Palmerston Island
Chapter XIII A Hint of Hurricane — The Atoll of Perfection, Introducing “Mister Masters Himself”
Between the Societies and Australia there is a regular line of steamships calling at Raratonga, Samoa, and New Zealand, and it was to avoid this cut-and-dried route that we of the dream ship headed for Palmerston Island, a mere speck on the chart six hundred miles distant.
But we sailed just that trifle too soon that makes all the difference between a fair-weather passage and the reverse. December to April, inclusive, is the hurricane season in this part of the Pacific, when the schooner skippers from Raratonga and other places in the direct path of the cyclonic disturbance see fit to lie up in the comparative safety of Papeete harbour, and we sailed early in the latter month.
I am not claiming that we encountered a hurricane; far from it, for it is doubtful if even the dream ship would have survived a full-fledged demon of the species. In these same latitudes I have seen turf torn from the face of the earth and rolled up like a carpet by sheer force of wind, and mile-wide swaths cut as cleanly as with a sickle through settlement, plantation, and jungle. But these exhibitions of ferocity were witnessed from terra firma. It is a totally different thing from the deck of a small boat at sea.
Surely, if man does not recognize his own insignificance when faced with overwhelming turmoil of wind and wave, he never will. He shrivels on the instant from a being of considerable importance in his own estimation to the semblance of a microbe; and his craft follows suit by dwindling from a sturdy home to a cockleshell. That is why it is best for the mariner, if he can manage it, not to think too deeply during time of stress.
The demon was about, as evidenced by the barometer which fell to twenty-nine, but his main body, writhing in a circle as is his wont, must have missed us, for all we of the dream ship encountered was a lashing of his tail.
It was enough. It blew, and it rained. Lord, how it blew and rained! first from dead ahead, which caused us to heave to; then, as the vicious circle was completed, from dead aft, so that we “ran” like a wind-driven rag under double reef and storm jib.
It is an easy thing to “run”; the difficulty is to know when to stop. There is always the possibility of being “pooped,” which simply means being overtaken by a mountain of water and crushed into the depths out of harm’s way for good and all. To the uninitiated it would appear that the faster a ship travels the better chance she has of escaping a following sea. But this is not so. No one has yet succeeded in explaining the phenomenon satisfactorily, but it seems that the wake caused by even a small boat passing down the face of a comber induces it to break prematurely, and if the boat and the comber chance to be travelling at the same speed, the latter breaks aboard, that is all.
It is a chance that all who go down to the sea in ships must take when they “run,” and the only way of obviating the disaster is to restrain a very natural desire to “get on with it” while the weather is fair, and heave to in time.
In the case of the dream ship there was no need to do this, as we had reduced canvas to such an extent that she was not doing more than ten knots, and rose to the summit of each breaking comber like a cork. I have yet to see the weather that she could not face without flinching, and I treasure her design beyond price.
After such a bucketing Palmerston was a welcome sight, as welcome as it was unique. It is doubtful if such another gem adorns the earth. Neither atoll nor island, it is a perfect combination of both; a natural necklace of surf-pounded coral strung with six equidistant, verdant islets, the whole enclosing a shallow lagoon slashed with unbelievable colour.
Such was Palmerston as we approached it before a stiff southeast “trade,” to be welcomed by a fleet of amazingly fast luggers and their astonished crews.
Who were we?
Where had we sprung from?
Had we any matches?
To our own astonishment the questions were fired at us in English, and, what was more, English of a strangely familiar pattern. It is a quaint thing to hear one’s own tongue fluently bandied amongst a brown-skinned people on an isolated speck of earth in mid-Pacific. But there was no opportunity of solving the riddle just then.
“Let go!”
“She’s set!”
“Lower the peak!”
“Lower the main!”
The dream ship had come to anchor on the north-west side of the reef, well sheltered from the almost eternal southeast trades of these latitudes, and the pilot, a six-foot figure of bronze sketchily attired in a converted flour sack, was addressing us with a courtesy as unusual as it was refreshing.
With our permission, he would take us ashore at once. Mister Masters himself had given instructions.
The “Mister Masters himself” settled it. We tumbled into one of the luggers, tumbled out again at the reef, and stood knee-deep in swirling waters while the pilot and his crew towed the craft against a ten-knot current through the boat passage; then aboard once more and away at an eight-knot clip through a maze of coral mushrooms, bumping, grazing, ricocheting, until finally sliding to rest on a glistening coral beach.
“Mister Masters himself,” a dignified old gentleman with a flowing white beard, a tight alpaca jacket, and the general air of a patriarch, met us at the veranda steps of his spacious home, and inside of ten minutes we were sitting down to a meal of meals.
Our host informed us that the schooner was overdue and we must excuse the viands, but I saw no need for apology. In fact, how a few acres of powdered coral could have produced the variety of edibles we consumed at that meal passes my understanding. “Sailing Directions” in its own terse way, says of these atolls: “Inhabitants live entirely on cocoanuts and fish,” and it sounds stringent enough, but I beg to state that our menu on one of them, namely Palmerston, read as follows:
SOUP:
TURTLE
(Made of the genuine article, taken but a few hours ago from its playground in a zinc bath at the door.)
FISH
(I know not of what species, but tastier than most of the tropical varieties.)
BOILED FOWL
(And not the wretched victim of malnutrition emanating from most tropical barnyards; nor served undecapitated as appears usual in the Islands.)
ROAST PORK
(Which must have subsisted during its lifetime on something more nourishing than coral.)
VEGETABLES:
SWEET POTATOES
TARO ROOT
SWEETS:
COCOANUT PUDDING
(The core of cocoanuts stewed in milk squeezed from the meat of the nut, a dainty warranted to send the restaurant connoisseur into ecstasies if it ever reaches him, which is unlikely.)
Over rum, emanating from the dream ship, as the local supply of liqueur was retained for strictly medicinal purposes, the history of Palmerston Island was unfolded.
What any student of Island history knows is that it was discovered by Captain Cook in 1774 on his second voyage, though some authorities claim it to be the “San Pablo” of Magellan, the first island discovered in the South Seas; that on his third and last voyage Cook landed again to get fodder for his starving cattle; and that later on it came under the critical notice of the Bounty mutineers, who, after a thorough spoiling in luxurious Tahiti, decided against Palmerston as their future home.
But what everyone does not know is the history of the Masters family who now occupy the island.
One William Masters, as fine an old English sea-dog as ever came off a whaler, took a fancy to the place in 1862, leased it from the British Government, and, not believing in half measures, took unto himself three native wives. By each he had a large and healthy family that he reared in strict accordance with his own standards of social usage.
That they were sound standards is evidenced in the people of Palmerston to-day. They read, write, and speak English, this last with an accent vaguely reminiscent of the southwest of England. They are courteous, hospitable, and honest to a degree little short of startling these days, and although naturally inbred, they do not show it mentally or physically.
The islets scattered round the reef have been equally distributed amongst the descendants of William Masters’s three wives, who now number ninety-eight, and under the authority of the island council, presided over by “Mister Masters himself,” are worked to such purpose that they produce a thousand pounds’ worth of copra per year.
I have Palmerston securely pigeon-holed in my own mind as the spot of all others in which, when the time comes, to sit down and wait for the end. The outside world, in the shape of a schooner from the Cook Group, intrudes itself but once a year. The ordinary infirmities to which flesh is heir are non-existent. The lagoon and the neighbouring islets are a mine of interest to the naturalist or sportsman, and the people have a charm that is all their own.
One thing alone troubles the Masters of to-day. To whom do they and their island belong? The war has changed all things. The Cook Group, two hundred and seventy-three miles to the southeast, of which Palmerston has now been declared a far-flung unit, is administered by New Zealand. Is “Mister Masters himself” to be taxed, governed, and generally harried by a people who hardly existed when his father took over the island? It looks like it. Here is as fine an example of the communal system worked out on a practical and prosperous basis as will be found in the world to-day. Why, and again why, cannot incipient administrators be induced to leave well alone?
A tour of the tiny settlement is worth while. Not long ago a French brigantine rammed the reef on a clear night of stars, while the crew, including the lookout, was below playing cards, with the result that Palmerston settlement to-day is for the most part built of ship’s timbers and planking, companions, portholes, bunks, and miscellaneous brass fittings.
The little church, which is in course of construction and meantime serves as a school house, boasts walls and pulpit composed entirely of panelled doors from the hulk; and fine old seasoned timber it is.
The recognized playground is outside the church door under the palms, where a cricket pitch entices all and sundry. But the real playground of Palmerston is the boat passage in the reef, through which a mill race rushes at each turn of the tide. Here the multitudinous offspring of William Masters disport themselves on every contrivance that floats, from a full-fledged sailing-boat to a weather-board, and at the rate of knots sweep yelling round tortuous curves to or from the sea.
The dream ship, riding at anchor outside the reef, became the centre of attraction, and finally added to her many accomplishments by becoming a bargain store.
It may be remembered that on setting out from England we had laid in certain commodities known as “barter.” Well, they were still aboard—slightly mildewed, but aboard—for the good and sufficient reason that we had not been able to get rid of them. It appeared that our ideas on the subject of “barter” were archaic. Nothing short of silk stockings, real gold watch chains, gramaphones, and gin is acceptable in the Islands these days. How could we offer such a discriminating public rusty jew’s-harps?
But here was an opportunity not to be missed. “Sale! Sale!! Sale!!! Heart-rending reductions!” was the notice I suggested nailing to the mast, but there was no need. The entire population of Palmerston tumbled aboard like an avalanche, and gigglingly surveyed our effects outspread on the engine-room hatch.
To any one requiring the services of a thoroughly efficient window-dresser and salesman, I can heartily recommend Steve. Until the occasion of the dream ship’s jumble sale I had, it appears, misjudged the man. Prose poems to a piece of voile (double width, slightly soiled and cunningly displayed on an arm) fell from his lips like rain. Imitation leather belts, looking glasses conveying a somewhat distorted reflection, near tortoise-shell haircombs, rusty knives, even jew’s-harps, each and all possessed some sterling virtue of which I had been ignorant until enlightened by Steve. And they “went.” It was my humble duty to make a note of the sales, and there was no keeping tally of them. In twenty minutes our “counters” were bare, and our customers clamouring for more.
And this was not all. From below, where Peter was supposed to be conducting a kind of ice-cream social without the ice-cream, came the unmistakable sounds of “barter,” and when we mere males had succeeded in fighting our way through a solid mass of femininity, it was to behold her surrounded with a drift of every domestic commodity from raspberry jam to a safety-pin.
“They wanted them so badly, poor things,” she confessed to me after the fracas, but did not succeed in hiding from me the embers of battle in her eye. Brothers are awkward things.
It was only when the last boatload of cheerful humanity had taken its departure, and we of the dream ship were dividing the spoils, that it was discovered by a closer reference to the invoices we had sold everything at cost!
Four more days we spent at Palmerston for the simple reason that we could not tear ourselves away.
It was a pleasant thing of an evening to wander over the firm wet sand of the beaches hand in hand with singing children, while a tribe of dogs leapt after mocking sea birds, or splashed into rock-pools snapping at the fish.
Perhaps the tide had turned, and one by one the coral mushrooms reared fantastic shapes out of the still waters of the lagoon—a gambolling elf, a ship under full sail, a mammoth bird or beast. It was difficult to realize one was not in fairyland—and an unworthy task at that. But again, even here, there entered the tragic touch of the South Seas. A thin spiral of blue smoke rose from the smallest of the islets across the lagoon, and I asked who lived there. A brother and sister, I was told, lepers.
“We’re going to have shell in the lagoon as soon as we can get some by the schooner,” “Mister Masters himself” told me on the veranda one evening. “Ought to do well enough. And we could run a few cattle here, too. But a schooner a year isn’t much good to a man, is it?”
I admitted that it could hardly be called a “service.”
“I’d have a proper passage dynamited in the reef,” he went on, presently, “and you could do a bit of trading between here and the Cooks and Tahiti. And you could have a house here, and Matha to look after you—if you’d care to stay.”
I looked at him, at Palmerston, at the dream ship, and regretfully shook my head.
“Not yet,” said I.
Au revoir, little island. Some day in the not very distant future a decrepit, irritable old man will return to your hospitable shores in search of peace; and if you are then as you are now—which Heaven send!—he will assuredly find it.