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Of course, I had heard of this great lagoon, with its coral reef stretching nearly fifty miles in circumference, but I had never been there, for it was off the trade routes, and shipping rarely passed that way. Because its reef is submerged at high tide-leaving only a line of writhing white foam to warn the navigator of its perils-Suvarov, however, is clearly marked on all maps. Yet Suvarov is not the name of an island, but of an atoll, and the small islets in side the lagoon each have their own names. The islets vary in size from Anchorage, the largest, which is half a mile long, to One Tree Island, the smallest, which is merely a mushroom of coral. The atoll lies almost in the centre of the Pacific, five hundred and thirteen miles north of Rarotonga, and the nearest inhabited island is Manihiki, two hundred miles distant.

That afternoon Frisbie entranced me, and I can see him now on the veranda, the rum bottle on the big table between us, leaning forward with that blazing characteristic earnestness, saying to me, “Tom Neale, Suvarov is the most beautiful place on earth, and no man has really lived until he has lived there.” Fine words, I thought, but not so easy to put into action.

“Of course, you must remember,” he broke in, “There’s a war on, and at present Suvarov is inhabited.”

This I knew-for two New Zealanders with three native helpers were stationed on Anchorage in Suvarov’s lagoon. These “coast-watchers” kept an eye open for ships or aircraft in the area, and would report back any movement to headquarters by radio.

“But they’d probably be glad to see you-or even me,” added Frisbie with a touch of irony.

I got up for it was time to leave. And as I said goodbye to this tall, thin man whose face and eyes seemed to burn with enthusiasm, I said, and the words and sigh came straight from the heart, “That’s the sort of place for me.”

“Well-if you feel that way about it, why don’t you go there?” he retorted. Storekeeping was not a very arduous job and I soon fell into my new life. My first “posting” took me to Atiu-a small island with rounded, flat-topped hills, and fertile valleys filled with oranges, coconuts and paw-paw; all of it less than seven thousand acres, each one of them exquisite and forever beckoning. From there I moved on to Puka Puka-”the Land of Little Hills”-where seven hundred people lived and produced copra.

The pattern of my life hardly varied, irrespective of the island on which I happened to be relieving the local storekeeper. Each morning I would make my breakfast, open up the store and wait for the first native customers in the square functional warehouse with its tin roof. The walls were lined with shelves of flour, tea, coffee beans, tinned goods, cloth, needles-everything which one didn’t really need at all in an island already overflowing with fruit and fish! No wonder that as I was shuttled from one outer island to another, I soon discovered that storekeeping was not the life for me, though it did have its compensations.

Filed under: Islanders