Page: 6
COULD
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1957,: 1:
IT BE JUST A FLUKE? THE ODDS WERE MILLIONS TO ONE
Out of the vast wastes of the Pacific camo
a boat. No one was aboard. It had been drifting for a year.
I
• The waves drove. it towards the island. Then the incredible happened. Instead of smashing on the reef, the boat lurchod through a tiny gap-into the harbour whore it had been built.
• The story of The Boat That Came Home is told in RETURN TO THE ISLANDS, by Sir Arthur Grimble, who spent a lifetime governing the Gilbert and Ellice Islands of the Pacific.
THE
THE cutter which for years I used for my trips as a district officer between the istanda was the pride of Betio station. She had had a strange history, and she was destined years later (if you believe in such a thing as destiny) to find as strange an end.
Her story had begun for me personally one day in 1916, when, as a very green district officer, I had sailed 18 miles across-lagoon to talk to Mrs Grant about nothing but the renewal of her trade-store licence up at Tarawa North End,
The grim old widow was strictly agin the Government, and had never before honoured me with anything like 11 con- Adence; so I really can't guess what led her to treat me all of a sudden to the stuff she spilled about David Kanoa and ris home-Anding boat.
big.
David Kanda was the Routle Ilawnilan half-gaste whom she and her late husband Peter Grant had befriended in The wild years before the British Flag came lo the Gilberty.
By Sir Arthur Grimble
We clung to the capsized canoe in the steep, savage sea.
How Widow
steered
ing at sunrise, she said, sense passage from the ocean that cut
She had found him une morn- less and bloody on the bench of their trade-store, thumped there out of a barquentine bound from Ponape to Manifiki.
The supreme boat-builder
TULEX nover come back," was
all the eared to audi
From
the narrow land there
of the Grant the verandak
marle i Shanty she certainly lovely pleture, poised like LA still, white swan on the emerald flame of the outstowing lide,
discretion: blankly, It wasn't her beauty, though, but her utility that wrung me "Well, she was born in along with desire at the moment. I there, ye night say," Rhe
any shore,
But build her at a place like
Grant's boat home
itself
I'm bound to admit, though, that the old lady backed ber convictions generously, Three beautiful spare of pinewood arrived at Government station one day, with a note from her "Home?" I ochood might sink with you, miles from now and then tossed up on the though David's dead an' gone." of drifting, the shuttlecock to say that as the Government weather beaches of the "Gilberts." David had taken his boat off wind and cross-wind, current was holding on to David's boat, Marshail and counter-current, through it might as well have these for Mrs Grant made a big thing islands, seeking other work in heaven alone knew what inner nothing.
They really belonged to Tarawa but being as they were the last of the Chilfornian lumber Sent Along So Special (the expitala for building the
longed to have just such a craft plied, and that set her tongue ut my call for regular visits to really clacking.
Top nuthority, she explained, David Kanga The fact was, her islands.
Lone-headed as had had his boatyard by 119 to however,
trodden ital paysage. Not on the lagoon usual, had recently
for daring to beach, though. No, he had It carefully a furlong
this little bit of prehistory: "so
upon me hard
the
we had him on our hands, entertain so expensive a notion. located But me an' me lubby didn't
1 was just on the unwise point inshore, midway between lagoon.
lose nothing on him.
"Не turned out to be number-ono boat-builder.
10
Jaluit, in
the
and landlocked water, and she'd her most about it was the secret him soon, poor soul, and his Pacific, to emerge out of that he had chosen, looking at trees of that pine mast. What tickled 1902. But dysentery had klifed most solitudes of the central
a of telling Mrs Graut all about and occan, where the ebb and understand.....”
He it when a swirl of the falling flow of waters drove through bullt as a cutter for nothing but tide made the cutter dance and the thickest of the palm grove.
her moorings. his keep with the lumber we lug at
old give him. Over 30 years back, at her" said the
171t
was,
Looks IT was a fixed idea of his that And sald
YE,"
woman
again, "She's trying to home, she is!"
but she's gull a beau!. Look at her!"
boat lay moored at the The strangeness of her phrase embayment of a tidal rapped me out of my near in-
The lagoon
RESERVATIONS
about mustn't on any
ac-
D
ruddy years in the saddle by then) from grabbing it for a flagstaff,
the
launched una lunga rey "One day she is stubbornly, she'll conte
recital of
the boats David hud bullt there,
But 1 did manage to cat her at will return...
within
sight of
miracle
her safe
were hers)
craft 15 years ago.
I snatched at her gift.
The
All so very, illicit
of
er. remember it in her bones for way it had arrived, with the masterpiece had been seki to a huge emptiness not simply David, she went on to explain,
clear-as-mudi Intention, she German trader. rockoned,
the of preventing
So there she had been in inside lis lagoon. Government (aeveral 1914, away up in Jalult lagoon, You wouldn't
400-odd miles from home, when
The double the Japanese Navy came along
Marshall Instead of rolling itself up on and occupied
know what the foreshore like all the rest group. Everyone
rent had happened then.
gear needed to "Flotsam"-that's what we cali- ; Mrs Grant, of its kind, for everyone to see,
The Japonese had taken the
topped her as the ocean-going eloop of she's always come it had deliberately shot the foot whole bunch of Jaluit irade odds must have
one night at flood boats out to sea, blown the bowa Lo, as he claimed, point Arst, get count be born in sight of the back
hundreds of millions to one my dreams was going to cost the without
whole of 200," which there out of them with time charges against her chance of ever re- rudder 1de, then dived straight Into the sea. If she was, he alwayd Even
came safe back 13 very tidal passage said, she'd never be a landinder, she's
where of gun-cotton, and left them to turning, unsleered by human wasn't a hope of Headquarters Grants lived, and obligingly You couldn't tell then when she where she'd been born, any of
came to rest at the bend of the founder. There wasn't the ghost hand, from a point 400 miles letting me spend out of public his boats woukh"
I dkin't bother to inquire it stream by David Kanon's boat of a reason why David's crea away, to even the approximate funds; and I couldn't afford any
tlon should have escaped the neighbourhood of that single thing near that amount out she herself believed such ridicu- yard.
fate of the rost, I reminded the speck that was her birthplace, my own pocket, lous nonsense: it was too clear
oki woman, but she only in-
It staggers the imagination to back. I kinda feel it,"
guess at what they must have David Kanou's boat did, in added up to against her chance fact, find her way home. Yes, of pulling of the "double," last If any of the craft born'-
entirely on her own, as far as which la to say, first the miracle to use her own word in the
a merely human eye could see, of her homing and then the Kanou yerd had ever,
to her and Peter Grant got it sawn There in Tarawa lagoon, in the crowning marvel of knowledge, shown The Icast into 20ft. lengths levered offing of the native Government, entry into harbour. proof of possessing that peculiar ashore, and covered up
PUT what with getting the with station, I myself saw her float- homing Insunet she'd mentioned, palm leaves before another soul ing, aureoled in the dawn light,
In the whole 20-milo length spars so providentially for Mrs Grunt eyed me dis-
weeks of the roaring barrier reef that nothing and paying for the sails saw it. Turning it into plania one morning not three
shut her tastefully,
out from Tarawa myself, I found it fairly easy to then barked: at his leisure then, David had after Mrs Grant had spoken. "You wouldn't understand, that last boat of his finished
Ingoon, there were only two scrounge the rest from Goverṇ- channels young man. You ain't no and within the next two years or so.
through which a ment stores-the odds and ends, human sicersman could
wire of a sailor." and, as if I hadn't
have I mean, like manila and interrupted, went on describing "Well, I bet that was the
brought her, half waterlogged rope, and rigging screws, the last craft David had built home-indingest of all the craft
0s she was, unscathed.
copper rails, and tackle, got in. on Turown--a 32-foot
metal sheathing, cruiser, he ever launched," I
She either chanced precisely muniz cutter-rigged, with a fine hold "Just funey! Even the timber
Just like that on one of these paint, and red lead, and tar, under hitches amidships and a she was going to be bullt of
SCORE of elder villagers presages and swam serenely in
It was a highly fillelt proceed- below couple of bunks
decks coming barging in on its own
came forward to back the on the bosom of the rising Ude,
the but it did enable like that, all
from the way
old
wommul's identification or else came swooplig home ing her California?"
the through glant, Floisam to go into commission and point out David's habitual superbly.
almost at once an a despatch To tell
truih, I was mark,
deep-cut charging
vessel the sternpost. She was thousand jagged coral points bored stiff with that "ruddy in Government" line of hers; she half full of water; the and ledges, any one of which a We put her on a monthly cun
sooner or later to Abilang, was always shooting it, and I'd Japanese gun-cotton had shat few minutes
the Island just have liked to get some change tered her foredeck, bat, by some than the exact top of high water north of Tarawa. When I didn't
have ripped her to uut of her if I could; but all miracle, her bows had been left would
go along in her myself the man she replied to the gibe was, intact. Her mast, though shaicy, splinters in the crashing, surf. who took charge of her was that
what I thought still stood.
Mrs Grant behaved most superb sailor and That's just
wonderful by She had survivod, our irritatingly about the whole friend of the Glibertese, chief myself," and then, after a long pause, "I kinda feel sho will rockoning, well over 12 months thag. I thought. The wonder of come back one o' these days, (meaning thousands of miles) it left her totally unimpressed.
ROUND THE CLOCK
an
A real occan-going job: stem and sternpost, keel and ribs, of local hardwoods; her hull carvel-built of in, planks from one of those rently-dresser) Gort. pine masts from Californin currents that the winda and
•
This séries is adapted from Return to the Islands, by Sir Arthur Grimble, to be published by John Murray.
the
MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN-
OKEF, WE BEEN FRONING PROF. KORR FORTWO DAYS, I KNOW SOMETHINGS WRONG!
ILL BREAK OPEN THE POOR. NOW, MANDRAKE -- WHAT'S ALLTHIST SOME KING- FORCING THE CHESS CHAMPION TO VISIT HIM?
Shuttlecock
of the wind
HE'S GONE! THEY'VE TAKEN PROF.
KORRI
H
big
K
MANDRAKE, YOU CAN'T CHARGE A KING WITH "THAT EVEN IF I HAVEN'T
HEARD OF HIS
COUNTRY--
combers
over
By Lee Falk and Phil Dayls
THERE'S NO
EVIDENCE
ANYTHING'O
HAPPENED. YOU NEED
PROOF
WHAT DOES
ASANDRAKE
I SER PROOF!
ten
(Continued on Page 7)
and
and and
}
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