Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

The weirdness of this unexpected sight was incredibly surprising. It electrified me, dismayed me, as few phenomena have.

Piri a Tuahine, at the wheel, called down to the captain.

“Paparai te pahi matai!” he announced in the even tone of the Maori sailor. “The ship wrecked in the cyclone!”

Moet came on deck in pajamas, surveyed the spectacle of desolation, said “Bon jour!” to me, gave an order to the sailor to “Keep her off,” and returned to snatch another nap. I saw through the stripped masts of the wrecked ship the fires of the bakers who mix their flour with cocoanut-milk, and wrap their loaves in cocoanut-leaves to bake. They were comforting as tokens of the living, contrasted with the sorrowful skeleton of one-time glory in that isolated cradle of rocks. Kopcke stuck his head through the companionway to observe our bearings, squinted at the somber wraith through his heavy eyes,—he and McHenry had played écarté most of the night,—and replied to my query:

“As you say, mon garçon, it is the County of Roxburgh, that English ship. She lost her reckoning, and in a big hurricane crashed upon the reef. Her crew put over a boat but it was smashed at once, and those who reached the shore were badly bruised and broken by the coral. When the people of Takaroa—my girl’s father was one of them—rushed to succor them, they fought them off, because their books said the Paumotuans were savages and cannibals. It wasn’t till they saw Takauha, the gendarme, and he showed them his red stripe on the sleeve of his jacket, that they realized they were not on a cannibal isle. Takauha brought Monsieur George Fordham, an Englishman, to interpret for them, and they were taken care of. They had broken arms and legs, and heads, too. Mapuhi bought the ship from Lloyd’s for fifteen hundred francs. Think of that! He took everything off he could, but the hull, masts, and yards stayed on. He made thousands of dollars out of the ship, and in his store you will find the doors and chests and the glass. She was built in Scotland.”

Her hull and decks of heavy metal, and her masts and yards, great iron tubes, she had defied even that master wrecker, Mapuhi, to disrobe her of more than her ornaments. Carried over the reef upon a gigantic wave, and perched upon a bed of coral in which she now fitted as snugly as in a dry-dock, she had withstood the storms and tides of years, and doubtless must stay in that solitary spot until time should disintegrate her metal and dissolve its atoms in the eternal sea.

The palms on the atoll paraded in battalions, waving their dark heads like shakos, and the surf shone in silver splashes, as I sat on the cabin house and watched the dawn unfold. Slowly the moon withdrew. At half-past five o’clock, the mother of life and her coldly brilliant satellite were in concert, and the ocean was exquisitely divided by sunbeams and moonbeams matching for favor in my admiring eyes.

Kopcke reappeared with a cigarette. He had an unusual chance to find me alone, and was hungry for information.

“There is a passage in the reef at Takaroa,” he said, “but you can bet the Marara won’t go through it. It is plenty big enough to let her in, but that takes seamanship. Now, I have seen Mapuhi sail his schooner through this passage in half a gale of wind, and swing her about inside in the space most chauffeurs in Tahiti need to turn their automobiles. No one else would try it. He won’t go in; but Mapuhi would have his crew stand by, and, with the wheel in his own hands, would tear through the opening as if he had all the seven seas about him.”

I was below washing my hands, when the roar of the breakers came to my ears with the call of Moet that a boat was leaving. I rushed to the waist of the schooner and, catching hold of a belayed rope’s end, dropped on the dancing thwart. Chocolat made a bound and landed on his master’s lap. Moet swore, but we were away.