached the waterfront he
suggested that we rest for a bit on a bench there.

Presently he said: "There's one thing I want to speak about." He was
silent for so long I thought he'd forgotten what he meant to say, but at
last he added: "I've got a nice place out there... on my island, I
mean. Used to spend two or three months on it every year. There's a man
and his daughter looking after it for me now.... I hope they won't
have to be disturbed?"

I told him I could make no promises about that, in advance.

"No... I don't suppose you can," he replied, slowly. "Well...
that's all.... I just wanted you to know about them." At last he
looked up at me with the bleakest smile I've ever seen on a human face.
"When I sent 'em out there," he said, "I thought I was doing a good turn
for once in my life.... Guess I was too late makin' a start."

He left me a moment later without any explanation of what he meant by
that statement.

The last leg of the journey was made in a two-masted, ninety-ton
schooner used in the copra and pearl-shell trade amongst those islands.
The only other passenger was the Resident Agent of the island I was
bound for. His Christian name was Viggo and he was always called so,
either that or "Papa Viggo." He was a Dane with a round ruddy face and
hair so blond it was almost white. His big belly was as sound as the
rest of him. "My heart," he called it; then he would smile and give it a
resounding thump with his fist. When I knew him better I was convinced
that a heart as big and kindly as his could have found room in no other
part of his anatomy. I should not be surprised if, in Viggo, heart and
stomach had been fused into one organ, digesting food and experience
together, and never with the slightest touch of spleen. There are
certain men who, you know at first glance, are good all the way through.
Viggo was one of these. I never heard him say an unkind word of anyone.

The captain of the schooner was also called only by his first
name--Tihoti, which is the native word for "George." Viggo and
George--what a pair they made! They were contemporaries in age, around
sixty, but George, although he had the point of view of a white man, had
a considerable mixture of Polynesian blood in his veins. He had a walrus
mustache and bloodshot, protruding blue eyes that glared at you in a
manner disconcerting at first until you learned that there was nothing
hostile behind the glare. He was one of the most naturally courteous men
I've ever met--that is, in his attitude toward strangers; with Viggo, of
course, he stood on no ceremony since they had been friends from away
back. There was a courtly, Old World charm about him, and while he could
remove that manner as easily as taking off his coat, I became convinced
that it was no veneer of good breeding but something native; a gift
received, probably, through his Polynesian blood.

Before we had been an hour at sea I was on excellent terms with these
two old cronies. I soon gathered that they had only a vague notion of
the nature of my errand. They knew that some kind of base was to be made
on the island, but their idea of it was a storage tank or two to contain
fuel-oil for ships that might have to pass that way now and again. I
decided not to give them the facts until I had to.

The captain had a short-wave radio, but it was an old contraption and
static was so bad, he said, twenty-five days out of the month, that he
didn't bother to listen in often. However, on this first night he tried
to get London and succeeded after a fashion. We heard Big Ben striking
the hour and the voice of the announcer saying: "This is London calling
in the Overseas Service of the B.B.C." After that scarcely a word was
distinguishable for several minutes; then we heard: "Some of our
overseas listeners have written to ask whether nightingales still sing
in wartime England. We are happy to let the nightingales answer that
question for themselves." Following that, we heard the faint song of a
bird but the static soon drowned it out. The captain switched off the
current in disgust.

"I wonder if that was an imitation?" said Viggo. "Surely, they couldn't
have had a nightingale right there by the
what-you-may-call-it--microphone?"

"Viggo, you're the dumbest man about radios," said the captain. "Of
course they didn't have a nightingale there. The song was what they call
transcribed, off a phonograph record."

"Was it?" said Viggo, with a blank look. "Is that how they do it?"

Presently he added: "I expect that's all the nightingales' songs they'll
have left by the time the war's over: what they've got on the phonograph
records. My, my! What a world it is in Europe for the birds, with all
the shells and aeroplanes and bombs!"

"I was reading a while back," said the captain, "about a big flock of
aeroplanes that had been making a daylight raid somewhere in France or
Belgium. This was last spring. It told about how they'd flown right
through a flock of small birds on the way home. They were going so fast
they didn't see the birds till they were right amongst 'em. It said all
those planes came home plastered with blood and feathers and the bodies
of little birds so flattened out they couldn't tell _what_ they were."

"What's happening to all the wild life over in Europe, Mr. Dodd?" Viggo
asked. "There must be a lot about it in the papers. And the fish? You'd
think the fish must be about wiped out in the Mediterranean and the
North Sea, with the depth bombs and mines and torpedoes."

I said that I'd seen no mention in the papers of the tragedies of the
birds and fishes, but I didn't confess, which was true, that I'd never
myself given the matter a thought. It struck me as strange that I'd had
to come all this distance to meet anyone who appeared to be concerned
about these matters. I changed the subject by asking them to tell me
something about Boyle.

The captain heaved himself out of his deck chair to spit over the rail,
as though the mere mention of the name had brought a nauseating taste to
his mouth.

"That old skunk!" he said. "He's the biggest crook in the Pacific!"

"Now, Tihoti," said Viggo, with an air of mild protest.

"He is," said the captain, with even more heat. "Viggo knows it as well
as I do. Mr. Dodd, that fellow has done more dirt in his lifetime than
the devil himself could have thought up."

"What about the Lehmanns?" asked Viggo.

"I knew you'd bring them in. Leave them aside for now. One good deed in
forty-five years won't make up for all the misery he's caused."

Viggo was about to make another protest but the captain cut him off.

"Just you be quiet, Viggo," he said. "Mr. Dodd ought to know something
about Boyle since it's his island he's going to, and I'm the man to tell
him, not you."

"_His_ island!" he added, bitterly. "He's got the legal rights to it,
that's true enough, but if he had his dues he'd be in jail for life.
Thirty years ago the natives weren't protected in their property rights
the way they are now. Boyle took advantage of that. He was bound to have
that island and he got it the way he's gotten everything else he owns,
by dirty underhand tricks. He's smart, no doubt about that. He's
nobody's fool except his own, and that's the only thing that gives me a
grain of comfort when I think about him. Maybe, now when he's just about
ready to tumble into his grave, he's beginning to wonder what good all
his skulduggery has done him."

"Boyle told me that he had a man and his daughter living on the island,
taking care of his house," I said. "Are they the Lehmanns you spoke of
just now?"

"Yes," said the captain. "Viggo, you can tell him about them."

I'll not attempt to repeat the story as I heard it that night on the
schooner. The captain would break in now and then and the two of them
would argue back and forth about the motives that had prompted Boyle to
do what he did. By the time I'd been told all the circumstances I had
two strangely contrasted pictures of Boyle to set side by side. This is
the gist of the tale:--

In the autumn of 1940, shortly after the fall of France, Boyle had gone
to the British consul--of the island we'd just left--with a request that
nearly bowled the consul over because of its unexpected nature. He said
that he wanted to do something for a family of Jewish refugees--any
family; it didn't matter about that so long as it was one right up
against it: homeless, friendless, desperate, not knowing which way to
turn. He wanted the consul's help in bringing such a family out to the
islands from Europe. Boyle guaranteed to stand all expenses and he
promised to take full responsibility for their support, for the rest of
their lives, if need be.

Knowing Boyle well, the consul was more than suspicious. He wondered
what kind of shady scheme that he would stand to profit by Boyle was
cooking up now. Certain, at first, that there could be nothing
altruistic about it, he told Boyle that such a plan was out of the
question, in wartime. Continental Europe was in the hands of the
barbarians. Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal were the only countries not
yet in their clutches. No, it was an impossible plan. Nothing could be
done about it.

But Boyle persisted. He came back again and again with his plea. He
offered to place one thousand pounds in advance in the consul's hands,
as an evidence of good faith. At last the consul became convinced that
the man was sincere; that, for once in his life, he really wanted to
perform a generous, unselfish act. He promised to see what might be
done. The business was outside his consular functions but that didn't
matter. The consul was a humane man. If, through his agency, a refuge
might be found for one of the tens of thousands of Jewish families
homeless in Europe, he was not the man to stay his hand. Having been
assured by the governor that there would be no official objections, he
wrote a letter explaining the circumstances to the British consul at
Lisbon, Portugal, requesting him, if the plan seemed feasible and
transportation could be found for such a family, to wireless the fact,
whereupon money to cover all expenses would be immediately wirelessed in
return.

Nearly a year passed without any reply to this letter. Then came a
radiogram: PASSAGE AVAILABLE VIA PANAMA, JEWISH FAMILY. WIRELESS
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY POUNDS. FATHER, DAUGHTER. NAME, LEHMANN.

They arrived by a small British freighter New Zealand bound, and Captain
George had brought them on to Boyle's island. He was in port with his
schooner on the day they arrived from Lisbon. He said that Boyle's
manner toward the refugees was consideration itself. He showed great
delicacy of feeling, effacing himself as much as possible. It was the
consul who acted as intermediary. He told them of Boyle's home on the
atoll; of his love for the place and how he was now too old and infirm
to look after it himself. He wanted a dependable family to live there.
They were to have the full use of this home for as long as they chose to
remain, with all expenses paid and a small but comfortable salary in
addition. They were also informed that the island was a lonely place,
having no contact with the outside world save by the schooner that
called there twice yearly. It offered no distractions except what they
could devise for themselves.

"Mr. Dodd," said the captain, "I wish you could have seen them the day
they landed from the freighter. They couldn't believe what was
happening. They were afraid to believe in case they might wake up and
find it was nothing but a dream. After the horrors they'd been
through... well, it was just too much, having such kindness shown them.
The consul told me how they sat on his veranda, the daughter holding
her father's hand, neither of them able to speak from the fullness of
their hearts. He said he had to leave them for a bit and fuss around
in his office, to give them both time to pull themselves together.

"He'd received a letter from the consul in Lisbon, telling about the
Lehmanns. He let me read it. Mr. Lehmann had been a professor in some
university in Vienna at the time the Nazis came there. His only brother
had been caught, and all he ever heard of him after that was when a box
was sent containing his ashes. Mrs. Lehmann was dead. Mr. Lehmann and
his daughter, Ruth--she's a beautiful girl, eighteen or nineteen years
old--escaped to Czechoslovakia. Then the Huns took that country, and,
somehow, they managed to reach Poland. They went on from there, before
war broke out, to France, by sea. They hoped they were safe, in France.
Mr. Lehmann, who is a fine violinist, got a job playing in some
orchestra. Then the Huns came tearing into France and the Lehmanns
escaped from Paris just in time. They had a terrible journey from then
on. They had no papers and only two hundred francs in money. They
managed to cross the Spanish border at night. That was in September, and
they made their way over the mountains on foot. How they got into
Portugal the letter didn't say."

"Tell him about the piano," Viggo put in.

The captain was silent for some little time.

"That Boyle!" he exclaimed, wonderingly. "That old crook! Whoever would
have thought he had a spark of decency in him? But what he's done for
the Lehmanns... there's just no explaining it. It's one of those
things that goes to show how hard it is to size up any man, even when
you've known him as long as I've known Boyle. My belief is that the old
villain has softened up, now that he knows he hasn't long to live. He's
scared, that's the plain truth. He hopes he can ride into heaven on his
one good action."

"Tell him about the piano," Viggo repeated.

"I'm coming to that," said the captain, testily. "Give me time.

"There were some Russians crossed this part of the Pacific a few years
back. They were refugees, too. They'd had to leave Russia at the time of
the Revolution and had been wandering from one place to another ever
since. They came out here from Shanghai and were trying to get to South
America. But they were just about busted, and the only thing they had
left that could be turned into money was a fine piano.... What's it
called, Viggo?"

"A Bechstein."

"That's it. They'd held onto it as long as they could and it just about
broke their hearts to part with it. Boyle bought it on spec. Here's
another thing I haven't told you about that fellow: he has a real love
for music. He can't play a note, himself, but he has the finest
phonograph and the biggest collection of records, I'd say, in the whole
Pacific. None of your jazz and cheap stuff: classical pieces, Beethoven,
Brahms and Mozart, and all that. He's never had any friends; no one ever
goes to see him except on business, and that's how he spends his
evenings, playing his phonograph.

"On the evening of the day the Lehmanns came they went with the consul
to Boyle's house, and when Miss Lehmann saw the piano she was drawn to
it, the consul said, like a starving person at the sight of food. He
said he'd never forget that evening, and I guess Boyle hasn't forgotten
it either. Mr. Lehmann had a violin, the only thing he'd carried with
him all the time they were running from the Huns. That was sent for and
father and daughter played the evening through. They couldn't have found
a better way of thanking Boyle for what he had done for them. They could
say in music what it was hopeless trying to say in words. The consul
said that Boyle was like another person, and when they came on to the
island by my schooner, he sent the piano with them. I guess it was the
one thing needed to make their happiness just about perfect."

"And they like the island? They're really happy there?" I asked.

The captain pondered this question for a moment.

"I don't know that I should have called it happiness," he said. "I'm
afraid they've suffered too much ever to know real happiness again. But
they think the island is heaven on earth. What's your opinion, Viggo?"

"I'll tell you," said Viggo. "Whenever I see them, and that's nearly
every day, I have a warm feeling in my heart for old man Boyle. Whatever
he's done before is wiped off the slate, so far as I'm concerned."

"I'm not that much of a Christian," said the captain, grimly. "But I'll
give him his due for what he's done for the Lehmanns."

During the course of the voyage I learned of one other white resident of
the island. The captain was carrying out half a dozen young fruit trees
in tubs, and he and Viggo watered and cared for them as though they were
the most precious trees on earth. They told me they were for Father
Vincent. Both men spoke of him with a warmth that showed their affection
for the old priest who was spiritual adviser to the inhabitants of this
and three other atolls within a radius of two hundred miles.

"You'll like Father Vincent," said Viggo. "I'm not a Catholic and the
father has never tried to make me one; but the natives are--my wife too.
We think the world and all of Father Vincent. He's a Christian first and
a Catholic afterward. That's the way it should be, as I see it."

"And he's none of your Scribes and Pharisees kind," said the captain.
"Viggo, you remember the time I brought out the young mango and
breadfruit trees? I got in with my schooner on a Saturday evening," he
added, turning to me. "There'd been a long spell of dry weather, but
next morning the rain was pouring down and it kept pouring all day.
Father Vincent wouldn't miss a chance like that. He rang the bell for
Mass, as usual, but he'd sent word around that no one was to wear Sunday
clothes. Instead of going to church he went with the whole congregation
to his garden to set out the young trees while the weather favored. He
said there was more than one way of worshiping the Lord."

"He's got what they call the planting hand," said Viggo. "His garden is
a real wonder, Mr. Dodd. It's not for his private use. Everybody shares
in it, the children most of all. There ain't another like it on any of
the coral islands. You know, none of the tropical fruits such as
bananas, mangoes, breadfruit, papaias, and the like, grow on the atolls.
They've got to have rich volcanic soil from the High Islands, so Father
Vincent has Tihoti bring him some every time the schooner calls here."

"I've got fifteen tons aboard this trip," the captain added. "I wouldn't
be able to guess how much I've brought in all, in the last thirty years.
It will be thirty years next June that the father started making the
garden. What he's done in that time... but you'll have a chance to
see it for yourself."

The interests of these two old friends were refreshingly wide from mine
and new to me. They talked of islands whose names I had never so much as
heard of, scattered over a thousand-mile area in that part of the
Pacific, so far removed from steamship routes that the lives of their
inhabitants had changed very little from what they had been in heathen
times. The captain was born an islander--though his father, a prosperous
trader, had sent him to school in England--and Viggo had lived for so
long in that lonely sea that no more than George could he conceive of
any great change taking place there even in the midst of a planetary
war. As for myself, under the influence of their companionship, and
lapped round as we were by the peace of mid-ocean, I could almost doubt
the reality of what was happening elsewhere in the world. But at times,
as I watched the foam patterns moving slowly aft along the sides of the
vessel, I would see there the face of that paper hanger, that madman
Schickelgruber, or Hitler as he calls himself, who had boasted that
Germany would either conquer the world or pull it down in ruin. And I
thought with a bitterness common to all of us in these days of the
so-called statesmen who, until it was too late, remained so blandly
indifferent to all the repeated warnings and danger signals.

Then perhaps Viggo would, to my great relief, break into the current of
these musings by speaking of his turtle islet and how eager he was to be
at home before the last of the pits of eggs laid by the great sea turtle
should hatch. "I hope we get there in time, Mr. Dodd," he would say.
"There's a sight worth seeing: when the baby turtles come out."




                                   IV


We sighted the island at dawn on the fourth day, a slender
thread of black against the increasing light, and an hour later we were
close in with it. The sea was calmer than I had supposed the ocean could
ever be, with a few scattered clouds mirrored in it almost to
perfection. To a man inland born and bred as I was, there is something
almost incredible in the first sight of a coral island, particularly
such a one as this, far out on the Pacific, thousands of miles from the
nearest continent. It gives you a deep emotion. It's as though you had
sailed right off the planet. I forgot Detroit, the U.S.A., the war, and
the errand that brought me here. I had... how shall I put it?... a
feeling of peace, of deep content. When you see such an island you know
for the first time the meaning of the word "loneliness." And if you've
lived the kind of life I've lived, you realize of a sudden how long,
without guessing it, you've needed to have that meaning brought home to
you. It's hard to put into words the sense of a reawakening, of
reassurance granted. Believe it or not, for the next hour not one
thought of the barbarians, whether German or Jap, crossed my mind.

In order to give me a preliminary view the captain headed the schooner
for the northwest extremity of the atoll and we coasted along the
leeward side for ten or a dozen miles, just off the reef. There were
long stretches of reef awash where I could look across into the lagoon
and beyond to the islets on the far side, blurs of pale blue against the
horizon. Viggo pointed out one of these to me, his beloved turtle islet,
at that distance no more than a faint irregularity against the skyline.
The ones on the near side, a dozen or more, were gems of islets, with a
few coconut palms and pandanus trees casting long shadows over the coral
sand. The sea birds, among them snow-white terns, fluttering over the
trees or skimming along the hollows made by the combers rising to break
on the reef, gave the one touch of life and movement needed to make
loneliness more lonely still.

At length we approached the islet where the village stood. It was a
little more than a mile in length, from five to six hundred yards broad,
and beautifully green from end to end. No sign of human habitation could
be seen from the ocean side. As I have said, the passage through the
reef was a wide deep channel, but inside the lagoon we had to thread our
way through a number of coral shoals rising to within a fathom or so of
the surface. I remember thinking: "Those coral heads will have to be
blasted out the first thing we do." I resented being reminded so soon of
my errand here. The moment of pure content had vanished, but a moment
that has lasted for all of an hour is so much clear gain. I remember
reading somewhere a statement--by some crabbed old misanthrope,
evidently--to the effect that the man would be lucky who could look back
in old age over his life and tally up as much as an hour of unflawed
peace of mind enjoyed in the course of seventy years. I had that much in
one whack. It's a pity that I had to notice those coral heads or it
might have lasted longer.

We moored at a coral-slab pier extending twenty yards across the
shallows. At the end of it the lagoon floor fell away steeply to a good
fifteen fathoms, more than ample depth for the coming freighter. The
uneasy anxious feeling deepened as I thought of the freighter loaded and
ready to sail at that same moment, perhaps; or it might even then be
moving slowly down San Francisco Bay toward the Golden Gate. With an
effort I erased that picture from my mind. I was bound to have at least
one day as free as possible from thoughts of what was to come.

The entire population had gathered on the pier and the beach; that is,
all the natives. I didn't see the Lehmanns amongst them. But Father
Vincent was there, and the first glimpse of him was enough to show why
Viggo and the captain had spoken of him with such affection. You felt
the influence of his kindly nature from afar. He had snow-white hair and
a long white beard, and was dressed in a rusty-looking old soutane and a
broad-brimmed pandanus-leaf hat. The smoke curling out from his
long-stemmed meerschaum pipe seemed the peace of the island made visible
and tangible. There he stood in the midst of his flock, and he looked
more native to the place than the natives themselves. Viggo's two grown
sons were there to greet him, strapping fellows in their early twenties.
Viggo's wife was a Polynesian, born on this island. The boys showed far
more of their mother's than of their father's blood, but one of them had
Viggo's clear blue eyes.

It was a pleasure to look over that crowd. There was not a sickly
looking person amongst them; even the old people, the grandfathers and
grandmothers, looked as though they might go on living for another fifty
years. They showed a vigor that spoke well for their simple, natural way
of life, and both old and young had beautiful teeth, as white as the
meat of a coconut. I made a hasty count and estimated the population as
numbering between seventy-five and one hundred. Viggo made them a little
speech in the native tongue, explaining me, evidently, for as soon as he
had finished all the grownups came along to shake hands with smiles and
grins of the most evident good will. Father Vincent came too and gave me
a cordial welcome, but I could see that what chiefly interested him at
the moment were the fruit trees the captain had brought him. He was
delighted to find them in such flourishing condition, and immediately
commandeered the services of some of the boys to carry them to his
garden.

When the greetings were over I went with Viggo to his house with most of
the children tagging along at our heels. The houses were scattered along
the lagoon beach, and the beach itself, of hard-packed coral sand, was
the village street. It was shaded with gnarled old trees that looked as
though they had been growing there always. Outrigger canoes, from small
two-men craft to large sailing canoes that would accommodate a dozen or
more, were drawn up in the shade, and fishing nets hung from the
branches of the trees. The little settlement was scrupulously clean; it
looked as though it were swept from end to end every morning. The
dwellings were all of palm-frond thatch and behind each one was the
_far-himaa_, as they call them--open-sided huts with thatched roofs
over the earth ovens where the household cooking is done.

Viggo's house stood midway in the village. His was the only frame
building in the settlement. There were wide verandas both front and back
and the whole was roofed with corrugated iron. Here I met Mrs. Viggo and
their three daughters, girls in their teens, all of them chips off the
old block in health and sturdiness. Mrs. Viggo was almost as large as
her husband but a lively active body for all that. She took my hand in
both of hers and addressed me volubly in the native tongue, breaking off
to laugh heartily when her husband reminded her that I could not
understand a word she was saying. A moment later she bustled off to the
cookhouse to see about the preparations for the morning meal.

It was eleven o'clock when we drew up at table, Viggo, the captain, and
I, and what a meal it was! In quantity, at least, it reminded me of the
farm dinners of the Middle West at harvest time, and here as there the
womenfolk waited on table, having their meal when the men had finished.
We had four kinds of shellfish, including lobster, half a dozen kinds of
baked and broiled fish, roast suckling pig with Low Island taro, curried
chicken and rice, and I don't know what all else, ending up with a kind
of sweet pudding--_poi_ they call it--with a sauce of coconut cream. I'm
a pretty good trencherman, but I was nowhere with Viggo and the captain.
It was a memorable sight to watch them storing away provender as though
they expected to fast for the next week.

"Mr. Dodd," said Viggo, "if you like we might go over to see the
Lehmanns this evening. I'll let them know you've come."

"You think they wouldn't mind?" I said.

"No, no. They're fine hospitable people. Mr. Lehmann doesn't know
English very well, but Ruth does; and her father can speak every
language with his violin. We can hear some music if you'd care to?"

"I'd like nothing better," I said.

"Miss Lehmann has a lovely voice," said the captain. "She knows all the
fine old songs, in French, English, or German. I could listen all night,
the way she sings them."

"Life here must have seemed very strange to them at first," I said.

"Yes, it did," said Viggo, "but they've taken to it in a way that's
surprised me. They're city folks born and bred. I thought they'd be very
lonely here, but they're not. They're so simple and natural in their
ways, I guess they could fit themselves in anywhere. Everybody likes
them. Mr. Lehmann's not a strong man. He doesn't come over to the
village very often, but Ruth does. It's wonderful the way she's learned
the native language in these few months. She's a very bright girl."

Having finished his _poi_, Viggo scraped his plate for the last drop of
coconut cream, then pushed back his chair with a groan of content. The
captain looked even more apoplectic than usual. He took a cushion from
one of the sofas and stretched out on the bare floor of the veranda.

"We always have a siesta after _kaikai_," said Viggo. "Too hot to do
anything else in the middle of the day. My wife's got your room ready if
you want to have one yourself."

I've never formed the siesta habit, but I could well understand its
value to the inhabitants of a coral island. With no breeze blowing, the
hours in the middle of the day are, to say the least, enervating, the
coral sand reflecting back fiercely the heat of the sun. But the trade
wind was now blowing freshly again, ruffling the surface of the lagoon
to the deepest blue. To a man like myself, used to the temperatures of
July and August in the Middle West, the air seemed gratefully cool.
Nevertheless, I went to the room Mrs. Viggo had prepared for me and sat
for a while by the open window, thinking of one thing and another.
Little I'd dreamed, that day a week ago, what the week was to have in
store for me. I was in Chicago on the twentieth floor of a hotel on
Michigan Avenue on the day the wire came of my appointment to this job.
A greater contrast than that between the landscape I saw from my hotel
bedroom and the one framed by the window of Viggo's guest-room could
scarcely be imagined.

This struck me as a good time for a stroll. I would have the island
pretty much to myself, so I went quietly out past Viggo and the captain,
stretched out sound asleep on the veranda floor, puffing and blowing
like a pair of grampuses. Leaving the beach I came to a broad straight
path leading down the center of the islet, and at the end of it I could
see Father Vincent's church.

Not a soul was stirring anywhere. I spied sleeping forms on mats by the
doorways of the thatched houses or lying in the shade outside. As I was
to learn, the siesta habit was a universal one here, but at night the
people were up at all hours; often they would have supper at midnight or
breakfast at two o'clock in the morning, the light of their fires
casting wavering shadows among the stems of the coconut palms. I came
upon a group of children, five- and six-year-olds, asleep in the middle
of the roadway. They made a pretty picture with the checkered shadows
moving to and fro across their faces and their chubby brown arms and
legs. They had been playing some kind of hopscotch game common to
children the world over, for the hard-packed coral sand where they lay
had been marked off into squares. One little fellow had the end of a
bark string tied around his wrist as though he had been afraid the wagon
attached to the other end might go off without him while he slept. The
body of the wagon was the half of a coconut shell beautifully smoothed
and polished, mounted on a framework of sticks. Segments, perfectly
round, cut from some kind of snail shell, served as wheels. It was no
hodgepodge of a child's toy but one most ingeniously put together. I
could see that it had been a labor of love and skill and wondered
whether so small a child could himself have made it.

None of the children stirred as I walked quietly around them. It's
curious how the picture they made lingers in the memory. Perhaps it was
because of the setting, so strange and new to my Northern eyes, with
nothing anywhere to remind me of the twentieth century. I had the
feeling of having strayed by accident into some last lost remnant of the
Golden Age that Time had overlooked.

The church I came to a quarter of a mile farther on did little to mar
the illusion. Worship must have played an important part in the lives of
men during the Golden Age, if ever there has been one, and the temple I
saw before me seemed to express the very spirit of worship. I had been
told by Viggo and the captain that Father Vincent had himself designed
and built it, with the help of his congregation, twenty-five years
before, and that, with the exception of the bell and the stained-glass
windows, all the materials came from the island itself. It was a
coral-lime structure--that is, the walls, three feet thick, were of
coral slabs cemented together and smoothed outside and in with a lime of
burnt coral, as white as snow. There were five tall Gothic windows on
either side and an oriel window at each end. The belltower was in
perfect proportion with the rest of the building; in fact, the only part
to offend the eye was the steep-sloped roof of corrugated iron. That was
a concession to necessity, for there is, of course, no running water on
a coral island. It is a precious commodity, supplied by such roofs as
are made to catch the rainfall, and carried to reservoirs built
underground. I had seen the community reservoir for the village which
collected the rainfall from its own broad roof and that from Viggo's
house. By the church was a second one with a capacity, I judged, of
around ten thousand gallons.

The door of the church stood open. The cool dim interior enclosed the
peculiar kind of silence and peace that a small church can hold as well
as the greatest of cathedrals. It was made the more impressive by the
slow ticking of a clock which stood in a recess between two of the
windows, saying: "Forever... and ever... and ever... and ever,"
as though it were speaking from an anteroom of Eternity itself. I walked
up the center aisle to examine the altar which must have been a labor of
years to complete. It was of dark paneled wood and in the center of each
panel was a rosette or fleur-de-lis exquisitely carved from pearl shell.
The borders were also inlaid with mother-of-pearl, hundreds of small
oblong or diamond-shaped pieces to make, with the wood, a tessellated
frame for the central ornament of each panel.

I spent half an hour in the church, thinking of the old priest who had
built it as a monument to his faith, on an island so far from the
ancient home of that faith. And a fitting monument it was, but no more
so, I thought, than his garden which showed the other side of his nature
and his love for Mother Earth. The path by which I had come led directly
to the church door. It was continued from the other end of the church
and passed through the center of the garden. His small house stood at
the end of a lawn outside the garden, which was a walled enclosure of
several acres. The central walk was shaded throughout by a trellis
covered from end to end with flowering vines, and smaller paths bordered
by shrubs native to the island led to his groves of High Island fruit
trees: mangoes, bananas, papaias, breadfruit, limes, and avocados. There
was one orange tree that must have been his particular pride, loaded
with fruit just coming to ripeness. The trees had been planted in wide
trenches from which the coral sand had been removed and mixed with humus
and the volcanic soil brought by the schooner. The whole of the garden
had been laid out with an eye to beauty as well as use, and in the
center was a little summerhouse furnished with a circular bench where
one could sit and survey the whole of it.

Being an engineer, I tried to estimate the number of man hours of work
that had gone into the making of such a garden where everything had to
be done by hand, with pick, hoe, and shovel, wheelbarrow and watering
pot; the trees to be planted and the very soil brought little by little
from a distance of four hundred miles. I was not able to make even a
rough guess, but I had no doubt whatever as to the speed with which all
this could be swept away--church, garden, everything; the labor of
thirty years wiped out in scarcely more than that number of hours. That
was my task and it was coming; it would have to come. And not only that:
the whole of the village islet would have to be laid waste as well. This
first view was enough to show that it offered no more than bare room for
the base I had come to prepare. Land planes as well as amphibians were
to be stationed here, and the island was to be a refueling depot for
long-range bombers and transport planes that might, in the course of
events, have occasion to use it. Hangars, repair shops, barracks, radio
station, fuel-storage tanks, and other installations would require every
square yard of ground not needed for the landing field.

I walked slowly on to the end of the islet, sick at heart at thought of
the task ahead, lamenting the chance that had selected me for this work
of vandalism demanded by the necessity of war. I was in a mood to curse
our so-called Industrial Civilization and all its works, concerned for
nothing but itself, for nothing but greater and yet greater room for its
own monstrous growth. For the first time in my life I saw it as a
cancerous organism, desolating the earth, defiling the rivers, laying
waste the forests, poisoning the air with its foul breath, and all the
while reaching farther and farther out to clutch and destroy even such
crumbs of land as this.

Bitter words--what? No kind of talk for the engineer who had joined so
heartily in singing hosannas in the heaven of Detroit where the angels
and archangels were casting down their golden crowns around the glassy
seas of molten metals that would be the bigger and better machines of
tomorrow. "How lovely are the messengers that bring us the gospel of
Mass Production!"--no one had joined in that earth-shaking anthem with
more enthusiasm than myself, in times past. But Dodd the true believer
became Dodd the Doubter, almost the Apostate, in the course of one
afternoon, and it was the full realization of the task immediately ahead
that made him one.

A few moments ago, Charlie, you were envying engineers because we have
definite jobs to do, with clear-cut beginnings and ends. So we have,
commonly, and never before had I seen so clearly, as in this case, the
end before ever the beginning was made. But you would not have envied me
here. Decidedly not! I wish the pair of you might have stood with me in
that unspoiled mid-ocean sanctuary as it was on this same afternoon.
Thus far, old Father Neptune had been able to keep it inviolate. He had
selected very carefully its handful of human inhabitants. But he
neglected to examine the passport of one George Dodd, and this latest
comer could see at a glance what a neat little job had been given him
this time. But I was not what would be called happy in the prospect. I
saw in the mind's eye two appallingly contrasted pictures: Before
Treatment--After Treatment, and I much preferred the first.

There is a small bird, common, I'm told, to the atolls, one of the few
land birds to be found on them. They are extremely shy and it is hard to
catch a glimpse of one as they fly from thicket to thicket; but you hear
them at intervals. Their song is a lonely, melancholy cry always the
same: "Oh-h-h-h... Oh-h-h-h... Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh," dying away to
silence. I heard one during this walk, and it said all I had to say, all
there was to say, about the future of...

I came very near being indiscreet. I was about to give you the native
name of the island. It's a beautiful-sounding name as the natives
pronounce it, and it had for them a peculiar significance connected with
the legendary history of the Polynesian race. But it has nothing
whatever to do with the non-legendary history of nineteen forty-two, so
it may as well be forgotten here.

I had a strange meeting before returning from my walk. At the far end of
the islet I came upon a hut in the shade of a huge tree that looked to
be coeval with the island itself. An area of wildwood here showed what
the whole island had been in ancient times when Nature did the planting
as she chose. It was not a thicket exactly, for the soil of those
islands is not rich enough to permit any great profusion of vines and
shrubs and trees. You see no bitter struggle for plant existence;
rather, there seems to be a live-and-let-live policy amongst those hardy
varieties that have adapted themselves to such localities. Plant society
appears to resemble human society found in places where food is scarce:
the inhabitants learn to share it in common for the good of all. This
so-called wildwood looked as you would expect some long-deserted formal
garden to look: the chance grouping of masses of rich green growing from
the white coral sand gave the clear spaces winding amongst them the
appearance of garden paths that had once been laid out in a kind of
maze.

I saw the prints of bare feet in the vicinity of the hut, but no other
sign of an occupant except a mat spread over the sand in one corner,
with a curiously carved wooden headrest at the end of it. A small wooden
chest stood against a wall. That was all the furniture the place
contained.

I crossed the end of the islet from the ocean beach to the lagoon beach
and presently sat down to examine at leisure a plant of a delicate shade
of green and as exquisitely formed as a snow crystal. I had seen the
same design, carved from a pearl shell, in the central panel of Father
Vincent's altar and wondered where he could have gotten the pattern. The
plant grew from pure white sand and lay as flat upon it as though it
were the green shadow of something invisible above. For all my efforts
to distract my thoughts from the task ahead, I found myself picturing
one of the huge caterpillar tractors that would soon be crashing its way
through this small paradise of an island, crushing by the score the
hermit crabs, and the tiny iridescent lizards that were common here, and
grinding into the sand vines and shrubs and such little miracles of
plant life as the one I had been examining. I have the habit of talking
to myself when alone, and on this occasion I exclaimed aloud: "What a
pity! What an everlasting shame!"

Glancing up at that moment my heart skipped a beat upon seeing an old
native seated cross-legged beneath a tree not three paces distant. His
only garment was a faded waistcloth, and his emaciated brown body
blended so perfectly with the mottled sunlight and shadow that I had to
look more closely to convince myself he was not an optical illusion. I
had the foolish feeling of one caught talking to himself, but the old
native gave no sign that he had heard me or was even aware of my
presence; he gazed straight before him as though lost in the depths of
reverie. His hair was thick and snow-white and his face such a maze of
fine lines and wrinkles as to be completely expressionless. Not knowing
what to say in that presence I said nothing, but got to my feet and
walked quietly away. When at some distance I turned for a backward
glance. I could no longer see him and half doubted that there had been
anyone to see in the first place.

It was late afternoon when I returned to the village end of the islet.
Passing again through Father Vincent's garden I found him there hard at
work; he had just finished planting and watering the young trees the
captain had brought him. A procession of young fellows was going to and
from the schooner carrying copra bags filled with the High Island earth
we had brought as well. The father greeted me in the frank cordial
manner that banishes at once the feeling of strangeness between
strangers.

"Mr. Dodd," he said, "you come just at the right moment, but my old
bones would say, _after_ the right moment. They've been crying 'Rest!'
for the past half hour."

He led the way to a bench beneath one of his trees that spread its
branches in a wide-reaching dome, like the canopy of an umbrella.

"You know this tree?" he asked.

I confessed that I did not.

"It's a jam-fruit," he said. "I had that from Professor Harrison Smith,
of the island you've just come from. You know him, perhaps?"

"No, Father," I said. "I'm a complete stranger in this part of the
world. This is my first visit to the tropical Pacific."

He gave me a scrutinizing glance from beneath his shaggy eyebrows.

"And you... you are traveling for pleasure?"

I shook my head and remarked: "I wonder whether there is anyone in the
whole wide world traveling for pleasure in these days?"

There was an opening, a chance to confess the truth of my mission here.
I knew that I should take it, that nothing was to be gained by putting
off the evil moment; but to announce to the old priest thus brutally, at
our first meeting, that all he had labored so hard to accomplish here,
together with the life of this small island world as it had existed for
centuries, was to be swept away, cease to exist... I couldn't do it.
Although he may have had some curiosity as to the purpose of my coming,
I was convinced that he had no slightest suspicion of the truth.
Apparently, Viggo had not yet told him the little he himself knew.

Father Vincent spoke sadly of the war for a moment or two, but I felt
that it was almost as unreal to him as to the natives themselves. He had
never left his island parish since first coming here forty years
earlier. He received no newspapers or reviews to keep him in touch with
events in the outside world, and there was no radio on the island. The
little news received came by way of Captain George at the time of his
infrequent visits. Presently the father put thoughts of the war aside
and proceeded to tell me of his struggle to save the jam-fruit tree that
threw its circle of deep shade over the spot where we were seated. Its
growth, he said, had been very sickly in the beginning, but at last it
had adapted itself splendidly to this strange environment.

"It has been a great triumph for me," he added, happily. "Now I have
three others, young trees, coming on--you see?--over there. I am very
grateful to Professor Smith; he is a gardener after my own heart. He has
just now sent me a young durian, grown from the seed of a tree that he
brought, years ago, all the way from Borneo. You know the durian?"

I shook my head.

"It is the fruit with the awful smell," he added, with a smile, "but
Professor Smith tells me that the meat is like jellied nectar, once you
get it past your nose. But the tree needs the hot moist climate of deep
valleys. If I succeed in growing it here, Professor Smith writes that he
means to propose me for the _Mrite Agricole_."

"It strikes me that you fully deserve it for what you have already done,
Father," I said.

"My friend, I've had all the reward I deserve or need in making this
garden," he said. He pointed with his pipestem toward the orange tree I
had observed before. Some of the children stood gazing wistfully at the
nearly ripened fruit, hanging so easily within reach. "There is my
prize," he added. "I had many failures before I brought that fine fellow
into bearing. Look at those young rascals! They can hardly wait for the
fruit to ripen."

"They have more self-restraint than I had supposed any boys possessed,"
I remarked. "Do none of them visit your garden at night?"

"Will you believe it?" he said, his eyes twinkling. "They're more
dependable than their fathers and mothers. But the orange tree is their
particular property; all the fruit is divided equally among them. They
act as guardians while it is ripening."

A dozen or more children were at work in the garden, sweeping the paths
with homemade brooms of coconut-frond midribs; even the little fellows
were helping, collecting the piles of leaves and twigs and carrying them
to a pit used as a compost bed, half filled with rotting leaves, coconut
husks, and the like. They worked with a will and I could see that they
took as much pride in the garden as the father himself.

Presently I inquired about the old native I had seen at the far end of
the islet.

"I don't wonder that you thought you might have seen a ghost," said
Father Vincent. "That man--his name is Kamak--is one of the real old
heathen from away back. I shouldn't wonder if he's the last of them. How
old would you say he is?"

"I doubt if I could make a good guess," I replied. "He looks to be all
of a hundred."

"He's older than that, the natives say, but none of them knows for
certain. When I first came here he looked almost as old as he does now,
and he lived where he does now. He almost never leaves that far end of
the islet."

"He's a heathen, you say? How do you feel about that, Father?"

The priest's eyes twinkled as he replied.

"Mr. Dodd, a few heathen are needed in the world, to set good examples
for the Christians to try and live up to."

"Are you friends with him?" I asked.

He shook his head, slowly.

"You've seen Kamak," he said. "Do you think there could be a
possibility of friendship? Two are needed for that. No... Kamak
doesn't belong to my world. It is not too much to say that he doesn't
belong to the Polynesian world of these days."

He went on to say that, some years before, a celebrated Polynesian
philologist had visited the island. This man, he said, knew more about
the various dialects of the Maori speech than any man living, natives
included. From the moment he saw Kamak he had eyes and ears for no one
else.

"And at that time," said Father Vincent, "he learned what no one has
ever learned before about the ancient religion of these people. Kamak
told him that he had been advised in a dream by the spirit of his
grandfather to reveal the sacred teachings lest they should be lost
forever. The record, taken down word for word, as it was recited to him
by Kamak, is truly extraordinary. It was later printed in a small book,
the old native text in one column with the English translation opposite.
I can vouch for the excellence of the translation. Viggo has a copy. Ask
him to let you see it."

The father smiled as he added: "You will understand, my friend, that a
priest of the Christian Church might have some explaining to do if such
a book were to be found in his own library; but I have read it with the
deepest interest. It concerns the old esoteric religion of the
Polynesians, the worship of Kiho, their supreme God. That religion was
so sacred that the name of Kiho was never mentioned in the presence of
the common people. The rites connected with the worship of Kiho were not
known to them, either. The sacred songs and chants were known only to
the old heathen priests who handed them down by word of mouth from
generation to generation. Kamak is one of the last of those old sages,
perhaps the very last, and I knew nothing about it, all those years! In
fact, until this account of it was printed, no missionary, Catholic or
Protestant, has known anything of the worship of Kiho, except in the
vaguest way."

All this was so far outside my customary orbit of interests that I gave
the recital no more than polite attention. Father Vincent then took me
for a tour of his garden, pointing out fruit trees and ornamental trees,
flowering vines and shrubs, that he had acclimated here, giving me, with
the delight of a boy, the history of each one. And all the time I was
thinking: "How am I to tell him? How?"

                         *    *    *    *    *

I found Viggo sitting on his veranda, his bare feet on the railing, with
the air of a man wholly at peace with the world.

"We're in time, Mr. Dodd," he said, in a relieved voice. "They haven't
hatched yet. One of the men went over there yesterday. He's just come
back."

I was puzzled for a moment as to what he referred to; then I remembered
his precious turtles that he had spoken of so often during the voyage.

"They'll be coming out any day now," he added. "I was thinking I'd go
over there tomorrow. If you'd like to come we could make the tour of the
lagoon and visit all the _motu_ along the far reef."

"Good!" I said. "That will suit me fine."

Before I go on, I'd better explain _motu_. It's the native word for
"islet"; any fragment of land, large or small, on the reef or in the
lagoon is called a _motu_. The word came to have a particular
significance for me. It seems to express better than "islet" the nature
of such crumbs of land: their peace and beauty and sunlit tranquillity.
There's a feel of mid-ocean in the word.

"I've been sitting here just looking at things," said Viggo. "My, my!
How good it feels to be home again!"

"You've learned, then, to call it home?" I asked.

"Yes, long since. Next July I'll have been twenty-five years in this one
place, and I've never gone back to Denmark in all that time. I used to
plan to go, and once I did make a start. That was in nineteen
twenty-eight. I expected to be away the best part of a year and was all
stirred up thinking of the happy time I'd have seeing Copenhagen again,
and my old home at Havndal. That's a village on the east coast, directly
across the Kattegat from Halmstad, in Sweden. The day before I left the
people here gave me a big _tamaara_, a native feast, and they were all
on hand to see me leave by Tihoti's schooner. I kissed my old woman and
the kids and off I went; but when I got to the island where I was to
catch the steamer for Europe, via Panama, I found I wasn't nearly so
homesick for Denmark as I was to come back here. So back I came. I'm as
bad as Father Vincent. I guess the pair of us are more native than the
natives themselves."

"How do they feel about Boyle?" I asked. "I don't understand their
position here with him owning the island, as you say."

"It hasn't made a particle of difference," said Viggo.

"Don't they resent his ownership? Couldn't he clear them out if he
wanted to?"

"Well, yes, I suppose he's got the legal right, but he'd never be
foolish enough to try it. The natives never think of the island as
belonging to him. It's theirs and always has been theirs, and Boyle
knows it. About all his ownership means is that he's in a kind of
partnership with them in the copra and pearl-shell business. He markets
the produce and gets half the profit. Their half is enough for what they
want to buy: a little rice and flour and tinned beef and what clothes
and other things they need. So the arrangement suits them all right."

"I wonder how they'll take the idea of a base being made here?" I asked.

"Oh, you needn't worry about that," said Viggo. "I've already told them
about the ship that's coming. They're as pleased as a lot of children
when you promise them a picnic. It will be a big event out here. You
know, there's never been a big ship called at any of these islands;
they've never even seen a steamship. You can guess what a lot of
excitement that will make."

I was on the point, then, of giving Viggo the facts; of making a clean
breast of the real nature of the task I had come to perform. I wanted
his advice as to how and when I should tell Father Vincent. But
something in his happy reposeful attitude prevented me. "No!" I thought.
"There's a fortnight remaining before the ship can come. Let them all
have the full good of it. I'm not going to speak until I must."

Mrs. Viggo now had supper on the table. The midday meal would easily
have carried me through till the next morning; nevertheless, I drew up
with Viggo and made a pretense of eating. He had appetite enough for the
pair of us. When we had finished we strolled across the islet to the
outer beach.

"We'll go along to see the Lehmanns in an hour or so," said Viggo.
"Father Vincent and Tihoti are coming too."

"Where do they live?" I asked.

"On that _motu_ just across the passage. It's the prettiest little
place, not more than two hundred yards across either way, and Ruth and
her father keep it as neat as a pin. Mr. Lehmann told me that if he knew
he could never set foot off it for the rest of his life he'd be
perfectly content. They've got a home at last, Mr. Dodd, after all the
misery they've been through. I doubt if you could find two people in the
whole world who would appreciate it more."

He led the way to a kind of knoll shaded by two old trees with a bench
between them. It was not twenty feet above sea level, but Viggo said it
was the highest spot in the circumference of the atoll.

"This is my private observation spot," he said. "It's a fine place to
sit when you want to be alone."

Viggo was a comfortable companion, the kind to enjoy long silences with.
He loved to talk and always had something interesting to say, but he
took for granted what most men have forgotten: that silence is an
essential part of conversation. He was a great reader, and I discovered
that he had a wide knowledge of natural history gained through both
reading and observation. As for the latter, his senses were as keen as
those of a boy. Nothing escaped him.

We must have sat for a good quarter of an hour without exchanging a
word. Finally he said: "Mr. Dodd, have you ever thought what a wonder it
is that human beings ever reached these islands?"

"I was thinking of it during my walk this afternoon," I replied. "Where
could they have come from in the first place, and how did they get
here?"

"There's a difference of opinion about that," said Viggo. "I'm no
scholar. I don't claim to know much about it, but I've read what I could
get my hands on about the old Polynesian migrations. Some say there
never were any migrations; that these scattered islands are all that
remain of a great continent that sank into the sea ages ago. Others
believe no such continent existed and that the first people must have
come from the east, from South America. Neither of these opinions is
given much credit in these days. All the evidence goes to show that the
first inhabitants must have come from the west; the finest part of them
from India, in the first place."

"Is anything known of the time of their coming?" I asked.

"Here? Yes, the scholars have got a kind of a hazy notion from studying
the native legends and the old genealogies, but they don't agree about
the time. Some believe they came as early as the ninth century; others
think it was somewhere between the tenth and twelfth."

"How did they come? In canoes?"

"Yes; in big seagoing canoes that would hold up to a hundred people,
some of them. They had both single canoes with a huge outrigger, and
double canoes lashed together with a platform between. But 'canoe' is
hardly the word for those old ships. They were deep and broad-beamed and
decked over, and could stand a lot of sea."

"There must have been scores lost for every one that reached any land,"
I remarked.

Viggo nodded.

"I suppose they set out in fleets, a dozen or two together, spreading
out in a wide arc so as to cover as much sea as possible, keeping in
touch as well as they could, at night, by blowing their conch-shell
trumpets.... There would have been a sight to see, Mr. Dodd: a fleet
of those great canoes with their matting sails, filled with men, women,
and children, their pigs and fowls and dogs, nothing but empty unknown
sea around them. And maybe one, the last of them all, reaching such an
island as this, only a handful of people left in it, half dead from
thirst and starvation."

"They must have been a hardy, courageous lot," I remarked.

"I'll tell you what I think. They've never been given half the credit
due them. Long before Columbus was born some of those ancient Polynesian
explorers had gone on voyages probably as long as his."

We returned across the _motu_ by way of Father Vincent's house where he
and the captain were waiting; then the four of us passed through the
village to the beach where we took a canoe to cross the passage to the
islet where the Lehmanns lived. I confess that I was none too happy in
the prospect of this visit. I felt a most unreasonable irritation as
well, as though it were the Lehmanns' fault for being on the island,
adding another to the problems awaiting me; but that feeling vanished
from the moment of our meeting.

We went ashore in a little half-moon cove where overhanging trees cast a
pool of deep shadow on the starlit water. About twenty paces distant
stood the house, a one-story frame dwelling facing the lagoon, with a
deep veranda running the full length of it, and lighted now by a single
shaded lamp throwing a mellow radiance into the night. Masses of
shrubbery grew on either side of the entrance. The veranda was a
charming out-of-doors living room comfortably furnished with easy
chairs, tables, and settees. Open bookshelves filled with well-worn
volumes formed the greater part of the back wall, and in a recess at one
end stood the Bechstein piano.

Miss Lehmann was waiting at the top of the steps to greet us. Viggo and
the captain had called her a beautiful girl, and she was that,
certainly. She was a brunette, with thick, wavy brown hair, and her dark
eyes were full of life and intelligence. She had a low voice, very
agreeable to the ear, and she spoke English without a trace of accent.
As Viggo introduced me and she took my hand in a firm, friendly clasp, I
recalled what Father Vincent had said of her during our talk that
afternoon in his garden: "She has true nobility of character, Mr. Dodd.
That was my first impression of her and I think it will be yours." Viggo
had told me that she was not yet twenty, but she seemed older than that,
more mature than her years warranted. Her attitude toward her father had
in it a touching, protective quality as though she were daughter and
mother combined.

Mr. Lehmann was a man of about my own age, tall and extremely thin, with
a pale sensitive face that showed no trace of Jewish blood; in fact,
neither father nor daughter looked Jewish. He spoke English brokenly,
with a pronounced accent, and when the greetings were over seemed well
content to let his daughter do the talking for both of them. I noticed
that his glance rested upon her again and again, with a kind of sad-eyed
wonderment, as though he could scarcely believe that this lovely girl
with her abundant vitality was his own flesh and blood; or it may have
been wonder mingled with a feeling of deep gratitude that the two of
them had survived to reach such a haven as this.

I was aware at once of the easy friendly relationship that had sprung up
between the three old islanders and these homeless ones who had found
here so happy a home. Captain George could scarcely take his eyes off
Miss Lehmann. There was something comical between his habitual glare,
with its false impression of hostility, and the Old World courtliness of
his manner toward her. She must have found him an alarming figure at
first, before she could realize how mistaken one's earliest impression
of the captain was.

"Mr. Dodd," the captain was saying, "I wish you could have seen this
little island before Miss Lehmann took it in hand. What a wilderness!
And look at it now!"

"How can you speak of it, Tihoti," said Miss Lehmann. "It was heaven
before, and it always will be heaven, to us. Father and I do no more
than sweep the golden sands."

"Viggo, what do you say to that, you and Father Vincent?"

"That's right," said Viggo; "it was a regular jungle, old coconut fronds
lying so deep everywhere you could hardly get through them. Father
Vincent and I have our work cut out for us these days. We're both cranks
about neatness and order, but my goodness! We can't keep up with Ruth,
not even with the whole village to help."

I didn't know what the Lehmanns thought of my presence there. Now and
then I observed Miss Lehmann's glance resting upon me in a grave
questioning manner. Not a word was said of the war, or the reason for my
coming, but Viggo told me, later, that he had explained to them about
the ship that was on the way. "I believe that kind of scared them," he
said. "They had such a terrible time in Europe they can't believe
they're safe anywhere. They're always afraid something more is going to
happen. But I told them they needn't worry; there'd be no Huns coming to
chase them away from here."

When we had chatted for a little while, the captain took the occasion to
say: "Miss Lehmann, could we have some music?"

"Of course," she said. "What would you like?"

"There's nothing you might play or sing that we wouldn't like," said
George.

"Father Vincent, have you any suggestions?"

"I have indeed," he replied: "the sonata for violin and piano that you
played when we were last here."

At the mention of music, Mr. Lehmann was immediately interested.

"We shall be very pleased to play it for you again, Father Vincent," he
said. "We love it, too. It is Mozart's first sonata in A Major. It is
strange: that sonata is not often played, but I think it is one of his
best."

I am among the tens of thousands of Americans whose musical education,
such as it is, has been largely self-acquired, by means of the
phonograph and the radio. My mother loved the piano and played very
well, but she died when I was still a youngster. After that, music
formed no part of my life until the time when the phonograph was brought
to its perfection as a recording instrument; then my love for it was
reawakened, and the phonograph has been my great resource ever since. It
is one product of the Machine Age that compensates for many another of
more than doubtful value.

And so I was able to listen with deep pleasure while Miss Lehmann and
her father played, entirely from memory, the Mozart sonata. I doubt
whether, in the whole world, a more perfect spot could be found for the
enjoyment of music. It seemed to have been fashioned by Nature for just
that kind of enjoyment.

When Boyle had bought the piano from the Russians, he also bought their
library of music, a great boon to them, Miss Lehmann said, but it struck
me that they would have been at no serious loss without it, for their
memory was stored with music which they played without reference to the
score.

That was a memorable evening to me, and the happiest part of it began
when Viggo said: "Now, Ruth, let's have some of the good old songs." His
first request was "Solveig's Song"; then the captain asked for "The Last
Rose of Summer." Miss Lehmann had a lovely voice, clear and true and
effortless. I've got a lot of sentiment in me, beneath the engineer's
disguise. I soon discovered that I had a pair of blood brothers in this,
in Viggo and the captain. I'm far from sure that Father Vincent was not
another; at any rate, he was the very picture of contentment as he
listened. Presently Miss Lehmann turned to say: "Mr. Dodd, what shall I
sing for you; especially for you?" I had so many suggestions that I
didn't know which to mention first, and while I was hesitating she said:
"I believe I can guess one of them without your telling me. You must
have English words for this, but I know only the German."

Then, to my astonishment and delight, she sang "Last Night the
Nightingale Woke Me," my mother's favorite song. How often I had heard
her sing it on beautiful summer nights when the whippoorwills were
calling in the wood lot back of our house and the moon was rising over
the hill beyond. All through boyhood nightingales meant whippoorwills to
me. That hit me right where I live. Old memories came thronging back,
and when Miss Lehmann had finished I paid her the furtive tribute of a
tear or two.

It was past midnight when we came away. As we were paddling back to the
village islet, Father Vincent remarked: "Think of the stupidity of the
Germans, to call it nothing else, in driving such people from their
homelands." We were silent after that. We were thinking, all of us, I
believe, of the tens, the hundreds of thousands who were unable to
escape the butchers; who had been driven not into exile but the grave.

The songs Miss Lehmann had sung for us stirred up such a throng of old
memories and associations that I was far from sleepy when I returned to
my room at Viggo's house. I was looking over a shelf of books he had
there when I came upon a thin volume in paper covers: _The Worship of
Kiho-Tumu_, the one Father Vincent had spoken of that afternoon. With a
lamp at my elbow, I sat down to glance through it, convinced that such a
book would be certain to bring on drowsiness before I had read a quarter
of an hour.

I was greatly mistaken. I did more than glance: I read, my interest
deepening with every page. I was astonished by what I found there. I
want to read you one of the sacred chants I found in it, the
translation, of course. I made a copy of it that same night, and I've
carried it with me ever since. It is called: "The Song of the Exalted
Presence of Kiho-the-All-Source Concerning His Will to Bring Space and
the Universe into Existence."

The Primal Source thrusts outward, upward.
The First Source of Chaos and the Night dwelling below in Havaiki sends
  forth a first pulsation of motion.
Unseen, invisible in the fathomless abyss of Night;
Sleeping face downward in the Wide-Highways-of-Repose-of-Space;
Propped on an elbow in the sunless Deep...
        Up, on my knees!
        Now, with bended back!
Heaving upward, I stand on Havaiki,
Erect at last upon the Sacred Mound of My Temple,
Ahu-Toru, Altar-of-Ascending-Fire,
As I will the prodigious travail of the Spheres.

        O, Majesty! O, Divinity!
        Now dreams...

Now dreams the Almighty God.
Now the Almighty-God-of-the-Cosmic-Night dwelling below in Havaiki,
  visions:
The creation of the Spirit World, an abiding place for the spirits of the
  dead;
The unfolding of the wide realms of the Earth, a sanctuary for the living;
The under-propping of the Sky World here above, a Homeland for the Gods;
That these multitudes reflect upon the Supreme Creator dwelling below in
  far Havaiki;
That they lift on high their voices in acclaim of the Source-of-All.
In Him alone is the power to perform these mighty deeds.

        O, Majesty! O, Divinity!
        These mighty deeds...

These mighty deeds are destined to be performed by the Creator of the Gods
  alone, the God Supreme!
He is the Source who shall take life away,
        That the elementals shall know,
        That the dead shall remember,
        That the living shall not forget
        (Whilst the lesser Gods acclaim me),
That I Myself am the author of these mighty deeds;
That, knowing this, the Universe proclaim
Me, Myself, the Cause-of-All.
I recline upon My Temple, Sacred-Altar-of-Ascending-Fire,
  While the fire leaps upward in streaming flame.

I was deeply impressed by this and other chants from the Kiho worship,
recorded as they came from the lips of the old Polynesian of a former
age. I found myself comparing "Up, on my knees! Now, with bended back!"
with "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light," of our
own sacred writings. As a concept of the Creator in the agony of
creation, the heathen one seemed to me immeasurably the more vivid.




                                   V


Early next morning I set out with Viggo and a dozen of the
natives to make a circuit of the atoll from inside of the lagoon. We
were to spend the night on the turtle _motu_ diagonally across the
lagoon, ten miles from the village. I felt that Viggo was on pins and
needles to reach this islet. He was afraid the last of the pits of
turtle eggs might hatch before we could get there. However, he was very
considerate. Knowing that I wanted to see all the _motu_ along that far
side, he suggested that we take them in on the way.

It was a glorious day, with clear skies and the wind blowing fresh from
the southeast. We skimmed along at between twelve and fourteen knots,
according to Viggo's estimation. He told me that such a canoe would
easily do sixteen in a strong wind. His two sons managed the big
steering paddle and the other fellows watched the trim. As the gusts
heeled us down they would leap to a kind of runway built across the hull
to the outrigger, to offset the pull of the sail. Sometimes the gusts
were too quick for them; the outrigger would leap clear of the water and
come smacking down again; I thought half a dozen times that we were
about to capsize. On the other tack the men would bunch on the runway to
the hull side to prevent the outrigger from being buried in its turn.

We went first to an islet almost in the center of the lagoon, six miles
from the village. It was not more than twenty paces across; with its
clumps of green scrub and a few old trees that seemed to be growing
there as perches for sea birds, it made as pretty a picture as one could
wish to see. We dropped the sail here and the canoe was sculled slowly
around the islet to give me a view of the steep walls of coral falling
away to the depths of the lagoon. I'd no idea, before, that there were
so many kinds of corals, of such fantastic shapes and colors. Viggo had
a small box, open on one side, the bottom covered with a watertight pane
of clear glass. Set upon the water with the pane side down, it takes off
the glare from the surface and you look into the depths as though you
were looking through an open window. Shafts of sunlight lit up ravines
and caverns far below where fishes as gorgeously colored as the corals
themselves were hovering along the steep walls in countless numbers. You
can imagine how the sight would appeal to a Middle Westerner used to
ponds and streams so muddy you can scarcely see your hand held six
inches below the surface of the water. I would have been content to stay
there for the rest of the day, looking through the water-glass window.
Viggo told me that the atoll was one of the best in that part of the
Pacific for pearl oysters.

"I suppose that's why Boyle wanted it," he said. "He's made a pile of
money from pearls and pearl shell, but the market's gone for pearls,
since the war."

He asked two of the boys to give me a demonstration of how the diving is
done. They trussed up their waistcloths in the fashion of swimming
trunks and over the side they went. Meanwhile, Viggo attached a line to
the handle of a bucket and let it down till it rested on a ledge of
coral far below. The two men, holding to the side of the canoe, breathed
deeply for half a minute or so, filling their lungs again and again,
then they went down. Viggo had let out a hundred feet of line, but I
could still see the bucket and the forms of the men diving toward it
with the fish streaking on either side as they descended. From above one
had the illusion that they were being splashed away by the divers, and
they moved with such lightning speed they were mere streaks of brilliant
color in the shafts of sunlight. The men walked, so to speak, along the
coral walls far below, using both hands and feet. Pearl oysters grew
thickly there and the bucket was soon filled; then with a light spring
the divers rose toward the surface, their arms pressed closely to their
sides, their faces turned upward. I timed the dive. One man was under
water a minute and thirty-five, the other a minute and forty-eight
seconds. Viggo told me that dives from two minutes to two minutes and
twenty seconds were common, and that three minutes was the longest one
he had ever timed. He also told me that he had known divers to go as
deep as thirty fathoms but that they could not work at such a depth.

We sailed along the far side of the lagoon, making short boards away and
back again so that I could examine every _motu_ along the whole extent
of the reef from the northwest to the far southeast end of the atoll.
There were twenty-three in all, most of them tiny islets of no more than
two or three acres. The largest was about a quarter of a mile from end
to end and well planted to coconut palms. I saw that it would be large
enough, but no more than that, to accommodate the people when the time
came to shift them from the village islet.

We reached the turtle islet a little before sunset and Viggo hurried
away at once to see whether or not the turtles had hatched. He returned
a few minutes later, his broad face beaming.

"We're in time," he announced. "It will be tomorrow, almost certain."

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"The eggs hatch in seventy-five days. If I know when they're laid I make
a record of it, but the old lady who left this lot didn't let me know
about it in advance. But the hermit crabs are gathering round and that's
a sure sign it won't be long."

This was the kind of islet a small boy dreams about without really
believing in its existence. The beach on the lagoon side was of pure
coral sand, pale gold in the westering light, and marked with the prints
of sea birds' feet and the wavering tracks of hermit crabs. The seaward
reef was fifty or sixty yards across, dotted with broad salt-water pools
that were mirrors for the evening sky. On the landward side of it was a
great rampart of coral fragments torn from the reef and heaped up there
by the storms of past generations. Viggo and I seated ourselves on this
rampart to watch the others spearing fish; meanwhile, two of the men had
gone along the reef to another _motu_, all but joining this one, for sea
birds' eggs.

The bird islet was a fascinating sight at this hour of the evening. High
above it, so high that one could scarcely see them, the frigate birds
were patrolling singly or in small squadrons, awaiting the return from
fishing of the respectable, hard-working members of the bird community.
The gannets appear to be their favorite victims. When the frigate birds
spy one or two or half a dozen gannets coming in from sea, they go down
in power dives that would make Jimmy Doolittle envious. The gannets are
superb fliers, but so are the frigate birds, and these latter are
fighters. The gannets are so many feathered Daladiers and Neville
Chamberlains: peace in their time appears to be the idea with them. When
hard-pressed they give a disgorging squawk and up comes the gulletful of
small fish they were so hopefully carrying home to their young. The
frigates dive for the spoil and seize it in midair.

When we had finished our supper of broiled fish and roasted birds' eggs,
Viggo and I strolled to the place where the turtle eggs had been laid, a
scarcely perceptible mound that I would not have noticed if he had not
pointed it out. A score or two of hermit crabs had collected there as
though waiting for something to happen. These crabs are small creatures
that make their homes, as you probably know, in discarded snail shells.
The full-grown crab manages to thrust his unprotected rear end into a
shell about the size of your fist. They all snapped into their shells as
well as they could, at our approach, and lay still. Viggo gathered them
up, two or three at a time, and threw them to a good distance.

"That won't hurt 'em," he said. "I've got a kind of liking for hermit
crabs. They're such harmless creatures, usually, feeding on pandanus
nuts and the like of that. But they can't resist baby turtle. Blessed if
I know how they can tell when the eggs are going to hatch. I think they
must smell 'em. They're always on hand a little while before the turtles
come out."

We seated ourselves near by at a spot where we had a clear view of the
adjacent bird islet. Beyond it the reef curved away to the northwest and
disappeared over the slope of the world. Thousands of birds were still
in the air, flying idly back and forth in the last faint light. They
seem to enjoy the day's end as much as humans do. Viggo broke a long
silence to remark:--

"I wish you could be here in December, Mr. Dodd, to see the big turtle
come ashore to lay their eggs."

"Do many come?" I asked.

"Not so many as there used to be; they're getting scarcer all the time.
They're having as hard a struggle as the whales, these days. You know
what's happened to the whales? Their last refuge was in the Antarctic.
The Japs and the Norwegians have about wiped out what's left of them
even there, with their big ships and modern methods of killing. This
war's had at least one good effect: it's stopped the slaughter of
whales, for a while, anyway."

"Are sea turtle hunted commercially?" I asked.

"Yes, but not so much in this part of the Pacific. The great trouble for
them is that there are so few places, nowadays, where they can find a
safe refuge for egg laying. But this _motu_ is one. I see to that. I'm
as partial to a fine turtle steak as any of the natives, but I've come
to realize that watching them is a hundred times better than eating
them. They start coming in around October, but November and December are
the big months. I've seen as many as three huge turtle come ashore on
the same night."

"Aren't they shy about being seen?"

Viggo didn't appear to have heard me. Presently he asked: "Excuse me,
what was it you said?"

"Aren't the turtle afraid of being seen?"

"I was thinking of the strange feeling it gives you to come face to face
with a big sea turtle at night, in such a lonely place as this," he
replied. "And some of them _are_ big: they'll weigh three, four, up to
five hundred pounds and they look as old as time.... No, I can't say
that they show any fear, but I'm always careful not to disturb them.
Once a mother turtle starts digging the pit for her eggs she goes right
on with her work. I've watched by moonlight and starlight. You can sit
within three paces, in plain view, and she pays no more attention than
she would to a bush or tree. On dark nights I've lit my lantern and set
it close by. When she sees the light she halts for a bit and turns her
head slowly in your direction; and that's when the queer feeling I spoke
of comes over you. I don't know how to describe it. It's like... it's
like... I don't know _what_ it's like. You want to get up very
quietly and go away. You know you have no business to be watching.

"But if you stay where you are, she soon forgets about you and goes on
with her digging, using her hind flippers, first one, then the other.
She digs the hole as deep as she can, say around eighteen or twenty
inches, then in go the eggs, all the way from a hundred and fifty to two
hundred and fifty--even more. She uses both flippers to cover the hole,
patting down the sand and pressing it under her shell till she has made
a good workmanlike job of it. Then she uses her powerful front flippers
for the first time, scattering sand and gravel in every direction. I
suppose the idea is to try and hide the place where the eggs are. She
seems to forget the track she's made leading to it, and the one she'll
make back to the sea."

Viggo broke off, and was so long silent that I took the occasion to say:
"What happens next?"

"Mr. Dodd," he said, "it would be worth your while to come all the way
back here some day to see the whole business from beginning to end. It
really would. I don't know but what the most interesting part is when
the old mother turtle is resting for a bit before she goes back to the
sea. After watching and studying them for so long I've come to believe
that turtles have a kind of sad wisdom. It stands to reason they should
have when you remember how long they live, if they're given a chance to
live. They're acquainted with grief, as the Bible says, especially with
regard to their young ones.

"There's the tragedy. Of all the two or three hundred baby turtle that
will come out of that pit in the sand, probably not a dozen will live
through the dangers they'll have to meet while they're little and
defenseless. I more than half believe the mother knows this. When she's
resting beside the hole filled with the eggs she's tucked in and covered
so nicely, you'd say she was thinking sadly about the future. A turtle
has a curious hoarse way of breathing. All of a sudden she will let out
a sigh it startles you to hear. It's as if she were thinking: 'I know
what's to come, but there's nothing I can do about it... Nothing.'
Then, without even a glance in your direction, she starts slowly back to
sea."

"Have baby turtle so many enemies?" I asked.

"Enemies! They have nothing but enemies! Maybe you'll have a chance to
see for yourself. When you remember that a mother lays two batches of
eggs a year, probably four or five hundred in all, and how few grown
turtle there are... yes, you may well say they have a hard struggle
to survive. And if human beings grab every lonely sandbank that's left
in the Pacific, as they seem to be doing these days, it will mean the
end of the sea turtle."

I don't know what prompted me to speak out at that moment. A sense of
guilt, perhaps; the need to confess and get it over with. However that
may be, I gathered up my resolution and told Viggo why I had come and
what the making of a military and naval base would mean to that lonely
atoll. I made no attempt to soften the blow. By the time I had finished
he knew the whole desolate truth. He heard me through in silence, and
the silence that followed was the only possible comment.

But at last he exclaimed, in a low voice: "Oh dear!... Oh dear!...
Oh dear!"

I would not have believed that this mildest of exclamations could
contain such genuine anguish of mind and heart. I managed to say: "Never
in my life have I had so hateful a task to perform," and little
consolation that could have been.

"Will... will my turtle _motu_ have to go?"

"I don't know," I replied, "but you must be prepared for it. The
freighter that's coming will bring a naval engineer who will decide
where the various installations are to be placed. There will be
anti-aircraft guns on various islets around the lagoon, that is certain.
This may be one of them.... How will the people take this when they
know the full truth?"

"It will be hard on the older ones."

"Will you be able to make them see the necessity? Can you explain what
the United Nations are fighting for, and how their own welfare is
concerned here?"

"Yes, in a way... but..."

"But, what?"

"You must remember, Mr. Dodd, how cut off they are from the rest of the
world. The only book they have in their own language is the Bible. They
know it from end to end, much better than most white people, but that's
all their reading. You can't expect them to have any clear notion about
the war and the countries outside. I've shown them pictures now and
again of towns and great cities and railroads and tall buildings and the
like of that. It don't interest them much. It's all too strange and
different from their own kind of life. Someone's sure to say: 'Where's
the lagoon?' or 'Where's the reef?' I've found it's useless trying to
explain what a continent is.

"Then there's another thing. They have a love for their islands that
goes deep down. They love every inch of ground, every little _motu_
along the reefs, no matter how small. You'd have to live here and know
the natives to realize how great that love is. Having so little land,
it's very precious to them."

"Yes, I can well understand that."

"Well, when they see what's going to happen now, they'll ask me
questions I'll have a hard time answering. They will say: 'Viggo, you
and Father Vincent have told us about the Germans and Japanese and what
they would do to our islands if they had a chance to come here. But see
what the friendly nations have done! How are we going to live?' What can
I say, Mr. Dodd? It won't be a fair question, but how can I explain?"

I had no suggestions to make. I didn't see how it _could_ be explained.

"I'm not worrying so much about the young people," he added, bleakly.
"They will be so interested in what happens after the ship comes they
won't think of anything else, at first. But it will be a terrible blow
for the older people.... Then there's Father Vincent, and the
Lehmanns. There's no way, you think, of saving the father's church and
his garden?"

"No. They will have to go. As for the Lehmanns..."

I didn't complete the sentence. Old Boyle's words came back to me: "When
I sent 'em out there I thought I was doing a good turn for once in my
life. Guess I was too late makin' a start." I could not summon up even a
bitter smile as I thought of the irony of the situation as it applied to
the Lehmanns. Where on this tormented planet could a refuge be found if
not here? But my one meeting with them was enough to convince me that
they would take this new development with the stoicism they had learned
from hard experience.

"When did they come?" I asked.

"The Lehmanns? Eight months ago. In July, last year."

"They've had that, at least."

"Yes," said Viggo.

He sat with his chin in his hands, his elbows propped on his broad
knees, gazing at the path of glory in the lagoon made by the
first-quarter moon, now low in the west. Presently he said: "Mr. Dodd,
here's what I suggest. A week from tonight the people will have one of
their _himins_; it's a kind of song service. Every now and then they
get together to sing their old songs that have been handed down from
generation to generation. I think you'd enjoy hearing them."

"I certainly would," I replied.

"Well, I'll say nothing till that's over. I can tell them that same
night, after the singing. They'll all be together then."

"Good," I said, "it's an excellent suggestion."

The moon had set when we returned to the place where the camp had been
made. Viggo's sons and the other men had spread the sail of the canoe
for their own bed. Mats with pillows and coverlets Viggo had brought
were laid out for us. I was impressed by the prayer service in progress
as we came in. All those young fellows took part in it with a complete
lack of self-consciousness. They were repeating prayers of the Catholic
Church, but there was nothing perfunctory in their manner of doing so.
The loneliness of the place, with the empty sea around and the great
vault of sky, spangled with stars, overhead, gave a peculiar solemnity
to that brief evening service. I felt that worship meant something to
these people; that it was a necessary part of their daily lives.

I couldn't go to sleep for a long time, and, although we had no further
conversation, I knew that Viggo was as wakeful as myself. But at last I
heard his measured breathing, with intervals of snoring between. I lay
on my back staring into the sky. In those Southern latitudes, with no
human lights, or dust, or smoke to obscure the view, the vast arc of
Milky Way is of awe-inspiring splendor. I felt that I had never before
really seen the Milky Way, but what chance do most of us Northerners,
city dwellers, give ourselves to see it? Near the constellation of the
Southern Cross is that abyss of blackness so inadequately named "the
Coal Sack," opening into ancient and eternal Night. I thought I heard a
chorus of mocking voices--the Ironic Spirits of Thomas Hardy's
"Dynasts"--issuing from the void:--

             Pour all your troubles down the old Coal Sack
             And smile, smile, smile.

But I lack the cosmic point of view. Human concerns are all-important to
me, so I was not comforted.




                                   VI


Next morning the turtles hatched out. I'm tempted to give you
a full account of that, but it's something to see rather than to hear
about. One of Viggo's boys came to wake me. He spoke no English, but his
gestures were eloquent; I knew at once what was happening and hurried
after him to the seaward side of the _motu_. The others were already on
hand, and there was Viggo, rushing up and down the beach from the turtle
pit to the reef, waving an old brown coconut-frond over his head to
scare the birds away. And down from the pit, about fifty yards inland,
came a thin line of baby turtle, each of them about the size of an
American half-dollar, scurrying toward the sea as fast as their tiny
flippers would carry them. They could walk and swim from the moment of
birth, but otherwise they were as helpless as newly born human infants.

"Excuse me for waking you up, Mr. Dodd," said Viggo, "but I thought
you'd want to see this."

"I certainly do," I replied, and, in fact, I wouldn't have missed the
strange sight for anything. But I was fully as interested in watching
Viggo as I was in the turtle. He might have been old Father Turtle
himself, trying his best to protect his host of harassed children as
they made toward the sea. The birds hovered above them in clouds, and
despite all that Viggo and the boys, under his direction, could do to
keep them off, they would swoop down and seize the tiny defenseless
creatures. Viggo would gather up a hatful and hurry down with them to
the water, but he had even less chance to protect them there than
before: the fish were as eager for those tender morsels as the birds.

The surf was thundering over the wide reef, flooding the pools and
channels in the coral, and the spume thrown high filled the air with a
perpetual cloud of rainbow-colored mist.

"There she is, Mr. Dodd!" said Viggo, pointing to a wide pool in the
reef, a good forty yards out. "You see her?"

"Who?" I asked.

"The old mother turtle. She must have come in last night."

I was incredulous.

"You tell me she knows when her eggs will hatch?" I asked.

"My goodness! Why shouldn't she? Of course she knows! This isn't the
first time I've seen it happen.... Look!... There! You see her
splashing? It's like she was saying: 'Hurry, children! Here's your
mother!'" and away he went again, waving his palm frond. He had
completely forgotten, for the moment at least, the sorrow to come.

For all his efforts and those of the native boys, there was a woeful
slaughter of baby turtle that morning. I could see the fish streaking
across the shallows after those that had succeeded in reaching the
water. Presently Viggo came back to where I was standing. He was puffing
and blowing, and although the sun was not yet an hour high, his shirt
and trousers were soaked with sweat.

"I expect you think I'm an awful fool," he said, with an apologetic
smile.

"Not in the least," I replied, "but it does seem hopeless, trying to
save them."

He nodded, glumly.

"You see now what I meant when I spoke about their enemies? I don't
suppose more than thirty or forty of the whole lot will live to reach
the sea, if that many. And the danger isn't over then. Far from it!"

He told me he had a pen fenced off in the shallows of the lagoon where
he raised many baby turtle until their shells had hardened and they were
able to fend for themselves; then he let them go. "It's a nice hobby,"
he said. "I certainly enjoy it." Of a sudden he remembered, and I shall
not soon forget the expression that came over his face as he added: "But
I don't suppose I'll be able to do it any more, after the ship comes."

"Remember, Viggo; this is only for the duration of the war," I said.

"I know... there's that to think of." He shook his head, slowly. "But
I'm afraid it will never again be like it is now... Well, we can
hope, anyway."

We spent the day and the following night on the turtle islet. The
experience gave me the true "feel," so to speak, of Low Island life. I
could imagine this sort of thing going on year after year, generation
after generation. Those native boys were as much a part of the natural
history of the place as the sea fowl, the hermit crabs, the turtle and
the fish. They belonged there. They had been molded by the environment
into as fine a type of primitive man as, I believe, could be found
anywhere. I don't like the word "primitive," in this connection, with
its connotation of slow wits and darkened minds. Slow-witted they
certainly were not. Their minds were, no doubt, dark in the sense that
they contained little knowledge except that useful to them in their
daily lives; but how wide that knowledge was I had occasion to observe
at all hours. I was the dark-minded, slow-witted one here. My ignorance
of their kind of knowledge was abysmal.

It was a treat to see their "at-homeness" whether on land, on the reef,
or in the sea. Viggo kept a small outrigger canoe on this _motu_. He
thought it would interest me to see how they spear fish in the sea
beyond the reef, and I willingly accepted the chance. The canoe--large
enough for four occupants--was carried to a place fairly free from the
villainous knife-edged coral that covered much of the reef. Here we
embarked, Viggo, two of the boys, and myself, and the canoe was paddled
through the broken water foaming across the reef to a V-shaped opening
on the seaward side where it could easily be launched despite the surf.
At least, so Viggo said, but as I watched the combers piling in I didn't
see how it was to be done. At the moment I would gladly have renigged
this expedition planned for my benefit, but pride wouldn't allow me to.
So I sat fast and waited, taking heart from the expressions of complete
assurance on the faces of the others.

Two men held the canoe while the seas piled in, and when the precise
moment came Viggo shouted an order. We were given a shove; the paddlers
pulled with quick hard strokes, and we shot out toward the long
steepening slope of a comber sweeping majestically in to break on the
reef. Up and over it we went, and thirty seconds later we were riding
easily over the swells past all danger. I learned anew from that
experience how readily old Mother Ocean--sometimes, at least--will aid
the purposes of men. But there's no sentiment about her. Meet her
conditions and thrive. Fail to meet them and suffer the consequences.

Meanwhile, here came the fish spearers. They swam out through the surf,
trailing their slender, single-pronged spears which they clasped with
their toes. Imagine one of us trying to clasp anything with his toes,
least of all while swimming through a heavy surf!

The canoe was paddled slowly along a little way beyond the break of the
seas, while the spearers were at work. I couldn't see them well at that
distance, but I caught an occasional glimpse as they went down toward
the steeply sloping wall of the reef. Then a head would break water, the
diver now holding his spear upright, sometimes with two fish impaled,
one above the other. They pulled them off on the sides of the canoe and
down they would go again. They wore homemade diving goggles that gave
them an odd scholarly look, and scholars they were at that business:
they could read a coral reef, and come away with their knowledge of it
impaled on the point of a fishing spear. They were piscatorial Ph.D.'s
and Litt.D.'s.

That was a memorable experience for me, but I was relieved when we were
safely over the reef again. The coming in was as beautifully timed and
as neatly done as the going out. I saw that anyone could do this kind of
thing as easily as breathing, even the fishing part of it, if his
ancestors had been Low Islanders for several centuries.

I felt that I was getting to be a pretty good amateur Low Islander, so
when we had crossed the outer ledge of reef I got out of the canoe to
walk across the shallows to the beach. The water was no more than thigh
deep.

"Look out for the sea urchins," Viggo warned. He had already spoken of
these; you see them everywhere on the reefs. They are beautiful things
to look at, of a deep shade of blue or purple, covered with long
needle-pointed spines that stick out on all sides. But those spines can
give you a lot of grief if you chance to bash a hand or foot against
them. The pain is soon relieved, Viggo said, if you apply urine to the
spot; apparently the ammonia dissolves the points of the spines that
break off in the wound. But I had no desire to be urinated upon so I
walked warily.

I was wading slowly along, examining the strange forms of marine life,
both animal and vegetable, when one of the boys who was with me grasped
my arm and drew me back just as I was about to take a step. "_Nohu_," he
said. That meant nothing to me. Following his glance I peered into the
clear water but saw nothing there to be alarmed about. With an underhand
thrust of his spear he impaled what I thought was a gorgeously colored
lump of coral; but the color was the only gorgeous thing about it. It
was a fish, and a more monstrous-looking thing I have never seen. You
would have said that it was the embodiment of the Spirit of Evil:
Schickelgruber, in the form of a fish; I was tempted to say, "_Heil_,
Hitler!" Viggo had come up by this time.

"Mr. Dodd," he said, "if you had stepped on that fellow, within five
minutes you would have wished you were dead. And you might have been
dead before many days had passed."

He pointed out two hollow ducts in the spines of the dorsal fin.

"He lies amongst the coral with that fin erect," said Viggo. "Why, only
the devil knows; and if you step on him he squirts into your foot poison
that _is_ poison. It's worse than any rattlesnake bite."

"Are these things common?" I asked.

"No, heaven be thanked!" said Viggo. "But you can never be sure where
you will find one. They seem to take on the color of whatever part of
the reef they inhabit. I've seen _nohu_ with no color at all lying
amongst fragments of dead coral. All that you can say for this fish is
that it's very good eating."

I proved that for myself at our midday meal. It was excellent eating,
and thankful I was that it was the flesh and not the poison I had
partaken of that day.

We returned to the village early the next morning. With a good following
breeze we fairly flew down the lagoon, covering the ten miles in forty
minutes. While we were still a good distance off, Viggo, who was looking
ahead, remarked: "That's strange! The schooner's gone!" He couldn't
account for it. "Tihoti always stays three or four days when he calls
here," he added. "He said nothing about leaving early this time."

We soon learned the reason for his going. During our absence a small
cutter had arrived from an island eighty miles distant. An old woman was
dying there and she had begged to have Father Vincent sent for; she
could not die in peace unless he was present to perform the last rites;
therefore, some members of her family had come for him. This island was
dead to windward and it would have taken the cutter several days to beat
up to it. The schooner, using her engine, could reach it overnight, so
Captain Tihoti, with Father Vincent, set out at once. The captain was
going on to the southeast, afterward, and would call for the priest on
his homeward voyage.

Upon hearing this news, I confess that I had, at first, a feeling of
profound relief. Chance had spared me the hateful task of telling Father
Vincent what I had decided to tell him immediately upon our return to
the village. But, upon reflection, I greatly regretted that I had not
spoken that first afternoon when we met in his garden. Now, almost
certainly, he would not return until at least a week after the arrival
of the freighter. By that time...

"I believe it's best as it's turned out," Viggo said when I spoke of
this. "Since it has to come, Mr. Dodd, I believe the father would _want_
to be away, if he could. I'm glad he's not here to see what's going to
happen."

"But think of his return," I said.

"I know," said Viggo, bleakly. "Well... there's nothing we can do
about it now."

The arrival of the cutter gave me another glimpse into island life. A
young native, about twenty, had taken the chance to come with it for the
purpose of seeking a bride for himself. Viggo told me that this sort of
thing happened often.

"The natives are very careful about inbreeding," he explained; "more
careful, even, than we are: you never hear of one of them marrying a
cousin. They would consider that the next thing to incest. There are not
many inhabitants on any of the atolls. This one is about typical of the
numbers you'll find all through the Group. So when young men are ready
to get married and settle down, they often make long voyages to some
other island to find a wife that has no blood relationship with their
family. Sometimes they will stay on the wife's island, and sometimes
they will bring their girls back to their own."

He spoke of one fellow who had come for a wife from an island at the far
end of the archipelago, six hundred miles distant. Father Vincent had
married the pair, and they were waiting for their first child to be born
before going to the husband's island.

"They haven't long to wait," said Viggo. "The child is expected any
day."

As a matter of fact, it arrived three days later. There was no physician
to attend the mother, but that didn't matter. Old Papa Viggo was on
hand; and every island woman of middle age or beyond has had long
practice in midwifery. Later I saw this infant, a fine lusty boy. If he
lived out his allotted span he would see the year 2012. I wondered, none
so hopefully, what kind of Polynesia there would be at that distant
date.

During that week, I was busy indoors and out. Viggo provided me with a
large table to work at, and with his data and what I myself collected, I
made a large-scale map of the atoll marked with the shoals in the lagoon
and every _motu_ large and small on the reef. Although the final
decision as to where the various buildings and other installations were
to be placed rested with the naval engineer coming with the freighter, I
sketched on the plan my own suggestions. I left blank Viggo's turtle
refuge and the adjacent bird islet.

Viggo was worried about the burying ground. "You know, Mr. Dodd," he
said: "the natives have great reverence for the dead. I don't know but
what you might better call it 'fear.' If the dead are disturbed the
living will suffer for it: they're as certain of that as they are of
tomorrow's sunrise." I set his mind at rest about this. The cemetery was
at the far end of the village _motu_ near the spot where old Kamak had
his hut. It was enclosed by a low wall and there were no trees within
it. The islet lay northwest and southeast, in the eye of the prevailing
wind. Planes landing would skim over the cemetery, and those leaving
would taxi to that end and turn into the wind just by the wall. They
would have the full length of the islet--a good 2400 yards--for the
takeoff, a sufficient distance even for bombing or transport planes. I
assured him that the cemetery was safe, but I was not so certain of the
repose of the dead, under those circumstances.

Viggo was sitting in my guest-room "office" while I worked on the map.

"I don't see how we will do for fresh water," he said, "with two or
three hundred extra men here." He could scarcely believe me when I told
him that we would have a distilling unit capable of furnishing six
thousand gallons per day.

"My goodness! Is that so?" he exclaimed. After a long silence he added:
"It's going to be terribly interesting to see all this... but oh
dear!... Oh dear!..."

I thought "terribly interesting" just about expressed it, from Viggo's
point of view.

The weather during this week was perfect, and I mean just that.
Throughout the day the trade wind blew cool and fresh, tempering the
midday heat. At sunset or a little after it would die away, and the
reef-enclosed lagoon had the purity of stillness one sees in a mountain
lake. The moon was coming on toward the full, and the shadows of the
coconut fronds, of the pandanus trees with their tufts of long slender
leaves, of the old pukatea trees, the patriarchs of the island, seemed
to be woven into the texture of the white sand beneath them. The far-off
incessant thunder of the surf along the outer reefs accentuated the
peace within. It was as though the reefs were saying to the clamor
coming from the outside world: "Thus far and no farther!" One soon
ceased to hear, consciously, the roar of the surf. Despite it, perhaps
because of it, the silence within the circle of woven sound was
perfection itself.

I remember with especial pleasure an evening when Viggo, the Lehmanns,
and I paddled in a canoe far out on the lagoon and then drifted. We
talked little, well content to let the voices of the night speak in our
stead. Now and then a sooty tern would pass high overhead uttering its
curious harsh cry; it seemed to be dropping hard pellets of connected
sound, making ripples in the great pool of silence. Some of the natives
were line-fishing off the shoals not far from the passage. We were a
good mile distant, yet we heard their voices plainly; but they too were
silent for the most part. Occasionally, one of them who had a
beautifully clear tenor voice would sing a little refrain and, after an
interval of silence, would repeat it in another, higher key. To me it
was the very voice of mid-ocean solitude. I have only to hum it to see
again the island as it was that night. No one spoke of it then; no
comment would have been adequate to express the effect of the refrain
that seemed to come from an immeasurable distance; but three nights
later, when Viggo and I went over to spend an hour with the Lehmanns, we
heard it again, woven into a sonata for violin and piano. Mr. Lehmann
had composed it during the interval, and I doubt whether Mozart himself
could have done it more beautifully.

On the Saturday night the people gathered for the _himin_, as they call
it--the song service. It was held on an open plot of ground near Viggo's
house. They brought mats to sit on and arranged themselves in a wide
semicircle facing the lagoon, the view of it framed by two old trees
growing on the beach. Miss Lehmann was there. I saw her chatting with
some of the women as easily as though she herself were a Low Islander,
but I suppose the fluency was less real than it seemed to be. In any
case it was a remarkable achievement, I thought, to have learned so much
of the native speech in a period of eight months. Viggo had brought out
chairs for himself and me and we sat facing the others, a little to one
side. He said we could best get the effect of the singing at that
distance.

Presently the laughing and talking died away. An old man got up in his
place and, in a simple, dignified manner, made a brief speech,
addressed, apparently to Viggo.

"It's for you," Viggo said, when he had finished. "He says you are
welcome here. They are happy to learn of the great ship that is to pass
this way. Now they will sing you some of their ancient songs."

"Am I supposed to reply?" I asked.

"No. When the singing is ended I will speak for you."

A moment later they began. There was no leader for the chorus; they had
not even a tuning fork to give them the pitch, and needed none. Singing
is their great art, perfected over the centuries, handed down from
generation to generation. But how am I to describe this kind of singing?
It's impossible. I can only say that it made a deep and strange
impression upon me. The effect of it, heard on such a night, in such a
place, was one never to be forgotten.

A woman's voice invariably opened each song. It was an extraordinary
one, clear and sweet and true, with an astonishing range; the highest
notes were almost beyond the reach of hearing. I tried to pick out that
particular woman, but all sang with such apparent ease that I could not
distinguish in the moonlight the one who carried that leading part. When
I inquired of Viggo, he replied, with a pleased smile: "That's my old
woman. I guess her voice is what made me a Low Islander. But she was a
mighty pretty girl twenty-five years ago."

The singing continued for at least an hour and a half. During this time
I felt rather than saw Viggo's increasing anxiety as the moment
approached when he was to tell the people of what was to come. I felt
sorry for him, sorry for Father Vincent and the Lehmanns, sorry for me,
and, above all, sorry for them. It seemed to me that the impending
sudden and brutal change in their lives demanded by the harsh necessity
of war, to be imposed upon them whether they would or no, was a tragedy
for the entire human race. We are all members of one great family, and
the health of the whole comes, in part at least, from the variety of the
contributions made to the sum of living. When the uniqueness and the
integrity of any contribution is lost, something precious and
irreplaceable has been lost forever. There was no doubt in my mind as to
the value of what was about to be destroyed here. Ten days on the island
had more than convinced me of its worth.

When the singing ended, Viggo got slowly to his feet and paced back and
forth for a moment or two; then he turned to address them. He had
acquired the same dignity and simplicity of manner in speaking which
comes as second nature to the Polynesians, or he may always have
possessed it. Perhaps it was both native and acquired. He was one of
those men who haven't a grain of deceit in their natures; who are men of
good will in the high sense. As I have said, he had a big heart--big
rather than soft, filled with sympathy and compassion for others in
their griefs and trials.

I could not understand his words, but knew well enough, of course, what
he was saying. Studying the faces of his audience as well as I could in
the bright moonlight, I had a feeling of reassurance. They appeared to
be taking in what he said very quietly, as though neither surprised nor
angered. No bitter looks were cast in my direction, but Viggo, I felt
certain, would explain that I was a mere agent, without responsibility
in the matter, except with respect to the task I had been sent out to
perform.

When he had finished, several of the older men rose, in turn, to reply
briefly. Their voices, insofar as I could judge, had in them neither
heat nor bitterness. Then the crowd quietly dispersed, and Viggo and I
were left alone. He suggested that we go to his bench on the seaward
side of the _motu_. We walked in silence and seated ourselves there. At
last I was constrained to remark: "They seem to have taken it very
well."

"They don't understand," he replied, sorrowfully.

"They don't understand? How is that possible?" I asked.

"Mr. Dodd, I told them just what is going to happen. I explained
everything as you have explained it to me. And still they don't
understand. They heard my words, but they haven't grasped the meaning of
them--not yet, anyway. They're not dumb, as you might think from this.
But they can't conceive of such a thing happening to their island. It
doesn't make sense to them."

"I don't wonder," I replied. "It _doesn't_ make sense, from any
customary point of view."

"I expect we'd feel the same," said Viggo, "if strangers were to come to
our own lands and tell us we must get out at once--crowd ourselves into
a corner and let them have the rest to do what they pleased with. We
wouldn't believe them."

"Well?" I said.

"There's nothing to be done about it. We'll have to wait and let the
truth come in to them little by little. They'll realize soon enough,
after the ship comes."

I left Viggo when we crossed the path leading to the church. He returned
to the village. I walked on to Father Vincent's garden. In the bright
moonlight both church and garden seemed enchanted places that might
vanish even as I looked at them. How close that was to the truth of the
matter no one knew better than myself. The place was deserted now, but
that same afternoon the whole village had gathered there while Viggo
divided among the children the fruit of the fine orange tree. They in
turn had shared with the grownups so that there was at least a part of
an orange for everyone.

Walking slowly along the paths I came to the jam-fruit tree, casting a
circle of shade so deep I would not have noticed that the bench beneath
it had an occupant. I stopped short as my name was called. Miss Lehmann
was seated there.

"I'm still under the spell of the singing," she was saying a moment
later. She spoke so quietly and calmly that at first I thought she might
not have understood what Viggo had told the people.

"You've heard it before, of course?" I replied.

"Yes. I never miss the _himins_. Usually my father comes too. Have you
ever heard stranger music, Mr. Dodd? I've never seen my father so
stirred as he was when we first listened to these songs. He has tried to
get some of them down on paper, but he says it's impossible. It can't be
done."

"He succeeded wonderfully well with the refrain we heard the fisherman
sing," I replied.

"I know, but that was only a phrase, quite different from this other
choral singing. Did you like what he did with it?"

"Very much," I replied. "I don't believe that Mozart or Beethoven could
have bettered that sonata."

"Oh, you mustn't say that!" I could see that she was shocked by the
comparison. "My father has real talent at musical composition, but he
would be the first to say that it goes no farther than talent."

We fell silent. I knew that she was waiting for me to speak first of
what was in both our minds. Presently I said: "You understood, Miss
Lehmann, what Viggo told the people this evening?"

She nodded, without speaking.

"I can understand what a blow this will be to you and your father."

"To us? What does it matter?" she replied, mournfully. "But the poor
people... They haven't yet grasped the truth of it, Mr. Dodd."

"That's what Viggo told me."

"They are thinking more of the ship that's coming than of what will
happen after it comes."

"What of yourself, Miss Lehmann? What will you and your father do now?
What will you want to do?"

"Can you ask me that? We would like to stay, of course."

"Do you realize what we shall have to do in making a naval and military
base here? The place will be stripped bare.... There will be nothing
left but the climate," I added, grimly. "Even that will be changed with
most of the trees gone."

"Stripped bare? The whole of it? How are the people to live?"

I spoke of the _motu_ on the far side of the lagoon to which they would
be moved. "Aside from that," I added, "I'm afraid there'll be nothing
left except the bones of an atoll."

"Mr. Dodd," she said, "I believe I'm almost as sorry for you as I am for
the natives. I can see how you love the island already. To have to
destroy it before you've had a chance to really know it..."

That was unexpected. I didn't reply for some little time; then I said:
"I'm an engineer, Miss Lehmann. This kind of a job is right down my
street, and I shan't have to stay here after the job is finished.
Meanwhile, among other... among other matters, I've got to think of
your and your father's situation."

I could not see her face clearly, but I thought I could detect a kind of
mournful gaiety in her voice as she replied: "Why didn't you say
'problems' as you were about to do? The old problem of the Jews,
individually or collectively! It gathers age with the passing of the
centuries, but that is all the years bring to it. The solution is as far
away as ever."

"Miss Lehmann, do you really want to stay here?"

"Of course. Where else _can_ we go?"

"Then you shall," I said. "I'll take it upon myself to promise that in
advance. I don't yet see how it's to be arranged, but we'll manage it."

She shook her head, slowly. "I won't have you making promises. You might
be compelled to break them. When I said 'Where can we go?' I didn't
really mean it. One thing Jewish refugees have learned is that, outside
of Nazi-held Europe, we can, somehow, continue to exist."

"How did you manage in Portugal?"

It was a thoughtless question. I was sorry the moment I'd spoken.

"Father and I had a difficult time there because so many refugees were
crowded into that small country. But... we did survive."

"Difficult"--I could imagine what lay behind that understatement. The
Lehmanns were not the kind of people who would push themselves forward
in a bitter struggle for mere existence, or make a show of wretchedness
in the hope of sympathy.

"When is the ship expected?" she asked, a moment later.

"Any day, now."

She got to her feet. "Then I'm going for a walk to the end of the
_motu_. Will you come? It may be the last chance to see it as it is
now."

Many a young man would have envied me that experience, in that company.
For all the fact that I have a son and daughter older than she, it was
reassuring to find that my middle-aged heart could respond to the
attraction, so unconsciously exerted, of that charming presence.
However, the heart had not middle-aged for nothing. I was not even
tempted to make a fool of myself.

What chiefly attracted me was the rare combination of youth and maturity
of character. One felt no desire to "talk down" to her in the fashion
that so often seems necessary when a man in his fifties tries to make
conversation with a girl in her teens. There was a level head on those
young shoulders, one filled with sad wisdom and profound common sense.

I spoke of old man Boyle, painting a somewhat flattering picture of the
impression he had made upon me.

She heard me through, and then said: "Mr. Dodd, my father and I could
never, never repay him for his kindness to us. But we have never before
been objects of charity, and that is what our situation here amounts to.
This seems a small-minded thing to say. One should be able to accept a
generous gift in the same fine spirit in which it is offered; but we
have our accursed pride. It's a defect in both of us, but there it is!"

I might have protested, with truth, that Boyle's obligation to them was
far greater than theirs to him. What he had done for them had cost him
nothing but the money involved and he was well able to afford that. His
unselfish act--the only one in a lifetime, if Captain George was right
about it--had, unquestionably, greatly salved his feeling of
self-contempt. But I could hardly speak of this. I knew, of course, that
Miss Lehmann was entirely right in thinking that Boyle had not really
needed them to care for his home here. He had been under no necessity of
sending all the way to Europe for assistance in that matter. So I said
nothing. I hate dissimulation, even for a good purpose.

"No," she added, "much as we love the island, Father and I could not
have remained indefinitely as pensioners here."

"Had you made any plans for the future?"

"Yes. At the end of the year we hoped to return to the other island, the
seat of government. Father feels certain that he could find a position
there, teaching violin in the schools and privately. I am a
stenographer. I believe I could find work in some office, perhaps for
Mr. Boyle himself."

"Are you a good stenographer?" I asked.

"Better than that--expert. I can say it without self-flattery. I type in
English and French as easily as in German. I was employed in the office
of the university where my father was Professor of Ancient History. I
carried this work in addition to my studies there."

"In that case, I believe we can find a job for you here, if you really
want to stay," I replied.

"That would suit me very well," she said, "but you're to make no
promises and you're not to worry about us. Whether we stay or go, Father
and I will be all right.... Mr. Dodd, it's heaven for us merely to
breathe free air. We could live on that alone, if necessary. You'd have
to be a Jew from Central Europe to realize how nearly that comes to
being sober truth."

We walked slowly on to the end of the _motu_, skirting the end of it
from the ocean side to the lagoon beach. Approaching old Kamak's hut we
saw him seated in bright moonlight near by, plaiting palm fronds; he
was, evidently, preparing a new roof for the hut. He plaited rapidly;
his old hands seemed to have lost none of their skill at that work. As
we passed, Miss Lehmann greeted him with the customary "_Kia ora na_."
He made no reply except to raise his head for a brief glance, as though
regarding something that had neither meaning nor interest for him.

"He seems a surly old fellow," I remarked, presently. "Has he ever
spoken to you?"

"Never. Father Vincent told me that he has not been able to exchange a
dozen words with Kamak in all the years he has lived here."

"How do the natives regard him?"

"With great respect, mingled with fear."

Both Miss Lehmann and her father had read Viggo's copy of _The Worship
of Kiho-Tumu_, and had been as deeply impressed by it as myself.

"Think of his extraordinary memory," she said, "carrying those ancient
chants, word for word, in his head all these years!"

"I'm surprised that he could have been persuaded to repeat them," I
said.

"He didn't want them to be lost; that was his reason, evidently. My
father says this record alone is enough to convince him of the antiquity
and the high origin of the Polynesian race. No primitive island people,
he thinks, could have conceived that worship of a supreme god. They must
have brought it from some ancient homeland."

We passed through the burying ground, lying in full moonlight. Many of
the older graves were marked only with borders of shells or coral
fragments. Others had headstones of coral-lime with a cross and the
names and ages of those sleeping beneath. There was one larger stone
over the grave of an Englishman who had died here years ago. Viggo had
told me of this man. When dying he had asked to have the single word,
REPOSE, carved on his tomb. The word seemed to ring soundlessly in the
air of that lonely spot.

Miss Lehmann turned to me.

"Will Kamak have to be moved from the _motu_ with the others?" she
asked.

"I'm afraid so," I replied. "That old tree that shades his hut will,
certainly, have to go."

"I wish he was safely here," she said. "I wish he could die before the
ship comes!"




                                  VII


That wish was not to be fulfilled. The freighter arrived
thirty-six hours later. The night before she was sighted I spent alone
on the small _motu_ in the middle of the lagoon. I wanted a taste of
complete solitude while the chance offered, so Viggo took me out there
in one of the sailing canoes. I could not have chosen a better place or
a better night for such an experience. My only companions were about a
dozen gannets and frigate birds that made their home on the _motu_. They
perched in the few low trees and bushes regarding me with a kind of
watchful indifference. I was surprised to find the timid gannets
hobnobbing on the same small islet with their enemies, the frigate
birds. Perhaps the few I saw there were the Quislings of their species.

Presently the waning moon rose directly behind a _motu_ on the far side
of the lagoon, revealing its scattered coconut palms and pandanus trees
in clear silhouette, at the moment of rising.

                    The moving moon went up the sky,
                    And nowhere did abide;
                    Softly she was going up,
                    And a star or two beside...

That is a perfect description of the night. I wish I had been able to
banish the thoughts that marred the peace of it, for engineer Dodd.

Early next morning I saw the sailing canoe heading up for the _motu_.
While it was still a good half-mile off I knew, by Viggo's attitude as
he stood by the mast, that he was bringing news, and I had no doubt as
to what it might be.

"She's in sight!" he called, as soon as they were within hailing
distance. "She can't be seen yet from below, but the boys say she's
coming up fast!"

For the past three days he had kept some of the youngsters on lookout in
the tops of the highest coconut palms in the seaward side of the village
_motu_.

I got into the canoe with the others, and with the wind abeam we made
direct for the passage. The natives were as excited as Viggo himself and
kept their glances fixed ahead as we passed out of the lagoon and met
the long smooth swells of the open sea.

"There she is!" said Viggo, pointing out a faint smudge of smoke barely
discernible on the horizon to the northwest. In their eagerness to see
the ship the boys forgot to watch the trim of the canoe, and the first
thing we knew the outrigger rose high in air, hung there the fraction of
a second, and came smacking down again. Most of us were spilled out and
the canoe was half filled with sea water. It was a merry experience; the
boys laughed and shouted as Viggo came sputtering up. I don't know what
he said, but it must have been something like: "My goodness!... You
boys!... Ain't you got any sense?... Can't you watch things
better'n that?" Meanwhile, he and I clung to the gunwale while they
lowered the sail and bailed the canoe dry; then they hauled us in.

"We're in a fine state to meet the ship," said Viggo, with an apologetic
grin. He was dressed in his best suit of white drill and his
broad-brimmed Sunday hat with a narrow ribbon of black around the crown.
"We can go back and change if you want to, but if we stay where we are
we'll probably dry out before they get here."

I was all for the latter, so we wrung out our soppy clothing and put it
on again. As a matter of fact we were all but dry when the ship was
still a good mile distant.

I was puzzled by the size of her. The freighter I'd seen at the pier in
Oakland, ready for cargo, was of about five thousand tons. The one
approaching was twice as large. When we saw the men crowded along the
bulwarks and looking down at us from every available perch on deck,
Viggo said: "My goodness! Are they all coming here? There won't be
standing room for so many!"

"It's not the ship I expected," I said. "There must have been some
change in plan since I left San Francisco."

"Maybe they've got more than one place to go," said Viggo, and that
proved to be the truth of the matter.

Viggo took the steering paddle. The boys with us were as much concerned
as himself to make a good impression upon the watchers. The ship was now
approaching very slowly and a boarding ladder had been put over the
side. The sail fluttered down at just the right second and we came
alongside in fine style. Before Viggo and I were halfway up the ladder
the canoe was away again, the sail bellying out to the breeze.

We were met at the gangway by the first mate and an officer who
introduced himself as Commander Brigham of the Navy. He was the engineer
I was to work with. The mate conducted Viggo to the bridge while the
commander and I stood by the gangway, talking for a bit.

He was around thirty-five, a serious, intelligent-looking fellow,
smartly dressed and with just the slightest touch of condescension in
his manner. He was very courteous, but his manner as he introduced
himself said: "Colonel Dodd? Of the National Guard, I believe? It seems
that we're to work together. War makes strange bedfellows, doesn't it?"

My thought was: "I'll bet he's a first-class engineer. What does it
matter if he high-hats me a bit? A temporary colonel of the National
Guard doesn't have to stand on his dignity."

That short climb up the ship's side had taken me from one climate to
another, from one world to another. Inwardly, I'd said good-bye to the
island as I stepped out of the canoe and grasped the ropes of the
boarding ladder, and I was back in the U.S.A. the moment I set foot on
the freighter's deck. For all the feeling of sadness, with respect to
the island, I was conscious of a pleasant, quickening sense of
homecoming as I looked about me and sniffed in once more the fragrance
of machinery. It does have a kind of fragrance to a man of my
profession. My old engineering self reasserted its authority. I was
again a man with a job to do, and here around me, stowed on deck, were
the tools for the job: some in crates, some under tarpaulins, some
already uncased, groomed for action the moment they should be swung over
the ship's side.

The workers with these tools, young fellows most of them, were not
thinking of the job at the moment. They were crowded three deep along
the bulwarks, looking toward the island.

"Sure they're coconut trees! Can't you see the nuts in 'em?"

"Boy, don't that water look good! What a place to swim!"

"Oh yeah? I'll bet it's full of sharks."

"Say! Is that all the land there is? Not much room to move around."

"You don't move around on a South Sea island, you simp! You sit under a
coconut tree and play a ukulele."

"Yeah, and when you get hungry you reach up and pick a banana and a
coupla breadfruit."

"Hell! This ain't what I expected. I thought the islands was bigger."

"Buddy, we'll have 'em changed for you right away. Give us a little
time."

It was the U.S.A. all right. There were boys of all kinds, conditions,
and environments; boys silent and boys talkative; boys from the great
cities, from farms and country towns; from the plains country, the
timber country; from universities, high schools, trade schools, and from
no schools to speak of save that of experience. Some were the kind to
make the most of this sojourn in tropical seas. To others the experience
would mean little or nothing and they would return home to grouse about
having been buried on a lousy little island a thousand miles from
nowhere. Some would lament deeply what was to be done to the island;
others would not think twice about this aspect of the situation.

Despite what Europeans say of us, we Americans are inclined to be
apologetic about ourselves as a nation, and we're a mixture of all
kinds, of course, good, bad, and indifferent, just as every other nation
is. But as I looked over this sample of the U.S.A., this cross section
of it, hastily collected for an emergency job and crowded into a
10,000-ton freighter, I felt pretty confident about the future of the
country. I seemed to get a fresh and encouraging slant upon the
generation just on the threshold of manhood, and I wondered whether
another such shipload of young men, collected from whatever country,
would have shown a higher proportion of well-shaped, well-knit bodies
and alert, intelligent faces. There must have been a bewildering mixture
of bloods represented here, but all these fellows looked, and were,
American.

"I'd better take you along to see General Clarke," Commander Brigham was
saying. "I expect he's up by now."

"There's a general aboard?" I asked.

"Three," said the commander.

I wish I could give you the precise inflection of his voice as he
uttered this one word. It was the distilled essence of the U.S. Navy's
feeling toward the U.S. Army. It contained the history of all the feuds,
jealousies, clashings of authority common between these branches of the
Service since we have had a navy and an army. I smiled inwardly, but
maintained an expression of gravity in keeping with his own and suitable
to the revelation of so black a piece of news.

"General Clarke is the only one for this island," said the commander.
"The others are going elsewhere. As you probably know, the Navy is to
have full charge here, eventually; but for the present..."

He left the sentence unfinished. The implication I gathered was that,
for the present, Commander Brigham and what other Navy men were aboard
were to suffer the unspeakable humiliation of being under Army
authority.

We went up to the bridge deck where General Clarke had his cabin
adjoining that of the ship's captain. He was sitting on the edge of his
bunk lacing up his shoes as we entered at his loud "Come in! Come in!"
in response to our knock.

"Colonel, how are you?" he roared heartily, even before Commander
Brigham had the chance to introduce me. "I can tell National Guardsmen
far as I can see 'em," he added, with a grin. "Expectin' us, wasn't
you?"

"Yes," I replied, "but not in this ship."

"I know. Change of plan at the last minute. This old floating
incubator's got chickens for more than one market. Got to work fast
these days, Colonel. Got to improvise. Plans made in the morning blown
up three or four sizes before night. Got a mixed grill aboard here:
Army, Navy, even a job lot of civilians. All we lacked was a
representative of the National Guard.... Sit down, Commander! Sit
down! Hell's fire! Make yourself at home!"

There was an expression of iced suffering on Commander Brigham's face.
However, he accepted the invitation. The general went on:--

"You see, Colonel, it's like this: I wasn't supposed to come out here.
Last-minute appointment you might say. The Navy got such hell knocked
out of 'em at Pearl Harbor that all the spare admirals and vice-admirals
been put on fatigue duty over there, cleanin' up the mess. So the
Gov'ment had to call on the old, dependable, ever-ready Army. We got to
pinch hit for 'em till the Navy gets over the jitters and pull
theirselves together a bit. That right, Commander?"

Plainly, Commander Brigham was not temperamentally equipped to defend
himself against a leg-puller. Respect for superior rank, even though it
_was_ Army, may have prevented him from making any reply to this sally.

"You mustn't mind me," said Clarke, with a grin. "When you come right
down to it, I guess the Army's got about as much reason to feel sick
over Pearl Harbor as the Navy has. If we'd both been on the job December
seventh there'd have been no need for bases way out in this part of the
Pacific. Maybe they won't be needed anyway. Hope not.

"But here we are," he added, brusquely, "and this is no time to be
saying 'if.'...Now, Colonel, what's the layout ashore?"

I made a brief report of the situation there, speaking of the
examination I'd made of the atoll and of the map prepared, containing my
suggestions. I said nothing at the moment of Father Vincent or the
Lehmanns.

"Good," said the general. "I'm no engineer. Leave all that part of the
business to you two. Quicker it's done the better." He glanced at the
calendar hanging over the table by the side of his bunk. "This is
Sunday, and my brother generals aboard--one of 'em outranks me,
Commander--say their men need a run ashore. Been cooped up here ever
since San Francisco and they've got a long way to go yet. It's only fair
to give 'em the chance."

"How many are going on?" I asked.

"Four hundred. There's a hundred and eighty in our detachment, but we'll
keep them busy aboard ship for today. Plan is to give the others a
couple of hours' shore leave, two hundred at a time. That'll get the
kinks out of their legs, anyway. Meanwhile, we'll start unloading our
own gear so's to be ready for work the minute the ship leaves. How long
do you reckon that'll take, Commander?"

"Is there a wharf here?" Brigham asked.

I explained that there was a solid coral-slab jetty that would serve for
unloading the small gear, but that it was too narrow for the tractors,
graders, and the other heavy equipment. "But there's good depth for the
ship all along the beach at a distance of thirty yards," I added.

"That's easy then," said the commander. "We'll run across a temporary
unloading stage.... We can have nearly everything ashore by
nightfall. An hour or two in the morning will, certainly, see the end of
it."

"Fine!" said the general. "Now I'll have a bite of breakfast and see you
on deck in ten minutes."

I was rapidly becoming George P. Dodd of Detroit once more. The
freighter had brought the U.S.A. climate along with the other supplies,
and as I breathed the energy-charged air, the old feeling of nervous
tension, the old desire to "fill the unforgiving minute with sixty
seconds' worth of distance run" returned as strongly as ever.
Furthermore, I wanted to get my part of the job done with so that I
could leave at the earliest possible moment.

As the commander and I went out on the bridge, Viggo was standing by the
captain, conning the ship around the coral shoals between the lagoon
entrance and the village.

"Those coral heads will have to be blasted out one of the first things
we do," said the commander. He had expressed, almost word for word, my
own thought on the morning of my arrival in the schooner. He then left
me to give his orders for starting work on the unloading stage.

The American climate had had no effect upon Viggo, insofar as I could
see. His moment of excitement, after the ship was sighted, had vanished
and he was his tranquil self once more. You would have said that he had
been accustomed all his life to piloting ships into Low Island lagoons.
I could see, from the relaxed expression on the captain's face, that he
had complete confidence in the pilot.

The ship was not then brought up to the pier but anchored one hundred
and fifty yards off the beach. Meanwhile, General Clarke came up, and as
soon as Viggo was free I introduced him. The general cottoned to him on
first sight and called him "Viggo" from the start, as, in fact, everyone
did. Viggo had the faculty of appearing in the guise of an old friend
upon five minutes' acquaintance. This was owing, I think, to his innate
goodness, to the honesty and decency upon which his character was based.
You knew at once where you stood with him.

All the village had gathered on the beach on either side of the pier.
They were dressed in Sunday garb, the men in white shirts and trousers,
the old women in flowing Mother Hubbards, the younger ones in their best
flowered muslins. All were barefoot. There wasn't a pair of shoes
amongst the lot.

"Quite a little family you've got here, Viggo," said the general. "How
many are there?"

"One hundred and ten," said Viggo. "No... one hundred and eleven.
There was a baby born last week.... What's the name of this ship?"

"_Pioneer_.... Why?"

"The parents of the baby want to give him the same name."

"Not a bad name for a baby at that," said the general.

"They'll have a hard time pronouncing it, though," said Viggo.

However, they managed it in the peculiar native fashion of pronouncing
words and names strange to them. I learned later that the baby was
called Pioniri, shortened, for convenience, to Pio. The letter _i_ in
their speech is pronounced like our long _e_.

"They thought the ship would be coming right up to the wharf," said
Viggo. "They've got a kind of a song of welcome they want to sing. Shall
I tell them to go on with it?"

"Sure, go ahead," said the general.

Viggo waved his hat toward them with repeated arm's-length gestures, and
a moment later the chorus burst into song. Unfortunately, the breeze was
blowing onshore so that the full effect was lost; and the noise on
board, with the winches going, interfered with it still more. A big
launch was being lowered over the side, and, following that, a
flat-bottomed barge.

The general stood with his head turned sidewise, his hand cupped around
his ear.

"Kind of funny singin', ain't it?" he said.

"Do you like it?" Viggo asked.

"Can't tell whether I do or not with all this racket goin' on....
Now, Viggo, we got to work fast here, as Colonel Dodd's probably told
you. Captain wants to get his ship away first thing tomorrow morning.
Biggest part of this outfit's going on, you know. Want to give the men
of that part a run ashore. Be all right, won't it?"

"Yes, of course," said Viggo.

"Good! Start 'em going right away. Meanwhile, I want to have a look at
the place across the lagoon the colonel told me about. Have to shift the
people over there quick so's we can start work."

"You mean you want to go this morning?"

"Sure. How far is it?"

"Eight miles, but it's dead to windward the way the breeze is blowing
this morning. We'll have to beat up to it, General. It will take quite a
while."

"You needn't worry about that. We're not going in one of your canoes.
Take a launch. Be over there in half an hour.... Where's Commander
Brigham? He'll want to come with us."

Another launch had been put into the water by this time and brought to
the foot of the ladder on the off side of the ship. Meanwhile, the big
launch, crowded with shoregoers, had put off from the opposite side.

In a kind of daze, Viggo climbed down the ladder with the general,
Commander Brigham, and me, into the smart Navy launch with its smoothly
purring engine, waiting for us.

"Now where away?" said the general.

Viggo pointed out the distant _motu_ where the tops of the coconut palms
made a faint blur on the horizon.

"There's deep water all the way across," he said.

"Then open her up, young man," said the general. The launch gathered
speed, throwing up clouds of spray as it hit the cross seas.

"She certainly goes, don't she?" Viggo exclaimed, admiringly.

"Fine lagoon you've got here," said the general. "Deep water like this
everywhere?"

"Pretty near everywhere after you get offshore, except for the shoals
near the passage."

"Viggo, we're all prepared to take care of the people here," said the
general. "Feed 'em and everything."

"Oh, there'll be no need for that," said Viggo.

"That's all right. Gov'ment orders. Got to see that they're all right.
That's why I want to have a look at the place they'll have to shift to.
Put a warehouse up there to hold supplies for 'em. What do they live on,
mostly?"

"Well, there's coconuts... and fish..."

"Mean to say that's all they have to eat? Coconuts and fish?"

"That's the main part," said Viggo. "We raise some pigs and chickens. We
get supplies from outside, too: a little rice and flour and tinned beef.
Of course, that's pretty well stopped since the war."

"How often do you have boats here?"

"There's a schooner comes twice a year on the average," said Viggo.

"Twice a _year_!" exclaimed the general. He shook his head,
incredulously. "Young fellow," he added, turning to the boy steering the
launch, "how'd you like to live on an island where you had a boat twice
a year?"

"I think I'd like it, sir, for a while, anyway."

"Well, here you are! Here we all are. Guess we're going to like it
whether we like it or not. But the schooner twice a year is out. You're
on the map from now on, Viggo--the Army and Navy map, anyway. Even got a
new name for you."

"What is it?" Viggo asked.

The general shook his head.

"That's a secret.... Call it 'P-R-B 9' if you want to--Pacific
Reserve Base Nine. That would be something like it.... Where you
from?" he asked, turning once more to the steersman.

"Kansas, sir."

"Where you other boys from?"

The launch had a crew of three. One was an Iowa boy and the third from
Nebraska.

"It beats all how you fellers from the Middle West flock into the Navy,"
said the general. "Ignorance, I suppose. You don't know what you're
lettin' yourselves in for."

All three grinned.

"We're learning fast, sir," one of them said. "I can't say I'd change to
the Army if the chance was offered."

"There you are," said the general, "gettin' the Navy spirit before
you've been in service a year!"

"Two years, sir, in my case."

"Then you're lost," said the general, his eyes twinkling. "We might have
saved you if it'd been only a year. But two years... you're done for!
That right, Commander?"

Commander Brigham made a faint attempt at a smile, but it struck me that
he didn't at all approve of the general's chaffing with the crew of a
Navy launch.

We were fast approaching the _motu_. As I've said, this particular one
was about a quarter of a mile long, the largest on this far reef of the
atoll. Viggo had told me that it was the custom of the natives to move
over here in a body twice yearly to collect the coconuts from all the
islets along this side. The nuts were opened and the copra dried here.
It was a land of communal picnic for the entire population and made a
pleasant break in the tempo of their lives. A village of small shelters
would spring up overnight. The men fished and loafed while the copra was
drying. The women and children gathered up the fallen fronds and tidied
the _motu_ from end to end. They also engaged in the particular kind of
fancywork common to the women of the atolls. On this _motu_ were found
great quantities of tiny, multicolored shells from which they made
necklaces, hatbands, and other ornaments. They were beautifully
designed, with a shading and arrangement of various colors and sizes
that made them works of art.

But now as we approached, the _motu_ had the appearance of being one
never before seen by the eyes of man. The long smooth beaches were
untrodden, marked only with the shadows of the trees that shaded them. I
could see from the expressions on the faces of the boys from my own part
of the U.S.A. that this was a memorable experience for them, just as it
had been for me. I wondered whether any of them, in grammar school, had
examined, in their geographies, a sketch with the caption, "Atoll--a
Coral Island," printed beneath it. Probably not. School geographies in
these days are illustrated by photographs, I believe. There is a world
of difference between a photograph of an atoll and a sketch made by
someone who had only dreamed of such places: someone short on exact
knowledge, perhaps, but long on the strangeness and mystery and beauty
of the imaginative conception. Even the sketch falls far short of the
reality in these very qualities. I was sorry for the boys whose duty
required them to remain with the launch. This was their first, and it
might be their only, chance to see a Low Island _motu_ in its natural
condition, before the impending change was under way.

There was no sentiment in General Clarke, and I liked him none the less
for that. He didn't appear even to notice the sea fowl, the strange
vines and plants, the shadows on the sand, or the vistas through the
trees of the surf piling in over the outer reef. He was all intent on
the job in hand. He halted when we had reached the upper slope of the
beach.

"Wouldn't be a bad place for the storehouse right where we are," he
said. "What do you think, Commander? Unless Colonel Dodd's found a
better one?"

The commander agreed, and I said that it was the place I had fixed upon
and marked, tentatively, on my map.

"Good! That's settled, then. Wish everything could be settled as
easy.... Now that we're away from the boys, Viggo, I want to speak of
the toughest problem of all. I guess you know what that is?"

"No... I can't say I do, General."

"Hmmm! You never been in the Army, that's sure. Or the Navy. You've
never had to keep a fatherly eye on a lot of young bucks such as I've
got here. It beats all how, the minute they've got time for something
beside their duties, they all pick the same something to think about."

"Oh," said Viggo; "you mean... women?"

"That's it. We're not so old ourselves but what we can remember how it
was with us at twenty or around there.... How many young women are
there in the village?"

"Around twenty-five. Maybe a few more; that is, young women. But
General, they couldn't..."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, Viggo! I'm not hintin' that I want you to
recruit a corps of concubines for this detachment. Cost the Gov'ment too
much payin' 'em overtime. No, no! I'm thinkin' of the girls and how to
keep 'em out-of-bounds to a hundred and eighty young lustyguts, most of
'em in their early twenties."

"They're not all skirt-chasers, General," said the Commander.

"Hell, Commander! Don't suppose for a minute I'm thinkin' of your Navy
boys. Everybody knows from observation that not a gob in ten thousand
would look at a skirt unless he was ordered to. No, no! The girls are
safe from the Navy, but I'm worried about the rest of the outfit."

The commander smiled at this, the first encouragement I'd had that he
might improve upon better acquaintance.

"Joking aside, I want to get your people over here as soon as possible,
Viggo. The commander's right in what he said just now. We've got a fine
lot of fellows in this outfit. There'll be no trouble at all with the
greater part of 'em. They'll sit of an evening and look at their girls'
pictures. They'll remember the promises they made before they left
home... and keep 'em, too, since they'll have no chance to break 'em.
I watched and studied 'em pretty careful on the voyage. To make a rough
guess, I'd say not more than half have women-on-the-brain right round
the clock, and some of them are okay, otherwise. The rest have got the
disease only from around 6 P.M. till Lights Out, or a little later when
they can't go to sleep. We're going to work 'em so hard on this job that
Lights Out will _mean_ sleep; at least, till we've got things all
shipshape here."

We walked across the _motu_ and back and Viggo took the occasion to
speak of the water situation.

"We've got no reservoir over here," he said. "The people can use green
coconuts for drinking to start with but..."

"There'll be no trouble about that," said the general. "There's a
distillation unit we can set up here. Give 'em a steady supply all the
time.... Colonel, you picked the right place for the population."

"It's the only place large enough to pick," I replied.

He nodded.

"And eight miles between them and us. Eight miles over, eight miles
back. Guess none of the young fellers will want to swim that distance
however anxious they are to go sparkin' the girls. But you must keep all
your boats and canoes on this side, Viggo."

As we were walking down to the launch, he added: "Damned shame, ain't
it? Hard on the boys, stuck way off in a place like this. They'll think
war's just what Sherman said it was, even on a South Sea island."

                         *    *    *    *    *

The general invited Viggo and me to lunch aboard ship. It was only
midmorning when we returned so we went ashore to change into less mussy
clothing. As we approached the jetty we met the big launch returning
with a crowd of the first detachment of shoregoers. While I was looking
at them Viggo was gazing with astonishment at the work in progress on
the unloading stage.

"Mr. Dodd, I wouldn't have believed this if I hadn't seen it! They've
got it almost finished!"

"These jobs go in a hurry when you have all the materials on hand," I
remarked.

"And it's to be only a temporary wharf?"

"Yes. We'll widen the jetty in a day or two. Make a good solid job of
it. How long did it take you to build that pier?"

"Let's see," said Viggo.... "It was a little over eight months from
the day we started till we got it finished. Of course, we didn't work at
it all the time. There was no special hurry."

The scene on the beach was an animated one, to say the least: the
shoregoers were trying to crowd all the enjoyment possible into the
brief time granted them for stretching their legs.

"You don't know how strange all this looks to me," said Viggo. "They're
well-behaved boys, aren't they? I guess it's as strange to them as it is
to us."

Some of them, with the national passion for collecting souvenirs and
mementos, were gathered in groups before the houses of the natives,
trying to converse in sign language. One old woman who had just been
visited was standing on her doorstep, both hands full of bills, gazing
at them with an air of utter bewilderment. Spying Viggo, she beckoned to
him earnestly and thrust the money into his hands, talking thirteen to
the dozen.

"Mr. Dodd, will you look at this!" Viggo exclaimed when he had counted
the money. "These boys millionaires? She's got sixty-four dollars here!
It's what they gave her for a lot of shell wreaths and necklaces she
had!"

"She makes the prettiest ones in the village, Viggo," I said.

"I know, but sixty-four _dollars_!" He gave me a blank look, shaking his
head gravely. "The people here know next to nothing about money. Looks
to me as if these boys don't either, throwing it away like that."

"Men in service are well paid nowadays," I said. "They've got so much it
burns holes in their pockets."

Arriving at Viggo's house, we found half a dozen young Americans seated
on the veranda enjoying the hospitality of Mrs. Viggo and their three
daughters, Paki, Mona, and Thurid. The latter most resembled her father,
the reason, doubtless, why he had given her the old Scandinavian name,
Thurid, which the natives made pronounceable by calling her "Turi." She
had beautiful copper-colored hair that made an aureole around her head
in the sunlight. While none of the girls were what would be called
handsome, they were very pictures of health and youthful vigor, with the
fine easy carriage common amongst Polynesian women. The boys seemed to
find them very agreeable to look at, and one of them could scarcely keep
his eyes off Turi.

Viggo gave them a cordial welcome. Although none of his family spoke
English, that seemed to matter little. They had made their guests feel
at home, and brought them drinking coconuts which the boys were tasting
with evident relish.

"I hope you don't think we barged in here, sir," one of them remarked.
"Your wife invited us; at least that's what we understood."

"Of course she did!" said Viggo, heartily. "Wish we had room for all of
you. It's too bad you boys have to go on so soon."

"I don't," said one, a well-set-up lad with hair almost as blond as
Viggo's. "I'm with the detachment that's staying."

"Oh," said Viggo. "I thought none of you were given shore leave today."

The young fellow smiled, a bit guiltily.

"That's right," he said. "I came anyway."

"Shouldn't have done that, should you?"

"No, sir, but I couldn't wait. This is the first time I've ever seen a
South Sea island."

"Maybe you'll have more than enough of this one before you've been here
long."

"No, sir; not me. I was made for this kind of life."

"Don't be too sure," said Viggo. "A lot of you may think that at first.
You'll probably be sick of the place two weeks from now."

"What of yourself, sir?" the boy asked. "You must have lived here a long
time."

"I guess you've got me there," said Viggo, with a smile. "I'm kind of an
old fool."

"And I'm a young one of the same kind," the other replied. He took up
his coconut again, tilting back his head as he drained the cool
refreshment to the last drop. "Boy! That's sure good! First time I knew
what a coconut really was."

Viggo explained that these were the green nuts used for drinking. When
the others had emptied theirs, one of the daughters split the nuts open
with a heavy knife used for the purpose. Spoons were brought so that the
guests could taste the creamy film of just-forming coconut meat inside.
They did more than taste. They scraped the shells clean.

"That's what you might call a full meal," one of them said. "The meat to
eat and the water to drink."

A moment later they rose, politely. "We'd better be going on, sir. We've
only got two hours' leave. We want to see as much as we can."

They shook hands all round and I observed that the boy who was A.W.O.L.
lingered over his farewell to Turi. They turned to wave again as they
moved along the crowded village street.

"What fine boys!" said Viggo. "Will they all be like this, Mr. Dodd?"

"You mustn't expect too much," I replied. "There'll probably be all
kinds just as there are in every army."

"Yes, of course. But I hope the ones to stop here will be mostly this
kind."

We saw various kinds during the next hour. Having changed our clothing,
we still had time for a leisurely stroll through the village before
going out to the ship. The leave men were taking full advantage of the
opportunity to stretch their legs. They had scattered in all directions
over the _motu_. Some had brought bathing trunks and were swimming in
the lagoon. Others visited Father Vincent's church, tip-toeing, caps in
hand, up the aisles to examine the beautiful altar. Yet others were
walking in his garden admiring the trees and shrubs and flowers. There
were coconut-drinking parties all over the place. The native children
went up the boles of the palms like so many monkeys to throw down green
nuts, proud and happy to be of service.

The shyness of the young islanders was rapidly giving way to easy
comradeship with the visitors. The American boys seemed to know by
instinct how best to break the ice. They would point to this and that
and the other, asking the native names, and the girls shouted with
merriment at the attempts of the Americans to pronounce the names after
them.

On the path near the spot where I had seen the sleeping children on the
day of my arrival, a crowd had gathered around two expert harmonica
players who furnished the music for two equally expert jitterbug
enthusiasts. Half a dozen of the girls were looking on with keen
interest.

"Come on, sister! Have a try," one of the dancers said, seizing a girl
by the hand. "Come on! I'll show you."

The girl understood his meaning very well, and after giggling and
holding back for a minute or so, she stepped out with him. The harmonica
players took a new lease on enthusiasm and seemed to be devouring their
instruments. The other Americans grinned and shouted encouragement.

"Say! She's getting it! She's getting it! What do you know about that!"

"That's the ticket, sister!"

"Boy! She's got rhythm!"

"I'll say she has!"

The girl broke away laughing, and, with her hands over her face, ran
back to the protection of her companions. There was a loud chorus of
approval from the visitors, and as Viggo and I walked on they were
urging the other girls to have a try.

"What in the world kind of dancing is that?" Viggo asked.

"It's what they call jitterbugging," I explained.

"Is that the way all the young people dance in America?"

"I wouldn't say all. But a lot of them do."

Viggo shook his head, glumly.

"My goodness!" he exclaimed. After a considerable silence he added: "And
this is Sunday! I'm glad Father Vincent's not here!"

Another silence followed. He gave me a sidewise glance and then
remarked: "I've never seen such a crazy dance... but she kind of got
the hang of it, didn't she?"

Upon returning to the ship we found General Clarke waiting for us at the
gangway. This easy informality was typical of him. He sent no orderlies
to meet his guests and conduct them to his cabin, but did the meeting
himself. Another thing about him that interested me was the pride he
seemed to take in speaking English as though he had never seen the
inside of a grammar school. He was, clearly, a man of breeding and
education, but you would have said that he considered the fact a
disgrace. His use of the mother tongue reminded me of the kind used by
the professional Texans one hears in third-class radio programs. But
sometimes he would forget that he was supposed to be "a regular guy,"
and his speech, while none the less salty and American, would be good
Anglo-Saxon, and grammatically flawless.

"Boys havin' a good time ashore?" he asked.

"They certainly are," said Viggo.

"Behavin' theirselves?"

"Oh yes. If the men stopping here are like these, we'll be all right."

"They'll average up, Viggo. We've got a few hellraisers like I said, but
sometimes men of that kind make better soldiers than the others."

We went to his cabin for a few minutes, then down to the dining saloon
where the officers were gathering for lunch. We were introduced to the
other two generals who stood somewhat on their dignity at first, but the
mere presence of Clarke seemed to melt the stiffness out of them.

It gave me a comfortable, contented feeling to draw up to table in that
company. There were men of all ages between twenty-five and fifty and
not a weak or a crafty face amongst the lot. I tried to find a word to
sum up the general impression, and "wholesome" popped into my head,
followed by "dependable." They were the kind of men you like to rub
shoulders with, the kind you would choose to stand back to back with in
a tight place.

The lunch was excellent, and it did my heart good to see Viggo's
enjoyment of the meal. I did full justice to it myself, and set my teeth
into the best steak--in fact, the only one worth calling a steak--I'd
enjoyed since leaving San Francisco.

The conversation was general throughout the meal, and I discovered that
there was one subject, at least, in which the Army and Navy are in
complete accord: the Japanese. The talk turned to those in the U.S.A.
and the Hawaiian Islands, and what should be done with them after the
war. Every man there believed in the advisability, but not in the
probability, of their being sent back to Japan.

"It'll never be done," said General Clarke. "Wait and see. Take those on
the West Coast, especially in California. Them soft-headed, soft-handed
native sons will let 'em come right back, soon as the war's won."

"Whoa, there, General!" someone called from down the table. "I'm one of
those native sons."

"Excuse me, Major. I forgot," said Clarke, with a grin. "But that's what
you'll do. You Californians are too damned lazy to do your own offshore
fishin' and to raise your own garden truck. My guess is that, six months
after the war's over, the Japs will be right back at their old Golden
State, Golden Opportunity snoopin' jobs."

"They're a problem, no question of that," another officer remarked. "The
worst of it is that many of them are, probably, loyal U.S. citizens and
there's no way of separating the bad from the good. But the greater
problem is: how are we ever again to have even professedly friendly
relations with the Japs in Japan, knowing what we now know about them?"

"'What we _now_ know'?" said the General. "We've _always_ known it; that
is, everybody outside of Washington. So did Washington know, but they
found it expedient to pretend they didn't. It was expedient to sell the
Japs gas, and oil, and steel, and scrap, and planes, and anything they'd
a mind to ask for, to be used in bombing hell out of the Chinese. But
you can't blame it all on Gov'ment. Gov'ment and Business--there's the
'expedient' twins! When you think of all the dirt they've done China,
under the guise of friendship, it's the world's wonder the Chinese
haven't become our bitter enemies, long since."

"But General..."

"Wait, just a minute! Let me get this off my chest. Gentlemen, if that
word 'expedient,' and all it stands for in international relations,
ain't blotted out of the dictionaries they use in Foreign Offices and
Departments of State, we'll never have a world that's worth a damn to
honest men. Gov'ments have got to learn what individuals have always
known: that clear-cut questions of right and wrong can't be settled by
expedient methods. If a certain course is wrong and would compel you to
break faith with sworn friends, you don't follow it. If another course
is dead right, and the only one that _can_ be followed with decency and
honor, you go right down that street. You don't wait to be pushed or
scared into it. You go of your own accord, no matter how inexpedient you
may find it to do so. And you hold that course, come hell or high
water!"

"Three cheers, General!"

Clarke grinned, apologetically.

"Excuse me," he said. "I get hot around the belly-band whenever I think
of the way we've treated China. Guess it's because I served in the East.
Gave me a chance to size up the Chinese alongside of them teeth-suckin'
'So-solly' boys.... Let's talk of something else."

                         *    *    *    *    *

After lunch the general went ashore with Viggo while Commander Brigham
and I took the launch to examine the shoals near the passage. We planned
to start blasting them out as soon as the ship left. We then crossed the
lagoon, as the commander wished to see the islets along that far side.
Among others, we visited Viggo's turtle refuge. I told the commander of
my sojourn there and of Viggo's love for the place, hoping that what I
said would soak in and the _motu_ be left unoccupied. The commander
didn't commit himself one way or the other.

We returned late in the afternoon to find the general on board again.
From then until suppertime and for three hours thereafter we were busy
in his cabin, with my map spread out on the table. Both the general and
Commander Brigham fixed upon the _motu_ where the Lehmanns lived as the
ideal place for headquarters. No mention was made either of the Lehmanns
or of Father Vincent. The commander knew nothing about them at this
time, and I gathered that Viggo had not spoken of them to the general. I
awaited a more suitable opportunity, when alone with him, to bring up
the matter of the Lehmanns.

The commander left us at half-past ten, but not to sleep. In fact, there
could have been little sleep for anyone aboard ship until the small
hours of the morning. The winches were going full tilt, as tractors,
graders, rooters, angledozers, planes in crates, and other heavy gear
were swung over the side and lowered to the newly made wharf.

Presently the general folded the map and pushed back his chair with a
sigh of content.

"Colonel, let's call it a day," he said. "And a mighty good day it's
been. We've got a lot done.... Any objections to a Scotch-and-soda?"

He rang for a messboy who returned with two tall glasses filmed with icy
vapor. That highball looked good to me. It was the first I'd had since
leaving San Francisco. The general told me that he rationed himself to
one a day. "And I always wait till night to have it," he said. "Gives me
something pleasant to look forward to."

He raised his glass. "Here's to P-R-B 9," he said. "That's a camouflage
name, of course, one that we'll use here amongst ourselves. I can't give
even you the real one."

He sipped with gusto and set his glass down carefully.

"It's a damned shame about that old priest," he said. "What's his name?
Father Vincent?"

"Oh... Viggo told you about him?"

"Yes.... I saw his church and garden. Hate to think all that's got to
be wiped out."

"I feel the same way about it," I replied.

"If only they were somewhere else!... But wishing won't move 'em, and
there they are, right in the middle of what will be the landing
field.... The blasted war! Who'd have thought, a few years ago, that
these bits of islands would ever be involved in one? It's going to be as
hard on the natives as on the old father.... Hell!"

"Did Viggo speak of the Lehmanns?" I asked.

"The Lehmanns? No. Who are they?"

"They live on the islet across the passage: a father and daughter;
Jewish refugees who came to the island eight months ago."

"Christ A'mighty! Have we got a Jewish problem to deal with way out
here?"

"No, not a problem," I said. "An asset, and a valuable one, in my
opinion."

I went on to tell him, briefly, what I had learned of the history of the
Lehmanns and what I had gathered from my own observation. I spoke of
Miss Lehmann's stenographic abilities and of the fine musical talents of
both father and daughter. I suggested that two such persons could
perform a valuable service here, amongst young men who, when their day's
work was done, would have little to do and no place to go. In fact, I
believe I became a bit eloquent in presenting a case for the Lehmanns.
The general heard me through in silence; then he said:--

"Colonel, it's impossible. It's simply out of the question. My orders
are that no one outside the Service is to be permitted to visit the
island, to say nothing of living on it. The only exceptions are the
resident agent and any missionaries established here, which lets in
Viggo and the old priest. I'm truly sorry. I have deep sympathy for all
refugees, Jewish or otherwise, but you see how I am fixed? Orders are
orders. The Lehmanns will have to go."

"Yes, I see that," I replied.

"If the decision rested with me... But it doesn't. And that's
that.... Let's see what's going on."

We went out to the port side of the bridge deck and stood for a while
watching the work in progress below us. The ship lay moored with her bow
alongside the coral jetty and her stern at the unloading stage. The
heavy equipment was now ashore and other supplies were coming out the
hatches both fore and aft. The intense light from the cargo clusters,
mingled with that of the waning moon, lit up the scene with a bizarre,
unreal effect. It was now well past midnight, but many of the natives
were still on the beach or looking on from a distance, amongst the
groves. The moon had lost none of her old serenity, but the waning
light, I thought, might have been that of a last appearance. And,
certainly, she would not, for years to come, if ever, look down again on
the old peaceful island it had been my privilege to see for so brief a
time. Before the coming of the next full moon, that island would have
ceased to exist, and P-R-B 9 would be in its place.

The general's reflections were running in a direction similar to my own.

"The cursed Huns!" he exclaimed, bitterly. "What haven't they to answer
for? I wonder if there is anyone, anywhere in the world, whose life has
not been at least partly ruined by their beastliness?"

"I wouldn't give all the credit to the Huns of Hitler's _Reich_," I
replied. "Some must be saved for their blood brothers in Tokyo."

"You know, Colonel, there ought to be a new word coined to include both
tribes in the same breath.... But where, from the depths of Evil,
could the ingredients for a fitting word be dredged up?... Well, I'm
going to turn in. We can really get going tomorrow."

I found Viggo on the beach. He had, evidently, been waiting for me. We
walked to his bench on the opposite side of the _motu_ where we had
before us the expanse of moonlit sea, unbroken to the horizon line. It
seemed to be slightly uptilted toward the land, as though the island lay
in a shallow depression, in the center of a brimming silver bowl.

"I didn't mention the Lehmanns to the general," Viggo said, presently.

"I know.... I've told him."

"And... they can't stay?"

"No."

"It's what I was afraid of."

"He has no choice in the matter," I said. "No foreigners save you and
Father Vincent can be permitted to stay.... 'Foreigners'! That's a
strange way of putting it! As though you and the father belong in that
class!"

"I understand what you mean," said Viggo.

"I wonder if they're still up," I said. "I want to tell them at the
earliest possible moment and get it over with."

"They haven't been over here today," said Viggo. "I walked along the
beach by the passage a little while ago. I could see their light through
the trees."

He volunteered to go with me, so we took one of the small canoes to
cross the passage. The lamp with its shade of clouded, cream-colored
glass was throwing out its mellow light from the end of the veranda
where the piano stood; and even before we saw the light we heard music.
Mr. Lehmann was playing something I have always loved, Raff's
"Cavatina," to his daughter's accompaniment. Viggo and I waited below,
in the shadows, until the playing ceased.

I'm sure that Miss Lehmann knew, the moment she saw us, what we had come
to say. I didn't beat about the bush but told them at once.

They took the blow quietly as I knew they would, but that didn't seem to
make the telling any easier.

"We have had eight very happy months here," Mr. Lehmann said, in his
broken English. "We will never forget them. This time has been a great
blessing for us. Now we are ready for anything."

"Father and I have really felt guilty, Mr. Dodd, being so... so safe
and useless, in times like these. It has been the only thing to mar our
happiness. Now we must try and find work that may help others a little,
even if only a little."

I don't believe that I have a heart particularly susceptible to being
wrung. But as I looked at these two fine people, as I tried to realize
the full depth of the tragedy of their lives, I seemed to feel of a
sudden the appalling weight of the burden of millions of other lives,
wrecked as theirs had been. Here was grief too deep for human
expression--a dry-eyed grief that seemed as fathomless as the Coal-Sack
pit in the Milky Way.

Old Papa Viggo was thinking only of the Lehmanns and of what this news
meant to them, and the tears trickled unchecked down his ruddy cheeks.
He drew out his handkerchief, unashamed, and wiped them away.

"Ruth," he said, "it doesn't seem fair that you and your father..."

He couldn't get on with what he wanted to say. Miss Lehmann went quickly
to him, leaned over the back of his chair, putting her cheek to his and
her arms around his shoulders.

"Viggo, you good old friend! Why, this is nothing to feel so sad about!"

"But... we'll miss you here.... We'll all miss you.... And I
don't see just... where you'll go now."

"Where? Why, to the other island, of course: the seat of government.
That's not so far away. Father and I feel certain we can find something
to do there."

"Well I... hope you can, Ruth. I... certainly hope you can!"

We didn't stay long, and we had nothing to say to each other as we
paddled back to the village. Everything was silent there. Work had
stopped and the peace of mid-ocean was flowing in again, seeming to
widen and deepen from moment to moment.

"Do you suppose they've finished unloading?" Viggo asked.

"Yes; at least all the main part of the cargo," I replied. "There may be
a little left to put ashore in the morning."

"It's morning now," said Viggo. "Must be two o'clock.... Well, good
night, Mr. Dodd. I expect you're as ready for bed as I am."

"I'm going soon," I replied. "I want to have a look round for a bit to
see how they've got things sorted."

I've spoken of the open space near Viggo's house where the _himin_ was
held. It was a village common, used for all kinds of community purposes.
The heavy engineering equipment had been brought to this place and
ranged on either side: tractors, graders, shovels, bulldozers, rooters,
and the like. I saw that nothing had been forgotten; in fact, the amount
of equipment exceeded the need we would have for it; but the ship, or
another one, was to call later to carry it all elsewhere.

I'd seen apparatus of this kind times enough in the past, of course,
without thinking much about it one way or another, except from the
engineering point of view. But as I looked at this double row of
machines facing each other in the moonlight from across the little
common, I had a feeling of apprehension, as though a corps of robots
might emerge from the shadows to begin the work of destruction even as I
looked at them. Of all the grotesque, incongruous, horrible sights, you
would have to go far to find one to cap this of the machines, brooding
in the moonlight on a coral island. I thought of the tens and hundreds
of thousands of other machines scattered far and wide over the earth,
thus brooding through the night, dreaming their fearful dreams, and,
with man's help, making them come true.




                                  VIII


The winches were set going again at the crack of dawn and an
hour later the last of our share of the cargo was ashore. The men of
General Clarke's detachment then came off with their duffelbags and
other personal gear. I noticed that several of them carried musical
instruments. One had a piano accordion slung over his shoulder, two
others carried violin cases, and there must have been half a dozen
saxophones in the outfit. All these belongings were stacked for the
present in a shed used for drying copra. The men then stood by to await
orders, and once more the village was thronged with people as it had
been on the previous day.

Great heaps of drinking coconuts had been assembled on the wharf as a
gift from the islanders to the men who were going on. Much of the work
of collecting them had been done the afternoon before, under Viggo's
direction, and while the ship was preparing to unmoor, the nuts,
thousands of them, were taken aboard in cargo slings and heaped on the
forward deck.

The natives were still dazed and excited by the events of the past
twenty-four hours. When island people, whose lives have flowed
tranquilly on in the same channel generation after generation for
centuries together, are suddenly swept from their old bearings into a
whirlpool of strange and incomprehensible events, time is needed for
them to come to even a dim realization of their significance. As I
strolled here and there during this hour of confusion before the
departure of the freighter, I tried to put myself inside the skin of an
islander, to imagine what he was thinking and feeling at the moment.
Viggo was with me a part of this time, and I got an inkling of the
situation through what he told me.

"They just don't know what's happening," he said, with a sad shake of
the head. "And I don't see how I'm going to make them understand. Will
you believe it? Some think the ship is leaking and that all this cargo
has been put ashore so they can get at the leak. Others believe they've
run out of fresh water and that's why we've given them the drinking
nuts."

While we were talking, the old woman who had been given the sixty-four
dollars for her shell ornaments came hurrying up to Viggo. I don't know
whether or not she had been holding the money since the day before, but
here she was again, and once more she thrust the bills into Viggo's
hands, speaking in the same torrential fashion. She seemed to be
pleading with him, and she became more and more earnest and entreating
as he replied, with repeated shakes of the head. At last he seized her
hand, placed the money in it, closed her fingers over it and gave her a
gentle push, whereupon she went sorrowfully away.

"She wants me to buy her a sewing machine and a brass bed," Viggo
explained, with a faint smile. "She thinks they must have them aboard
the ship. She can't get it through her head that this isn't a trading
ship like Tihoti's schooner."

"Don't they all sleep on mats?" I asked. "Outside your own house, I
haven't seen a bed in the village."

"Yes," said Viggo, "but there isn't an old woman in the place that don't
covet a brass bed, for show. The young ones want mirrors, big ones with
gilt frames."

Presently we spied General Clarke coming in our direction.

"We shan't be long now, Colonel," he said. "All set, you and the
commander?"

"We're ready to start in as soon as the ship leaves," I replied.

"Okay. Go to it! How have you lined up things between you?"

"The commander wants to supervise blasting out the shoals. I'll get work
under way ashore."

"I'm going out with you in the ship, Viggo," the general said. "Want to
have a last word with General Grover. On the way back we'll have a look
at the headquarters islet. You can introduce me to the Lehmanns....
Go right ahead with things, Colonel; you and the commander."

There were so many things to go ahead with at the same time that I
hardly knew where to begin. I went over them in thought while the ship
was unmooring and the men aboard were shouting good-byes to their
friends on shore. One of the first jobs would be clearing ground for the
barracks and the building to house the supplies, but before that work
could be gotten under way the natives had to be shifted to the _motu_
across the lagoon. At the moment they were all gathered along the beach
watching the ship as it drew slowly away from the wharf. Many of them,
no doubt, only now realized that the ship was actually leaving behind
the stores piled high in all the available space along the foreshore.

Commander Brigham joined me as I was standing there.

"I'll get work at the coral heads started within the next half hour," he
said. "Lieutenant Kelly is assembling the men of your shore unit. He'll
be ready for orders as soon as you want to give them."

"Is he a Catholic?" I asked.

"I suppose so. Never knew a Kelly who wasn't. No objections to that, are
there?"

"Not at all. On the contrary," I replied.

I had already met the lieutenant, a husky young fellow who, in
peacetime, had been a foreman with a big West Coast construction
company. All of his men belonged to an engineering company of the
regular Army, although many of them had only recently joined the
Service. They had changed to fatigue dress before leaving the ship.

One job, the destruction of Father Vincent's church, could be started
immediately. I was bound that this should be done carefully, with all
the reverence a work of destruction will permit. Lieutenant Kelly was
the man to supervise it, and I learned that a good third of his
detachment were Catholics.

"You can leave it to me, sir," he said. "I'll see that it's properly
done." He shook his head, sadly. "But it'll be sorry work. Such a pretty
little church! What will his Reverence say when he comes back?"

When I returned to the village an hour later, I found General Clarke and
Viggo standing near the latter's house. The general was speaking
earnestly as I came up.

"But we've got to clear 'em out," he was saying. "We can't get properly
started till the natives are out of the way."

"I know," said Viggo, in his quiet apologetic manner; "but if you can
give them a little more time? They don't understand yet what's
happening. It's all come so quick they're still kind of dazed."

"Time! We've got no time to spare," the general replied, in an
exasperated voice.

The natives were standing in the doorways of their thatched houses or
wandering aimlessly here and there. The general scratched his head as he
looked about him, and the hard-boiled expression on his face softened a
little.

"It's a damned shame, having to root them out of their homes like this,"
he said.... "Listen, Viggo! Tell 'em it's not our fault. Tell 'em
they've got them little yellow devils from Tokyo to blame for all this.
And tell 'em that, before this war's over, Uncle Sam is going to make
that so-called Rising Sun set so hard they'll feel the tidal wave from
the splash way out here."

"I couldn't explain that, General," said Viggo. "They don't even know
who the Japs are."

"What!" said the general. "Ain't you told 'em?"

"Yes," said Viggo; "Father Vincent and I have both spoken about the
Japs, but they don't really understand."

The general turned to me with a give-it-up expression.

"Colonel, can you beat it?" he asked.

"I don't know that you can blame them," I replied, "when you remember
how little we ourselves understood before Pearl Harbor."

"You've said it," the general replied, with a grim smile. "If we're
going to talk about dumbness, I guess we'd better start right at home."

I don't know how Viggo managed it, but before midday the people
understood that they were all to move and had started packing their
belongings. There was no great amount to pack. Looking about me, I
realized how few material possessions are needed for a comfortable and a
happy life in a place like that. Each family had about the same
articles: mats and pillows and a few handmade patchwork coverlets which
they call _tifaifai_; a kettle or two and a large iron pot; a wooden
chest for clothing; an _ana_, which is a wooden stool with a coconut
grater attached, and the men's fishing spears. There were two or three
sewing machines, which, doubtless, served the needs of all the women of
the village. Except for these and the cooking utensils, their belongings
were homemade. I did see a superb brass bed. I suppose it was that which
had set the other women to longing for one like it--for show. Each
family had the same one-volume library, a well-thumbed Bible, translated
long ago into their dialect of the Maori speech.

At noon our men knocked off for chow, and at this time tins of bully
beef and salmon, with hard biscuits, were distributed to the natives.
They certainly ate with relish. I was surprised, in a place where fresh
fish are so plentiful, to see the gusto with which they tucked into the
salmon. Viggo told me they considered it a great luxury. I suppose they
liked the different taste of the canned fish.

As soon as the meal was over they set to work dismantling their
dwellings. Once started, they worked with a will; I was astonished at
the speed with which the huts came down. The plaited palm fronds were
bound to the framework with lashings of sennit. This was of no value for
they could easily plait new ones, but the framework of the houses they
took carefully apart to set up again on the other _motu_. The islets
being small, wood is a valuable commodity. Furthermore, the natives love
their trees individually and hate to destroy one for housebuilding.

In an hour's time, the village, with the exception of Viggo's house, had
vanished. Nothing remained but the bundles of posts and rafters, and the
old thatch heaped up for burning. Viggo's house was to stand. He had to
have a place to live and the plot of ground it occupied could easily be
spared. For the present his wife was to stay here with him, but his
daughters were to go to the other _motu_ with one of Mrs. Viggo's
brothers who would take them in with his own family.

Insofar as I could tell the natives felt no resentment toward us. Though
they might well have been bitter and sullen, I neither saw nor heard
anything to indicate such feelings on their part; but there was many a
sad face amongst them. I noticed in particular one sweet-faced old
grandmother seated on a coral-slab doorstep, all that remained of her
dwelling, with her small possessions tied up in a bedquilt beside her.
She gazed in dismay at what had been the village street, shaking her
head sorrowfully and saying "_Au! Au!_" over and over again. This is a
common expression amongst Polynesians. By various inflexions of the
voice it may express surprise, compassion, regret, fear, joy, or grief.
I had no doubt as to its meaning on this occasion.

Meanwhile, the youngsters, both boys and girls, had scattered over the
_motu_ to drive in their pigs and fowls which are allowed to run wild
for the most part. That chase was something to see. Our men helped, or
tried to, and in the excitement and fun of the quest, everyone forgot
the sadness of the occasion. Low Island pigs beat any I've ever seen for
intelligence and agility. They are small and wiry and can they run! They
seemed to enjoy the chase even more than the pursuers. They would wait,
alert and ready--with something you would swear was a grin on their
faces--while three or four of our men were slowly closing in upon them.
Then, as a grab was made, they were away like greased lightning, leaving
the hopeful chasers sprawling and clutching at empty air.

General Clarke laughed till the tears came; in fact, the lot of us,
grownups and children, whites and natives, had a wonderful time, and the
fun of it brought us all together on a common footing. I would give
something to have a motion picture of that wild scramble, but I don't
really need it. I've got it all in memory and my diaphragm quivers at
the mere thought of it. Even Papa Viggo joined in. He thought he had one
pig that was being driven straight toward him, with no apparent avenue
of escape; but as he stooped to grab, the pig went between his legs as
though shot from a catapult. As for the fowls, they were like
partridges, swift and strong on the wing. By this time many of them were
perched in the tops of the highest coconut palms, cackling in triumph,
as though the nuts clustered in the nests of fronds beneath were eggs
that they had laid.

"Viggo," said the general, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand; "I
wouldn't have missed this for a thousand dollars!"

"They're kind of wild," Viggo said, apologetically.

"You don't need to tell me. I'd give odds on one of these pigs against a
whippet any day. And if you could train the fowls like we train carrier
pigeons, we wouldn't need our wireless. We could have hen-and-rooster
communication between here and Honolulu."

It was thanks to the children that the greater part of the livestock was
finally captured, and by that time it was midafternoon. A happy holiday
spirit had seized the natives, like that, I suppose, of their
semi-yearly migrations to the _motu_ across the lagoon. Furthermore, not
many of them could have realized as yet what would happen to their
village islet before they saw it again. About thirty of them piled into
our big all-purpose launch, and another thirty embarked with the
community belongings in the flat-bottomed barge which was to be towed
behind. The canoes, large and small, with the rest of the population,
were taken in tow behind the barge, and presently the flotilla drew away
from shore, the people singing and waving good-byes to the rest of us.
Before they left I arranged, through Viggo, that twenty of the boys and
young men should be sent for early next morning to strip the nuts from
the palms. Our bulldozers and their drivers were protected by iron bars,
one overhead and one to each side, against trees that might fall
backward or sidewise against them, but they had not been built for
coconut-grove destruction, and nuts falling from a height of from forty
to sixty feet would be like salvos of dud bombs.

Viggo and I stood together, watching the flotilla until it was far out
on the lagoon. He turned to me with a blank look.

"Old Kamak!" he said. "I forgot all about him!"

"Would he want to go?" I asked.

Viggo shook his head.

"He's lived at the far end of the _motu_ for at least thirty years.
Couldn't we leave him there?"

"Yes, if he wants to stay," I replied. "But the old tree by his hut will
have to come down. It would be right in the way of planes coming in to
land."

"Well, I'll see him tomorrow," said Viggo, with a sigh. "I'll tell him
about the tree, but I think he'll want to stay in any case."

The departing villagers were scarcely out of sight when Commander
Brigham sent the small launch in to say that hundreds of dead and
stunned fish were coming to the surface as a result of the blasting
amongst the shoals.

"There's enough coming up, sir, to give ten times our whole outfit a
feed of fresh fish," said the man who brought the news.

Little good the information did us with all the boats on the far side of
the lagoon, and the Navy launch could not be used to cart fish ashore. I
went with Viggo to the beach by the passage. A three-knot current was
carrying the fish out to sea, and there were, literally, thousands of
them, some still flopping feebly, but most of them unquestionably dead.

"It'll be a good feed for the sharks," said Viggo. "I certainly hate to
see those shoals go. That was a fine place to fish."

                         *    *    *    *    *

With our portable generating units set up, work was continued in shifts
far into the night, in the intense white glare of powerful lamps. In
that distant part of the Pacific there was no present need for
blackouts; nevertheless, the light was screened, on the seaward side, by
means of tarpaulin curtains.

Father Vincent's church looked forlorn indeed as the general and I
viewed it at nine o'clock that evening. The bell and belltower were
gone; the roof had been removed and the framework supporting it. With
the sheets of roofing iron, Lieutenant Kelly had built a temporary
shelter on the ocean side of the _motu_. Here all the furnishings of the
church--altar, stained-glass windows, benches, and the like--had been
carefully stored. The timbers had been marked and numbered to simplify
the task of rebuilding the church, should Father Vincent have the heart
and the energy for the task. Nothing now remained but the empty shell,
and that was fast disappearing. Men with pneumatic drills and sledge
hammers knocked down the upper part of the walls, whereupon our
bulldozers made short work of the bottom sections.

General Clarke sniffed the air, filled with the acrid stench from engine
exhausts.

"Not much of the odor of sanctity left," he said, glumly. "It's a pity
we're forced to do the kind of work the Huns are so fond of."

I'll not go into the details of the events of the following week. I was
in a curious frame of mind during this time; in fact, I believe that
most of us were, from the general down to the drivers of the tractors
and graders. To some, no doubt, this destruction of a coral island meant
little or nothing; it was merely the first part of an engineering job to
be completed in the briefest possible time. You will find, on any such
project, men who are thoroughgoing examples of the Industrial Age, and
we had, I suppose, about the average quota in our detachment. To men of
this kind, a swamp, green with wind-rippled rushes, refuge for all kinds
of aquatic life, makes little appeal. It is something to be drained,
filled in, and divided into factory sites or suburban real-estate
projects. A fine asphalt-covered parking lot gives them more pleasure
than the same acreage of meadowland, and they think of forests in terms
of lumber or wood pulp. They have no more sentiment for organic life
than the machines they drive. But it seemed to me that most of our
outfit hated this work of destruction, particularly the early stages of
it as we swept the _motu_ all but clean of trees and bush. But once that
was irrevocably done we could breathe more easily. The old island with
its shady groves and paths was gone. Now it was an engineering project
and we could get on with the work with interest and enthusiasm.

One's feeling about machines varies with the environment in which they
are being used. For example, I'm down for a few days from the Alaska
highway project. As you know, that colossal job is completed and the
highway was formally opened by Secretary Stimson last November, but
there's still plenty of work for engineers to do up there. Well, in such
a wilderness, tens of thousands of square miles of virgin forest,
mountains, and muskeeg, you have no doubt of the value of machines.
There you see them as the friends and servants of man, giving him the
power to conquer wild nature, seemingly hostile to his purposes, and to
convert it to his own uses. But on a small coral island you are
impressed not by the hostility of nature but by that of the machines
themselves. You see their power from a different angle and have many a
sober second thought as to the beneficence of that power.

As you know, the broad swath for the Alcan Highway, sixteen hundred and
seventy-one miles of it, was cut through the Canadian and Alaskan
wilderness in a single summer, sometimes at the rate of eight miles per
day, and this against as formidable obstacles as men and machines have
had to meet. Imagine, then, the simplicity of the task of making P-R-B
9. It was as though a djinn, with one short, contemptuous breath of
mingled fuel-oil smoke and carbon-monoxide gas, had said, "Begone!" to
the island that was. There was scarcely time to see it vanish.

During the moment, so to speak, of its disappearance, several vivid
scenes were etched indelibly upon my memory. I watched the melting away
of the knoll on the ocean side of the _motu_: Viggo's favorite
observation spot; his "fine place to sit when you want to be alone." His
bench and the two fine trees on either side would have been spared
except for the fact that the knoll was wanted for filling in a
depression crossing the islet from east to west that must have been made
when the sea swept over the land in some great storm of the past.

Two bulldozers--Big Joe and Little Joe, the boys called them--with a
rooter friend of theirs, were detailed for this work, and one could all
but see their iron smiles as they approached the shaded, gently rounded
knoll. "What!" they seemed to say. "Do they send _us_ for this
two-by-four job?" Big Joe coughed and sputtered his disgust. "Go on,
Little Joe; you take them trees. I'll stand by in case you need any
help; but hell's fire! This is baby's work!" Little Joe jockeyed around
them with the same air of contempt; then he went in, making deep and
vicious bites at the roots and soil that held and fed them. About three
minutes later Big Joe said: "All right, son. I'll take 'em now," and
after a few powerful heaves and buttings, down they crashed, taking
Viggo's bench with them.

As soon as they had been pushed out of the way friend rooter went to
work, and in fifteen minutes' time the knoll was being carted away and
dumped into the depression where the graders and rollers were busy. The
boles of hundreds of coconut palms were neatly laid side by side in the
depression, and on top of this went the knoll, together with the rubble
that had been Father Vincent's church, his house, and the walls of his
garden. Another of the vivid glimpses came when I saw a shovel--small as
shovels go--scoop up what remained of the fifteen tons of High Island
earth brought by the schooner and dump it into a truck. Then, as though
looking around for more offenses against levelness, it seized upon a
heap of coral sand and gravel not yet carted away and chucked that in on
top.

Kamak's tree went early the same morning. The work of clearing was
started at both ends of the _motu_, and it went much faster than Viggo
had believed possible. When he saw the speed with which trees were
falling, he was in a hurry to warn Kamak, so I took him in a jeep to
that end of the _motu_. We arrived none too soon. Kamak was seated near
his hut, with several of our men standing around him, speaking loudly in
an attempt to attract his attention.

"Hey, Grandpa! Come on, now! You'll have to shift out of here!"

They were relieved when Viggo and I appeared.

"He won't budge, sir," one of the boys said. "Is he deaf, or what? We
were just about to pick him up and carry him away."

We stood at a little distance while Viggo spoke to the old man.

"He didn't pay no more attention than if we wasn't there," one of the
tractor men said. "Guess he's a kind of an old dummy, ain't he?"

Perhaps I should have assembled the boys working in that vicinity and
read to them the "Song of the Exalted Presence of Kiho-the-All-Source
Concerning His Will to Bring Space and the Universe into Existence," but
the moment was hardly a favorable one, so I replied with a mere nod of
the head.

Viggo spoke with him for a moment or two; then Kamak brought out his
few belongings--the small chest, his sleeping mat, and the wooden
headrest--which he placed in his one-man canoe. He pushed the canoe into
the water, climbed in, and paddled away in a northwesterly direction.

"Can you beat that!" one of the boys exclaimed. "I wouldn't have thought
the old fossil had so much life in him."

That was my last sight of Kamak. Viggo told me he was headed for a
little _motu_ seven miles distant.

"He'll be all right," he said. "He often goes over there to fish and
stays for a week or two. But this time he knows he won't be coming
back.... Kiho hasn't been very good to him, has he?" he added, with a
bleak smile.

                         *    *    *    *    *

Ten days after the departure of the freighter, P-R-B 9 was a functioning
unit in the United Nations far-flung defense and communication line
across that part of the Pacific. At least, it was ready to function.

As I stood at the southeast end of the village _motu_ it was hard to
convince myself that I was on the same islet I had first seen such a
little time before. From that vantage point there was now an
uninterrupted view the full length of the _motu_ to the burying ground
at the far end. One had the impression of looking along the flight deck
of an aircraft carrier; but the deck of this island carrier rooted to
the ocean bed had been gently, almost imperceptibly, rounded to furnish
perfect drainage in rainy weather. No tarmac runs were necessary, for
our steam rollers had packed hard the crushed coral surfacing, making
the entire landing field almost as smooth as the Lincoln Highway.

A double row of Quonset huts occupied the site of the old village, with
Viggo's iron-roofed dwelling in the midst of them, like a bewildered old
hen that has hatched a brood of chicks not at all what she had expected
them to be. Prefabricated buildings of other kinds housed the stores,
the mess hall, the hospital, the power plant, the machine and repair
shops. The distillation unit carried a two-and-a-half-inch stream of
fresh water into the underground tanks. Hangars for the land planes were
sited along the ocean side of the _motu_, as far apart as possible. The
mess hall for the enlisted men occupied part of the former village
common. It was a combined mess hall, motion-picture theater, and general
recreation room and could be quickly converted from one purpose to
another. The radio station was located on a small _motu_ half a mile
distant along the reef to the southeast.

We left what trees we could, but they were woefully few. Those shading
the beach where the village had been still stood, and a narrow ragged
fringe remained along the ocean beach between the scattered hangars and
the buried fuel-storage tanks. Camouflage of the base was an all but
impossible task, but that was to be attempted shortly.

The only other job not yet completed was that on the _motu_ across the
passage. This, as I have said, was to be the headquarters islet, but
General Clarke had delayed the work there on account of the Lehmanns.
They were to go as soon as Tihoti's schooner returned. Viggo's house was
used as temporary headquarters and his front veranda served as the
officers' mess.

I'd seen nothing of the Lehmanns during this time, my days and nights
having been fully occupied, but General Clarke had spent an evening,
with Viggo and several other officers, in their company.

"Fine people, Colonel, first class," he had remarked upon his return
from that visit. "You're right: they'd be a real asset here. Only
trouble would be that every young feller in the detachment would fall in
love with Miss Lehmann. I have myself, as far as that goes. Sang 'Annie
Laurie' for me. Never heard it better sung. You'd say she'd been born
and bred in Scotland."

As a result of that visit the Lehmanns were invited to attend a concert
held several evenings later. Night work was now at an end and the men
had asked permission to give an entertainment, a kind of house-warming,
for the new mess hall. They were to furnish the talent and had appointed
Lieutenant Kelly as their master of ceremonies. While we were having
dinner that evening the lieutenant had suggested to General Clarke that
the Lehmanns be asked to come.

"The boys have heard about them, sir. They thought they might be willing
to help out with the musical part of the program. Maybe they'd let us
bring the piano over."

"Good idea," said the general, heartily. "Go right ahead! If they'll
come it will be a fine addition to the program."

No time was wasted. Immediately after dinner the lieutenant went across
in the launch with a dozen of the boys and soon returned with the piano.
The concert was to begin at half-past seven and well before that time
every man not on duty came to the mess hall. Lieutenant Kelly brought
the Lehmanns over. This was the first time most of the boys had seen
them, and while the lieutenant was introducing them to the men taking
part in the concert, others crowded round to be introduced. The general,
Commander Brigham, Viggo, and I were sitting in one of the front rows.

"What did I tell you?" the general remarked. "She's takin' 'em by storm.
She's the girl he left behind him to every young feller here."

That about hit off the situation, I thought. A part of Miss Lehmann's
charm came from the fact that she was so unconscious of exerting it, and
this was no affectation on her part. She was simple and natural and
friendly without a trace of coquetry. Mr. Lehmann stood to one side,
pleased and proud of the impression his daughter was making. Now that
they had come there was to be a slight rearrangement in the program.
Miss Lehmann was to play the accompaniment for the vocal numbers and
both she and her father were to join the orchestra for some of the
instrumental ones.

The boys were proud of their orchestra. It was top-heavy with
saxophones, of course, but they had two violins--three with Mr.
Lehmann--a flute, a clarinet, a piano accordion, and a bass fiddle. The
opening number was the _Poet and Peasant_ overture and it made the hit
it always does. The boy with the piano accordion was an ace with that
instrument, an orchestra in himself, and you would have said that the
Lehmanns had played the _Poet and Peasant_ times without number, which
may have been the case. When it came to the pretty waltz refrain, Mr.
Lehmann made his violin speak in a way that went straight to everyone's
heart, and the boys playing with him outdid themselves in their pleasure
at having a first-class violinist to lead them.

After that came all sorts of turns, musical and otherwise, but the one I
remember best was a song that came toward the end of the program. The
singer was a young aircraft mechanic with an excellent baritone voice,
and by some miracle he was not a crooner. He first sang "When Day Is
Done" to Miss Lehmann's accompaniment. There was tumultuous applause so
he returned for an encore. As he placed the music before Miss Lehmann
and she glanced over it, I saw a startled look come into her eyes. I
don't think anyone else noticed it unless it was Viggo. Certainly, the
young man didn't, but stood facing his audience, waiting for her to play
the opening bars. The song was "You Will Remember Vienna."

You're probably familiar with the song; it's from a motion picture that
was very popular some years back. There's real nostalgia in it for the
old happy carefree Vienna; both words and music must have been written
by someone who knew and loved that Vienna.

          As the years roll on
          After you have gone
          You will remember Vienna;
          Life that was happy and hearts that were free...

That's how the refrain goes, and every word must have been like a blow
on the heart to the Lehmanns. But Miss Lehmann carried through her part
like a Spartan. Not a tear did she shed.

                         *    *    *    *    *

There's little more to tell. Captain Tihoti's schooner returned the
following day, bringing Father Vincent home. I'm not going into that.
You will know how the old priest must have felt as he stood on the
former village _motu_, gazing down the length of it toward the place
where his church and garden had been. But he had a valiant spirit. I
never saw him to better advantage than at that moment. The work of half
his lifetime had been swept away, but you would never have guessed from
his manner that the loss was of any great consequence. He was concerned
only about his flock and how they were to live now, under the changed
conditions. Within an hour of his return he was on his way to them.

I had been working on the _motu_ to which they had been moved,
installing their fresh-water distillation plant, and my heart was sore
for every one of them. A few of them were halfheartedly plaiting palm
fronds for their new houses, but for the most part they merely erected
small lean-tos, temporary shelters, and let it go at that. They sat in
groups or wandered aimlessly about the small islet, watching our men at
work, but, seemingly, without the wish or the capacity for taking up the
broken threads of their own way of living. I had the feeling that the
coming of the freighter, with all that had entailed, marked the end of
an era in Polynesian life, to be followed, perhaps, by changes even
greater than those which had taken place when the ships of Wallis and
Cook and Bougainville had first appeared over their horizons. And not
only in Polynesia were these changes taking place. On islands and
archipelagoes in the Western Pacific the patterns of native life were
being broken up to a far greater extent. Perhaps, in the long run, it
will prove to have been for their good. Who can say, now? Insofar as one
small island of Polynesia is concerned I could see present evil very
clearly, but I was not able to foresee the ultimate good to offset it.

Old Captain Tihoti was, I believe, hit harder by the changes than either
Viggo or Father Vincent; at any rate, he showed it more. Viggo and I had
lunch with him just before the schooner sailed, and he gave vent to his
feelings in snorts, explosive sentences, and wrathful predictions of the
fate of the island and its people, now that both had been drawn into the
net of the Central Pacific defense line.

"It's done for," he said, bitterly. "Look at the place! What good will
it ever be, again?"

Viggo tried to speak hopefully of the future, but the captain cut him
short.

"Trying to fool yourself, Viggo," he said. "You know that as well as I
do. What kind of a life can the people have now? Suppose the war lasts
another two or three years--how you going to keep 'em cooped up on one
little _motu_? They'll all die of boredom. Wait till they start flying
the aeroplanes around here. What about the birds? Won't be any of 'em
left in a few weeks. No, this island's finished. When the war's over it
won't be worth a damn to anyone, white or native!"

We said good-bye to him and the Lehmanns the same afternoon. Since they
had to go, the Lehmanns felt that the sooner they left the better, and
the captain had no wish to remain a moment longer than was necessary.
There was no lingering over the farewells. Miss Lehmann spoke quietly
and cheerfully as though she and her father were going to an assured
destination, but this, I could see, was largely for Papa Viggo's sake.
All their possessions were in one small trunk and a suitcase, and Mr.
Lehmann had his precious violin in its case under his arm. Viggo and I
stood on the newly made wharf waving to them until the schooner was far
down the lagoon heading for the passage to the open sea.

Orders for my own departure had already come. I had a new assignment,
Alaska this time, and General Clarke informed me that I would be able to
make at least a part of the homeward journey by air. A wireless message
had been received of the coming of a plane, Honolulu bound from
Australia via New Zealand. It was a four-motored transport plane and
arrived the following morning. Captain Tihoti's prediction of what would
happen to the sea fowl was borne out by the arrival of this first plane
to land at P-R-B 9. It approached from the southwest and in circling the
atoll it splashed through a cloud of birds hovering over one of the
_motu_ where the _kavekas_ were then nesting. No harm was done to the
plane except for the fact that it was spattered with blood and the
mangled carcasses of birds churned to bits by the propellers.

There were some big shots on board, English, Dutch, and American, mostly
civilian officials, part of the backwash that had followed the Jap
invasion of Malaya, Java, and other places in the Western Pacific. All
were U.S.A. bound, on various missions, I suppose.

We took off late in the afternoon and as we crossed the main islet at
about five hundred feet, I had my last view of Viggo, waving a
palm-frond as he had that day on his turtle refuge, to scare the birds
away. I wished him well with all my heart; but as I looked down upon
that denuded island, swept bare of everything that had made it a
pleasant homeland for its people, the desolation I felt was but a
reflection of that which my eyes beheld.

I was to see the Lehmanns once more; at least, I was to see Captain
George's schooner, carrying them on the next uncertain lap of a voyage
that seemed destined never to end. They were far out at sea, and from
our height of eight thousand feet the schooner looked no larger than
half a matchstick. There was only a glimpse; then it was gone.

We passed ten or fifteen miles to the eastward of the island where I had
landed from the plane on my voyage out. The sun had just set and the
island stood out clearly silhouetted against the golden light. As I
watched it receding swiftly behind us, I said, in thought, "Good-bye,
Polynesia," with the fear in my heart that it was good-bye forever to
the old peaceful life of those once remote islands and archipelagoes.

I was in a sober mood; perhaps my thoughts were gloomier than they
should have been, but you must remember what I had seen happen to one of
the islands in the space of three weeks. I felt, as I have said, that
what was happening here was a tragedy for all mankind. For our planet is
none too large, as many of us are beginning to realize, and if we give
machines the scope they increasingly demand for their kind of life and
activity, what kind of world shall we human beings have, in another half
century? I had the feeling that, even before the war could end, the
integrity of indigenous life, in no matter what remote corner of the
world, might be so far destroyed that it would be lost forever.

I found these lines from the "Song of Kiho" running through my head:--

    Now dreams the Almighty God.
    Now the Almighty-God-of-the-Cosmic-Night dwelling below in Havaiki,
    visions:...
    The unfolding of the wide realms of the Earth, a sanctuary for the
    living;
    The under-propping of the Sky World here above, a Homeland for the
    Gods...

Where, I wondered, in days to come, would there be found any sanctuary
for the living? As for the gods, the only one I was aware of in that
ancient Polynesian homeland was the man-created, four-motored _deus ex
machina_ winging its way through falling night toward Honolulu.




                                   IX


Webber was the first to speak.

"And that's the end?" he asked.

The engineer nodded.

"Of my part in the story," he replied. "As for what has happened
since..."

They were silent for some time; then Professor Marsh said: "You will
understand our interest, George. You've heard from your friend Viggo?"

"Yes, on several occasions."

"Well, then?"

"Phil, I've given you all the essentials. You can write the Epilogue for
yourselves. As a homeland for its people the island has been destroyed
almost as completely as Father Vincent's church and his garden. Let the
broad statement suffice. Why dwell on the particulars?"

"Because you yourself did," Marsh replied. "And because, like yourself,
I lack the detached, cosmic point of view. Human concerns are
all-important to me, too."

"What ones chiefly, in this case?" Dodd asked.

"How is one to say, George? You've given me an ache in the heart from
too many directions at once. While you were telling the story, I was
thinking of the island in terms of some small community here at home,
suddenly invaded and overwhelmed by forces that would be as strange, as
unintelligible to us as ours to the Polynesians; and we as helpless
against the invasion.... And yet, I'm not wholly sure that my first
concern _is_ for the natives themselves, except, of course, in a general
way. You've not particularized them to any extent, as individuals..."

"I couldn't," said Dodd, "without making the story unconscionably long.
And you must remember how brief a time I had to know them, and that I
lacked their speech."

"I understand," said Marsh; "which is the reason, no doubt, why my
concern goes out more strongly, perhaps, to Viggo, and the Lehmanns, and
that fine old priest. What has happened in his case?"

"Wait, Phil," Webber put in. "Let that come in a moment. What about
Viggo's turtles, and the sea birds? Did his refuge have to go?"

"Yes," said Dodd, "Viggo wrote me about that. The turtle refuge was
taken over for gun emplacements, as I feared would happen. As for the
sea birds... I can tell you of them in terms of what happened on
another lonely island, Ascension, where, as you may know, our Air
Transport Service has established a base. I clipped this news item from
a paper I was reading on the train, yesterday:--

    "The difficulties of maintaining a base at Ascension have been
    due to its remoteness, its lack of any natural advantages, and
    its birds. Hundreds of thousands of sea birds stubbornly nested
    on the newly made runways. No matter how often they were shooed
    off, or splashed through by the huge air transports, back they
    came. The Army appealed to the ornithologists, who scratched
    their heads. Cats were imported, but the strong-winged boobies
    routed the cats. At last a curator of birds from the American
    Museum of Natural History made a special trip to Ascension. His
    uncomplicated solution was to destroy their eggs and to keep on
    destroying them till the birds gave up. For some time thereafter
    A.T.C. personnel ate eggs, walked on eggs, engaged in sham
    battles with eggs, with clouds of indignant 'wide-awakes'
    circling overhead. From the latest reports, the situation at
    Ascension, with respect to the sea birds, is now well in hand."

"That is how the problem was solved at P-R-B 9," Dodd added; "but I
gather that no curator of dead birds from the Natural History Museum was
needed to instruct them what to do."

"I can guess that another problem has not been solved so easily," Webber
remarked, after a moment of silence. "What of General Clarke's hopeful
plans for keeping his men apart from the island women?"

"You're right: they went all astray," Dodd replied, slowly. "As I've
read Viggo's letters, I've felt that difficult situation becoming more
and more acute. He has given me just enough anxious hints so that I was
able to draw my own conclusions. But in his latest letter, without
anything to prepare me for it, he announced, quite simply, that all
three of his daughters are in the family way, by American soldiers."

Webber burst out laughing; then checked himself abruptly, gazing at the
others in an abashed manner.

"Now why in the world did I do that?" he said.

Dodd smiled, faintly.

"It's understandable, Charlie. There is, often, something intrinsically
comical in tragic situations. Perhaps it's the fullness of the measure,
in Viggo's case, that struck you as laughable, here. The island he loved
so much overrun by strangers and the life of its people completely
disorganized; his turtle refuge gone, his birds gone, and now all three
of his daughters--far gone in pregnancy. And no one really to blame,
least of all General Clarke. He did his best, but he must have known, in
his heart, what would happen. There are now three hundred and seventy
men on the atoll, all of them young fellows, lonely, homesick, and, most
of them, bored almost to death. Is it to be wondered at that they should
seek distraction, consolation?"

"But... but how has this worked out, George?" Professor Marsh asked.
"What of the island men? Does Viggo speak of them?"

"Yes.... Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out. It's not only the young
women who are involved; the married ones, too. It's a forlorn situation;
one of those problems without solution. In the case of one native
husband--killed by a soldier, presumably in self-defense--there was
stark tragedy."

"There must be scores of islands farther west in the Pacific where the
same problem exists," said Webber.

"Undoubtedly... but there..."

"I was thinking," Dodd resumed, "of the far grimmer problem--of life
itself--that the natives of those islands are faced with; of the fate in
store for the vast archipelagoes in that part of the Pacific as the war
gathers intensity. What will be left of their native inhabitants? What
will be left of the islands themselves after hurricanes of shells,
bombs, torpedoes, land and sea mines have laid them waste time after
time? The desolation in Europe, Russia, North Africa, will not equal
that of innumerable small islands subjected for months, perhaps years,
to the concentrated destruction from both sides that is, certainly,
coming. One can hope that Polynesia and the archipelagoes in the eastern
Pacific have, at least, been spared that fate."

"Don't be too sure," said Webber. "There may be a World War III to
come."

"I said that one can hope."

"What were those lines, George, in the Polynesian Song of Creation you
read to us?" Marsh asked.

          "Erect at last, upon the Sacred Mound of My Temple,
          Ahu-Toru, Altar-of-Ascending-Fire,
                          *    *    *
          "While the fire leaps upward in streaming flame.

"And now the fires are leaping again, but not the sacred fires of
creation.... What would those so-called heathen think of our world of
today, could they view it? And of us, the inheritors?"

"We might inquire of that old native," said Webber. "What was his name?
Kamak?"

"Yes," said Dodd. "He's still on the tiny _motu_, Viggo writes, the one
he moved to when we started clearing the village islet. It's not more
than twenty paces across, with a few old coconut palms and pandanus
trees growing there. Fortunately, Kamak has not had to be disturbed
again."

"Now what of Father Vincent?" Marsh asked. "Does he plan to rebuild his
church?"

Dodd shook his head.

"Viggo thinks not. I suppose that he hasn't the heart for it. I wish you
could read Viggo's letters; they are full of comment and sad speculation
about Father Vincent and the Lehmanns. He writes just as he talks; I can
feel the long periods of silence between the sentences. The old father,
he says, carries on his work as quietly and faithfully as ever; but the
disintegration of native life and the loss of his church and garden have
been too much for him, at his age. Viggo writes that he often sees him
standing on the old village _motu_, looking down the denuded land toward
the place where his church and garden were, as though he cannot yet
realize that they are irrevocably gone. The bell, the salvaged timbers,
and the stained-glass windows remain where they were stored by the
wrecking crew."

"What does he say of the Lehmanns?"

"Poor old Viggo! He worries as much about them as he does about Father
Vincent. He's had only one letter from the Lehmanns, written shortly
after their arrival at the other island, the seat of government. At that
time they were expecting, or at least hoping, to find work there, but
they gave him no details. For all their hope, he fears they may have had
to go elsewhere. Now that the atoll is a military base, Captain Tihoti's
schooner no longer calls there, so Viggo gets no more news through him."

Presently Dodd got to his feet and slowly paced the room a time or two.
Drawing a matchstick from his vest pocket, he broke it in half and
tossed one piece onto the rug before him. Hands in pockets, he stood
gazing down at it as though from a great height.

"You will remember my saying that, when I last saw Captain Tihoti's
schooner, with the Lehmanns on board, the vessel was far out at sea,
looking no larger than half a matchstick, from our height of eight
thousand feet. I still think of the Lehmanns as being in that lonely,
homeless, friendless situation, always forced to move on, like so many
thousands of their race, to some unknown, uncertain destination....
If only wishing them well might help!

"There is another picture that comes often into mind," he added. "A
picture of the island itself on a night of full moon. It was the night
just before the freighter came, when I met Miss Lehmann in Father
Vincent's garden and we walked together to the end of the village
_motu_. She had said, 'It may be our last chance to see it as it is
now,' and that proved to be the case. Having gone to the far point we
walked slowly back, saying little, and when halfway to the village
seated ourselves at the upper slope of the beach where we could look out
over the lagoon. We had no further conversation; we merely sat there,
enjoying the peace and beauty of the night, which seemed, somehow,
beyond that of Earth. But at last Miss Lehmann broke the stillness to
make a single perfect comment, a quoted phrase from Matthew Arnold's
'Rugby Chapel':--

                   "...the moonlit solitudes mild
                   Of the midmost ocean...

"Just that--nothing more. A moment later we walked on, in silence, to
the village."






[End of Lost Island, by James Norman Hall]
