On the fourth day out from Niué we sighted the group, but decided not to proceed as there are no lights on these outlying reefs, and we had been warned by every island skipper of consequence that a vessel "sights" and "hits" one of them as near simultaneously as no matter. So we hove-to on the tail-end, the very mildly wagging tail-end, of a "southerly-buster," and turned in.
Throughout the night we took it in turns to go on deck at intervals and see that we were not drifting on to anything, and, save for the eternal dirge of the sea that fills the night in the vicinity of any group of South Pacific Islands, all was well. Yet with the sudden sunlight of dawn in these latitudes, we stood aghast at the scene confronting us: on all sides waves, an apparently complete circle of breaking combers, their emerald-green bodies and white-capped heads flashing in the sun. To all appearances we were as effectually trapped as a rat in a cage. Yet how was the thing possible? If there were an inlet into this inferno of reefs there must assuredly be an outlet.
The engine was called upon, and responded nobly. During that day we systematically searched for a loophole of escape, and found none, until toward evening we glided through a passage no more than fifty yards wide, and to our intense relief found that it led to the open sea.
While hove-to the previous night the dream ship must have executed a miracle by drifting into a narrow-necked horseshoe of coral; that was all. And to some it may appear that we were an unconscionable time in finding a way out, but for the benefit of such I would point out that the inside of the horseshoe, as is often the case, was littered with broken reefs, each forming an apparent outlet which on closer inspection proved to be nothing of the sort. In short, I would commend those with a taste for maze-solving to visit the Friendly Islands.
I was not surprised to learn later that local trading craft, equipped with a band of lynx-eyed Kanakas, never sail at night in these waters. Apart from the constant danger of known reefs, others have a knack of appearing and receding in the most uncanny way, so that no chart issued can keep track of them.
In this connection a most enthralling theory engages the attention of the South Sea student. It is his firm belief that what is now the "milky way" of the Pacific was at one time a vast coral and volcanic continent; that it has subsided here, and been upheaved or erupted there, until broken into a myriad fragments, and that the day may still come when Nature will elect to raise them from the deep, welded once more into a mighty whole.
As has been said before (if it were not sufficiently evident without saying at all), I am not a scientist, but the existing indications in support of this theory meet even the casual observer at every turn in the Pacific Ocean to-day. There is a wall on Easter Island, not unlike the great wall of China, but which runs for a short distance and then plunges aimlessly into the sea. Where did it begin? Where did it end? What mighty city did it embrace? On Pitcairn there are the remains of a former and highly advanced civilization. On Lord Howe Island, a mere rock sprouting three thousand feet out of the sea four hundred and eighty miles from the Australian coast, there are sixty different species of land shell, 50 per cent. of which are not to be found anywhere else in the world. How do they come to be on Lord Howe? Land shell cannot swim. In the Carolines, you may look down into the water of lagoons and see the remains—mosaic floors and broken walls—of a submerged city.
So, from east to west, and from north to south, this mighty ocean of the Pacific holds its secrets of forgotten lands and peoples.
As for the dream ship, not content with escape from a coral death-trap, we sailed out, and still out to the open sea, until nothing short of a gale could carry us into danger, and there hove-to again for the night. There was nothing else to be done. What was more, and owing to an oversight attributable to no one but myself, we had no large-scale chart of Tonga Tabu, so that it took us three days of searching and three nights of heaving to before we found the eastern pass through the reef and waited with international code flag flying for the pilot.
