www.tvds.net - An Island to Oneself, by Tom Neale

Contents

For George Moore Taggart III
My American Friend in
The Old Tahiti Days

My thanks are due to "Peb" Rockefeller who took the photographs opposite pages 64, 65, 128, and 129 in this book when he visited Suvarov in 1954. The remaining photographs were taken by Noel Barber and Chuck Smouse when they visited me for the Daily Mail in 1961, and my thanks are due to the Daily Mail, London, for permission to reproduce them.

Author’s Note

This is the story of six years which I spent alone, in two spells on an uninhabited coral atoll half a mile long and three hundred yards wide in the South Pacific. It was two hundred miles from the nearest inhabited island, and I first arrived there on October 7, 1952 and remained alone (with only two yachts calling) until June 24, 1954, when I was taken off ill after a dramatic rescue.

I was unable to return to the atoll until April 23, 1960 and this time I remained alone until December 27, 1963.

Tom Neale Tahiti and Rarotonga, 1964-1965

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An Island To Oneself
INTRODUCTION

by Noel Barber

Contents

For four rough days I had sailed due east from Samoa in a rusty old vessel called the Manua Tele which I had chartered in Pago Pago. Our destination was Suvarov atoll, a tiny group of islets in a coral reef normally uninhabited but where, it was said, a white man had lived alone for five years.

When I awoke on the fifth morning, the swell had gone, the Manua Tele’s engines were still, and the old tub was rocking gently at anchor. I donned a pair of shorts, picked up a tin of beer and some bananas and went on deck.

Ahead of us the reef thrashed the water in a line stretching for miles; beyond it, drenched in sun, was man’s most elusive dream, a coral island.

Suddenly, as the Samoan at the wheel searched for the pass through the reef, I saw a flash of movement where the palms met the coral, and a man bounded out and started waving. Through the glasses I saw him run to a tiny boat, push it into the water, and a few minutes later he had a sail up to help him as he rowed towards the Manua Tele. Within twenty minutes he was climbing aboard with the agility of a boy of twenty.

"Not bad for fifty-eight," he grinned; and this was my introduction to a man who had done what millions of us dream of doing, but never seem to do. For Tom Neale, a New Zealander, had left the world behind for life alone on a coral island so remote from the trade routes that he was fortunate if one ship a year called by chance to disturb his solitude.

What had made him do it? Was he intelligent–or was he slightly mad? He didn’t look a crank, as he sat there on the deck, the Manua Tele rolling gently in the swell. Tall and spare, his skin was stained dark brown; he wore tennis shoes, a pair of ragged sorts, ("Usually I wear a strip of pareu, but I thought there might be women aboard!") and a battered old hat. His greying hair was close-cropped. But it was his eyes that fascinated me. Brown and watchful–the alertness accentuated by the wrinkles the sun had drawn on his burned face–they were never still. They had a laugh in them, but they were always restlessly watching–a cloud in the sky, the Samoan mate’s brown back, the size of a wave, me, each time I spoke.

Though I am delighted that Tom has asked me to write an introduction to his book, it is not my place to describe the island and how he met the challenge of living on it. Tom has done that in a story I have found fascinating. I am more concerned with the man himself–with perhaps some aspects of his character that he has not put forward, for I found him very modest, quiet and intelligent, with a wonderful sense of humour and a lively curiosity about events in the world he had left behind. No, this was no crank.

He kept a journal, and its pages were crammed with neat, careful writing. He used an old-fashioned nib–in itself an indication of a character far more fastidious than I would have imagined; for any thoughts that Tom Neale might have lowered his standards simply because he was alone were quickly dispelled. Indeed, of all the anomalies of Tom’s island, nothing struck me so forcibly as the sight of him carefully washing up; holding a glass to the light to be sure it was clean–all incredibly incongruous, for outside, the coconut palms rustled, the sea lapped on the beach, and beyond the reef the lonely immensity of the Pacific started rolling to the nearest coral atoll two hundred miles away.

But Tom was the most house-proud man I ever met. Every cup and saucer was in its right place. The dishcloth was stretched to dry. When I dropped a bit of coconut shell on the veranda, he quickly kicked it away, and twice on that first day he swept out the hut with his home-made broom of palm fronds. And when he made his first cup of good tea for months with the tea I had brought him, he carefully heated the pot first.

"Even when I use old leaves over and over again, I always heat the pot first," he said, adding almost severely, "I hate tea out of a cold pot."

I can see him now after dinner, sitting on an old box, leaning forward, drawing an aimless pattern in the white coral dust, enjoying the sheer pleasure of talking, of forming words, for mine was the first ship he had seen for eight months.

But as he talked, I realised with something of a shock that though he was obviously pleased to see me, and was delighted with the stores I had brought him, he would not miss me when I left. He had never even bothered to inquire how long I intended to stay.

Only when I asked him the inevitable question "What made you do it?" was he silent for a long time, and I can remember the scene now on that long, black beautiful night; the hurricane lamp between us, Tom’s mahogany-coloured face half lit, two cups and the empty teapot on the roughly hewn table, one of his cats sitting upright, still as an idol.

"Many people asked me that–even before I left to come here," he said finally, "and I must admit I’ve answered the question in many different ways; probably to get rid of them because I felt they would never really understand. Sometimes I’ve tried to put my feelings into words. But even then I would wonder, ‘Is that really why I came?’

"The real truth is, you don’t make decisions like this all at once. I’d been growing towards the idea for thirty years."

Then suddenly he added, half teasingly, "Don’t go getting the wrong idea, though, and thinking I’m a hermit. Do I look like one?" He leaned forward. "I like people–I honestly do. I’m not just evading responsibilities. I suppose really–honestly–I don’t quite know why I did come here in the first place."

We sat talking far into the night. The moon came up, silhouetting the Manua Tele framed in palms, reminding me of a scene in Treasure Island with the Hispaniola anchored off-shore. But that had been a beautiful island of violence; this was a paradise of peace. Everything was calm and still on the beach. Even for me, a casual visitor, the world had ceased to exist. Here was nothing but peace, for even nature was not hostile.

When the time came for me to leave Suvarov, something very curious happened. I had, in fact, rather dreaded the moment, possibly thinking of those endless embarrassing farewells on railway platforms; but when the actual moment arrived and the Manua Tele’s boat was ready to take me off the beach, Tom squeezed my hand firmly and said: "It’s been wonderful seeing you, Noel, and I can’t thank you enough for all the stores you brought."

I wondered how he felt, but I had no time to find out, for as the crew pushed the boat into the turquoise water, he loped back up the beach and vanished in the shade of the coconut palms. He never once looked back.

Was that quick, unemotional farewell a sign of inner contentment or was it a mask to hide his despair at being left alone?

I never knew until I read this book. There is a photo of Noel Barber further on in this book.

An Island to Oneself
PART ONE - The Years of Waiting
Chapter 1: Wanderlust in the Sun and moon

Contents

I was fifty when I went to live alone on Suvarov, after thirty years of roaming the Pacific, and in this story I will try to describe my feelings, try to put into words what was, for me, the most remarkable and worthwhile experience of my whole life.

I chose to live in the Pacific islands because life there moves at the sort of pace which you feel God must have had in mind originally when He made the sun to keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the taking; but though I came to know most of the islands, for the life of me I sometimes wonder what it was in my blood that had brought me to live among them. There was no history of wanderlust in my family that I knew of–other than the enterprise which had brought my father, who was born in Wellington, though while I was still a baby we moved to Greymouth in New Zealand’s South Island, where my father was appointed paymaster to the state coal mines. Here we remained until I was about seven, when the family–I had two brothers and three sisters–moved to Timaru on the opposite side of South Island.

It was a change for the better. My maternal grandmother owned twenty acres of land only five miles out of Timaru and here we settled down, my father commuting to his new office either by bicycle, trap or on horseback, while I went to the local school where (with all due modesty) I was good enough in reading, geography and arithmetic to merit a rapid move from Standard One to Standard Three.

Looking back, I imagine the real clue to my future aspirations lay in the fact that it always seemed absolutely natural that I should go to sea. I cannot remember ever contemplating any other way of life and there was no opposition from my parents when I announced I would like to join the New Zealand Navy. My real ambition was to become a skilled navigator, but when my father took me to Auckland Naval Base to sign on, I was dismayed to discover that already I was too old at eighteen and a half to be apprenticed as a seaman.

It was a bitter disappointment, but I had set my heart on a seafaring career and did the next best thing. Signing on as an apprentice engineer meant starting right at the bottom–and I mean at the bottom–as a stoker, although I didn’t mind because the job, however menial, would give me a chance to see something of the Pacific.

I spent four years in the New Zealand Navy before buying myself out, and I only left because of a nagging desire to see more of the world than the brief glimpses we obtained beyond the confining, narrow streets of the ports where we docked. And our visits were dictated by naval necessity–simple things like routine patrols or defective boilers–so that I saw Papeete but never Tahiti; Apia but never Samoa; Nukualofa but never Tonga. It was the islands I always longed to see, not a vista of dock cranes nor the sleazy bars which one can find in every maritime corner of the world.

For the next few years I wandered from island to island. Sometimes I would take a job for a few months as a fireman on one of the slow, old, inter-island tramps. When I tired of this, I would settle down for a spell, clearing bush or planting bananas. There was always work, and there was always food. And it was only now that I really came to know and love the islands strung like pearls across the South Pacific–Manihiki at dawn as the schooner threads its way through the pass in the reef; Papeete at sunset with the Pacific lapping up against the main street; the haze on the coconut palms of Puka Puka; the clouds above Moorea with its jagged silhouette of extinct volcanoes; Pago Pago, where Somerset Maugham created the character of Sadie Thompson, and where you can still find the Rainmaker’s Hotel; Apia, where I was later told, Michener was inspired to create Blood Mary and where Aggie Grey’s Hotel welcomes guests with a large whisky and soda.

I loved them all, and it was ten years before I returned to New Zealand in 1931. I was then twenty-eight and when I reached Timaru I telephoned my father at his office.

"Who’s that?" he asked.

"Tom."

"Which Tom?"

"Your Tom!" I replied.

At first he could hardly believe it. But before long he was at the station to fetch me in his car. The old man looked much the same as I remembered him, as did my mother–but my brothers and sisters had grown so much that at first I scarcely recognised them. Ten years is a long time, but before long I was back in the family routine as though I had been away hardly more than a month. Yet, somehow, I remained an outsider in my own mind. I had seen too much, done so much, existed under a succession of such utterly different circumstances, that at times I would catch myself looking at my mother sitting placidly in her favourite chair and think to myself, "Is it really possible that for all these years while I’ve been seeing the world, she has sat there each evening apparently content?"

I stayed for some months, doing odd jobs, but then I was off again, and I knew this time where I wanted to go, for of all the islands one beckoned more than any other. This was Moorea, the small French island off Tahiti, and it was here that finally I settled–or thought I had–in an island of dramatic beauty, with its jagged peaks of blue and grey rising from the white beaches to awesome pinnacles against the blue sky. It is a small island in which, however, everything seems to be a little larger than life. It is an island of plenty. I could walk along the twisting, narrow coast road and pick guavas, coconuts, or paw-paws and pineapples and nobody would be angry. The French, who had superimposed their wonderful way of life on the people, took care that Moorea should remain unspoiled.

Only one boat a day made the twelve-mile trip from Papeete and passed through the narrow channel in the barrier reef. And–when I was there, anyway–providing a man behaved himself, he was left alone, and I preferred it that way. I had to work–indeed, I wanted to work–and there was always bush to be cleared, copra to be prepared, fish to be caught. I really wanted for nothing, and I remember saying to myself one beautiful evening after swimming in the lagoon, "Neale" (I always call myself Neale when I talk to myself), "this is the nearest thing on earth to paradise."

Life was incredibly cheap. A bullock was slaughtered twice a week and we were able to buy the meat at four-pence a pound. Within a short time of settling down the natives had built me a comfortable two-roomed shack for which I paid them a bag of sugar and a small case of corned beef. Life was as simple as that. I had my own garden, a wood-burning stove, plenty of vegetables, fruits and fish.

My living expenses never came to more than £1 a week–often the total was less–because from the moment I left the Navy I had made up my mind to "batch"–in other words, look after myself completely; do my own washing, cooking, mending, and never move anywhere without being entirely equipped to find for myself. It is a decision I have stuck to all my life. Even now, I am never without my own mattress, sheets, pillows, blankets, cutlery, crockery, kitchen utensils and a battered old silver teapot.

Even as I write, the "housewife" which the Navy gave me the day I joined up is not far out of reach. It is in itself a symbol of years of "batching" which has saved me a fortune. Mine was a simple existence. No furnished rooms to rent, no meals to buy. My only luxury was buying books.

I was very happy in Moorea. I quickly learned to speak Tahitian, I made one or two friends, I worked fairly hard, I read a great deal. My taste in literature is catholic–anything from Conrad or Defoe to a Western; the only thing I demand is an interesting book in bed last thing at night.

It was in Moorea that I first stumbled on the works of the American writer Robert Dean Frisbie, who was to have such an important influence on my life. Frisbie had settled in the Pacific, and had written several volumes about the islands which I read time and time again, though it never entered my head then that one day we should be friends.

I might have stayed in Moorea for ever, but around 1940, at a moment when I thought myself really happy, a character came into my life who was to change it in a remarkable way. This was Andy Thompson, the man who led me to Frisbie, captain of a hundred-ton island schooner called the Tiare Taporo–the "Lime Flower."

I met Andy on a trip to Papeete and immediately liked him. He was bluff, hearty and a good friend, though after that first meeting months would sometimes pass before we met again, for we had to wait until the Tiare Taporo called at Papeete. We never corresponded.

I was astounded, therefore, to receive a letter from him one day. It must have been early in 1943. Andy was a man used to commanding a vessel and never wasted words. He simply wrote: "Be ready. I’ve got a job for you in the Cook Islands."

At that time I didn’t particularly want a job in the Cook Islands and Andy didn’t even tell me what the job was. Yet when the Tiare Taporo arrived in Papeete a few weeks later, I was waiting. And because I sailed back with him I was destined to meet Frisbie, who in turn "led" me to Suvarov.

To this day, I do not know why I returned with Andy–particularly as the job he had lined up involved me in running a store on one of the outer islands belonging to the firm which owned Andy’s schooner. The regular storekeeper was due to go on leave and I was supposed to relieve him. On his return, I gathered, I would be sent on as a sort of permanent relief storekeeper to the other islands in the Cooks. I suppose, subconsciously, I must have been ready for a change of environment. Nonetheless, I didn’t find the prospect entirely attractive.

First, I had to go to Rarotonga and here, within two days of arriving, I met Frisbie.

Since this man’s influence was to bear deeply on my life, I must describe him. Frisbie was a remarkable man. Some time before I met him, his beautiful native wife had died, leaving him with four young children. He loved the islands; his books about them had been well reviewed but had not, as far as I could learn, made him much money. Not that that worried him, for his life was writing and he had the happy facility for living from one day to the next with, apparently, hardly a care in the world. He was, he told me, an old friend of Andy’s, and any friend of Andy’s was a friend of his. It was Sunday morning and, unknown to me, Andy had invited us both for lunch.

I could not have known then what momentous consequences this meeting was to have. None of us suspected it then but Frisbie had only a few more years to live (he was to die of tetanus), and on that Sunday morning I saw in front of me a tall, thin man of about forty-five with an intelligent but emaciated face. He looked ill, but I remember how his eagerness and enthusiasm mounted as he started to talk about "our" islands and told me of his desire to write more books about them. We liked each other on sight, which surprised me, for I do not make friends easily; and it was after lunch–washed down with a bottle of Andy’s excellent rum–that Frisbie first mentioned Suvarov.

Of course, I had heard of this great lagoon, with its coral reef stretching nearly fifty miles in circumference, but I had never been there, for it was off the trade routes, and shipping rarely passed that way.

Because its reef is submerged at high tide–leaving only a line of writhing white foam to warn the navigator of its perils–Suvarov, however, is clearly marked on all maps. Yet Suvarov is not the name of an island, but of an atoll, and the small islets in side the lagoon each have their own names. The islets vary in size from Anchorage, the largest, which is half a mile long, to One Tree Island, the smallest, which is merely a mushroom of coral. The atoll lies almost in the centre of the Pacific, five hundred and thirteen miles north of Rarotonga, and the nearest inhabited island is Manihiki, two hundred miles distant.

That afternoon Frisbie entranced me, and I can see him now on the veranda, the rum bottle on the big table between us, leaning forward with that blazing characteristic earnestness, saying to me, "Tom Neale, Suvarov is the most beautiful place on earth, and no man has really lived until he has lived there."

Fine words, I thought, but not so easy to put into action.

"Of course, you must remember," he broke in, "There’s a war on, and at present Suvarov is inhabited."

This I knew–for two New Zealanders with three native helpers were stationed on Anchorage in Suvarov’s lagoon. These "coast-watchers" kept an eye open for ships or aircraft in the area, and would report back any movement to headquarters by radio.

"But they’d probably be glad to see you–or even me," added Frisbie with a touch of irony.

I got up for it was time to leave. And as I said good-bye to this tall, thin man whose face and eyes seemed to burn with enthusiasm, I said, and the words and sigh came straight from the heart, "That’s the sort of place for me."

"Well–if you feel that way about it, why don’t you go there?" he retorted.

Storekeeping was not a very arduous job and I soon fell into my new life. My first "posting" took me to Atiu–a small island with rounded, flat-topped hills, and fertile valleys filled with oranges, coconuts and paw-paw; all of it less than seven thousand acres, each one of them exquisite and forever beckoning. From there I moved on to Puka Puka–"the Land of Little Hills"–where seven hundred people lived and produced copra.

The pattern of my life hardly varied, irrespective of the island on which I happened to be relieving the local storekeeper.

Each morning I would make my breakfast, open up the store and wait for the first native customers in the square functional warehouse with its tin roof. The walls were lined with shelves of flour, tea, coffee beans, tinned goods, cloth, needles–everything which one didn’t really need at all in an island already overflowing with fruit and fish! No wonder that as I was shuttled from one outer island to another, I soon discovered that storekeeping was not the life for me, though it did have its compensations.

As long as I kept my stock and accounts in good order, I had a fair amount of leisure, which I occupied by reading. In some stores we carried supplies of paperback books so even my browsing cost me nothing, providing I didn’t dirty the covers. I was batching, of course, and each store had free quarters so I was able to save a little money, especially as in some of the smaller islands the white population could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Mine was, in every sense of the word, a village store. One moment I would be selling flour, the next I would be advising a mother how to cure her baby’s cough. I carried an alarming assortment of medicines (always very popular) as well as a jumble of odds and ends ranging from spectacles to cheap binoculars, from brightly decorated tin trunks to lengths of rusty chain. I had drums of kerosene for the smoking lamps of the village, lines and hooks for the fishermen who, more often than not, would try to buy these with their latest catch of parrot fish or crays.

I came to be something of a "doctor" and village counsellor, and this I did find a rewarding part of my job, for in the really small islands I was often the only man to whom the people could turn for help. In an indirect way, I was money-lender, too–because I alone had the power to judge the worth of a man’s credit against the future price of copra, and many is the bolt of calico I have sold against nuts still on the tree.

The really sad conclusion about my life as a storekeeper is that I might have enjoyed it had the store been in Tahiti or Moorea or had I never met Frisbie and been fired with the dream of going to Suvarov, for my yearnings were not desperate ones; I didn’t spend all my days mooning about. But always in the back of my mind was the vague feeling, "What a bore life is! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if for once I could see what life is like on an uninhabited island."

As it was, I seemed to spend my time waiting for the inter-island schooner which, every now and then, would lie off the island, giving the people a reason for wakening for a few hours out of their languid torpor while my stores were unloaded. Occasionally, Andy would sail in the Tiare Taporo, then we would spend an evening on my veranda.

It was an uneventful, placid existence and though I should have been content enough, I soon disliked it intensely. Why, then, did I remain for years as a storekeeper moving around from island to island? The main reason was that every time I was transferred, I had to return through Rarotonga and so met up with Frisbie again.

Then we would talk far into the night about Suvarov (and the other islands of the Pacific) and occasionally, when the rum bottle was low, I was able to persuade him to read the latest passages he had written. He had a deep compelling voice, and talked with as much enthusiasm as he wrote. And towards the end of each evening–and often "the end" only came when the dawn was streaking over the red tin roofs of Raro–we always came back to Suvarov.

"Do you think I’ll ever get there?" I asked one night.

"Why not?" Answered Frisbie, "though probably you’ll have to wait until the war’s over." I remember we were sitting together sipping a last beer on a visit to Rarotonga, "but then–there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go–that is, providing you equip yourself properly. Suvarov may be beautiful, but it not only looks damn fragile, it is damn fragile–and I should know."

There was no need to elaborate. I already knew that in the great hurricane of 1942, sixteen of the twenty-two islets in the lagoon had literally been washed away within a matter of hours. Frisbie had been trapped on Anchorage with his four small children and the coast-watchers during this hurricane. He had saved the children’s lives by lashing them in the forks of tamanu trees elastic enough to bend with the wind until the violence of the storm was spent.

I did not see Frisbie again for some time, but we corresponded regularly, and one day when I was feeling particularly low, I picked up his book, The Island of Desire. When I came to the second half I discovered it was all about Suvarov; how he had lived on the island with his children, how he had been caught in that great hurricane. I was enthralled and his descriptions were so vivid that no sooner had I finished the book than I sat down and wrote to him. "One of these days," I wrote in my sloping, eager hand, "that’s where I’m going to live."

Frisbie replied, a half joking letter in which he suggested "Let’s both go. You can live on Motu Tuo and I can live on Anchorage, and we can visit each other."

It made sense. For like me, Frisbie was naturally a solitary man. Like me, he never had much money and yet, sadly, we were never to see the island together. In fact, Frisbie was never to see Suvarov again before he died in 1948.

There was another important reason for remaining in the Cooks. If ever I did go to Suvarov–if ever I had the luck or courage to "go it alone"–I would have to leave from Rarotonga, for Suvarov is in the Cook Islands, and though the inter-island trading schooners rarely passed near the atoll, there might one day be an occasion when a ship would sail close enough to the island to be diverted. But only from Raro.

This is exactly what happened. Suddenly, in 1945, there came an opportunity to visit Suvarov for two days. It was Andy who broke the news to me in Rarotonga. He was under orders, he told me, to take the Tiare Taporo round the islands, calling in at Suvarov with stores for the coast-watchers there, on his way back from Manihiki.

"I need an engineer for this trip," he said off-handedly, as though he did not know how much I longed to see the island. "Care to come along?"

I was aboard the Tiare before Andy had time to change his mind!

When we sailed a few days later, Andy and I were the only Europeans aboard amongst a crew of eight Cook Islanders. We set off for the Northern Cooks–Puka Puka, Penrhyn, Manihiki–which are all low-lying atolls quite different from the Southern Cooks which are always known as the "High Islands."

It was a pleasant, leisurely trip. I can imagine no more perfect way of seeing the South Pacific than from the deck of a small schooner. Life moved at an even, unhurried pace. I did not have much work for the Tiare carried sail and the engine was seldom needed. Our normal routine was to sail for a few days until we reached an atoll, lay off-shore, discharging cargo, take on some copra and then sail off again into the beautiful blue Pacific with white fleecy clouds filling the sky above.

The night before we reached Suvarov, we lay well off the atoll without even sighting it, for Andy, a good navigator, had no intention of risking his ship during the hours of darkness. All through the night we could hear the faint, faraway boom of the swells breaking on Suvarov’s reef. Though there was no moon, it was clear and starry, and I stood on deck for a long time, listening, filled with an emotion I cannot even attempt to describe, until finally I fell asleep dreaming of tomorrow.

Dawn brought perfect weather and we began to approach the atoll at first light, though it lay so flat that for a long time we could not make out the land ahead. We had a good wind and full sail, and the Tiare must have been making four knots without her engines as I stood on the cabin top, the only sound the lap of the water and the creaking of wood, shading my eyes until at last I caught my first glimpse of Suvarov–the pulsating, creamy foam of the reef thundering before us for miles, and a few clumps of palm trees silhouetted against the blue sky, the clumps widely separated on the islets that dotted the enormous, almost circular stretch of reef.

The air was shimmering under a sun already harsh as Andy took the Tiare towards the pass, and Anchorage started to take a more distinct shape. I could make out the white beach now, an old broken-down wharf–a relic of the days when attempts had been made to grow copra on the island–and then some figures waving on the beach.

From the south end a great flock of screaming frigate birds rose angrily into the air, black and wheeling, waiting for the smaller terns to catch fish so they could steal them.

How puny the islets seemed in the vast rolling emptiness of the Pacific! Frisbie had called them fragile but they were more than that. To me they looked almost forlorn, so that it seemed amazing they could have survived the titanic forces of nature which have so often wiped out large islands. Had they been rugged, then survival would have been easier to appreciate, but none of the islets ahead of us in the lagoon was more than ten or fifteen feet above sea level, so that only the tops of the coconut trees proclaimed their existence.

The chop of the sea ceased, for now we were in the lagoon, and it was as though the Tiare were floating on vast pieces of coloured satin. We edged towards Anchorage very slowly through a sea so still that our slight ripple hardly disturbed it. Like many South Pacific islets, Anchorage–lying just inside the lagoon–is subterraneously joined to the main reef by a submerged "causeway" of coral. And so, as I looked down into the water, I thought I had never seen so many colours in my life as the vivid blues, greens and even pinks that morning; no painter could have imitated those patterns formed by underwater coral at differing depths.

Then the anchor rattled down. We put a ship’s boat overboard and a few minutes later I was wading ashore through the warm, still water towards the blinding white beach.

Common politeness made me greet the five men living there–each of them desperately anxious to go home as soon as possible!–but as soon as I decently could, I went off alone, and on that first day I took a spear and my machete–a French one I had bought in Tahiti, more slender and pointed than those of the Cook Islands–and went along the reef, spearing the plentiful fish I discovered in the reef pools and so lazy that one could hardly miss them.

In the evening, I had supper with the coast-watchers and looked over their shack with the secret, questing eyes of a man wondering if one day he would inherit it. It seemed ideal. The tanks were full of good water, and when I went for a stroll I discovered a fine garden they had made out of a wilderness.

The watchers were only anxious to leave. How different are men’s attitudes to life! They were agreeable, cheerful and noisy–and delighted with the stores we had brought them–but theirs was a forced gaiety, hiding their anger that war should have played them such a dirty trick as turning them into castaways on a desert island.

On the second day, Andy and I took a ship’s boat to the islet of Motu Tuo six miles across the lagoon, where the native boys caught coconut crabs and fish and lit a fire to cook our picnic lunch.

And when lunch was over, I turned to Andy and said simply, but with utter conviction, "Andy, now I know this is the place I’ve been looking for all this time."

It was to take me seven more years before my dream came true. Seven long years before another vessel from Rarotonga passed anywhere near the island, seven years during which I reached middle age. Perhaps it was this consciousness of time passing, perhaps this and the dreariness of my job that brought an increasing heaviness of heart which I only managed to struggle against by clinging obstinately to the hope that I would one day get back to the island.

In 1952 my opportunity came. Dick Brown, an independent trader in Rarotonga, had gone into the shipping business after the war, buying a long, narrow submarine chaser of less than a hundred tons which he had converted into an inter-island trader. She was called the Mahurangi, and quite by chance I heard that on her next trip she was going north to Palmerston Island and then to Manihiki. I did not need a map to know that the course passed right by Suvarov.

In all my years in the Cooks, I had never heard of a trading vessel sailing this direct route; it was an opportunity which might never come my way again.

I totted up my finances. I had saved £79. I went to Dick and asked when he was sailing.

"In two weeks," he replied.

"How much would it cost to divert on the way to Manihiki and take me to Suvarov?"

He scratched his head, figuring.

"Thirty quid."

It seemed a lot of money, especially when the Mahurangi must pass almost within sight of Suvarov and could have dropped me off with little trouble. But diverting a vessel is always expensive and I did not argue.

"Done!" I said, and we shook hands on it.

I had just two weeks to gather together everything I thought a man would need to survive on an uninhabited coral atoll. Two weeks–and £49.

An Island to Oneself
PART ONE - The Years of Waiting
Chapter 2: Shopping List for a Desert Island

Contents

Three minutes . . . after so many years of waiting. Only three minutes to settle my passage, and the whole transaction concluded in an almost comically casual fashion.

I walked slowly back to the unfurnished room I was renting for 7s. 6d. a week in the valley behind Raro, praying I would not meet anybody; I had to be alone–just for a little while. I was not thinking–not yet–of the dozens of preparations which I must make within a very short time. Instead, as I walked home in the hot sunlight, my mind went back to that day with Andy on the Tiare Taporo, when he had edged into the lagoon, and I had had my first real impression of Anchorage. I could see it in my mind’s eye now as I walked along and could still hardly believe that in a little over a couple of weeks I was going to be back there again. How excited Frisbie would have been. But poor Frisbie had been dead now for four years.

In my room I filled the kettle and made some tea on my primus, but was unable to bring myself to eat anything. My first overwhelming excitement was replaced now by hundreds of different jangling thoughts. For no reason I suddenly thought, "I mustn’t forget fish hooks." In this daze I actually wasted several minutes mentally wrangling as to whether or not I ought to take any baking powder. Tea over, I went to wash up, and found myself saying almost crossly, "Neale, you’ll need some new dishcloths."

I had only a fortnight before I sailed and there was so much to do. Nor could I turn to my friends for advice, for after all what would they know about living on a desert island? Even Andy was away at sea. Now the great moment had come, I was alone.

And maybe this was the best way, because once I calmed down, I discovered I really knew exactly what I would need. It was just a matter of getting things sorted out in my mind, so that the sudden thoughts that kept rushing in–like "I must get a crowbar!"–"How will I stop my tea going fusty?"–were pigeonholed in some sort of order.

I forced myself to concentrate on the island. I knew the coast-watchers had left some years ago, but I remembered now that they had had a flat-bottomed boat almost like a punt–and the chances were it would still be there. But would it be seaworthy? I made a mental note to buy a few copper nails.

I do not know how long I sat there–probably a couple of hours–whilst I jotted down the most vital items on an old bit of paper. But oddly enough, once I had got up and returned to the familiar world outside my shack, I never needed that piece of paper again. For my requirements now seemed written like a list in my mind where I suppose they had probably been accumulating subconsciously throughout all the years of waiting.

I was not afraid. That I can honestly say. Perhaps I was a little overawed by the challenge I had taken on. I was fifty now. And this dream of mine had been essentially a dream of youth. Was I too old now to turn this dream into successful reality? I flattered myself I was still in excellent shape, but there was no doubt that physical hardship would fall more heavily on me than it would have done twenty years ago; and then there was the possibility of falling ill . . . .

By the following day, however, I was back to normal–and I started as efficiently as I could to make an inventory of my possessions. I still have it on faded pieces of paper, dated August 1952. There are several lists; one headed "Personal Effects," another "The Kai Room" ("Kai" is the native word for eating, so my kai room list contained all the things I used for eating and cooking). The third list was headed "Tools."

How well I remember my very first purchase. It was a sack of Australian flour, from a shipment which had just arrived. This was a rare luxury in Raro as we naturally bought everything we could from New Zealand, but I had cooked with Australian flour from time to time and knew from experience that it would keep much longer than the local brand.

I also knew that once the news of its arrival got around, there would be a run on it, for the South Seas stores are really more like warehouses than shops, and when shipments of new lines arrive to be piled up against the shelves of the barn-like buildings, everyone in town rushes to buy. So I was down at Raro’s "shopping district" as soon as the stores opened, asking the assistant at Donald’s, whom I had known for years, "Any of the Australian flour left?"

"Sure, Tom," he replied. "How much–a couple of pounds?

"How much is it?"

"Sixpence a pound."

"Oh well," I pretended to hesitate, secretly enjoying the joke, "Might as well take a fifty-pound sack!"

He nearly dropped it; and at that moment the wife and daughter of a Government official came in, and stared in astonishment at the sight of Neale buying a whole sack of flour, so on the spur of the moment I added, as casually as I could, "While I’m here, I’d better take a seventy-pound bag of sugar!"

After that, the news was soon round Raro–even though I said very little myself. But you can’t keep secrets on an island of only eight thousand people, especially when I–normally so careful–began to buy goods by the sackful.

Most of the stores like Donald’s or the Cook Islands Trading Company–both famous island firms–had their functional buildings grouped on or near Main Road between the solid whit e building of the Residency and Avarua harbour, and now I started shopping in earnest.

I came in for a lot of good-natured banter. After all, I had been on friendly terms with some of the assistants for a long time, and the sight of me staggering out of Donald’s with enough coffee beans to last a year was bound to provoke curiosity or mirth.

At least I faced no problems as far as my "personal effects" were concerned. These consisted of a couple of pairs of long trousers, a few singlets, three or four light shirts, two pairs of khaki shorts, three pareus (a sort of native sarong), two pairs of sandals and a raincoat. Naturally, I also had my Navy "housewife," a razor, an old shaving-brush, a toothbrush, and a pocket-knife.

My sleeping gear was simple, although you could hardly call it extensive. I had my kapok mattress, a pair of sheets, an ex-Navy blanket, another lighter blanket, two pillows, two pillow slips and two towels. I planned to roll the whole lot up in the mattress, which I would wrap round with some old pandanus matting for protection when the time came to sail.

I needed only a few other personal effects. I invested in thread and needles for my "housewife"; I bought twenty-four razor blades which would last me some years, for I had long since learned that by sharpening them in a glass under water, I was able to use the same blade for three months or so. I thought I would probably shave twice a week, though I received several amiable suggestions that it would be cheaper–and more in keeping with my illustrious predecessor, Robinson Crusoe–to grow a beard. The same assistant who sold me the blades also asked me why I didn’t have all my teeth out before leaving instead of wasting money on the four tubes of toothpaste I bought.

Yet the interesting thing is that during the fortnight there was nothing malicious or sarcastic in any of the humour. Nobody was trying to take a rise out of me; indeed, I had a feeling, as I suddenly became a sort of local curiosity, that most people were secretly envying me.

I remember going into Donald’s and ordering two pairs of rubber-soled tennis shoes which I knew would be necessary to protect my feet when fishing on the coral reef. The salesman was an old pal of mine, and after saying jokingly, "Want anybody to carry your bags?" he added quite earnestly, "Two pairs isn’t enough, Tom. You know the islands better than I do, but let’s face it, you’ve always been near a store. What’s going to happen when these shoes wear out–or if you lose them?" He was right–and I bought six pairs. It turned out to be a very wise decision.

I planned to pack my clothes in an old suitcase and an equally ancient but serviceable Gladstone bag. Wonderful bags, the Gladstones–they have a great capacity for stretching and into this one, besides my clothes, I tucked a supply of writing materials; two bottles of ink, half a dozen spare nibs, some paper and envelopes, two big Collins "Trader" diaries–a page to a day–and a calendar.

As the day of departure drew nearer, I paid almost daily visits to the Mahurangi which lay in Avarua harbour. I knew most of the Cook Island crew–indeed, one or two of them had sailed with me on other vessels–and I would stop and chat with them, perhaps drawn towards them by a common love of the sea, perhaps because I knew they would be taking me to Suvarov, perhaps because I needed some reassurance; and when Dick Brown, who regarded my frequent visits with amusement, asked one morning, "What’s the trouble, Tom? Scared we’ll leave without you?" I suddenly felt a little cross and answered seriously and surlily, "You can’t. I’ve paid my passage money."

For the truth is, I probably was a little frightened. It was never a predominant emotion–I never for a moment considered abandoning the enterprise–but, well, there were the odd times when I wondered if I weren’t a bit too old, and there were times when I asked myself if I really realised what life would be like without another human being to talk to for months on end.

I would hardly have been natural had I not occasionally felt this way, but the flashes of despondency always passed quickly. Quite apart from the fact that I had a great deal to do, I now became quite touched by the way people I hardly counted as friends rallied round. One day, staggering home with several parcels, a woman I knew only slightly offered me a lift in her car, and when we reached my shack in the valley she said, "Tom I envy you. It’s the sort of thing everybody would love to do. I’ve got a very good barometer I never use–I’d like to lend it to you."

It was exactly what I wanted but could not afford, and I accepted it gratefully. Then when I had difficulty finding two heavy strips of flat-iron which I wanted as firebars to rest on stones, the P.W.D., (Public Works Department) for whom I had worked occasionally, offered to give me a couple. A Government department!

I even had more than one proposition from the ladies. And I may say that I was tempted, for the Cook Island women are not only handsome but wonderfully adaptable, used to hard work, and can turn their hands to anything. Frisbie had found great happiness with his native wife, so when one woman of about thirty, the sister of a Cook Island friend, quite seriously offered to come (adding ingenuously, "You don’t need to marry me!") I definitely considered the possibility.

However, I decided against it. I had been batching so long I really didn’t need a woman. And, perhaps most of all, the prospect of being cooped up with a woman who might eventually annoy me, of being imprisoned with her–like a criminal on Devil’s Island, without hope of escape–made me shudder. I would be better off as a middle-aged bachelor.

Curiously, those of my acquaintances who (sometimes facetiously and with sly winks) suggested I should take a woman to Suvarov all seemed most concerned lest I should fall ill alone, and regarded a "wife" as a necessity in case she had to play the role of nurse.

Indeed, the most persistent question posed by my friends during these last two hectic weeks was, "Aren’t you afraid of illness?"

Was I? I don’t think so. I cannot deny that occasionally a moment of apprehension flitted across my mind, particularly at the thought of an unexpected accident such as a broken limb. But any fears were fleeting. I couldn’t allow myself to be afraid, otherwise I might just as well go back to storekeeping. And I have always been fit, apart from the odd dose of fever. My eyesight was good, and as far as accidents were concerned, men like myself who are used to living very close to nature gradually acquire a special sort of protective instinct when using tools like saws or axes, or heating metal or climbing trees. It is the tenderfoot who usually cuts or burns himself. Automatically, I was in the habit of taking far greater care than the normal man.

I was, however, worried about the possibility of toothache, for that was something I could not control. I had had an upper plate for several years, but I went to the dentist and told him to take out as many of my bottom teeth as he wanted! It says much for my simple life that he only extracted one–and I have never had toothache.

I had to take some medical precautions, but I could not afford to take a really extensive kit, much as I would have liked to have it. Drugs cost so much. So I had to content myself with plenty of bandages, sticking-plaster, Germolene, a supply of Band-Aid, a little cotton wool, one bottle of Vaseline and a half-pint bottle of Mertholiate, plenty of antiseptic, some sulphur thiazole (M & B) tablets for fevers. I bought no aspirin because I never get headaches.

Of course, I did not spend one day buying food, or another selecting pots and pans. Like any housewife, I became a familiar figure in the local stores, carrying my shopping lists and buying whatever I needed from the heaped shelves and counters. I used to stagger home with my purchases, tick them off on my list and then pack them in a motley assembly of variously sized parcels, making a note of the contents of each packet.

I spent a great deal of time on my food list. I knew I would never starve on Suvarov, for I expected to find coconuts, bananas, paw-paw and breadfruit, in addition to unlimited fish and crayfish. I also knew that the coast-watchers had kept fowls though I could not be certain if there would be any left.

But obviously a diet consisting of only island produce was going to be monotonous, and since I had £49 I saw no reason for not laying out a substantial part of it on supplies that would at least tide me over until my garden was producing.

I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted, for after all I had been cooking my own meals for half a lifetime and I went from store to store buying the different basic foods. By the time I had finished, my stock of purchases, piled up in my shack, was not unimpressive.

I decided quite deliberately to spend some of my money on gastronomic luxuries which I really did not need, for though I had proved many times that I could live on native or island food, I had noticed over the years how the sudden switch to such a spartan diet tended to make me a little depressed. Breadfruit and coconuts sound all very well in adventure stories, but nobody can deny they are monotonous. I felt I should ease my way into the new life ahead of me by starting out with some of the foods I enjoyed.

After all, I didn’t really know what lay in the future. I flattered myself I would never be lonely, but how could I tell? I remember having a beer one evening with a friend, and when I pooh-poohed his suggestion that I might be bored with my own company, he pointed out quite seriously, "I know you enjoy being on your own, Tom, but remember you’ve always had somebody around–if only to call them a damned nuisance! What’s going to happen if you’re alone–and lonely? Nobody to shout at–not even an enemy!

He was right, of course. How could I tell what I would feel in circumstances which I had only so far imagined? Well, at least I could get some good food to cheer me up if I felt too low. I went down to Donald’s the next morning and promptly bought a dozen one-pound tins of jam and a dozen tins of sweetened condensed milk!

I already had my flour and sugar, a forty-pound bag of coffee beans, and now I bought a forty-pound tin of Suva biscuits, also known as "cabin bread", which I had chewed for years on the inter-island boats where it was always produced when the flour gave out–as it regularly did. I bought it for the same reason–to use when my flour gave out, or went bad. These biscuits were about four inches square, about ten to the pound. I chose my sealed tin with great care, checking that no seams were broken or punctured, for tins often arrived from Suva in bad condition.

Though I hoped there would be fowls on the island, I felt I had to take some meat with me, so I bought two dozen tins of bully beef to eat on special occasions, together with ten pounds of beef dripping which I sealed up with sticking plaster in an old sweet tin. I became a regular cadger of old sweet tins–even though sometimes I had to pay a shilling each for them. I needed several more, including two in which I sealed up twenty-five pounds of rice. I also bought some old screw-top jars in which I packed five pounds of salt.

I was now getting near the end of my food list, though I had still not bought my tea. Making a cup of tea just before sundown at the end of a day’s work had been a ritual of mine for years, but I reluctantly decided to limit myself to two pounds. So often in the past I had kept tea too long until it went fusty. It would be a waste of money to take a larger stock, though the very day I took the tea back to my room I repacked it in small containers–any tins I could find, such as baking-powder tins with press-top lids, which I filled right up to the top so there would be virtually no air space, and then sealed each lid with a rim of sticking plaster.

For a similar reason, I only bought four one-pound tins of butter. However carefully it is packed, butter invariably goes rancid after a time.

Tobacco was a real luxury. I don’t smoke a great deal, but one cigarette has always seemed to go with that evening cup of tea I love so much. I bought half a pound of tobacco and a dozen packets of cigarette papers.

At first I was unable to decide whether or not to take a shotgun. I had heard rumours that the coast-watchers had left some pigs on the island, which would be quite wild by now, perhaps savage. And, too, I knew there were plenty of birds on Suvarov. But there were several reasons against taking a gun. I don’t like killing living things; nor could I really afford a gun. But perhaps the deciding factor was that I was afraid of becoming dependent on a weapon which would be valueless when the last cartridge had been fired. I felt I had to meet the challenge of Suvarov on terms which would not change with the years. For the same reason I refused to take a small battery-operated radio. I imagine that subconsciously I was afraid I would miss its company after the batteries had run down.

By now there was very little else I needed. I bought a few odds and ends–a tin of pepper, a couple of jars of curry powder (to flavour food when all else failed), a dozen large bars of laundry soap, a dozen cakes of toilet soap.

I packed all the food in wooden boxes or cartons I had been collecting–I am always collecting things–lining each box with newspapers or magazines, which I knew would come in useful for all sorts of things, including lining shelves, when I reached Suvarov.

During the last week, more farewell gifts arrived. I had never realised how many friends I had. One presented me with a twenty-five-pound tin of malted milk powder. Another gave me a twenty-five-foot bamboo fishing pole–it was rare in Rarotonga to find one quite so long–which I added to several saplings I had cut for making fishing spears, just in case I could not find any straight ones on the island.

Those stalwart friends of the P.W.D. lent me a pick and shovel; a storekeeper gave me a kerosene case which was made to hold two square four-gallon kerosene tins. The two empty tins were thrown in with the case. I cut the tops off each tin and then packed them both, and the odd spaces around them, with some of my smaller belongings. I knew that once I reached the island the tins would be invaluable for boiling clothes.

I even managed to swap a shirt for a crowbar which I considered a vital necessity. It was, in fact, the transmission shaft of an old model "T" Ford, which I took to a blacksmith who sharpened one end to a point and the other to a chisel edge.

My money–to say nothing of time–was running out, yet there were several tools I badly needed, despite the fact that I had accumulated quite an assortment over the years including chisels, a hacksaw and carpenters’ saws, an axe and tomahawk, a couple of machetes, a sheath knife, as well as pliers, an adjustable spanner, and things like a hammer, screwdriver and a rat-tail file.

All the same, I required a few more items, which I bought during the last week. I needed a couple of really good chisels for I expected to find empty fuel drums left by the watchers. I bought a pair of tin-snips in case the tin roof of the shack should need attention. And when I was in the hardware store, it suddenly seemed a wise precaution to buy two tins of paint to protect any new building I might have to erect. I needed some spare hacksaw blades and when I bought some eighteen-inch lengths of round iron, with the idea of making them into spears, I had to buy two extra files. I had made enough fish spears in the past to know that even the toughest file doesn’t last for ever. Then I bought a selection of nails, a hundred assorted fishing hooks and a spare hank of fishing line. Lastly I bought a small vice, which I would need if ever I had to heat and shape metal.

While accumulating all this gear, I was also busy buying seeds for the garden I knew I would have to make. I bought packets of tomatoes, cucumbers, rock melon (known in Europe as canteloupes), water melon, runner beans and Indian spinach, which trails along the ground with thicker, fleshier leaves than ordinary spinach.

I also purchased some shallots, a few tubers of sweet potatoes or yams–known in the Cooks as kumeras, an old Maori word–which I knew would quickly send up shoots which could be pulled out and planted. Finally, I bought two banana shoots in case the banana trees on the island had been torn down by a hurricane.

By now, my tiny shack was jammed to the ceiling with crates and parcels, and I had barely enough room to turn around when I made myself a cup of tea. Yet the shopping was not quite ended, for I still had to buy one or two things for my kai room. I had very nearly all I needed, for my belongings accumulated over the years included everything–crockery, cutlery, glasses, tin-openers (I never travelled without two) enamel and zinc bowls, a hurricane lantern and a glass table lamp, even a coffee-grinder as well as a coffee-pot, dishcloths and tea-towels and, above all, my old silver teapot which I had used since I left the Navy.

In addition, I had about a dozen square one-gallon screw-top glass jars which fitted into their original case. I had bought them about a year before with Suvarov in the back of my mind. They would be invaluable for storing the food I had bought in bulk; however, I did not plan to fill them before we reached the island in case they got broken on the voyage.

I bought several more articles for the kai room. Firstly, I decided to invest a precious £2 10s. on a six-pint cast-iron kettle, which would not deteriorate in the same way as aluminium when used over an open fire.

I also bought a big square of kitchen linoleum for the table. Throughout my "batching" days I had always insisted, even when alone, on eating off a table cloth, but for the island I thought washable linoleum would be simpler.

Otherwise, the rest of my kitchen purchases were fairly simple–plenty of spare wicks for the lantern and lamp, twelve dozen boxes of matches and four five-gallon tins of kerosene.

And now I gave some thought to the "home-front." I decided it was imperative to take a cat, for though I knew Suvarov had virtually no insects or mosquitoes, it did have a colony of small indigenous rats. With all my carefully sealed tins, it was unlikely they would eat me out of shack and home, but I just happen to hate rats. As I was already the possessor of an old cat with a kitten I decided to take them both with me, and so that they should travel in style I built a special box to house them for the six-day boat journey.

We were not old friends. As a matter of fact, I had only had the mother cat for a very short time, and she was a confirmed thief which seemed a good reason for calling her Mrs. Thievery. The son I named Mr. Tom-Tom.

Only one thing more was necessary to make me completely self-sufficient, and this was a dozen large, volcanic stones–beyond price, but without any financial value. I dug them out of a creek bed not far from where I lived and carried most of them back to my room–which was now beginning to look like a warehouse–one at a time on the saddle of my bicycle.

Each one of these large stones weighed between eight and twelve pounds. I knew stones like this just couldn’t be found on Suvarov and I needed these heat-resisting stones to make a native oven. Coral is no use, for it crumbles after being used only once or twice.

With the last of my money I now went in search of my greatest luxury–a few books. Two days before the sailing date, I spent a morning browsing among the paperbacks on sale along Main Road. I had a few books already by Defoe,Stevenson and other favourite authors. Frisbie’s Island of Desire was certainly amongst them, but when it came to spending my last few shillings on reading matter, my choice was dictated by the stocks I could inspect. I knew that the coast-watchers had left some books on the island, but I had no certainty that they would please my taste. I had to take a few of my own choice–not many, for I derive great pleasure from re-reading the same book (so long as I like it), but I was able to pick up three books by Somerset Maugham, two by Dickens (including Oliver Twist), Mutiny on the Bounty by Nordhoff and Hall (whom I had met on occasion), and several rather poor quality Westerns and Edgar Wallace thrillers which featured predominantly on the local bookshelves.

On the last night but one, when I was riding my bicycle to the friend who had promised to keep it for me, I stopped by a small general store and picked up a book which was to give me great pleasure in the months ahead. Indeed, I must have read it a score of times. It was a dog-eared, second-hand copy of Lord Jim.

With this treasure clutched under my arm, I cycled to the house where I was to "park" my bicycle. I was just about to set off on the walk home when, for some ridiculous reason, I took the pump off the crossbar.

"What on earth do you need that for?" My friend must have thought me crazy.

I couldn’t answer. I just felt that I must take everything–just in case it came in useful.

Somehow or other, everything was ready in time. In all, I had twenty-one packages, twelve stones, two cats and my bamboo pole and saplings–plus a bundle of long-handled tools and a broom.

The Mahurangi was due to sail for Palmerston Island on the evening of August 29. That same morning I gathered all my gear together and Dick Brown sent up his lorry to collect it–and me. Having arrived at the wharf, it took us some hours to stow away all this cargo, since I insisted on watching every single bundle as it was stacked away in the after-hold. Had one of these parcels vanished, it could have made all the difference to my life on Suvarov.

The moment had almost arrived. I was leaving Rarotonga perhaps for ever. It gave me a queer sensation and I remember thinking, "Neale, remember you owe the P.W.D. a pick and shovel." On that last day, Rarotonga–which I had disliked so much because of the work which chained me–suddenly seemed much more attractive than ever before, and the strip of dusty Main Road which separated the lagoon from the shops seemed alive with acquaintances stopping to shake my hand and wish me luck, and there is no doubt that there was an element of sadness behind my confidence.

These were very natural thoughts, but inside I was calm in the certainty that I was doing the right thing. Even more reassuring was a profound belief that I could make a go of it. I was equipped down to the last copper nail, so far as my budget would allow. I had forgotten nothing. All that remained was for me to say good-bye to the friends I had made in the frustrating years spent in and around Rarotonga.

This I did on the last afternoon, after I had watched the final cases being packed in to the Mahurangi.

And then, not four hours before sailing, everything went wrong. At a moment’s notice, the sailing plans were changed. Horrified, I learned that instead of calling at Palmerston the Mahurangi’s orders were to sail directly to Manihiki on a new route which would pass nowhere near Suvarov.

For a time I was unable to believe the news. I almost ran all the way down to the wharf to find Dick. Everything I owned in the world–excepting my bicycle–was on board. I had vacated my room; I had nowhere to sleep, nothing to sleep on, no clothes to wear, no food to eat and no money to buy food.

"You can’t do this!" My voice must have echoed my desperation.

"I’m awfully sorry, Tom–" Dick really did look sorry–"but the Palmerston Island trip is postponed until we return from Manihiki."

He was very kind, assuring me it wouldn’t be long before my chance would come again. But at that moment I could have cried, even though I knew this sort of thing was always happening on the inter-island trading boats. Life in the South Seas does not know the same tempo as big ports and cities; a few weeks’ delay rarely matters to the island folk brought up in a different tradition. Should they find themselves in my situation, as likely as not relatives or friends will put them up for a week or two, for life is not only easy but cheap.

Many a time in the past, when I was working on the schooners, our sailing directions had been changed at the last moment. But that had been different.

As I stood there on the wharf wondering dully what would happen now, one thought was uppermost–I was virtually penniless. What was I going to do during the period of waiting? It must have been with a sense of desperation that I dived my hand into the pocket of my khaki shorts, and brought out some small change.

"Look–" I showed it to Dick–"that’s all the money I have in the world."

And it was. The loose coins added up to five shillings and eightpence, for I had deliberately spent all my money before sailing as money would have no value on Suvarov. It struck me that what had happened now merely illustrated one of the reasons I wanted to get away.

After my first anger had subsided, I found I couldn’t honestly blame Dick. I just had to pull myself together and face up to the situation.

I turned to him again.

"It’s all I’ve got," I said. "Lend me ten pounds and I’ll pay you back when I come back from Suvarov–if I ever do."

Dick was the sort of man who always carried a fair amount of money in his pocket. Without demur, he handed me two five-pound notes.

I was able to off-load my belongings before the Mahurangi sailed . . . all except the stones and three big cases buried beneath other cargo. Fortunately, I had kept lists of the contents of each package. Dick’s lorry took eighteen of them back to the room after I had arranged to rent it again for a few weeks longer.

Before the Mahurangi sailed, I went to the skipper and every member of the crew, begging them to look after the three cases I could not off-load. And my stones! Oven stones were precious and those boys on Manihiki were bound to pinch them if they had half a chance.

But though my precious stones and cases returned safely, it took over another month before I finally did sail on October 1. We reached Suvarov on October 7, 1952.

An Island to Oneself
PART TWO - On the Island: October 1952 -- June 1954
Chapter 3: The First Day

Contents

It was 1.30 p.m. as we chugged slowly towards the pass. I stood leaning over the gunwale, sipping from a tin of warm beer, watching Frisbie’s "island of desire"–which was now about to become my island–as we prepared to drop anchor a hundred yards off shore. This was an experience I did not want to share with anyone.

The journey northwards had been uneventful. I knew several of the crew–good-hearted, cheerful, bare-chested boys from the outer islands in search of adventure–and we carried nine native passengers as well as myself. There were five women and four men, all returning to Manihiki after visiting relatives in Raro, and they were bursting with the infectious exuberance of people just ending a wonderful holiday in the "big city." The forward deck was cluttered with their farewell gifts; everything from newly-plaited hats to bundles of protesting chickens. Like all holidaymakers, they were taking home things they could just as easily have bought on their own island, but these were invested with all the importance of souvenirs or gifts.

They were a jolly crowd, but something had made me keep to myself for most of the trip. One might have thought I would eagerly seize the opportunity of sharing these last few days in the company of my fellow men, but in fact the opposite happened. Perhaps I was too excited; perhaps I was a little afraid.

As the captain–eyes fixed on the two rocks marking the channel–bellowed orders, I stood a little apart from the others, filled with a tremendous excitement surging up inside me. But I have never been a demonstrative man and I doubt whether the crew or passengers crowding the rails had the slightest inkling that this was a moment so remarkable to me that I could hardly believe it was really happening.

The sun beat down harshly; scarcely a ripple disturbed the lagoon as we edged our way through the pass, and the white beach, which I had last seen with Andy from the cabin top of the Tiare Taporo, came closer and closer.

My landing was hardly spectacular. Not far off the old wrecked pier the crew lowered a ship’s boat and loaded my belongings aboard, and rowed me ashore. As the Mahurangi’s skipper had decided to stay in the lagoon until the following morning, my boat was followed by the passengers anxious for the chance to stretch their legs. So I came ashore in crowded company and almost before my crates and stores had been off-loaded, the beach was busy with women washing clothes whilst the men hurried off to fish.

Quite suddenly, though still in the company of human beings, I felt a momentary pang of loneliness. Everybody seemed so busy that nobody had any time to notice me. The crew was already rowing back to the Mahurangi, the laughing, brown women were sorting out their washing, the fishermen had disappeared, while I stood, feeling a little forlorn, on the hot white beach under a blazing sun, surrounded by a mound of crates, parcels, and black stones, unceremoniously dumped near the pier. A plaintive miaow reminded me I had a friend. Mrs. Thievery was impatiently demanding her freedom. Leaving all my packages on the beach, except my Gladstone and the box with the cats, I walked almost apprehensively the fifty yards up the coral path to the shack.

I was in some way reluctant to get there, wondering what I would find. Was it still going to be habitable? Were the water tanks still in good order? All sorts of anxieties crowded into my mind. Was there anything left of the garden which the coast-watchers had started, and what about the fowls they had left behind? Then there was the old boat. I had seen no sign of it on the beach.

I quickened my step along the narrow path, brushing past the tangled undergrowth and creepers, the dense thickets of young coconuts, pandanus, gardenias, which had grown into a curtain, walling me in, almost blocking out the sun.

Suddenly the shack was there in front of me and I must admit my heart sank. I had forgotten the amazing violence of tropical growth; forgotten, too, just how long ago it was since men had lived here. Subconsciously, I had always remembered Suvarov when the shack had been inhabited. And now, standing there with my bag and box at my feet, I could hardly distinguish the galvanised iron roof through the thick, lush creepers covering it. The outbuildings, too, seemed almost strangled beneath a profusion of growth. Cautiously I stepped on to the veranda which ran the length of the shack. The floor-boards felt firm, but when I looked up at the roof, I saw the plaited coconut fronds had rotted away. And then, at one end of the veranda I spotted the boat, upside down–with two quarter-inch cracks running right along her bottom. I knew immediately she would sink like a stone in the water; nor was this realisation made any less depressing by the knowledge I had brought no caulking with me.

It was all rather overpowering. I sat in the hot sun, mopped my brow and opened up my faithful Gladstone bag and took out the screwdriver which I had packed on top of my clothes in order to be able to unscrew the netted top of the box and release the cats. In a moment the mother had jumped out, looking around her, and I set the kitten down alongside. Unlike me, they did not seem a bit deterred and proceeded to make themselves at home immediately. Within five minutes Mrs. Thievery had killed her first island rat.

I rolled myself a cigarette, sat on the veranda for a few moments and looked around at the scene I remembered so well from my one brief visit.

The end of the veranda–which was about seven feet wide–had been walled in to make an extra room, which the coast-watchers had used as their kai room. In front of the shack the ground had been cleared to form a yard which was in hopeless confusion, with weeds and vines railing across it, dead coconut fronds blown in on stormy nights littering every corner.

At the end of the yard was a storage shed and bath-house, also overgrown with vines, while to my left were the remnants of the garden. After one glance at the tangled wreckage of its fence I turned away. Time enough later for these problems. First I must look over the shack. So, getting up, I pushed open my front door.

Oddly, this act gave me a curious sensation, an almost spooky feeling as though I were venturing across the threshold of an empty, derelict building which held associations I couldn’t know anything about. As though, in fact, I was trespassing into someone else’s past which had become lost and forgotten, but was still somehow personal because the men who had lived here must have left some vestige of their personalities behind.

Once I was over this, I went inside. The room was about ten by ten. There was a high step up from the veranda and the first thing I saw was a good solid table up against the wall facing me. Nearby was a home-made kitchen chair.

High on the wall to my left I saw two shelves holding some fifty paperback books. Two of the walls had been pierced for shutters and I opened them to let in air and light. These were typical island shutters, hinged at the top, opening upwards and designed to be kept open with a pole.

This had been the radio room, and it would make an excellent office, I thought; a sort of writing room where I could keep my few papers and, each evening, record the day’s events in my journal. And the barometer would look very handsome nailed to the wall over the table. Indeed, when I took down one or two books and riffled their pages, it did not need much imagination on my part to invest the roughly hewn table with the more dignified title of desk and visualise the small, square room not so much as four rather bare walls, but as my study.

A footstep outside interrupted my daydream, and as I turned around to see the man in the doorway, I felt a moment of irritation that even on this day I could not be left alone. But I had been unfair. It was one of the passengers, a big burly Manihiki pearl diver called Tagi, who now stood rather sheepishly, wearing nothing but a pareu, and said, "Tom, we thought you might be too busy to cook yourself a meal. When the fish is ready, come and eat with us."

Full of contrition, I accepted gratefully, for on this day of all days I had no time to cook.

"I’ll give you a call when it’s ready," he added cheerfully, but seemed to linger. He was filled with curiosity. "Come in and see–not bad, eh?" I asked him.

He looked around, then followed me into the bedroom which was separated from the office by a partition five-foot high, with a narrow slip serving as a door. I opened up the other shutters. This room was double the length of the first room, and to my astonishment contained a bed. It had never entered my head that I would find a bed as for some reason I had assumed the coast-watchers would have been equipped with camp beds and I had been cheerfully resigned to sleeping on the floor until I built one. I sat down eagerly to test it. It was solidly built of wood—with no springs, I was pleased to note, for I cannot stand a bed which sags. A wooden bedside table and a small shelf, which had probably been erected to keep toilet articles on, completed the furnishings.

"I wish I had a house like this," sighed Tagi.

A practical thought now occurred to me. If the coast-watchers had left a bed, two tables, a chair and books, might they not also have left some useful articles in the kai room? I hastened to inspect it.

This room had been constructed by walling in the last third of the veranda and when I pushed open the door from the veranda and looked inside, I was astounded. In one corner was a large food safe with doors and sides of zinc netting, in another the carcass of an ancient kerosene-operated refrigerator. The fuel tank had been removed but it would still make an excellent cupboard. The hinges of the food safe seemed strong when I swung the door open and the three shelves were in good condition. To complete the furnishings, the coast-watchers had built a solid table—more of a bench, really—running nearly the length of the longest wall and facing out on to the yard, with shutters above it.

I wonder if you can appreciate the excitement I felt when I discovered this unexpected treasure. I know I had barely landed on Anchorage, yet the sight of these solid pieces of furniture—which would save me endless work—made me feel as Crusoe must have felt each time he returned to the wreck. I was so delighted that I opened the food safe and the refrigerator again for the sheer pleasure it gave me, and I remember mopping my brow and saying, "Yes, Tagi, you’re right. This is a place in a million."

At the far end of this room a broken-down door led out to the cook-house, quite a decent room, roofed with flattened-out fuel drums, and walled in with slats of dried mid-rib of coconut fronds neatly nailed on to supporting poles, and giving plenty of air.

Round the back of the shack were the two water tanks, which I remembered. They were in good condition. One, built of circular corrugated iron, held about three hundred gallons; the other, a square galvanised tank, held some four hundred gallons. And when I turned on the taps excellent water came gushing out. To my relief, this was quite drinkable. The tanks must have been well built and, since they rested on a wooden platform eighteen inches above the ground, did not seem to have suffered the general process of decay. Fed from the guttering along the wall, each was almost full.

Behind the shack I discovered a latrine some eight feet deep, situated some little distance away. This handy convenience was lined with two oil drums whose bottoms had been thoughtfully knocked out. On the spur of the moment, I christened it "The House of Meditation."

As I toured my new domain, my first sensation of dismay began to evaporate in the excitement of discovering items like the food safe and the bed, and I began to think to myself that this wilderness of creepers and vines could easily be cleared up in a couple of days. Then I had another pleasant surprise—in fact, two—after walking across the yard to take a look at the store shed and bath-house. Situated at the far end of the yard, it was shaded by parau trees which shed their hibiscus blossoms each day, so that I had to tread over a carpet of flowers to reach it.

Picking up a handful, I let them trickle through my fingers as I stood for a moment, soaking in the scheme. A gap in the trees, like a window, gave me a glimpse of the lagoon, blue and still and sunlit. If I listened carefully I could hear the thunder of the barrier reef above the faint rustle of the palm fronds, until the clamour of frigate birds wheeling overhead drowned all other sounds. One more angry than the rest seemed to dive almost on to the shack, and as I watched it, I suddenly realised that the long, low building, even though covered with creepers, was solid and that Tagi had been right to envy me, for it was, in fact, going to be the best place I had ever "batched" in. I turned round to tell him, but he had gone. I had been so absorbed I had never heard him leave.

Entering the rough lean-to hut, whose walls were made of plaited coconut stretched on pandanus poles, I discovered a real treasure which the coast-watchers must have left—a coil of eight-gauge fencing wire. There were at least a hundred and fifty yards of it and it was all in excellent condition.

Jutting off the shed was the bath-house, with a water tank on a stand, and a half-wall of flattened tin drums. It was badly overgrown with creepers but it would be easy to hack these down, and in no time I would be able to build a shelf for my washbowl, and put up a line for my towels.

I was on the point of leaving the bath-house when I got a real start. An old hen, clucking with fear, rose right up under my feet and made off into the bush. I had a comfortable feeling that eggs might be available in the future.

This is my island, with 'Peb' Rockefeller's schooner to the right

The low coconut palms form a natural umbrella over the beach

A daily chore -- husking coconuts in the yard by my shack

Now I took a look at the garden, or rather the remains of the garden, overgrown with weeds and thick creepers. Once there had been a fence, but now only a few poles stuck out like rotten teeth, adorned with once-taut wire whose remnants lay tangled on the ground. One glance told me that whatever topsoil there might once have been had long since blown away. Right away it was obvious that re-making the garden was going to be a major problem. Only a single breadfruit tree in one corner of the wilderness gave a hint that the soil was at least fruitful.

I had been so preoccupied in exploring my new home that I only became aware of how hungry I was when Tagi returned to summon me down to the meal on the beach. But later, as we sat there against a background of palms with the lagoon stretching away in front of us and the Mahurangi riding at anchor a hundred yards out, I couldn’t help watching my companions’ faces and wondering what they would be doing at this time the following day, the following week, the following month, the following year. Would they remember this meal—and this lonely character who had chosen to stay behind on the island? Would they ever remember me at all once they had sailed away in the schooner?

It was an odd sensation. But somehow I did not very much care whether they chose to remember or not. For now I was quite sure I had broken free, though it was hard, sitting there eating fish with my fingers, to search inside myself for words which described what it felt like.

They might not remember me, but, I wondered, would I ever remember them? How, in later years, would I look back on this last meal? I overtly watched the five women who had finished their washing (which was laid on the beach, weighted down at each corner with lumps of coral) as they feasted, without a care in the world. Jolly, handsome-looking women, mostly inclined to plumpness from eating too much poi, they grabbed whatever they could—from the tasty fish and crays to the ugly over-rich coconut crabs. We all ate off banana or breadfruit leaves, while a kettle boiled noisily on the small fire, and there was a great deal of laughter and giggling and suddenly I found myself being envious of them. The Cook Islanders are such happy-go-lucky people, untouched by the onslaught of tourism, that nobody can help liking them. They were contented, no doubt about that, and they didn’t have to search for happiness. They were simpler than we whites in the South Seas, they took their pleasures as they came. I was the odd fish at that fishy meal!

Once we had finished, there was still plenty of daylight and Tagi announced that the men would carry my packages up to the shack.

No sooner had they started, however, than the five women also surged towards the yard. Now that I had shared their meal, they felt they had earned the right to see where I was going to live, to satisfy a curiosity that I found rather touching because of its innocence.

I couldn’t be angry, for these weren’t predatory females anxious to probe the secrets of a crank. They accepted me for what I was, and wanted to see if I would be comfortable.

They obviously thought I was not going to be comfortable, for when they had gathered in the yard, a great deal of gesticulating accompanied a torrent of words.

In a way, I was anxious to get down to work for I had all my belongings to sort out.

"What’s the row about?" I asked, a little crossly.

"The women say your veranda roof is no good," replied Tagi.

"I could have told you that," I retorted.

"They would like to make a new one," he added.

And they did! Almost before the last of my packages had been deposited in the shack, five giggling women were squatting on my veranda burdened with fronds. They worked to such good effect that over half a new roof had been finished before the Mahurangi sailed the following morning.

I had little time that first evening to explore my island. Indeed, all I could do was unpack the few necessities I required, for as I wrote on the first page of my journal, "Haven’t had time for a proper look around, but I can see miles of work sticking out. There will be no time for sitting under a tree and watching the reef, not for a long time anyway."

Soon after sundown, after I had entered this in my journal, I rolled a last cigarette before turning in. I was either too tired or maybe too excited even to brew a pot of tea.

I had unpacked a little glass and crockery and now I used some of my precious soap to scrub down my eating table. I put a couple of drinking coconuts on the shelf near the bed and then I unrolled my kapok mattress, spread it out and made my bed carefully.

I had had no time to examine the books left by the coast-watchers, but in any event it did not matter, for on this first night only one book seemed appropriate. When the cats had settled down, I lit the glass table lamp, carried it to the bedside table, and soon I was tucked in reading The Island of Desire.

Only once did I wake during the night, when a sudden squeal, half human, half animal, made me jump up, frozen with fear. It was succeeded by a series of grunts—and then I knew the sounds and relaxed. It seemed that the rumours I had heard of wild pigs on the island were true.

The Mahurangi sailed soon after dawn. Over the years I had imagined this moment dozens of times, often wondering what sort of emotions I would experience at the actual moment of severing my last contact with the outside world. I had imagined I might be a little despondent and had thought, too, there might be a sudden surge of almost frightening loneliness. But now the schooner was leaving I felt nothing but impatience that the ship took so long to get under way.

I hate protracted farewells at the best of times, and yet I would have been abnormal had I not felt a pang or two of emotion. It was not despondency. It was not fear. But when Tagi, who was the last to get into the ship’s boat came and said, "Best of luck, Tom!", I will admit there was a lump in my throat. It was the severing of the link, the rather ceremonious way he shook hands, that made me feel that way; but it passed quickly.

At last all the passengers were on board, and the old Mahurangi began to move. I stood on the beach watching her sail slowly towards the gap through the reef. Once she was far enough away, I took off my shorts and waved them in symbolic farewell.

From that moment onwards I never again put on those shorts. Instead, I wore a five-inch strip torn from an old pareu. I wore it native style, one end fastened round the waist, with the other end hanging down in front, then passed between the legs, drawn behind, the end being tucked under the waistband. Done properly, it will remain in position all day, whether you are working, swimming or fishing.

An Island to Oneself
PART TWO - On the Island: October 1952 -- June 1954
Chapter 4: Alone at last

Contents

Now that I was alone on my island I began to take stock. Since Anchorage is roughly tongue-shaped, and measures only three hundred yards at its widest point, I could take most of it in at a glance as I stood on the beach watching the Mahurangi disappear.

From the broken-down pier, where I had waved good-bye, I could see stretching back from the beach a profusion of coconuts, pandanus trees, vines and a mass of tauhunu—a shrub which has a habit of shooting up to twenty feet or more into an impenetrable bush. Dwarfing them all were five huge tamanu trees whose ponderous limbs jutted out from massive trunks twenty feet or more above my head. The trunks were forked and twisted like any ancient English oak, and it must have been one of these trees to which Frisbie had lashed his children during the hurricane. They certainly looked tough enough to withstand any storm.

Driven by a sudden impulse I decided that before doing anything else, I would walk right round the island, either along the beach or in the shallow waters of the fringe reef. It was not meant to be a pleasure stroll. I wanted to see something of the island, find out where the best coconuts were growing, discover the whereabouts of the best topsoil for my garden, examine the shallows with an eye to the best pools for fishing.

It was a beautiful morning, so leaving the old pier behind me, I set off up the west coast—the lagoon side—for the northern tip of my new home, walking at first along a beach so white and blinding that it almost hurt my eyes.

I hadn’t gone far before I came upon a clump of coconuts shading the beach like a canopy, their slender trunks bent by the prevailing wind so that they leaned over at an angle of about forty-five degrees. It was not their beauty, however, which struck me, but the more prosaic fact that the height of the trees did not look too intimidating for climbing. I could see there were plenty of nuts, many of them low enough to be got at with the short pole which, in my mind, was already equipped with an iron hook.

Behind them, the ground rose to fifteen feet, the highest point of the island, and here the trees were taller. Moreover, a mass of tauhunu, which thrives on sandy atoll soil (and shares the coconut’s gift for withstanding the salt driven in from the sea), looked so thick that I knew it would be difficult getting near many of the nuts. There was a lot of pandanus about, too; a thin-leafed palm looking quite different from a coconut tree, and which Frisbie once described as "gawky-limbed."

This was the only hill on my island, and it was not very large, and as I walked slowly towards the northern tip, the ground sloped down until it was barely three feet above sea level.

At times I was able to walk along a stretch of beach but at others the coral gave way to rock and I would paddle through the shallows as I skirted some miniature "headland." It was a very clear day and along the reef stretching north of Anchorage I could see several of the lagoon’s islets—Whale, Brushwood and One Tree Island, with its single palm like a toy tree stuck on a piece of cardboard placed on a sheet of glass.

It had taken only a few minutes to walk from the pier, half-way up the west coast, to the northern tip of the island, for the distance was hardly more than four hundred yards. Now I turned back and made my way along the white sandy beach of the east coast which stretched ahead in a series of gentle curves for half a mile to the sound end of the island. I could see no evidence of bees or insects, no reptiles; nothing more dangerous than the coconut crabs, and an occasional rat.

Some fifteen-foot miki-miki trees were growing almost out of the bare rock at the water’s edge, and I made a mental note about them; I would find their hard branches invaluable, for they make the best sticks in the world for husking coconuts. A few yards farther on I spied some young paw-paws fifty yards inland and decided to give them a closer look. I had almost reached them when a violent flurry in the undergrowth scared the wits out of me. Almost before I realised what had happened, I had a glimpse of a wild pig lumbering away with astonishing speed. But my momentary fear quickly gave way to anger when I realised I had disturbed the brute in the very act of tearing out the green young shoots of some paw-paw—one of the fruits on which I would have to depend. Those pigs presented a real problem.

The rest of the paw-paws appeared to be flourishing, but nearby some old banana trees seemed to be in a sorry condition, and I could see that if I wanted any bananas I might well have to rely on the two suckers I had brought with me—and devise a means of protective fencing to keep the pigs out.

Skirting the overgrown bush, I followed the curving beach until I reached a point half-way down the east coast. Here I re-discovered a little cove, marked on the charts as Pylades Bay, where I had swum on my first visit.

This natural bathing pool was deep, and the water was blue, clear and enticing. Pylades Bay would certainly be my private swimming pool. Behind it, the ground was covered with hibiscus trees and densely matted tauhunu, and from the beach I could see several uprooted coconut trees, the long, slender, dead-straight trunks lying just where they had crashed. I remembered Frisbie telling me, "The most awesome thing in the hurricane was watching, actually watching, the wind take an old coconut tree eighty feet tall and tear it out of the ground."

These must have been the ones he had referred to when describing the hurricane of ’42. I scrambled towards them, making my way past the impenetrable tauhunu along the patches of gravel here and there—some carpeted with fallen hibiscus blossoms, others bare, but covered with bird droppings, which delighted me, for I knew what that meant. This must be a nesting place for terns, which prefer to lay their eggs on bare rock in November and December. I could see the prospect of scrambled tern eggs for tea when they started to lay in three or four months’ time.

The fallen coconuts were big fellows, and the way they had been strewn haphazardly made me thin incongruously of a giant spilling a box of matches. They were overgrown with vines, and in some cases the roots had been torn out of the ground in their entirety.

Looking idly around, I saw a vaguely familiar object embedded in one enormous, spreading, upturned root, and with some difficulty I managed to dislodge it. It was a brick, apparently made from fire clay and in perfect condition. As far as I could see, it had never been used, and must have lain buried under the coconut palm for fifty years or more. No doubt it had been left there from the days when Lever Brothers were growing copra on the island. I tucked it under my arm, for everything can have a use on an uninhabited island.

The southern part of the island had obviously fared worst in the hurricane, and I had only to look around me to see the reason why, for though the northern end was protected by the barrier reef, the gigantic waves which had poured through the pass must have hit the south end of the island with their full force, so that near the southern tip a depression sliced its way across the island where heavy seas had swept right over Anchorage. This savage onslaught had done some good, however, for it was here that I now discovered a large amount of topsoil. Picking up a handful, I felt its gritty, fine sand and knew it was exactly what I wanted—though at this stage I did not even contemplate how I would transport it to the garden, a quarter of a mile away.

The day was so clear that looking across the lagoon I could even see Motu Tuo, where Andy and I had picnicked, and I remember on that first warm morning that hardly a breeze was stirring the coloured patchwork of the lagoon. And I can remember, too, standing ankle-deep in the shallows, looking at my own palm-tree skyline of Suvarov and saying to myself, "Well, Neale here you are after all these years—and it’s all yours."

During the next few days I was so busy getting straight that I never seemed to have time to cook or even think about meals. But this didn’t worry me because I knew a more settled time was coming when I had established a routine. And meantime I just seemed to sink naturally into this new island life. After all, I had had more than half a lifetime of preparation. My succession of jobs in the engine rooms of a dozen different island vessels had taught me how to handle tools. Indeed, I was used to coping with any practical problem that turned up, whilst my jobs on shore—clearing bush, planting bananas, even storekeeping—had taught me the hard way of fending for myself. I was the handyman incarnate. I knew four different ways to thatch a roof; I could spear fish; I was able to light a fire with a magnifying glass—not that I ever needed this trick for by now I knew exactly the kind of wood which smouldered but never burst into flame, so that I was able to keep a fire dormant all through the night.

I was immensely happy during those first few days. Before starting to unpack everything, I cleaned out the shack thoroughly, scrubbing the floors and washing down the walls. Then I spent three or four days hard at work tearing down the creepers and vines from the roof of the shack and hacking them away from the shed with my machete. I finished plaiting the veranda roof and had to nail up two of the shutters which had become loose. There seemed no end to the work, but before long I had made a shelf in the bath-house and then I fixed up a clothes line between two hibiscus trees at the bottom of the yard, and high enough to hang out my bed linen.

All this took a long time for I had to fish for the cats (and myself!) and though I did very little cooking at first, I had to make a fire and this meant collecting firewood from all over the island. But I was determined to clean up the place before I did anything else, and only when this was done did I set about sorting out my supplies.

One of the first tasks I had to tackle was unpacking my sack of sugar and storing the contents before it became damp in the empty screw-top jars I had brought along with me. I put these jars with the rest of my bulk food in the old refrigerator, except for the few items I knew I would need daily.

The old fridge was a real blessing for I decided my kai room was one place that must be both spotless and tidy. I suppose it is a relic of my Navy days that I like to stow things away in their proper places and keep them ship-shape. One of the first things I did, just to remind me that dirty plates had no place on an idyllic island, was to fetch a length of wire and two nails and string up a line above the kai bench for my dishcloths and teacloths. I can tell you that from that moment on I always washed up in hot water and invariably kept a spare teacloth in reserve. And when I sat down to my meals I laid out my plates and cutlery—or maybe some large green leaves instead of plates—on the table linoleum I had brought for just this purpose.

From the day I unpacked, I used the top shelf of the food safe for storing the food I knew I would require daily—a jar of sugar, a tin of jam, a little tea and coffee, and so on—while on the middle shelf I kept my plates and cutlery. The bottom shelf was reserved for the small tins of cooking aids like salt, curry powder and my coffee-grinder.

I was equally meticulous about my tools. I unpacked the smaller ones—saws, chisels, hammer and so on—into a convenient box which I kept on the veranda where I could get at them easily. The bigger ones and my pick and shovel I stored in the shed in the yard, where I also had a shelf for my packages of nails, screws and bits of wire.

The cook-house did not present much of a problem, and though I dumped my volcanic stones in a corner, there was no time yet for the laborious business of making a native oven, and I contented myself at first with finding two suitably shaped stones on which to rest my bars of iron for simple cooking over an open fire. In another corner I kept a box of wooden chips and some kindling wood.

The only thing I missed was a good, wood-burning stove, like the one on which I had cooked in Moorea. They are simple to use, economical with wood, and make it much easier to keep the cookhouse tidy. I knew, almost as soon as I settled in, that this was one purchase I should have made in Rarotonga, even if it had meant sacrificing some luxury. Had there been any good volcanic stones on the island, I might have built a stone fireplace of sorts, but there were none.

Once I had unpacked, firewood was one of my top priorities, for I wanted the shed filled with a good six months’ supply. In a few weeks the hurricane season would start, and that could mean a spell of heavy rainy weather. I had no intention of being caught without dry firewood.

It was a hard job. Some of the shrubs and trees had dead limbs which could be severed with a couple of strokes of the axe. But otherwise it was a business of solid, backbreaking sawing, and I relegated all other priority jobs until I had accumulated an impressive wood-pile. It took me nearly two weeks to fill my shed with wood, but later, when the rainy season came, it was to prove a boon.

Kindling wood I kept separate, mainly relying on tauhunu which, when more or less rotten, would smoulder happily on my fire. I always had a couple of pieces quietly smoking on the fire in the cook-house, and found them thoroughly reliable because when I wanted to get a blaze going it was only necessary to push two smouldering ends together, pile on a few chips from the box I kept handy, and in no time at all there would be a splendid blaze going. Indeed, this system worked so well that it was very seldom that I had to use a match, and as time went by it became almost a point of honour never to have to reach for the box.

Almost without noticing it, I slipped into the routine that was to become my life. Early morning had a familiar sound for I was regularly awakened by a rooster just before dawn. I would lie there relaxed for a little, thinking how lucky I was to look forward to a day which was going to bring me nothing but satisfaction. And then, as it grew light, I would get up and fill the cast-iron kettle and light a fire. Usually the embers were still warm. Once the kettle was on and the fire going, I invariably made for the "House of Meditation" for I have always been a creature of regular habits.

Close at hand was an old tin with the top cut off. Filled with ashes, it served as a practical alternative to modern plumbing.

Then off I went for a quick wash before breakfast; only a cat’s lick since I reserved my "shower" for the end of the day after hard work in the hot sun.

Back in the kai room the kettle would be boiling and the cats impatient for their fish (which I had saved from the night before). And whilst they ate I would get down a pound jar of coffee which I had ground from my supply of beans and brew myself a couple of cups to accompany a Suva biscuit or two, with butter and jam—though later, when I was more settled, I baked scones and, later still, would often have eggs for breakfast.

I rarely ate a substantial lunch. During those first months there was so much to do that I could not bear to waste time on cooking until the evening. I could easily find drinking nuts, and if I felt a pang of hunger around midday, I would chew some uto—the inside of a young sprouting coconut, which can be eaten either cooked or raw. (I shall have more to say about uto later on).

My dislike of cooking (only because it wasted time) amounted almost to a phobia at first, because I could not really adjust myself to the tempo of this new life, to the fact that I did not really need to hurry. Instinctively I wanted to get any job done as quickly as possible, and at times I would be spurred on by melancholy thoughts that I would never get my garden started or build a run and raise the fowl population.

After work, I would catch some fish in the early evening, cook it and then, if the weather were fine, take a bowl of tea down to the beach and sit there on a box-chair which I had made so I could watch the sun go down—one of my favourite "pastimes."

Then I would "explore" something very different from my daytime activities—the books left by the coast-watchers. These were a mixed bag, I must admit, and if I describe my own taste in literature as catholic, I don’t know what denomination to use in describing theirs!

I decided that half of them were not worth reading at all—a decision I reversed after a year when I was only too glad to read anything. But there were some gems among the trash, including several books of which I had never heard.

One evening I picked up Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I remember I was very tired that night, and meant to read only a few pages to lull me to sleep. I was kept awake half the night, entranced by a description of a world so horrifying that time after time I would stop, reflect on what I had read, and say, "Neale—if that's what the world is going to be like, you just stay where you are!" Even the crowing of a cock could not have wakened me that morning!

During the first weeks the problems of settling in occupied most of my time, but I did make a tentative start on some of the more long-term projects I had in mind.

Though the prospect of eggs for breakfast seemed remote, I tried to cajole the fowls by scattering grated coconut at the far end of the yard. I had plans to tame them and collect them all into one run and after the first couple of weeks I noticed they were a lot less hesitant about approaching the shack.

Unfortunately, my gifts of grated coconut also attracted the wild pigs; five large and destructive animals whose feverish passion for uprooting everything in sight made me acutely conscious that my plans for a garden were not likely to come to fruition with these menaces about.

Nonetheless, the garden was a necessity. What was left of it was about forty feet long, and eventually I knew I would have to fence it in. But since I certainly could not cope with this task just then, I contented myself meantime with trying to preserve the breadfruit tree which stood near the cook-house. I managed this by sawing off four equal lengths of coconut log from some fallen trees and with them I constructed a sort of frame around its roots. Every day after this I tipped in a mixture of old leaves and scraps of food, fish the cats had left and even fishbones, all stirred up to make humus which would nourish the roots and ensure me a regular and invaluable supply of breadfruit for my table.

At one end of what was left of the garden I planted the two banana suckers I had brought. Although I tended them in just the same way, there was a year to wait before I enjoyed my first bunch of bananas. Once the trees had started, however, they never looked back.

I managed to fit in these jobs between my daily routine and I was lucky in that the weather contrived to remain almost perfect during those first few weeks. So much so that the first month went past so rapidly I could hardly believe it when I came to enter up my diary for November 6, and discovered this was my birthday. I see from my journal that I noted this Friday "a beautiful warm day, the breadfruit tree is doing fine. Took my tea down to the beach after catching fish for the cats. Cooked them on the beach just before dusk and watched the night fall on the lagoon." And then, because the date took me back into an existence I had half forgotten, I found myself adding, "Fifty-one years ago today my mother was having a tough time."

I found it difficult to believe I had actually spent a whole month on the island. Does this sound impossible? Believe me, it did not seem so to me. Every day had been so full, what with my simple endeavours to get my roots down and establish myself on the island, that the time just seemed to have disappeared and I was sometimes so busy I would even forget my resolution to shave every Wednesday and Sunday, or boil my bed linen once a week.

And now here I was in November with the hurricane season due any moment, so that suddenly I had to turn-to and get down to definite measures which would ensure my survival.

Since the shack was my home, its preservation became my first thought. I knew I had to evolve a scheme which was going to make it stand up to whatever the winds could do, so I decided to peg it down with guy ropes made from the wire left by the coast-watchers.

I started by digging three holes on each side of the shack, holes designed to anchor the wire I planned to rig right over the roof. The next thing was to make good strong "anchors" for the guy ropes as any normal method of pegging would never stand up to a big wind.

For each of the six holes I had dug, I dragged up fifty-pound squarish lumps of coral, dumped them on the edge and wound them round and round with wire, leaving a big loop of wire sticking out from each one.

Then I lowered the stones into the holes, and filled them up so that only the loops remained above ground. Next I cut three long lengths of wire off the roll and slung them right over the roof of the shack. All I had to do now was fasten the two ends of each length through the loops on either side of the shack and tighten the wires by twisting them with my pliers.

This major job took me quite a few days but when it was completed I felt much more secure—though I didn’t flatter myself that my efforts would outlast a hurricane of the calibre of ’42. But for ordinary storms, I reckoned I could hold my own.

There was one final precaution: I dug a hole about five feet long and three feet wide in the shed to hold my survival kit which consisted of my box of tools, to which I added three boxes of matches in a tin sealed with sticking plaster and a spare pair of rubber shoes. And from now on I practised a "drill." Whenever my barometer indicated a severe storm coming up, my box went straight into that hole. Without it, I knew there was little chance of my survival.

An Island to Oneself
PART TWO - On the Island: October 1952 -- June 1954
Chapter 5: Fishing, Cooking--and Improvising

Contents

Miraculously, the storms left us alone. There were sudden squalls which blotted out everything five yards from the shack but these were shortlived and indeed were welcome, for they not only cooled the island but replenished my water tanks. I did not count them as "bad weather," however, and during the first autumn there were no signs of the hurricanes I had feared.

It was just as well, for during the next few months I began to work harder than I had ever done before in my life. And yet this was something I never resented because everything that cropped up seemed to come as a challenge and every time I managed to find the answer, it was a new step forward that seemed tremendously worthwhile.

Often after a hard day I would imagine myself back in Rarotonga, where I might have been waiting impatiently for Friday’s pay-packet. But here mundane things like that had no significance. Instead, I would relax in the evening and, if the weather were fine, I would brew myself a bowl of tea and carry it down to the beach. There I would sit with the faint sigh of the trade winds rustling the palms which bent like a canopy over my head. Sometimes I would light a small fire to cook the cats’ supper, and later Mr. Tom-Tom or Mrs. Thievery would jump up on my lap and purr contentedly.

On some evenings the air would be so still I could hear my own breath; at others, my little world would be filled with the screams and sounds of birds wheeling above me, mostly the terns (which I watched patiently, for I knew they would soon start to lay) and frigate birds, which nested on the islets in their thousands, knowing they had no humans to fear. I never ceased to be fascinated by these ugly brutes, with a wing span of up to eight feet and scarlet pouches below their bills. They are born bullies. Four or five would start chasing one poor little tern until they had forced it to disgorge the fish it had just caught, and then, with an incredible dexterity on the wing, would invariably catch the fish before it struck the water.

At least they provided drama during those moments between day and night—made all the more inviting by the absence of mosquitoes or flies.

Night fell around us with startling tropical swiftness, so that one moment the lagoon would resemble a patch-work quilt of colours and the next would become a black satin bedspread—yes, that is what it looked like, a giant’s bedspread, with the white foam of the reef like the tops of the sheets and pillows.

I was entirely content. Nothing could seem more perfect, and as the embers of my fire died down, the cats came closer to me, as though reminding me that this particular day was over, and now it was time to sleep and gather strength for the new day ahead.

And when the new day dawned, there were always two vital necessities which seemed to dominate every other plan I had in mind. They were fishing and cooking and it did not take me long to discover the most likely spots where my staple food was waiting to be hooked or speared, for the pools in the shallows along the reef abounded (and I use that overworked word deliberately) in all kinds of fish. It was only a question of choosing between the small ku, parrot fish, eels, cod or crayfish. Nor was I worried by sharks, barracuda or other dangerous fish, which rarely penetrated as far as these shallow waters (though I did have two encounters with sharks later on).

One of the simplest fish to catch—and one of the tastiest—were cray, on the barrier reef at night on a rising tide. Often I could see their feelers sticking out of a crevice, and since a cray invariably faces outwards from the hole in which it hides, I was able to catch hold of the feelers with my right hand, slide my left into the crevice, grab him and start pulling. The cray is quite difficult to dislodge and I had to keep up a steady strain. Once he tired, however, it was easy. When I got him out, I would give the tail a quick twist to kill him.

Quite by chance, I discovered a crayfish "reservoir." Walking along the reef one morning I came on a pool about eighteen inches deep with a white coral lining showing clearly through the water. At that very moment a cray scuttled like a flash from one crevice to another.

I thought I had spotted where it had taken refuge and poked after it with the shaft of my spear. For a few moments nothing happened and I supposed I had stuck the shaft into the wrong crevice, but just as I was about to pull the spear out, I felt a curious vibration in my hand.

And that meant a cray was hiding in the hole, for long ago in Moorea I had learned from the native fishermen that if you happen to touch a hidden cray a vibration travels up the pole. The cray doesn’t actually move—at least, I don’t think it does; it must be the fishy equivalent of a shudder of apprehension! Whatever it is, the vibration is so marked that I could always feel it if I were holding the spear shaft in my hand. Once I had got this one out, I tried another crevice and sure enough there was a vibration. I went on poking around until the whole pool seemed alive with cray. Indeed, it proved a fertile larder and I came back to the pool for weeks until I had exhausted the entire natural supply.

If the crayfish panicked out of sight, the parrot fish panicked in full view. Vivid blue or light reddish in colour, they lay in the small pools or depressions along the reef. Sometimes I would walk into a pool and disturb several of them—each between a foot and eighteen inches long—and then they would dart about frantically until finally, ostrich-like, they would make for some cranny in the coral and hide their heads so that I could spear their bodies easily.

The parrot is a fleshy fish from which I could usually cut a good fat fillet, and I dined on them in the early days because they taste best when eaten raw, and I was in no mood to waste time on too much cooking.

Since the days when I lived on Moorea, I had become used to eating them in the Tahitian style, raw and marinated in lime juice, but as there were no limes on Suvarov, I soaked them in a little vinegar and chopped onion which could be used over and over again.

If I did feel like cooking, then I would fish for ku, some six to nine inches long, with a delicate flavour not unlike mullet. I could easily catch half a dozen in a few minutes, using a hook which I usually baited with a feather.

I used to fry them straight away, with the heads and scales still on and once they were cooked the skin would peel off easily. Since they have a lot of bones, I seldom ate them on a plate. Instead, I used fleshy leaves from the breadfruit or paw-paw tree, which were as big as plates and obviated the necessity of washing up since I simply decanted the remnants around the roots of my breadfruit and banana trees.

My only worry when frying ku was that my supply of dripping was strictly limited, so before long I decided that I must cook them in a native oven, a process which involved spending much more time in the cook-house, as every meal entailed building an individual oven from volcanic stones. There was just no escape from this chore because a native oven has no permanence in the sense one thinks about ovens in a civilised world. One meal—however delicious—and you’ve got to start rebuilding your cooking stove all over again. It’s not a job I would recommend to the average housewife anxious to produce a tasty "little something" within a few minutes.

Let me tell you how I went about it. First I made a shallow hole in one corner of my cook-house, with my pile of volcanic stones handy nearby. In the hole—little more than a depression—I lit a fire, and once it was going well, ringed it with the larger stones and then carefully covered the fire by building up a sort of pyramid of the smaller stones over the burning wood, rather like putting coal on a fire started with chips. As the fire burned down to embers, the stones soon absorbed the heat so that after an hour or so the inner ones were glowing dull red. When the fire had finally burned itself out, I levelled the stones with the butt end of a palm frond and my oven was ready.

I knew the stones would retain their heat for hours and I had ready several dozen fat green leaves picked from the breadfruit tree and tied in bundles of ten. These were to form the "lid" and could be used over and over again.

Whilst the stones had been heating, I had got the fish ready, well wrapped in leaves and now I laid them on the stones gently covering them with a top layer of more clean leaves. On top of this I placed the breadfruit "lid" which I now finally covered with old mats and sacks, weighted down at the edges with stones.

Does it sound complicated? I can assure you that the result was really delicious and, what’s more, I could leave my meal cooking slowly there for hours. Indeed, I would often go away on another task and return much later, confident that when I lifted the lid my dinner would be awaiting me cooked to a turn whatever time I came in.

But as the weeks went on, the actual time spent in "creating" each individual oven began to irk me. This may seem strange on a desert island where time is generally supposed to have no significance, but for me every moment lost in cooking was time wasted for more vital projects.

Yet I could cook ku no other way without losing my precious dripping. (I was secretly saving it to fry my first eggs!) Ku were too small to be boiled and they were too tender and bony to make a fish stew. How I missed a real stove! I could have kicked myself for not having brought one, but then each new week brought fresh evidence of my lack of foresight when shopping in Rarotonga. I had really believed my list was complete, that after all the experience gained during my years of batching, nothing had been left to chance; and I often reflected ruefully on the remarks of the salesman when I was buying my rubber shoes: "Let’s face it, you’ve always been near a store."

Well, there were no stores on Suvarov and this was only one of many problems I faced, including another when I used the multiple barbed spear which a friend in Rarotonga had given me, for it tore the flesh of small fish so badly that after a few weeks of trying to eat torn and mangled fish, I decided I would have to set about constructing a single-pronged spear from one of the eighteen-inch lengths of round iron I had brought with me.

I needed an anvil to fashion my new spear and fortunately there was an old piece of ballast I had discovered on the beach which must have weighed fifty pounds.

I knew that in order to sharpen the tip I would first have to heat the iron bar over a fire, then hammer it to a point on the anvil, but only now did I realise I had never thought of buying a pair of blacksmith’s tongs with which to grasp it when the heat from the tip began to creep up the bar.

To get over this, I wrapped the end I had to hold in layer after layer of the large cloth-like dead leaves which you always find attached to the base of a coconut palm frond. They are brown in colour, and very soft and pliable, and in fact look and feel rather like sacking, so they suited my purpose very well.

Once I had got a good fire going in the cook-house, I found it fairly easy to hammer the iron to a point, and when it had cooled off I filed the point down with my coarse file until it was really sharp. Then I heated it again until it was bright red, and plunged it into water several times to harden it.

After I had picked out a suitable sapling for a shaft, I cut a slot four inches deep in one end, fitted the spear-head into it, then bound the whole with wire.

Though fishing and cooking—and, I suppose, improvising—occupied a great deal of time, I had to do something about the fowls and the garden. The fowl run which I hoped to build could wait, for more and more terns were wheeling overhead by now, and I knew that it would not be long before they started to lay.

On the other hand, a garden was an absolute necessity. I could start to make a fence but my real problem lay in transporting the topsoil I had discovered by the depression at the southern end of the island.

I set off on several occasions, armed with a shovel and a sugar sack, but it would take me an entire morning to carry one sackful to the garden. I did make a start by sifting out three sackfuls which I put into shallow boxes so that I could at least start growing seeds, though whether I would ever be able to transplant them was another matter.

My first attempts at separating the fine soil took me several days—simply because I had not thought to buy a sieve in Rarotonga. I did, however, have a small tea strainer, and I sieved enough fine soil for six seed-boxes, using only this wretchedly small implement.

How I missed a boat! I would look wistfully at the wide cracks in the upturned boat on the veranda, gaping at me as though to say, "I’ll sink like a stone." Why hadn’t I brought some caulking material? Then I could have mended her, hauled her through the shallows, loaded her up and pulled her back. But the boat looked impossible to repair—unless I could think of something; and I seemed to have so many other things to think about.

During this time when there was no chance of ever tasting an egg, I lived almost exclusively on fish, breadfruit, paw-paw—and uto, without doubt the most nutritious of all indigenous foods on Suvarov.

Uto is formed when a coconut has fallen from a tree and is left on the ground until it starts sprouting. At this moment nature begins a fascinating metamorphosis. Miniature coconut leaves sprout out, while inside the nut milk and meat are gradually transformed into a white spongy substance. This is uto, and you can eat it either cooked or uncooked, though over-indulgence in the latter leads to indigestion.

I discovered there was plenty of uto on the island, but once again I ran into cooking problems. In fact, it seemed as though every time I tasted a new fruit or caught a different kind of fish, I had to devise a new way to cook it.

I started by cooking uto on a native oven, but it was unsatisfactory because you can’t easily regulate the heat and overcooked uto is uneatable. I wasted so much time that I would find myself eating it raw to save the work of building the oven—and that, I knew, would in the end lead to stomach trouble.

It did. I had such a bad bout of indigestion I vowed never to eat raw uto again. But neither did I want the chore of making a native oven. I looked around for a way out, and eventually decided to try and make a special cooker for uto.

The coast-watchers had left several empty forty-gallon drums on the island. I rolled one up to the shack, and first of all cut about eighteen inches off the bottom of one so the drum resembled a giant cake tin. (It proved too tough for my tin snips and I spent two laborious days working on it with my cold chisel.) I made a hole deep enough to take the tin in a corner of the cook-house so that the top stuck out six inches or so above the ground. Next, I made a lid from the other end of the drum, though I had some difficulty as it would not fit over the top of the "cake tin" because, of course, it was exactly the same size. However, I cut slots with my hacksaw every nine inches around the edge of the lid making it just pliable enough to bend outwards a little, so that it would fit over the other section. I punched two holes in the lid and made a handle from a piece of wire.

I lit a fire inside the "cake tin" and when it was going well, threw in some volcanic stones. As soon as these grew hot, I popped in a couple of dozen husked uto nuts, with the eye-end carefully turned down—a necessity because there is little meat near the eye-end, so the uto cooks more quickly. I jammed the lid on, covered the cooker with old sacks and let the uto cook between three and four hours, timing the operation carefully. This, by the way, was virtually the only time I ever used my clock on Suvarov.

My cooker worked perfectly, and once the uto was cooked I kept it in a special box and often ate it cold with coconut cream for breakfast. It tastes remarkably like a coconut scone, and has a consistency which resembles Yorkshire pudding. It is very sustaining. If I were suddenly hungry I would go to my store, break open a cooked nut and eat the uto as one might eat an apple or a piece of cake between meals.

My basic diet, however, still continued to be fish, especially as I was hoarding my "special" supplies like a miser; I suppose instinctively I was guarding against a rainy day—literally a rainy day—when fishing might be impossible, or I could be confined to my shack.

Sometimes I would eat one of the coconut crabs which I found in small numbers on Suvarov. But I never really cared for them. They were ugly, brutal creatures, at least a foot long, with a pair of claws strong enough to crush a finger. Some of the islanders I had known considered their tails to be a great delicacy, but I found them too rich. Besides, coconut crabs are scavengers who will eat anything. They would have eaten me had I died! I roasted one occasionally when I really felt a need for a change of diet. Their claws were good, but my dislike for these repugnant creatures tended to spoil my appetite, so that when the cats and I got heartily sick of ku or raw parrot fish, and were desperate for a change of flavour, I preferred to go after larger fish.

Trevally, a predatory fish weighing six pounds or more, prefer live bait, but having none I constructed a lure of white feathers backed up with a strip of red material from an old pareu. Quite often I would hook a trevally with the first cast from my big rod and as a great treat I would use a little dripping and have a couple of well-fried fillets for supper, though more often—especially if I caught a bigger one with coarser flesh—I would steam the head, stirring some coconut cream into the water. If cooked properly, it made a really good fish soup.

Every fish in the lagoon seemed to queue up for my table (except, curiously, turtles, which were rare). Perhaps the easiest to catch was the reef cod which lay motionless in the pools as I approached. They never even moved until my spear was within six inches of them, and once I had them quivering on shore, I carried them back to the shack and steamed them in salt water in my aluminium pan over a fire beneath a piece of flattened old iron roofing.

Both trevally and cod had to be cooked over the open fire which I kept going under my firebars resting on two lumps of coral. But more and more I was wondering how I could build myself a proper fireplace as the substitute for the stove I so sorely missed. The coast-watchers had left so much junk behind—like the fuel drums which had been so useful for making my uto cooker—that I searched everywhere in the hope of finding other things I might turn to good account. I also searched along the beach, for flotsam of one sort or another was always being washed ashore.

I collected it all. Once I found a child’s ball. Empty bottles were washed up regularly, and one day I found several flat, yellowish blocks, nearly a foot square and three inches thick. As I picked up the nearest piece, I noticed some small stones partially embedded in its underside. These stones puzzled me until I realised that the substance must have softened under a hot sun and then hardened again. And then I thought of the paraffin wax my mother always used to seal the top of her jam jars. It was an odd find and in all there were half a dozen chunks of wax, weighing about twenty pounds.

This might have been of little value but nonetheless, I carried it all back to the shed in the yard—and then forgot about it, for my mind was still fixed on building a stove or fireplace.

Since the beach yielded nothing, I next turned to the fuel drums left by the coast-watchers and tried to flatten one, thinking that I might possibly build a stove out of sheet metal, but I did not have the tools. I even toyed with the idea of trying to dislodge a large slab of concrete embedded in the ground near the shack, which the coast-watchers had used as a platform for their generator—but that too proved impracticable and I left it where it was.

How infuriating to consider that one clue to building a fireplace remained right under my nose for weeks without my realising it—until one morning I went to the woodshed to get my broom which I had made out of palm fronds.

I wasn’t thinking as I stepped inside the shack, and then yelled with pain as I stubbed my bare toe on a large stone. Angrily I bent down to pick it up and throw it out—and my hand grasped not a stone but the brick I had dug out of the coconut root on my first day alone on the island.

A brick! If only I had some bricks I could build the world’s finest fireplace. I didn’t give another thought to sweeping out my bedroom. That brick had been left by Lever Brothers fifty years ago. Why on earth would they leave just one unused brick? Might there not be some more somewhere near the spot?

Instead of the broom, I grabbed my pick and shovel, called in at the shack for a cooked uto—which, with a drinking nut, would have to suffice for lunch—and set off to do a day’s digging.

I spent five whole days—in which I abandoned every other activity but fishing—on one of my most back-breaking jobs; but my hunch was right and in the end I was rewarded by unearthing twenty-one bricks.

I knew exactly how I was going to use them, and I carried them back to my cook-house where my couple of firebars were still resting across two large stones. This was my normal cooking spot when I did not feel inclined to build a native oven; two ordinary stones which, now I had the bricks, looked so thoroughly outdated that I hurled them outside. Soon I was building a proper fireplace with a base of bricks and two sides so that I could place the firebars across them. It was neater, more serviceable and more economical than anything I had had before, and I found myself casting an almost contemptuous glance at my old friends, the volcanic stones heaped in a corner.

By December—while I was still waiting for the rains, which were unaccountably late that year—I had my first omelette since I landed on Suvarov. Thousands of terns had arrived on the island by now and the time came when they started flying around in circles, making a terrific noise. Once I saw this, I knew that they were about to start laying—and I knew, too, that those eggs would be laid in spots where there was little or no undergrowth, or even on the bare rock.

The tern is as big as a pigeon, though its black and white body is of slighter build and its food comes exclusively from the sea. Despite this, as I knew from experience, their eggs never taste fishy—in direct contrast to hens which, when fed with fish, produce very fishy-tasting eggs.

Before long, they were laying in their thousands, and terns seem to lay again and again, like fowls. Knowing their habits and being anxious to secure fresh eggs, I constructed a sort of egg trap by clearing a patch of scrub. It worked, and soon I was collecting eggs there every day. Just to make sure, I dipped them one by one into water, knowing that if the egg were fit to eat it would lie on its side at the bottom of the glass. It is an old trick. Once incubation has begun an egg will stand on end, whilst an old one can soon be spotted since it simply floats to the top.

For a month I had eggs every day, and fed the rest of my daily haul to the cats who loved them, or as sure "bait" in my gradual struggle to tame the fowls. As a matter of fact, the hens loved them, especially after I had hard-boiled them and mashed them up with the shells still on. It is amazing how almost any bird or animal appreciates a change of diet. Not to mention myself.

I used to eat them ten at a time, sometimes hard-boiled, sometimes in a very gaily coloured omelette, for tern eggs have slightly pink yolks.

They were the best omelettes I ever tasted.

An Island to Oneself
PART TWO - On the Island: October 1952 -- June 1954
Chapter 6: The Killing of the Wild Pigs

Contents

Early in January the first heavy rains drenched the island. Three months of back-breaking work lay behind me, but now at last I could begin to see some results, for I had settled down to a happy, easy, solitary—but never lonely—life. I kept my shack spotlessly clean; I had built a small lean-to on the beach, roofing it with plaited pandanus (which lasts much longer than a coconut roof) and here I sipped my evening cup of tea at the end of each day’s toil. If I could not chalk up a success in my efforts to tame the fowls, at least I felt they were slowly becoming more friendly, lured on when I started offering them tern eggs. I had also begun to make a garden fence, and I had sown my seeds in shallow boxes. The breadfruit tree was flourishing; so were the two banana shoots in their squares of coconut logs. Even the cats seemed to be more contented than ordinary cats, and when the barometer started to tumble, warning me of bad weather on the way, and I buried my tool chest in its safety hole, I was able to reflect, almost placidly, that I had dry wood enough to keep a fire going for six months.

I had made careful preparations against bad weather. Two weeks’ supply of uto was already cooked, and in its special box. I still had plenty of bully beef, coffee, tea, sugar, and a fair supply of flour—though it was going a bit wormy, and I had to sieve it through the invaluable tea-strainer. In truth, I had been awaiting the rain almost with impatience, not because we needed rain (for Suvarov is blessed with regular, short, sharp tropical storms) but for an entirely different and almost comical reason. Bad weather would give me my first holiday!

Does it sound ridiculous to want a "holiday" on a desert island? Believe me, I had been going at it so hard that I was even behind-hand with my reading, nor did I ever seem to have time to repair odds and ends around the house, or even to do a little mending—not clothes, but a tear in a sheet needed attention with needle and thread, and one of my canvas shoes wanted stitching; a cupboard door was loose, the books should have been taken down from their shelves and thoroughly wiped clear of mildew. Yet I never seemed to have the time. With the rainy weather, however, my outside activities would be brought to a standstill—for when it rains in the Pacific, it really does rain—and I must say I awaited the break with the excitement of a schoolboy approaching the end of term.

For over two weeks, heavy rain lashed the island, while high winds tore shrieking through the trees, and coconuts rattled on the tin roof of my shack. There was never any serious danger of hurricanes that winter, but even though I was snugly protected from the rain, nothing—not even the shield of the low jungle—could keep out what Frisbie described as "the ungodly roar" of the wind, or the twang as it sang through the taut wire guy-ropes which shuddered each time the shack trembled.

At times the wind was so fierce that when I ventured outside the torrents seemed to be driven almost horizontally. At night, particularly, I could actually see the rain through the frenzied tops of the smaller coconut trees, glittering against a thin moon, and it was hard to believe that all this water whipping past came from the heavens, for it was almost parallel to the ground, as though it spurted from some distant hosepipe with a gigantic spray.

Even though the shack didn’t leak, everything seemed to be damp. Clothes, sheets, even blankets had that faint, uncomfortable feeling. The walls were wet inside as well as out, and day after day I had to wipe them down.

Outside, pools of water, with the rain dancing in them, covered the yard. The hibiscus trees by the shed had been stripped of all their blossoms, which lay at the foot of the trunks like a soggy, multi-coloured remnant of silk; the low, scudding clouds raced across the tops of the palm trees whose long fronds, writhing in the wind, looked alive and trying to escape. Even the fat, juicy paw-paw leaves, glistening with rain-—y dinner plates!—were strewn over the yard like broken crockery. From time to time the clouds would lift for an hour and then a miserable but persistent sun would turn the yard into a sauna bath as the steam rose from the ground. Then the curtain of rain would come down again.

I did not go out much, except to run across the yard for some dry wood, or to get paw-paw and an occasional breadfruit, for I have never been one for indulging in unnecessary discomfort. If I did have to go out, then I made no bones about it, and did what was necessary—even though it meant getting soaked. But there was no point in going for a "pleasure" stroll when I had a comfortable shack, an extra blanket (for when it started to get cooler), a covered cook-house, plenty of food and an assortment of books. I was much better off than the city dweller who has to make his way through rain and sit in his office all day in wet trousers.

Fishing was out of the question most days, which I found almost a relief, and in fact I hardly ever went to the beach—partly because there was no point in doing so, partly because the sea was the real danger, for as the winds whipped the waves into giant combers, the water came surging through the pass and over the reef with the speed of a mill race and was quite capable of rushing across Anchorage, which stood right in its path.

So, as I could not influence the angry moods of nature, I stayed indoors. I read a great deal during those days—and nights. Conrad’s Lord Jim kept me occupied at first, especially when the screaming wind prevented me from sleeping. And then amongst the paperbacks I discovered an ancient copy of Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis which absorbed me each evening until an accident stopped my nightly reading in bed.

It happened when a violent shudder rocked the shack, about three o’clock one morning. I thought the place was going to collapse on top of me and I jumped out of bed, fumbling for a match to light the lamp. In my haste I knocked over a tin of kerosene. It shouldn’t have mattered, for the tin, of course, was unbreakable, but for some reason, in a moment of carelessness, I hadn’t screwed the cap on properly. Before I could strike a match to see what I’d done, my precious kerosene was pouring out all over the floor. It was a disaster, for already I was using my second tin out of the four I had. From that day—until I devised an alternative way of lighting the shack—I gave up reading in bed.

On the other hand, the bad weather did me one good turn. During the second week, the rain virtually stopped for just one evening and I seized the opportunity to go fishing. I had to keep very close to the beach on the lagoon side of Anchorage, for heavy seas were still pounding and charging through the pass. But I managed to catch nearly two dozen ku in under an hour.

I fried some for supper, but there was a good deal more fish than the cats or I needed and I knew they wouldn’t keep fresh until morning unless they were cooked. Yet I just couldn’t face the prospect of laboriously building a native oven. I was wet and cold, and everything was clammy to the touch.

On the other hand, it seemed a pity to throw away such good food, so when I had given the cats a large portion for their supper, I wrapped the rest in leaves and laid them on my new brick hearth. I don’t really know what prompted me to do it—except that for once I had more fish than I needed, so instead of throwing them away, why not experiment?

The fire had gone out whilst I was fishing, but the bricks were still warm, though I could touch them without being burned, and although I was doubtful whether there was still enough heat in them, I thought the idea worth a try. It was about seven in the evening. I wrapped the fish in leaves, as usual, covered them with the "lid" of breadfruit leaves, put the two sacks on top (folded double) and weighted down with stones, and left them.

Next morning I opened up the leaf wrapping. To my surprise I found the fish were perfectly cooked and tasted far better than anything that had ever come out of my native oven. It was the continuous low heat which must have kept them moist and juicy. Indeed, they were so tasty that I made a hearty breakfast, watched by two reproachful cats.

After that memorable meal, I always used my brick fireplace for cooking fish in native style. Nor did I ever allow the fire to go right out.

I often lit a cigarette from the fire and in the evening livened it up for my meal, leaving it so that the bricks would keep hot whilst I was out fishing, and when I returned all I had to do was gather up the ashes and embers with a piece of tin, place the fish wrapped in leaves on the bricks, cover them and leave them for the night—and my breakfast cooked itself.

On the sixteen day the sun was shining when I woke: the whole island steamed as it dried and when I went down to the beach the combers were already beginning to flatten out. The "holidays" were over, and it was time to get back to work.

During the rainy weather I had had plenty of time to think about the problems which still lay before me, and I decided that above all I must do something about the wild pigs, especially as during all these months the garden had never been far out of my mind. For a start I worked on a fence, an affair of stout but splintered pieces of wood which now enclosed the site awaiting its topsoil. Before I went any further, however—before I even transplanted a single seed—I knew that I must deal with the pigs.

There were five of them—five monsters dedicated to a continuous and determined onslaught on any attempt I might make at a garden. Every green thing I wanted to plant would be doomed to be gobbled up, and since a garden was a necessity, it had come to a state where it was either me or the pigs.

Occasionally I had caught a glimpse of them, but as I had no gun, there was little I could do about it. Every time I had tried to catch one, the brute would show such a turn of speed despite its cumbersome proportions that I had been left standing. For a while I toyed with the idea of constructing some sort of trap with a rope and a slip-knot, with which I could lasso them; I spent hours thinking about a deep pit covered with dry coconut fronds and leaves. But always I came back to the realisation that even were I able to snare one, the strength in those shoulders would break any rope I possessed.

It became a simple problem of survival. After a great deal of thought, I decided the only thing to do was to kill them one by one.

But even after I had made this decision, I was troubled by the best way of going about it. In the end, I decided my best hope was to spear them and the more I thought about it, the less I came to relish this gory job. Certainly I have never had any qualms about killing meat when I am hungry (and this was a great deal more serious because my whole survival seemed at stake), but whatever the reasons, the prospect of eliminating those pigs filled me with gloomy foreboding and struck me as having all the elements of being a thoroughly messy business.

Since, however, there was simply no other alternative, I started making my preparations, and during the rains I had painstakingly filed a broken machete blade until it was as sharp as a razor. This is no idle figure of speech—I could have shaved with it, and no headhunter ever possessed a more lethal spearhead. After examining it carefully, I lashed it to a stout pole.

So now I found myself equipped with a spear boasting some eleven inches of naked steel. I had the weapon, I certainly possessed the necessary determination, but now that the fine weather had returned, the problem seemed to be to lure the pigs into range one by one. From experience, I knew that a hog is seldom in the habit of looking up. So, fortified by this knowledge, I spent three days in building a platform about twelve feet up in a palm. The next couple of days I was busy hacking a clearing around the foot of the tree.

It was very simple. All I had to do now as lure the pigs. Knowing my quarry’s passion for food, I waited for a bright moonlit night before opening a dozen coconuts and spreading them around the base of the tree. I then climbed into the tree and settled myself on the platform where I waited, patient but a trifle apprehensive. My machete was close beside me. The spear shaft I gripped in a sweaty palm.

But nothing happened; not a grunt disturbed the silence. Night after night I seemed doomed to a vigil amidst a tracery of fronds black against the moon. It was romantic enough, despite my grisly preoccupation. For four nights, as no pigs arrived, I had only to turn my head to see the lagoon, the breakers on the reef, and beyond that, the immensity of the ocean, with the moon dancing on the water as though millions of needles were cascading on its surface. It was warm and comfortable in my tree, with the south-east trade wind purring gently, and the only noise the jumping of mullet or the ripple of a trevally chasing small fish in the lagoon.

Below me the moon etched eerie patterns on the ground where the coconut crabs, some weighing up to eight pounds, executed a grotesque dance, their huge claws weaving and ghoulishly ripping at the white meat of the opened nuts. A little atoll rat—one of the few spared (so far) by Mrs. Thievery—came scampering out of the trees, sniffed suspiciously for a moment and began nibbling at a nut with his two long front teeth.

And then, on the fifth night, a dark shadow loomed silently out of the tangle of creepers and vines at the edge of the clearing, so that the little rat scuttled hurriedly away into the outer darkness.

All at once I was aware of moonlight glinting along tusks, accentuating the black bulk of massive shoulders. Suddenly I was hardly able to breathe. I felt cold but full of hatred and gripped my home-made spear more tightly.

Approaching the first nut, the pig sniffed quietly, wary and suspicious, because of the knowledge that an enemy was now on the island. There was a sound of chewing, another grunt, and then the boar moved on to the next nut, coming slowly closer and closer to the foot of my tree.

Normally I am a peaceable man, yet now I felt a savage sense of anticipation, and as he moved on towards the foot of my tree, I was actually trembling. My hands were aching on the shaft, the muscles of my arms were so tense they seemed to be part of the spear.

Directly below my tree, the pig paused with a deep, suspicious sniff. Instinctively I knew he had sensed me. Aiming just behind his neck, I plunged the spear downwards with all my strength. The razor-sharp metal sank in up to the shaft, and the pig gave a horrible squeal.

There came another half-human scream and the spear was wrenched from my hands. Spurting blood in the moonlight, the pig swung round with the heavy shaft sticking out of his back. As he staggered off heavily towards the thicket, I scrambled down from my platform and chased him, machete in hand.

I caught him before he reached cover and slashed my machete down across his spine. Again there came a horrible scream and as he rolled on his side, I cut his throat with one savage stroke, so that the blood flowed out to stain the coral.

Staggering back, spattered with blood, I thought for a moment I was going to be sick, but once the gurgling and thrashing stopped, once the heavy body slumped into dark shadowed immobility and I could see it lying there, I was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of melancholy. I suppose it was the reaction. All at once, I was no longer a hunter, I was just an old man of fifty-one, alone on an atoll. I walked home slowly, deciding that I would bury the animal the following day. Nothing on earth could have induced me to eat any part of it.

As the months began to stretch out into 1953 and my garden was still in its infant stage, I was always haunted by a reluctance to dip too heavily into the meagre stores I had brought. I was desperately concerned to make them last and would only occasionally allow myself a treat like a tin of bully beef. Between these treats I simply lived off the island except, of course, for my cups of coffee and tea and the occasional pinch of curry powder or a dip into the beef dripping.

Suvarov, however, was an island capable of constant surprises. One day I came across a patch of arrowroot growing wild. It was the sort the islanders prize, since it makes better starch than any of the packets you can buy in stores. When I dug it out, I found it had a bulbous root which went nine inches down into the sand. Out of this root sprouted pale green hollow stems, with leaves rather similar to those of a paw-paw. The leaf withers when the plant matures, and this is the right moment to dig out the bulb. The ones I found on Suvarov varied enormously in size. Some were the size of small apples, whilst others weighed up to three pounds. I used this arrowroot to make poi, a very popular native dish in the South Seas. At first I mixed it with paw-paw, though later, when the garden was producing, I was to vary this with bananas or pumpkins.

It was quite a business, preparing this dish. After washing the bulbs I grated them, and then came the big operation. Earlier, I had put four pegs in the ground, not too far apart, and each about two feet high. Over these I had stretched a bit of sheeting and placed my wash basin beneath it.

On top of this sheet I piled the grated arrowroot and then poured cold water over it, stirring it with my hand until the water strained through. At first the water which drained into the bowl was milky, but with each subsequent can of water it became increasingly clear so I knew that all the starch must have been washed into the bowl leaving only a remainder of fibre on the sheet, which I threw away. When I picked up the bowl, the starch had sunk to the bottom. I poured the water off, then put the intensely white, very fine, starch into the sun to dry.

Once dried, it was easy to pound up and when I had done this, I picked a couple of nearly ripe paw-paw and diced, boiled and mashed them before mixing them with the arrowroot. I wrapped the resultant delicacy in banana leaves (making sure these wouldn’t crack by drawing them over the fire to toughen them) and after that my native oven did the rest—producing a delicious pudding which I ate with coconut cream.

I depended a great deal on paw-paw before the vegetables in my garden were ready. Often when I was peckish I would cut one in half, take out the seeds but leave the skin on, then place it on my brick fireplace. Once cooked, I ate it with coconut cream, spooning it out of the shell. I remember writing in my journal that it tasted just like stewed peaches. Coconut cream which accompanied most dishes like these was easy to make. I simply split a mature nut, grated the meat as finely as possible and then wrapped it in a strip of cloth, twisting the ends until the "cream" was squeezed through.

Before long, my cook-house began to resemble a galley. In one corner stood my native oven (rarely used now), in another the uto cooker, alongside my brick fireplace with its iron bars. But all had a most necessary part in my life because the food I ate on Suvarov had to be cooked in so many different ways. Breadfruit, for instance, was always roasted on an open fire. Now the breadfruit I found on Suvarov were seldom larger than a child’s football and once I had picked one from the tree all I had to do was place it on an open fire, ringed with a circle of stones to keep the wood in position. After half an hour, I turned it over so the other end could cook. It is rather hard to describe the flavour, but I am very fond of it, and had eaten it regularly when I lived in Tahiti and Moorea, where it is a staple of the Tahitians. I preferred it hot, with my own speciality, cooked coconut cream.

This was a variant of my ordinary coconut cream and I made it quite simply by filling a half coconut with cream and then dropping in a small red-hot volcanic stone which I had heated on the fire. (The bend mid-rib of a coconut frond made a serviceable pair of tongs). The hot stone made the cream hiss and bubble, thickened it and gave it a particular piquant flavour which always seemed to go especially well with breadfruit.

Although I fished every day, there were only two occasions when I encountered sharks. The first time was near the north end of the island, where I had noticed a big pool fed with a continual flood of sea which seemed to well up from a gap in the reef.

It looked a likely place for fish and I took a couple of steps into the pool, rod in hand.

Without a moment’s warning, three sharks were charging towards me. Each looked about three feet long—the type which thrives in comparatively shallow water. For a moment I was almost paralysed and then instinctively I backed hastily out of the pool, banging the water furiously with my rod. It was only a matter of two or three steps, but those seconds seemed a long, long time. Fortunately, my desperately thrashing rod seemed to scare the sharks, who turned away. After that, I took care to cross the pool where the water was only ankle-deep.

The second occasion was a great deal more dangerous. One moonlit night I was standing in two feet of water fishing for ku with my bamboo rod when a big fish took the lure in a whirl of spray.

I had no idea what he was, but slowly and carefully I worked him to the edge of the reef, and when I realised he was well hooked, I leaned forward cautiously to grip him by the hills.

My hand was within six inches of his head when some instinct made me hesitate. Even now I do not know what it was, other than some subconscious mechanism which must have warned me of imminent danger.

That second saved my life. While the big fish was still struggling on my line, a great grey mass rushed on me like a torpedo. There was no time to move, no time even to panic. Before I could draw my hand away, a smashing blow whacked me across both legs, throwing me over on to my back.

I jumped up, gasping for breath and spitting out salt water. The fish was gone. The lure had vanished. I could see my bamboo rod floating in the water. The shark must have missed my hand by inches as it took the fish, and in passing had hit me with its tail.

I walked slowly back to the shack. The skin on my left leg was as rough as if I had rubbed sandpaper across it.

By the late spring of 1953 I had killed the last of the pigs. It had taken all that time because I’d had to wait for moonlit nights. I was forced to repeat the horrible business four more times—perched in my lonely tree with the moon rippling peaceably over the lagoon, and my lethal spear in my hand. Each time the same macabre scene was re-enacted, sometimes swiftly, sometimes after an infinity of waiting.

I hated those gory nights so much that I had to force myself to climb the tree, and I would breathe a sigh of relief when occasionally dark clouds obliterated the moon and made it impossible for me to keep my vigil.

But at the end of it, in the weeks following the finale of the whole brutal business, the change was astonishing. Wild paw-paw shoots sprang up everywhere, seeded from the trees the pigs had been unable to kill. The wild bananas began to flourish. And it was then—fortified with the knowledge that any garden I made now would be safe—that I finally decided I must try and mend the leaky old tub of a boat the coast-watchers had left, and which still lay on my veranda. I might well have left her undisturbed for years had I not urgently needed topsoil for my garden. Since this lay in plenty at the south end of the island, there was just no choice. I could not face the prospect of carrying sack after sack on my back a quarter of a mile to the garden.

"Neale," I told myself firmly one day, "what you need now is a boat."

Would the old tub stand the strain? I decided it was worth a try. Quite aside from the fact that if I got her afloat I would be able to ferry loads of soil for the garden, I knew that once she was seaworthy I could sail to Motu Tuo, six miles across the lagoon, or any other of the small islets in the fifty square miles of water inside the reef.

I looked her over carefully. Frankly, she was not impressive—ten feet long and three feet wide, a most ungainly, flat-bottomed craft. Her sides were in fairly good shape, but her keel of three-inch thick twelve-inch long planks showed gaping quarter-inch cracks between each pair of planks.

However was I going to caulk her? What a fool I had been not to bring some oakum! I suddenly remembered a length of two-inch thick rope which I had found after the Mahurangi sailed and had stored away in the shed. Getting it out, I found it to be about fifteen feet long, and I cut it into yard-long pieces which I teased strand by strand until I had something which resembled a supply of oakum. I made a rough paint brush with another bit of old rope and got to work on the ruin. Working on the veranda, I doused the open seams with plenty of green paint and then caulked them with my home-made oakum, taking care not to drive it in too hard, since that would have been fatal at this stage.

Once my handiwork was dry, I turned the boat upside down and filled the seams on the outer side with more thick layers of green paint. Then I nailed on two ten-foot lengths of wood I had cut, again well painted, so they entirely covered the seams. The next thing was to turn the boat the right way again, and now I used one of my flat pieces of iron as a caulking tool and hammered the caulking down as tightly as I could, topping it up with more alternate layers of paint and oakum until the seams were entirely filled. Finally I painted the seams over again and puttied them whilst the paint was still wet.

I must have done a really good job, for once I launched her she never leaked, and once I was satisfied she was seaworthy, I named her in red paint on her stern the Ruptured Duckling in memory of an old friend in Tahiti whose canoe had borne the same name.

The Ruptured Duckling, ungainly and difficult though she was, proved invaluable; and soon I was towing her through the shallows to the south end of the island where I would spend a day gathering soil. I could haul a full load back in an hour or two—a load which would have taken me days to carry on my back.

But the Ruptured Duckling also opened up a new world to me. For now if I felt like a change I could row over to one of the islets where I indulged in my favourite hobby of looking for flotsam. I found all kinds of things; odd Japanese rubber shoes-—he sort with a piece of rubber or plastic to stick between the toes—bottles, tins, bits of iron ballast.

One day I came on something which indicated a vessel must recently have been very close to the island. The sight of a green coconut lying among the stones on Brushwood Islet gave me an odd feeling. Picking it up, I discovered one end had been cut off—the wrong end, where the eyes had been.

"That must have been the work of some popaa," I said to myself, using the native dialect for European. No native would open a drinking nut like this at the eye-end where the husk is thickest. I could see the work had been done clumsily too, with a blunt knife.

When I opened the nut there was still some soft clean white meat. It could not have been in the sea for more than a couple of days and must have been thrown overboard from a vessel passing very close to the island.

"Why didn’t they call in?" I wondered. It would have been pleasant to see a friendly face and I remember thinking that I might have been able to swap some island produce for a tin of kerosene—and start reading in bed again, for that was a pleasure I really missed.

I cannot remember how my thoughts remained on the subject of reading in bed after I’d seen that coconut, nor can I say why one day some weeks later it suddenly occurred to me that I might be able to make some candles out of the chunks of wax I had found months previously. Perhaps, after all, it had nothing to do with finding that coconut, but when one day I broke a few bits off one piece of wax and discovered they would melt at a low heat, it seemed quite feasible to make candles. Nothing could be more welcome since I was always frightened of running out of kerosene and used it so sparingly that I usually moved around at night without any light at all.

Candle-making did not prove all that difficult, but I needed bamboo, which did not grow on Suvarov. From time to time, however, I picked up broken pieces on the beach which must have been washed ashore, presumably thrown overboard from Japanese fishing boats.

Selecting one, I cut it into sections into which I could easily pour the melted wax. What troubled me now was what to use for a wick. I solved this problem by boring tiny holes, spaced six inches apart, into a piece of old planking, then I threaded a piece of string through each hole, knotting each one so it could not be pulled right through.

I stood a section of hollow bamboo over each hold. The string I now drew through each piece of bamboo was meant to be the wick but I had a real job keeping this sufficiently taut, especially as I had both hands occupied holding the bamboo and pouring in the melted wax. After several abortive attempts to keep the "wick" in the centre of the hollow bamboo, I tied the top of each piece of string to the middle of a nail. When I laid it across the top of the empty bamboo the string was centred and then, by turning the nail, I was able to tighten the string and keep it in the centre, while I poured in the melted wax—not quite to the top, so that some wick still showed.

It took nearly half an hour for the wax to set; once I was sure it was hard, I cut the knots under the wooden board, carefully split the bamboo in half—and there were my candles.

After this, I never had occasion to use the table lamp again. I was able to keep my precious kerosene for the hurricane lamp which sooner or later I knew was going to be vital when the time came again to go outside in bad weather.

Those candles lasted for years. And the very next evening I started reading in bed again.

An Island to Oneself
PART TWO - On the Island: October 1952 -- June 1954
Chapter 7: Gardening--and a Chicken "Farm"

Contents

Once the pigs were out of the way I was able to start on my garden in earnest, for I had decided I must get it ready and plant out my seeds before I even thought of building a fowl run. The fence was finished and I had already started bringing up a little topsoil from the south end of the island. I knew exactly where the best soil was. Each morning I rowed to the south end of the island, beached the Ruptured Duckling and started inland, carrying my shovel and some sugar bags.

Getting this soil for the garden was one of the most laborious tasks I ever had to tackle. Quite apart from the back-breaking work of digging it up, sacking it and rowing or pulling it back in the boat, I discovered that the stuff was very patchy and contained so many coral pebbles that I was forced to sieve it.

Obviously this had to be done on the spot where I dug out the topsoil, so I constructed a sieve by tacking a double layer of half-inch netting to a rectangular wooden frame about two feet long and eighteen inches wide, with sides about six inches high. This looked solid enough, but the weight of stones quickly threatened to knock the bottom out, so I fastened two pieces of baling wire, drawn taut, from corner to corner diagonally, and crossing in the centre. After that my sieve never let me down.

I scraped rather than dug the soil—if you could call it soil—into small heaps, which I sieved a couple of shovel-fuls at a time and packed into sugar bags. I counted it a good day’s work if I were able to fill four or five bags, which I then carried down to the boat. Over the next few weeks I collected more than a hundred bags of topsoil from this part of the island, each one of which I had to lug to the boat. Next I had to row or pull the heavily-laden Duckling back through the shallow water, unload the bags and carry them one by one to the garden.

It was on one of these topsoil expeditions that I noticed a wild duck, perched on a mushroom of coral and looking very bedraggled, as indeed she had the right to be after what must have been a journey of at least two hundred miles.

I was astounded, for apart from frigates, terns and a few bosun birds—lords of the Pacific with their scarlet tails and white plumage—no living thing had ever alighted before on Suvarov whilst I had been there, and I can remember the tingle of excitement as I set down my shovel and sacks and started to walk towards her. In a way I was surprised (knowing myself only too well by now) that I was not in any way impelled by a hunter’s instinct. It never entered my head to ponder how good (if slightly fishy) she would taste after a few hours in the stewpot.

Looking on that first moment—from which a long and curious friendship, complicated by a strange mixture of trust and temptation, was to develop—I cannot imagine why I felt such a tender interest in that bird. I like animals and birds well enough and hate the casual cruelty which seems so prevalent towards them in the islands. But just the same I was hardly the sort of man to start investing them with the human attributes which seem to have become so fashionable since Walt Disney started putting words into their mouths.

As far as I am concerned (up to that moment, I mean) animals or birds had always been things to be kept in their proper place. In other words, if I were hungry, the unfortunate creature destined for my pot would be killed with as little compunction as a Chicago meat packer might kill a heifer and yet be a sidesman in church each Sunday.

But the wild duck was to prove quite different. As I stepped to within some fifteen paces, she became frightened and flew off twenty yards or so, then perched lonely and forlorn, observing me suspiciously. When I slowly approached her again she waited until I was exactly the same distance away, then slowly flew off another twenty yards or so.

I returned to my shovel and sacks, and continued scraping the thin layer of topsoil into small heaps.

And then, for the time being, I forgot her, and rowed back to the garden which was sited just behind the house. The coast-watchers must have chosen this spot for two reasons. Firstly, it was sheltered from any wind; and secondly, the paw-paw tree had been growing there for some time. It was a pleasant place, the square of earth now fenced in and shaded by a few tall coconuts and the spiky leaves of pandanus trees. Once I had got things really under way, I planned to have my fruit and vegetables growing close together.

The seeds which I had set out in boxes were now growing so quickly that they were almost ready for planting and I had quite a race to bring in the last of the topsoil. Now that the pigs were gone everything thrived outrageously. Even before I had finished the garden fence I had planted paw-paw shoots around the inside at ten-foot intervals, and these too were shooting up at such amazing speed that I wondered whether the gardener would ever be able to keep pace with his plants.

My journal of those days is filled with passages which even now I fancy hardly give an idea of the enormous amount of work I had to put in. There were so many incidental jobs there never seemed time to relax. And in the months which followed, time seemed to slip away; for my day-to-day life had long since settled into a sort of rhythm and pattern, starting with my early morning breakfast and ending with tea on the beach and a read in bed.

All sorts of unexpected incidents kept cropping up. Do you remember the splutter of amazement my friend in Raro had given when I insisted on taking my bicycle pump to Suvarov? Well, it came in very useful, for as I noted in my journal, "Nobody would think there would be a use for a bicycle pump on the island, but I used one with, I hope, good advantage today. A young breadfruit tree, about ten feet high near the garden is badly infested with White Aphis or Mealy Bug, and the black rust mites (a sooty-like deposit): true name unknown to me. I sprayed it with about three gallons of soapy water which I used this morning to boil bed-clothes. The bicycle pump made an excellent spray."

Or there was the inevitable moment on the home front when I noted "There was a case of incest today as Mrs. Thievery and Mr. Tom-Tom are, in fact, mother and son. I shall have some drowning to do as two cats are enough to keep down the few rats."

There were uneasy moments too. Unexpectedly, I went down with a minor bout of fever—" Last night after turning in, I felt chilly and a pain started in my right groin, so I dosed myself with Sulph. Thiazole and sure enough it turned out to be a fever. Have been in bed all day. I’m sure the fever was caused by a fish-bone I stepped on a couple of days ago. Still feel pretty shaky and have eaten nothing today."

These bouts were to return but, fortunately, this one cleared up quickly and within two days I was back at work again. I must have made a fairly rapid recovery, for the day after I left my bed I made my biggest catch on the reef so far—four crayfish and a cod.

Two of the crays were big and one had such enormous legs that I had difficulty in pulling him out. I noted, "A sea broke over me and if I hadn’t been anchored to the cray with both hands, I’d have been washed away. As it was, I nearly lost the spear. The big fellow was in a smooth, round cavity under a ledge, otherwise I’d never have got him out."

I had not seen the wild duck for some days now although the place where I first encountered her was where I always went to collect the best topsoil, and I was often down at the southern tip of the island gathering soil. One day, although I can’t remember how it came about, I had put some scraps of uto in an old cigarette tin after feeding the fowls, and now, after beaching the Duckling I noticed the tin in the bottom of the boat. Subconsciously I must have brought it for the wild duck.

And there she was; almost as though she were waiting for me, or so I flattered myself, and I realised then just how anxious I had been to see whether or not she had flown away from the island.

At the time I never thought that my behaviour was in any way odd. Looking back on it, I imagine it must have sprung from a loneliness of which I had never been aware until this minute.

It was hopeless trying to get up close to her. I spread out the uto, and walked up to the patch of topsoil and began sieving and shovelling it into the sugar bags. Out of the corner of my eye, however, I watched her every movement.

I had half an hour to wait. All this time she remained there motionless. Then she slowly waddled over to the uto and began to gobble it up. It must have been at that moment I made up my mind that providing she did not fly away, I would not rest content until I had succeeded in taming her.

I had other pressing tasks to attend to and did not return to the south end of the island for some days. Indeed, there was so much on my mind that I had temporarily forgotten her and was astonished when she appeared in the yard one evening. I noticed her over in the far corner where there were some clumps of grass with seed heads, and she was running her bill over them to extract the seeds. I stood there for a moment, watching; then I walked towards her. She watched me until I was about twenty paces from her before she half-turned and waddled obliquely away, still eyeing me all the time.

For some time now I had been splitting half a dozen sprouting nuts every evening to encourage the fowls to feel at home near the shack. I had not yet started to build their run so they came and went just as they pleased. There were several of them about now and the next evening the wild duck joined them. She still refused to let me near her so I walked away. Every evening the same thing happened. She would come into the yard, watch me suspiciously—and then, after a week or so, she was starting to waddle among the split uto and nibbling at them. She seemed to be a little wary of the fowls squabbling among themselves as usual. I started spacing the split nuts farther apart, then stood at a good distance, watching.

So it went on. I was unable to get anywhere near taming her for quite a while, despite the fact she now seemed to be making herself quite at home. Then one evening I decided to grate some coconut, put it in an old butter tin, and place a tin of water beside it. I had noticed that though she obviously liked uto it was always difficult for her to extract it from the nut because, unlike a hen, she couldn’t peck at it.

She made straight for the two tins—almost as though she had been expecting them—and with an almost comical meticulousness she drank from the water after each mouthful of grated coconut. Now each evening I positioned myself a little closer to the tins.

If progress at taming the duck was slow but sure, everything else seemed to move with remarkable speed, and by the end of spring the garden was at last ready. It had taken months to bring up all the topsoil but now the final load had been spread out and I had manured it with humus from the three tree boxes, working it into the soil with a rake made out of palm fronds—or rather a series of rakes, for they did not last very long.

In the new layer of soil I planted out some sixty tomatoes, three rows of shallots, some rock melons, water melons, pumpkins, cucumbers, Indian vine, three rows of kumeras (or yams). Now all I had to do was await my first crops. Or so I thought.

For some weeks I had been getting increasingly annoyed by the stupidity of the fowls, and now that I had planted out my garden, I decided to set about taming them and providing myself with a regular supply of eggs and roosters for the Sunday stewpot.

Searching for eggs, taming the fowls, and constructing a run were three vital but time-consuming activities which went hand in hand, but with such eventual success that by the time I left Suvarov the fowl population had increased to forty strong, despite inroads for my larder. Indeed, my "flock" became a blessing and a standby later on whenever it was difficult to obtain uto or paw-paw—or, on stormy days, fish—for then the fowls and their eggs were all I had (apart from coconuts) to keep me alive.

But that was all in the future. Meantime, I was still having a major headache finding any eggs, for the birds had been running wild for years now and nothing seemed to delight them more than cackling loudly once they had removed themselves as far as possible from the spot where they had actually laid. Like a schoolboy going bird’s-nesting, I would spend hours during those first months stealthily tracking my hens in a determined effort to discover their nests.

Living on a motu as small as Anchorage, one would have thought that no nest could remain hidden for long; one might have thought, too, that a bird the size of a hen might have experienced some difficulty in making itself invisible. But this did not prove to be the case and my fowls seemed to look on egg-laying as so intensely private that they went to extraordinary lengths to keep their affairs secret. The roosters, too, on whom I had designs for my cooking pot became remarkably elusive. Three entries from my 1953 journal show I was succumbing to a disease which was obviously endemic on Suvarov. I called "egg frustration."

". . . Wasted time following the hen that lays away. She went in a wide semi-circle and finally eluded me. I waited for half an hour to see if she would return. Not a sign; nor did she cackle again. She was in the yard when I returned. Am determined to find her nest, besides now I’ve got to show something for the time wasted looking . . . ."

". . . Tried to follow the same hen but a young rooster upset her. I chased him and only managed to scare the hen. She wouldn’t go straight to the nest but hung around in the bush. Couldn’t waste any more time so vowed I would put that young rooster in the pot. Don’t like his crow anyhow. Caught him when his back was to me. He was too busy to notice me . . . ."

". . . At last discovered her nest with ten eggs. This morning she had started making a noise so I followed her. Suddenly she disappeared. I couldn’t believe my eyes, so waited a bit longer and investigated a coconut stump about ten feet high. Damn me, if I didn’t see her head sticking out of a hole four feet from the ground. Talk about pigs not thinking to look up—I’m as bad! A lot of writing about nothing, but I feel I’ve achieved a major victory . . . ."

Of course, it was not a "major victory" at all and the unending waste of time soon convinced me that the only way to triumph over these elusive fowls was to build a good strong run and pen them in; as a matter of fact I had already made a tentative start whilst preparing the garden.

There was no point in completing the fowl run until I had succeeded in luring the birds to the spot I had selected in order to make them feel at home. Otherwise, even with a brand-new run, my whole plan would collapse since I’d never manage to round them up and drive them in. Week after week I set about this lengthy task. I laid out all the split uto in the new spot. The birds were bright enough to come and get it and seemed to thrive on these young sprouting coconuts. But at first the exasperatingly stupid creatures did not seem to grasp the idea that their meals were being served up at regular times. One or two near at hand would come clucking and running when I turned up, but the others would stay pecking about in the undergrowth, scratching for food, quite oblivious to the fact that a feast was served, and ready to eat, almost under their beaks. I tried coaxing them with a fine range of farmyard sounds, but the stupid birds did not seem to understand English. I tried to get behind them and shoo them towards the food, but as soon as I did this, off they ran, squawking protests, in the opposite direction. There is nothing so frustrating as an old hen.

Eventually, I hit on a solution so ridiculously simple—and so much more appropriate for humans than hens—that it still makes me laugh when I think of it. I banged a gong for breakfast and tea! It was as simple as that.

Morning and evening from that moment on I scattered the split uto nuts on the square of ground where the run was to be built, and then banged lustily on the old iron crowbar made from the transmission shaft of a Model T Ford I had acquired in a Raro junkyard. The result was really extraordinary. Up till now I had spent weeks unsuccessfully trying to cajole the fowls into a regular feeding time. Now, within a week, they were recognising the familiar sound of the beaten crowbar, and came running as fast as they could, determined not to miss a good feed. They brought all sorts of surprises with them, too—in the shape of at least two clutches of chicks which I had no idea even existed. Although this achievement did not immediately solve my egg-collecting problems, at least I was able to keep track of the island’s hen population, and now I started building the chicken run in earnest.

Firstly I made a rough shelter and thatched it over with coconut fronds. Then I fixed up some perches inside, and used some pieces of flattened-out old corrugated iron to fashion a tray underneath them which would collect the droppings to make splendid manure for my garden.

Next, I built a fence. This was a laborious job, for I had to gather hundreds of fallen coconut fronds and strip off their leaves with my machete before I could cut their mid-ribs into six-foot lengths. These mid-ribs are widest at the base so, using bits of old baling wire, I fastened them together alternately--one base at the bottom, one at the top—to make them fit more closely. The next step was a gate made from odd bits of wire netting lashed on to a wooden frame, and hinged with more wire anchored to a solid post.

Building the fowl run took me several weeks, and all this time I was occupied with other jobs which were vital to keep me going. Sometimes bad weather would hold me up for days, but however difficult things seemed, I never lost sight of my purpose.

There was another reason too. The hens had grown to hate the wild duck. On several occasions I had noticed them waiting for her to come into the yard and, as though according to some pre-arranged plan, they would attack her.

I never really discovered the reason for this jealousy—perhaps it lay in some strange animal awareness that she was always free to fly away. If hens are capable of thought (which I doubt), I suspect the real reason was her intrusion into the yard they now regarded as their private domain.

During these last weeks I had come a long way towards taming the duck. By now she would allow me within five paces of her—maybe because she had become so dependent on her evening meal.

"The wild duck is making herself at home all right," I wrote. "I still put grated coconut in a tin and a tin of water alongside. She takes a mouthful of nut, then dips her bill in the water—does it with every mouthful. Her wing feathers look a bit the worse for wear, so I expect she’s not young. She spends the greater part of her day in the shade, standing on one leg, with her head thrown back, sleeping, but with one eye open; then disappears just before sunset. Mr. Tom-Tom has stalked her a couple of times. I’ve had to speak to him sharply about that."

I often wondered where she spent the night. Until now I had never seen her fly away, but one evening I had just left the bath-house when I noticed her waddling towards the lagoon. Instinctively I sensed she had some definite purpose. I stood and watched.

As soon as she had reached the edge of the clearing where the ground sloped down to the lagoon, she took off, flying low—a few feet only above the ground—between the coconut trees towards the beach. From then on she changed course, heading out over the lagoon and making for Whale Islet, three-quarters of a mile away. A few evenings later I saw her do the same thing again—and she never varied this habit, but flew precisely the same course through the trees and over the water.

I must not give the impression that I thought about the duck all the time, but I did wonder occasionally how I could tame her. It’s hard to explain why I should have thought about it at all, for I can imagine no duller pet than a duck—and, after all, I did have my cats. I suppose it was another challenge—something as simple as that. I was already beginning to get eggs, the garden was growing, and possibly (though I didn’t realise it at the time) I did not now have to work quite so hard. Whatever the reason, I did—from time to time—toy with the idea of making a more positive attempt to tame her.

And in the end it came about quite by chance, without any thought, without any planning. One day she was distant and suspicious, the next she was eating out of my hand. And to this day I cannot explain why or how it happened. I can only assume that it was a question of time which had built up her confidence in me.

Almost without thinking, I held out my hand one evening with a little grated nut in my palm. She came up to me without the slightest hesitation and immediately started feeding. To my amazement, she now seemed completely unafraid and after that I fed her every day, with the result that she became so used to this routine that she would become quite angry if I were a few minutes late!

"I really had to laugh today," I wrote, "for I was a big late reaching the shack to prepare the duck’s food and she came towards me with one solitary disapproving quack."

After that there was always a disapproving quack if I should be late with her supper. Never two quacks—just the one.

Soon she would follow me up to the veranda, almost like a dog. She was a creature of precise habit, and never appeared in the yard before feeding time. Never once was there a note of disapproval so long as I was on time. At other times I saw her on the beach and sometimes I caught a glimpse of her thirty or forty feet out in the lagoon when it was calm, asleep with her head tucked under her wing.

My work on the fowl run was rudely interrupted by another bout of fever, which prostrated me in a matter of hours after I had scratched my foot on some coral. Nothing could have been more frustrating. Since I had been on the island I had never even had a cold or a runny nose, despite often being soaked to the skin and chilled at nights when the weather changed unexpectedly. I felt sure my immunity was due to an absence of germs on the island. Now I come to think of it, I had read somewhere that the Americans living at the South Pole never caught what is called "the common cold" except when a parcel from a relative in the States had been parachuted down to the tiny camp, accompanied by unwelcome germs.

The fever was a very different matter. I had had touches of fever in the Islands before, so when I was struck down by this attack I was not unduly worried and simply staggered to the safety of my bed. Sure enough, it passed off after a day or so, leaving me a little weak, but with no serious after-effects.

Nonetheless, it was not exactly pleasant. And lying there I recalled the jagged coral spike which had penetrated the heel of my shoe. It was nothing more than a scratch, which didn’t even need a bandage. Yet within twenty-four hours, here I was with a raging temperature. It had been almost all I could manage to crawl shakily to my bed and lie there. I would have to be careful—otherwise I might get a really bad bout.

Once the fever had burned itself out, I remember I staggered down to Pylades Bay for a swim as though to restore and cleanse myself in its warm, clear water. And on the way back, I stopped to look at my garden; and during the weeks I had spent building the fowl run, I had also tended the plants assiduously, staking out the tomatoes which were now three feet tall, and stringing up the other plants as they started to blossom. Though I had lost one or two plants from crabs which managed to claw their way through the fence, the rest had grown with astonishing speed, with foliage so thick and dense I had to trim all the lower leaves. I walked back to my shack well satisfied. Within a very short time I could expect my first fruit and vegetables, for everything seemed to be going splendidly.

And then I was threatened with near disaster. The fruit refused to set! Plants I had confidently expected to see loaded with fruit produced nothing more than a couple of small tomatoes.

I noted gloomily in my journal, "the rock melons and the kumeras I have planted are growing vigorously and are full of flowers, but the fruit won’t set; it just forms, then turns yellow and drops off. The same goes for the water melons. Must be the lack of bees. Hardly any of the tomatoes have fruit. If all the flowers set they would be loaded. I picked two today that had started to ripen. I shall soon replant the kumeras. So far they have been a failure."

The only things which grew well were my shallots, but even here I seemed to be dogged with bad luck, and it was quite a while before I had the chance to taste one because they simply vanished. At first I couldn’t understand it. A young shoot had only to appear above ground in the evening to be mysteriously gone next morning. Night after night I kept a close and suspicious watch on the hens. But it wasn’t in character; they were too frightened, and certainly too dim-witted to have forced a way through the fence. I wondered about the coconut crabs, but there were hardly any on the island by now, and in any case they were far too big to get through the fence.

Shortly before tea one evening I was walking along the garden when I smelt a strong scent of onions. Not baby shallots, but a really strong onion smell. I went to investigate—and found my answer. Rows of my precious plants were lying uprooted on a bare patch of ground near the onion bed. And round the plants, scores and scores of hermit crabs—some as tiny as a thumb nail—were have the feast of their lives.

Here was the secret of the vanishing onions. The crabs were so tiny they could get through any fence; the bigger ones, lured on by the tantalising smell of onions already uprooted, were actually capable of climbing slowly and painfully over the fence.

There was only one thing to do. Fortunately, hermit crabs tend to stay in one spot and they cannot move quickly. Next evening I laid out coconut bait near the onion bed and when I went down there towards sunset with an old tin, I pounced on and collected over a hundred victims—which I left in the tin until morning, when I took them down near the southern tip of the island and threw them into the bush. There was no point in killing them, they were too far away ever to return. Each night for over a week I repeated this performance until there were none left.

At least I had a few shallots, but the rest of the garden was such a miserable failure that I could have wept with despair. All that painstaking work had been for nothing. All that topsoil I had carried so laboriously from the south end had produced nothing more than a few pitiful blossoms which yellowed and died without producing any of the fruit and vegetables I needed so badly.

The curious thing is that—though I am supposed to be a handyman—it was some time before it struck me that instead of sitting back and moaning about ill-luck I might be able to pollinate the blossoms myself. Why not? I had never been a gardener for the simple reason that more than enough of everything grows wild in the South Seas; but one of the few fascinating paperback books left by the coast-watchers was an abridged edition of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. I had read it with enormous interest, and now remembered the passages in which he had described how the bees and other insects had pollinated flowers.

There was only one thing to be done. Since there were no bees, I would pollinate the blossoms by hand—and I set about it the very next day.

Fishing in the shallows with a single pronged spear --

-- and the evening's haul. I was never short of fish

Whenever the verandah roof leaked, all I had to do was make
myself a new one from coconut fronds

The time of day I love best. Sitting on the beach at sunset near the
small 'summer house' I built

It was not as difficult as you might imagine, for there were usually more male than female flowers, and I could distinguish them easily as the pollen-bearing stamens in the male blossoms were usually longer. All I had to do in most cases was break off a male flower and rub the pollen on to the female flower.

The easiest of all were the pumpkins, for the male flower had extra long stamens and female flower a definite orifice into which I could push the pollen, up and down, to make sure of fertilisation.

The tomatoes proved the most reluctant. I took a matchstick and bound some very fine, almost hair-like feathers of a bosun bird with cotton on to the end to make a miniature brush. Since I found it virtually impossible to distinguish the female from the male blossoms as they hung in clusters on the plants, the best I could do was to brush from flower to flower without taking off any blossoms. I went over the whole tomato crop two or three times, first one way, then another, and it worked.

Once I had fertilised the blossoms, I enjoyed some excellent crops. In three months I was picking tomatoes; in four months pumpkins and wonderful melons, both canteloupe and rock melons.

And now everything seemed to settle into place, as I had always imagined it would. Soon the fowl run was "inhabited," and once the garden was yielding and the hens laying, I became almost self-sufficient. From this moment I had more fish than I needed, plenty of fruit and vegetables and a regular rooster for the pot.

Nonetheless, I never succeeded in rounding up all the fowls inside my run. In fact, I never pushed this too far because hens are stubborn and some of the more independent-minded might have become actually unhappy in their new surroundings and consequently gone "on strike." But the others seemed happy enough and inside the run a new batch of chicks was growing at full speed.

Every afternoon I let out my new flock to forage for greenstuffs. In no time they had discoverred worms and insects, and often chased—frequently catching—small island lizards. Fowls need greenstuffs to remain healthy and the yolks of my eggs were always a good colour—quite different from the anaemic yellow of the "mechanised" eggs shipped from New Zealand to Rarotonga.

But though the eggs tasted good, I must admit I hardly enjoyed the roosters. It was essential I should eat them to give me a balanced diet, but thinking back to those days, I feel I never want to eat a rooster again. What hours I spent cutting them up for the cooking pot; what countless times I ate those tasteless, insipid birds merely because I was even more bored with fish.

At first it was not too bad. I had flour and fat, so I could make a passable "Southern Fried Chicken" if I felt so inclined. But once these tasty additions were all used up there was only one way to cook it. I cut the wretched bird into pieces, put it in the pot and added two or three shallots from my garden for flavouring. Although they added something to the taste, it is not a recipe I recommend to the wife anxious to prove the way to her man’s heart is through his stomach.

Unlike me, Mr. Tom-Tom and Mrs. Thievery loved their weekly chicken. Since their normal diet was solid fish, they soon came to recognise the smell floating out of the pot. Sundays for them were different in the only way that matters to cats, and both of them exhibited an uncanny sense of timing, even on the Saturday they sensed a rooster was due to be killed. From then on they were constantly in evidence around the cook-house, even sitting unblinkingly by the box where I kept the rooster, patient in the sure knowledge that sooner or later the time would come for Sunday lunch.

An Island to Oneself
PART TWO - On the Island: October 1952 -- June 1954
Chapter 8: My First Visitors

Contents

On August 4, 1953—ten months after I had landed—I welcomed my first visitors.

It was unexpected because I had long since stopped wondering whether one day I would wake up to discover a strange yacht or schooner anchored in the lagoon. I had become so engrossed with my life on Suvarov that I rarely gave a thought to the outside world.

They were very happy days. I was never lonely, though now and again I would walk along the reef wishing somebody could be with me—not because I wanted company but just because all this beauty seemed too perfect to keep to myself.

That August day happened to be particularly beautiful. A light easterly breeze was blowing and around two in the afternoon I took my spear and sauntered out along the reef, not really to catch fish, but more for the walk. After I had strolled a little way, the day struck me as so especially calm and perfect that I stopped and turned round to look along the shoreline.

There, in the shimmering distance, was a sail. I stared in momentary disbelief, but there it was, one of the most beautiful sights the Pacific can ever offer—a ship in full sail edging her way through the blue waters. She was plainly making for the entrance to the lagoon. It was so long since I had seen a sail that it took an appreciable time for the reality to sink in, for me to realise that in an hour or two I would actually be talking to other people; men, perhaps women; talking to them, instead of to myself!

Once I was over the initial surprise and excitement, a practical but prosaic thought came into my mind. It was not "I wonder who they can be?" nor "Will they be planning to stay?" On the contrary, as I walked back to the shack, the slender link still tethering me to civilisation had grown suddenly stouter and tighter so that I thought "I wonder if they’ve come from Rarotonga and if they’ve brought any mail?"

Before I reached the shack, the vessel had lowered her sail and was entering the passage under auxiliary power. I hurried inside to change my strip of pareu for a pair of shorts in case there were ladies aboard.

By the time I had come out again she had dropped anchor in thirty feet of water about a hundred yards off the old pier, and I remember how another thought suddenly struck me—that the pier which had been smashed up in the 1942 hurricane was an eyesore, and it was high time I tidied it up.

I could see now that the vessel was a single-masted forty-foot yacht, but I resisted the temptation to wave or shout and rush down the beach to meet my visitors. I decided to give them a little while to settle down before rowing out in the Ruptured Duckling.

As I pushed the Duckling off the beach and into the water, I could see four people crowding the rails of the yacht. They waved, but of course as soon as I began rowing across the lagoon my back was turned towards them, so I did not really see them until a few moments later when I came alongside, and two men were helping me to make fast the dinghy whilst two women looked on. Then I was aboard—and within a few minutes was drinking tea brewed by somebody else for the first time in ten months. And with milk in it!

The elder of the two held out a hand, "My name’s Tom Worth." He was approaching middle age, looked very fit, without a spare ounce of flesh.

"And I’m Mrs. Worth," said a slender lady who looked very pleasant.

"I’m Tom Neale," I replied, wondering whether Dr. Livingstone had felt as tongue-tied when Stanley introduced himself, for I had often pictured this precise moment—the exact moment of meeting strangers—and I had contemplated it with a certain nervousness. After all, what could one say to strangers? Especially as they would probably regard me with the suspicion normally reserved for a mental case.

There was a moment of almost embarrassed silence and then Tom Worth said something that staggered me—and broke the ice.

"Oh yes!" He laughed cheerfully. "We know all about you!" He turned to his two younger passengers, and introduced them as Mr. and Mrs. Taylor.

Whilst Mrs. Worth poured out the tea I asked how they had come to find out about me being here. "The British Consul in Tahiti told me," Tom Worth explained. "I believe he’s an old friend of yours. You know what he said? Call in at Suvarov and see whether or not Tom Neale has kicked what remains of the island into the sea with those big boots of his."

Those boots! I remember the day the British Consul in Papeete asked why I wore such big boots in such a hot climate. It was in order to strengthen a weak ankle after an accident, but these boots became a stock joke between us from that moment onwards.

"Would you like some more tea, Mr. Neale?" Mrs. Worth’s casual question jerked me from my memories of Tahiti into reality—if this were reality. For how incongruous it all seemed! Surreptitiously I watched this slim, good-looking woman pouring tea, while Mrs. Taylor, with a smile, proffered the milk (out of a jug!) and sugar. We might have been a thousand miles from Suvarov.

I liked Worth and his wife immediately. He was one of those easy-going individuals whom you automatically think of in Christian name terms, and before long we were Tom to each other. The younger Taylors were also delightful. I gathered that they were friends who had come along for the trip, and Taylor was soon asking me "Is the fishing good? Any chance of going out together?" I promised him we would go out with spears the following day.

After my third cup, Mrs. Worth asked, with a diffidence I found most pleasing, "We don’t want to disturb you, but we’d love to see your island before it gets dark."

It was the way she slightly accented your island that made me jump up full of apologies for my lack of hospitality. Soon we were all rowing ashore.

They seemed fascinated, and it was a pleasant feeling as I showed them round the shack and the yard, to realise that they seemed to be enjoying my company as much as I was enjoying theirs. Mrs. Worth particularly was intrigued. She examined the cook-house with all its various contraptions, and when I wrapped some ku in banana leaves, and put them in the hearth to cook in time for tomorrow’s breakfast, she called her husband.

"Why can’t you do that at home?" she laughed.

The ladies insisted on examining every corner of the shack. Mrs. Taylor seemed to be a great reader and was soon thumbing through my books.

"Did you choose all these?" She pointed to the motley selection of paperbacks on my office shelf and when I shook my head, she added, "I thought not. They don’t look you—not all of them, anyway."

So I had to explain how the coast-watchers had left them, and then while the men went for a swim, they looked over my kai room, opened the refrigerator and the food safe, and I think it was the sight of the dry tea and dishcloths hanging on the line—and perhaps my glasses which I polished with care—that made Mrs. Worth cry spontaneously, "Mr. Neale, I’m astounded that any man can keep a place as clean and tidy as you do."

When Worth and Taylor returned from the beach I asked them how long they had taken to sail from Papeete.

"We didn’t come directly from Papeete," answered Tom, "but from Maupiti." This is a small island a hundred and fifty miles west of Papeete. "It took us seven days."

"Perhaps you’d all like a shower?" I suggested.

"A bath! My God!" cried Tom Worth. "I’ve been dreaming of a bath for a week."

I had long since rigged up a bucket in the bath-house so that I could sluice water all over myself at the end of each day, and the ladies had the first bath after I had provided them with dry, clean towels.

"You do think of everything, don’t you?" said Mrs. Worth.

"You’re an astounding bloke," said Tom as we sat waiting on the veranda, smoking his cigarettes. "The Consul in Papeete said you were quite a character—but I never thought you’d be quite like this. I don’t know—I’d rather expected—"

"A hermit with a long beard?" I laughed.

"In a way—yes." He spoke seriously.

Taylor clipped in, "What staggers me is the way you’ve got everything fixed up. It all looks so easy!"

I recorded every detail I could remember of that afternoon in my diary and that night I had supper with them on board the Beyond, although there was quite a sea running in the lagoon so that I had some difficulty getting alongside in the Ruptured Duckling; but once I was on board and Mrs. Worth had gone into the galley to start cooking dinner, Tom brought out a bottle of excellent rum, held it up and said, "How about a drink?"

Now it was ten months since I had tasted alcohol, and never once during that time had I even so much as thought about it. I never miss drinking—but that doesn’t mean to say that I don’t enjoy a drink or two, particularly rum, and I looked at the bottle in Tom Worth’s hand, almost afraid of the effect it might have on me. He must have noticed my hesitation for he refrained from pouring a drink for himself until finally I said, "Thanks! I’d love one."

He poured out a more than generous measure, handed me the glass and asked, "Water?"

Water! No fear! This was much too good to dilute.

We followed the first rum with a second. Cigarettes were handed round. What a wonderful feeling it was, sitting back in the cockpit, yarning, while somebody else cooked my supper! Tom and his friend lost no time in telling me the latest news from the outside world. I remember thinking, doubtless after the second rum, "Neale, are you sure it’s really you sitting here?" It all seemed so unreal, so impossible. Only a few hours previously I had been perfectly happy entirely alone on the island—and now here I was, a member of a yachting party. It was too much to take in that first night, and sometimes I could hardly believe I was really there. I might have been watching a film. It didn’t seem to be me sitting there, sipping rum. The impact of meeting four strangers after ten months during which I had not spoken to a soul, the excitement of actually talking and listening, was a far more potent intoxicant than the rum.

Suddenly I shivered. I felt quite chilly, for I had rowed out in my singlet and shorts. It must have been the nervous excitement, or perhaps the breeze was stronger a hundred yards out in the lagoon. Tom Worth fetched me a cardigan so that I should be warm enough to enjoy my supper.

I don’t suppose I shall ever forget that supper as long as I live. I dare say other people living in conditions of hardship have reached similar conclusions to mine: I had long since accepted my rather monotonous diet as part of life hardly worth a second thought. I had enough to eat and that was what mattered.

But now Mrs. Worth called out cheerfully to her husband from the galley, "Tom! Supper’s ready."

We started with vegetable soup, good thick vegetable soup, and then, while we waited for the next course, Tom poured me a glass of ice-cold beer, then his wife handed me a plate of beautifully cooked meat from the Beyond’s refrigerator. I remember, too, there was something else I hadn’t tasted for a long time—real roast potatoes in thick gravy, and bread thickly spread with tinned butter.

It was not just the change of food I found so exciting; what amazed me was my host’s casual attitude to quantity. "Would you like some more potatoes?"—"Sure you’ve got enough gravy?" And on top of it here I was eating bread and butter with meat. For a moment I became quite worried lest they run short, forgetting that within a week the Beyond would be lying off some port, and Tom Worth would be able to go ashore and in half an hour re-stock his larder. It seemed inconceivable to me and I felt a twinge of guilt as the meat was followed by lavish portions of tinned fruit, with real tinned cream—for once not coconut cream.

As I rowed back to the shack later that night I found myself, to say the least, slightly happy—in more senses than one.

The following morning, I decided the time had come to reciprocate and entertain my guests to lunch. For though I myself was more than a little bored with island produce, I could well imagine that after seven days at sea, fresh fish or eggs would prove as exciting to my guests as their tinned soup had been to me.

Good fresh fish seemed the answer, especially as the Taylors had asked if they could go fishing. So I went on the reef with them to catch enough lunch for five. I lent them spears but they were unable to catch a single fish. It was almost pathetic to watch their efforts. One forgets how easy fishing becomes when you live in the islands, and I think they were puzzled that I was able to catch six cod and parrot fish and three crayfish in such a short time.

Overhead as we fished the air was alive with birds that seemed to have been drawn to Anchorage from the other motus—perhaps disturbed by the arrival of the Beyond. Terns by the hundreds wheeled smoothly in the air, perpetually frightened of the frigate birds—nature’s bullies with whom the smaller terns were destined to live from birth to death.

As we slowly walked, searching for fish, towards the north end, we came across rows of frigate birds watching us unblinkingly.

"Ugh! Horrible, revolting creatures," cried Mrs. Taylor, and then asked me, "You must have read Frisbie’s Island of Desire? Do you remember his description of the frigates?

She certainly knew her books, for nobody ever described frigate birds better than Frisbie did; how they sat in row upon row, watching Frisbie "with cold objectivity, snobbishly"; ugly, brutal, shiny, black birds with their big red wattles.

"They give me the creeps," added Mrs. Taylor.

"Yes, I remember Frisbie’s description," I replied and then surprised her by quoting, " ‘Eyes red and utterly cruel, birds as emblematic of evil as the raven’."

Back in the shack I cooked the cray, but despite my good intentions, Tom Worth insisted that we lunch on the Beyond. I think that Mrs. Worth felt I deserved a day off from housekeeping. Luckily my spring onions were flourishing at this time, so I collected a large bunch and presented them with these, together with a few eggs. These were a great success, and after lunch on board I spent most of the rest of the afternoon yarning and chatting, unashamedly enjoying the opportunity to listen to human voices.

They were due to leave early the next morning for Samoa and Fiji, and I cannot remember feeling any apprehension about their impending departure. Often when I was on my own I had wondered whether I should feel homesick for civilisation once my visitors had gone. I had envisaged a sudden longing, brought on by this unexpected human contact and had even imagined myself begging a passage back to the nearest inhabited island.

None of this happened. From the moment they arrived, it seemed perfectly natural that they should anchor in the lagoon. It seemed natural, too, that we should greet each other in an almost casual way, even though I soon became excited by all they had to tell me. But once it seemed natural for them to arrive, I had to accept the fact that logically it was equally natural that sooner or later they would have to leave. So on this second evening, although I wrote half a dozen letters which they had kindly promised to post, I cannot remember after turning in, feeling really sad at the prospect of their departure.

The following morning, they all rowed ashore for a last bath, and, as I recorded in my journal, "I gave them some more spring onions, eggs, melons, fish, which they said they appreciated very much. They gave me some tea, sugar, a jar of Scotch blackcurrant jelly and a little flour."

And then just before the Beyond sailed, with a strong south-easterly wind to blow her on her way, Tom Worth came back to the shack with a final gift—a bottle of rum.

This touched me very much, and as the Beyond sailed out towards the pass, I did in actual fact experience a queer feeling of loss. I remember thinking, too, how vastly different their lives were going to be from mine once their pleasant cruise was over. Even when they reached Apia in Samoa there would be bright lights (of a sort), cars, busy streets, cinemas, hotels; so-called luxuries which, however desirable, exacted their own price in tensions, problems, congested humanity.

It was a price I had long ago decided I was not interested in paying. So now I stood by the edge of the old pier watching their sail disappear round the end of the island from whence they would head for the channel and the open sea. It would soon be dusk, the end of another, but this time an unusual, day on my island. So unusual that I watched for a little longer because this had been a happy time. But once the Beyond was through the pass and heading out to sea, I turned my back on the lagoon and strode up the coral path to the shack.

The first thing I did was take off my shorts and put on my strip of pareu again.

An Island to Oneself
PART TWO - On the Island: October 1952 -- June 1954
Chapter 9: Down with Fever

Contents