DID IT HAPPEN?
MYSTERY at the HELM
HAD sailed 18 miles across-lagoon, I remember, to talk to Mrs Grant about nothing but the renewal of her trade store ficence up there at Tarawa North End.
The grim old widow was strictly agin the government. and had never before honoured me, as District Officer, with any- thing like a confidence; so I just can't guess what led her to treat me all of a sudden to the stuff she spilled about David Kanoa' and his homefinding boats.
David Kanon was the big, gentle Hawaiian half-caste whom she and her late husband, Peter, had befriended in the wild years before the British fing cante
to the Gilbert Islands.
She had found him orie morn- ing at sunrise, she said, sense- less and bloody on the beach of their trade store, dumped there cut of a barquentine bound from Ponape to Manihiki.
"The dirty cows never came back," was all she cared to add to this little bit of prehistory, so we had him on our hands, c. But me an' me,hubby didn't
luse nothing on
by
Sir
THE CHINA
MAIL, SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1955.
There, lying senseless on the beach, was 'David
Arthur Grimble
FOR 20 years he lived in the Gilbert Islands midway between Hawaii and Australia. His four children were born there. He got to know and love the islanders, and his tales about them have made him famous. Here is another story based on his early days as district officer. And what you are asked to decide is-did it REALLY happen?
I didn't bother to inquire it reckoned, she herself believed such ridieu- ruddy
of
DON IDDON TELLS THE STORY OF DR SALK
His Family Were His Guinea Pigs
D
New York. OCTOR Jonas Ed- ward Salk, the man who has routed and perhaps conquered infantile paralysis, is 40 years old, a native New Yorker, and a mixture of shyness and exceptional self. confidence..
When he was asked after his triumph in finding a fication and point out David's "safe, effective, and potent" customary mark, a big K deep-vaccine against paralytic cut in the sternpost. She was polio why he has devoted half full of water; the Japanese his life to research, he guncotten. had shattered ber
foredeck; but, by some miracle, replied: "Why did Mozart
compose music?",
her bows had been left intact.
Her mast, though shaky, still
Dr Salk is not relishing the
found the results of his experi- ments encouraging, he broadenst a speech entitled "The Scientist Speaks for Himself."
Other
scientists, perhaps jealous, ・ ・ perhaps frustrated, jumped" an him. Why didn't Salk confine his reports to pro- Sessions Journals?"
One eminent professor said: "We want Salk, to show is, not tell us
Now Salk has shown them, and shown the world
The young doctor owes a lot to the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, Bid the millions of dimes that people poured into the Founda tion at the urging of the late
ו,
the
'When you inoculate your wife and stood She had survived nearly publicity that beats about his children with a polio vaccine you she of the central Pacific, to emerge Michigan, that he had succeed, don't sleep well for 2 or 3 months'
ed
at Ann Arbor,
where other doctors and
him. He turned snapped mes out of my sulks lous nonsense: It was too clear years in the saddle by then) but inside its 12 of Tarawa, Scienusts had failed. Salk says:
boat
cut to be a number-one builder. He built us a cutter for nothing but his keep with the Jumber we give him. Over 30 years back, that was, but she's still a beaut. Look at her!!!
White swan
The boat lay moored at the of a tidal lagoen embayment
narrow passage that cut the
and there. From the veranda of the Crant shanty she tainly
શ
her
The strangeness of her phrase
Home?" I echoed blankly.
she
to
FUSS."
Look at her!" said the old, she'd been born, any of his boats her most about it was the secret 12 months of drifting, through head since the spectacular an-
way it had arrived, with the heaven knew what inner solitudes nouncemen woman again, she's trying to would."
clear-as-mud intention get home, she is!"
preventing the out of that huge emptiness not, government (several simply within
Lagoon. The odds she did; also, she was doggedly from grabbing it for a flagstaff. must have topped hundreds of launched on a long recital of the Instead of rolling itself up on millions one against her Ever returning, "Well, she, was born in along boats David had built there. But the foreshore like all the rest of chance there, as ye might say," I did manage to ask her at last its kind for everyone to ste, it unsteered by human hand, from well-balanced" man. explained, and that set her if any of the craft "born" to had deliberately shot the reef, a point 400 miles away to even shyness. He is not particularly Longue really clacking.
use her own word-in the Kanca int first, one night at food the approximate neighbourhood surprised by his success. yard had ever, to her know tide, then dived straight into the of that single speck that was The fact was, she said, David. ledge, shown the least proof of very tidal passage where the her birthplace. Kainos had had his boatyard by possessing that peculiar homing Grante lived, and obligingly
Not on the instinct she had mentioned. the tidal passage.
come to rest at the bend of the lageor beach, though. No, he
stream by David Kanoa's boat fur-
yard. had located it carefully a
midway between long inshore lagoon and ocean, where the ebb flow of waters drove and through the thickest of the palm grove...
made a lovely picture, poised like a still white swan on the emerald Hame of
It was a fixed idea of his that the out-
a boat mustn't on any account flowing tide. It wasn't beauty, though, but her utility be born in sight of the set. If that wrung me with desire at she was, he always said, she that moment.
be a landfinder. I longed to have never
You couldn't tell ...just such a craft at my call for coul
regular visits to other islands. might sink with you, miles from The Treasury, however, as mean any shore, Bus build her at a and know-all as usual, had place like he'd chosen looking recently trodden on me hard for ,at trees and land-locked water, daring to entertain so expensive" and she'd remember it in her
bones forever.
a notion
I was chewing the cud of this grievance when a swirl of the falling tide made the cutter
then when she
12
Secret way
interrupted,
ali
Roaring reef
want to get back to my Alexander Fleming devoted President Roosevelt, himself a Iaboratory and stop all this three years to perfecting the victims of infantile paralysis. vaccine before his mass testing Salk strode vigorously in the He is an intense, deliberate, on tens of thousands of school March of Dimes."
who despite his children began a year ago. His DT Thomas Francis,
initial research against polio announced the formal verdict of the mass inoculations, and who began in 1949.
He started to seck a weapon is Director of the Vaccine against infantile paralysis be Evaluation Centre in Michigan, cause it was a job that could had faith in Dr Salk when be done in a field in which I others were complaining of the
Но not time and money was interested."
being
Salk's wife, Donna, had faith too. He is not the casiest man and in the world to live with sometimes when Mrs Saik says
not listening to me!" the doctor replica: "My dear, 7 am giving you my undevoted atten-
At a press conference a re- porter asked: "Was there ever time when you' were disccur- aged to the point of giving up Dr Salk rescarch?"
with one word: "Why?" And when he was
enjoying the drama that has pended
everyone
and
ex-
surrounded the announcement
de of his success, and his Turning it into planks at his
meanour is elaborately casual. It staggers the imagination to your leisure then, David had that last
He said the other day: "I be boat of his finished within the guess at what they must have answered next year or .
udded up to against her chance lacked was he surprised that he came interested in polio because to her husband; "Jonas, you're
else was fooling She eyed me distastefully, then
of pulling OC the "double," *Well, I bet that was the which is to say, Best the miracle had at last discovered an anti- around with the pollo thing, so barked, "You wouldn't under- stand, young man. You ain't no home-findingest of all the craft of her boming and then the polio vaccine that could safely I thought I would play around human beings, with It too and gain some of her safe be given to hand, of a saker, and as if he ever launched," I got in crowning marvel
he replied: "It didn't come as experience."
The monkey has played a big describing the last craft David timber she was going to be bullt
went on there "Just tricy! Even the entry into harbour.
a surprise. It was something
Actually the "playing arouing" part in the Salk experiments.
Hundreds of monkeys have had but on Tarawan 32-ton of coming barging in on its own
In the whole 20-mile length of that could be expected because
been used by the research a day, six days a week, doing laboratories. barrier reef that it was well-founded theoret meant a minimum of 18 hours the way from the roaring. cruiser, cutter-rigged, her hull like that,
shut her carvel-built of two-inch planks California!"
out from Tarawa cally."
research laboratory work
From the long experiments from one of those ready-dressed
lagoon, there were only two
This was the cool, scientiae meticulous calculations. He was Dr Salk Anally developed 60-foot pine marts
Cali-
channels through which
mind speaking Yet Dr Salk assisted by four devoted assist- human
steersman could have himself is not a cold, austere ants, all under 40. He says: "The vaccine to protect against fornia that the winds and cur- rents now and then tossed up on
brought her, half waterlogged as man. He likes tennis and golf, jcb could not have been done Crippling effects of all the weather beaches of the
she was, unscathed. She either and occasionally the gregarious without them."
chanced precisely on one
atmosphere of the clubhouse, al- To tell the truth, I was bored these and swam serenely in on though in the past few years he stiff with that "ruddy govern the bosom of the rising tide, or
has had tle time for anything liked to get some change out charging men line of here. I'd have else came swooping home
me except his laboratory bench and combers over ten a few hours with his wife, of her, but all she replied was thousand jagged coral points and Doma, and their three sons, "That's just what I thought my tiges, any one of which, a few Peter, 11, Darrell, 8, and Jona self," and then etter a long minutes sooner or later than the than, 5, pause, “I kinda know she'll exact top of high water, would come back one of these days."
Lave ripped her to splinters in the crashing surf..
"Ay," said Mrs Grant, "and Gilberts. she'd always come back to it, he claimed; even without a rudder
13
from:
Mrs Grant made a big point dance and tug at her moorings, she'd come back safe to where of that pine mast. What ticded
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Masterpiece
"Well that' be wonderful!”
of virus which
1
the
three produce polia. Brunhilde, and Leon are the
strange names given
to the three strains of polio,
Brunhilde was named for a The crucial time for Salk and monkey in
which one strain his fight
against
infantile was isolated Lansing for the paralysis came in 1953, when city in
in Michigan where a pollo he was ready to test vaccine on victim developed another type persons who had never had of the disease, and Leon for a He chose himself his wife, and the third crippling virus. palio. Who should he choose? young boy who suffered from their three sons.
Dr Salk considers the names appropriate ther
for
ded to become a lawyer,
Often he works 18 hours day in his laboratory. Dr Salk has been known to go through I told her heavily. She's the I naturally grabbed her for a straight 24 hours working,
He says: "When you inocu- very thing I want, so long as the ruddy government. Perhaps without any pause except to
late your wife and children with He does not consider anything she doesn't cost the Treasury a that was why Mrs Grant pro munch a sandwich and drink
a polio vaccine you don't sleep particularly strange except the blanky bean." But she knew as passed to be totally unimpressed cup of coffee,
well for two or three months. fact that in his youth he had well as I I did what nonsense she
of The doctor by what had happened. When I
my possesses utter But I had the courage
decided had been talking. David had tried to bring the wonder of it and absolute concentration, is done it unless I had been more York City College he spent one .convictions. I couldn't have When he was a student at New sailed away in his bost to Jaluit, home to her, she only said I in the Marshall
friends say: "Jonas is the done Island, round about 1902. Dysentery had killed wouldn't bave seen no reason at clearest, most deliberate thinker critical of myself than others week going through the
all to be surprised if I'd been a
books and then suddenly signed you could possibly imagine. He were of me. him there in 1905, poor soil, and true sailorman, like her hubby won't press his work one second based on confidence and not up for a science course. his masterpiece had been sold, at used to be.
faster than it is absolutely safe daring, and it was conâdence auction to a local German trader.
to do, but he will press harder based on experience." and more determinedly" than Dr Salk has had many critics his youthful, spectacular anyone you have ever known."
The man who joins the ranks career. Three years ago, when Pasteur, Jenner, and he was approaching success and
So there she bad been in 1914, four hundred miles from home, when the Japanese navy came along and occupied the Marshall group.
Everyone knew what
A hunch?
One thing that did impress her had happened then. The Japanese was the rightness of her hunch. had taken the whole bunch of She rubbed that in whenever we Jaluit traders' beats out to sea, mat. Hunch indeed! If you aşk blown the bows out of them with me, she had simply gone all time-charges of gurcotton, and feminine about pour David's boat left them, to founder. There and suffered a bad attack of wasn't the ghost of a reason why what women love to call their David's creation should have intuition. You know what I escaped the late of the rest, I mean that gabble of warrantless reminded the old woman. she only insisted stubbornly, that,
But convictions and idiot conjectures once for every million Shril
come back I kinda misses, hits the incredible truth know it!"
bang on the nose. But I admit I never dared to put it like that to her face..
The miracle
WHAT I can't add now is that
up her so-called knowing for the wildness it was. It did nothing of the sort. David Kanos's boat did, in fact, find her way home. Yes, entirely on her own, as far as a merely human eye could
WORLD COPYRIGHT RESERVED
OID IT REALLY HAPPEN?
YES
NO
of
It was courage
HONEYMOON IN A FAROUK PALACE
Cairo.
INVITES the ad: "Spend your honeymoon in a Farouk Palace." And another: "Come swimming in Farouk's own pool by moon- light"
For Egypt, after many months of condemning the pudgy ex- king's way of life, has got around to thinking that there is some- thing in it after all-badly-needed tourist revenue.
Arid there seems to be nothing else to do with the magnificent seaside Montazah Palace at Alexandria and the other palaces where Farouk lived the good life. They are too big and too far apart to serve as government offices, not suitably planned to be universities, too heavily ornate to be hospitals,
But they are ideal for honeymooners. The plan for
lav
He has been a scientist ever since. His teachers say: "Salk read everything he could lay his hands on. He tried to be a perfectionist in school work."
During his holidays he worked as a laboratory technician and later
won scholarships in chemistry and experimentaf surgery and studied medicine.
He received his MIB, try: 1939).
Then after a spell in hospitals he won a scholarship to attend the University of Michigan for research into the influenza virus, Dr Balk is still intensely in- terested in influenza and the common cold,
a welcoming hors to build chalets, "furnished to create † Salk now 85," and
#
Dr Sall's on target, is like mental disease. He would to tackle that next.
He does not come trots
His father, family of doctors. Daniel, makes women's scarves, collars, and blouses in New York's garment centre. Mr his wife, Dora, also 65, may: "Jonas was The palace has been a museum for a year and in its huge, able to get the education that high-ceilinged rooms there is all the evidence of Farmak's last we never got. We are not sur moments there; his suits and uniforms still in the wardrobes, the prised at our son's success, In the space half-packed trunks, his toilet odds and ends in the cabmet saw this coming judge. There is Tarawa lagoon, above and keep this panel br of the royal bathroom on orders, lest on the card table. It was inoculated the vaccine into bile
even the last poker hand, dealt minutes. "WC
be when the offing of the native you until Monday, when the before he got eviction government station. I mystif saw answer will be given along not a very sure there is the garden palace of Inchaes, where her floating, aureoled in the with another slory in the series Outside Cairo dawn light, one morning not by three weeks after Mrs Grant had spoken.
12.
A score of the elder, villagers came forward to back her identi-
Put your tick
NAOMI JACOB
Yesterday's story, "The Lemon Pyjamaa,” was FICTION,
hand.
We
proot. Our son would never do
own family that there was the
the roulette wheels spin and couples away to samba rhythm. anything he was not sure of"
Soon the government plans to turn the rooms of the palace into a luxury hotel in whose vast grounds the visitors will be able to ride Farouk's 150 thoroughbred horses, shoot his duck, his desert hare, his gazelle, fish for his fish, and take lazy trips along his Sweetwater Canal in his river richt-London Express Service.
Dr Salk will receive no fees
of or royalties from the sales
want the serum, He doesn't
money, he doesn't want glory.
He wants to serve,
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JOHNNY HAZARD
脆
- THIS PARK SHOULD HAVE A
FOUNTAIN SOMEWHERE MAGOTTA
WASH THIS GRIME OFF. HEY!!
THAT YODELING DOESN'T, SOUND,
LIKE AN ARAB CHANTÉ
BABY BOY
By Frank Robbins
this situation
calls for a
San Miguel
#