Landing on Palmerston Island
With our permission, he would take us ashore at once. Mister Masters himself had given instructions.
The "Mister Masters himself" settled it. We tumbled into one of the luggers, tumbled out again at the reef, and stood knee-deep in swirling waters while the pilot and his crew towed the craft against a ten-knot current through the boat passage; then aboard once more and away at an eight-knot clip through a maze of coral mushrooms, bumping, grazing, ricocheting, until finally sliding to rest on a glistening coral beach.
"Mister Masters himself," a dignified old gentleman with a flowing white beard, a tight alpaca jacket, and the general air of a patriarch, met us at the veranda steps of his spacious home, and inside of ten minutes we were sitting down to a meal of meals.
Our host informed us that the schooner was overdue and we must excuse the viands, but I saw no need for apology. In fact, how a few acres of powdered coral could have produced the variety of edibles we consumed at that meal passes my understanding. "Sailing Directions" in its own terse way, says of these atolls: "Inhabitants live entirely on cocoanuts and fish," and it sounds stringent enough, but I beg to state that our menu on one of them, namely Palmerston, read as follows:
SOUP:
TURTLE
(Made of the genuine article, taken but a few hours ago from its playground in a zinc bath at the door.)
FISH
(I know not of what species, but tastier than most of the tropical varieties.)
BOILED FOWL