I had to look these facts in the face. Chenopodium, on which we had relied as a cure for one of the world’s most prevalent blights, was not coming up to our expectations. There seemed no answer to that, until help came from an unexpected quarter.
CHAPTER XI
“SO YOU’VE COME TO FIJI!”
I have such a collection of hurricanes that in self-searching moments I call myself “The Storm King’s Target.” The wind that blew us around an island, that time we were trying to make Rabaul, is an example. Another was one hot day in Fiji, years later, when our half-caste skipper demonstrated his share of brains: He saw the storm coming and poked our cockleshell into a sheltering cove. For three days we “holed up” with District Officer Bob and his wife Elaine, and watched a Fiji village take wings; the big palm-thatched meeting-house looked like a flying haystack. On the way home I searched for landmarks. Two rivers on Viti Levu had plunged together; an East Indian village had been swept away, everybody drowned. A Fijian town had vanished under a sliding mountain.
Once in North Queensland I saw a galvanized iron roof wrap itself around a telephone pole as you wrap paper around a pencil. I’ve been lucky; never has a ship gone down under me—quite. Several ships, though, have been wrecked before I had time to get aboard.
Two refuges for the soul in a hurricane are the Power of Prayer and the Power of Swear. Take your choice. Once the big wind roared over a mission station, and the missioner, who didn’t care to go himself, sent loyal converts down to bring in his launch, and they saved the boat from the gale’s fury. Neighbors made scandal of the wanton risk, but the missionary smiled, “Oh, no. It was no risk. I saw the Spirit hovering over them when they went down to the water.”
Another hurricane met our ship coming toward Fiji from Sydney, and I fell back on the Power of Swear. With every comber that plowed through the dining saloon of the old 1,100-ton Suva I dug up long-forgotten oaths. My wife and child got through; Eloisa comes of a pithy stock, otherwise she could never have followed me in my curious career. This trip was a soul-shaker. The Fijians have a meke song in which they address the powers of the hurricane, “blown from the black mouths of the Ladies of the West.” For three horrible days the Ladies of the West gave it to us, straight. The captain tied our propeller-shaft in a bowknot, heading straight into the volley, trying to drag us out of an invisible grip.
I had my hands full, seeing that my eight-year-old Harriette wasn’t drowned in our stateroom. An Australian lady furnished a touch “of romance.” A hard one would shiver our timbers, she would cling to me, her children would cling to her. “Oh, Doctor, I’m so glad”—she would shriek above the tempest—“that you’re here on the ship. I feel so much safer.” I imagined myself swimming with Eloisa and Harriette in one hand and the Australian lady (with family) in the other.
When we limped into Suva harbor the sea had turned to glass. Hurricanes have an annoying way of doing things like that.
There on our starboard hand lay the jumbled little waterfront; and on our portside a craggy peak they call The Devil’s Thumb; perpetual landslides had marked its face with a perfect Y, as though Yale sophomores had been working overnight.