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Then we would talk far into the night about Suvarov (and the other islands of the Pacific) and occasionally, when the rum bottle was low, I was able to persuade him to read the latest passages he had written. He had a deep compelling voice, and talked with as much enthusiasm as he wrote. And towards the end of each evening-and often “the end” only came when the dawn was streaking over the red tin roofs of Raro-we always came back to Suvarov.

“Do you think I’ll ever get there?” I asked one night.

“Why not?” Answered Frisbie, “though probably you’ll have to wait until the war’s over.” I remember we were sitting together sipping a last beer on a visit to Rarotonga, “but then-there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go-that is, providing you equip yourself properly. Suvarov may be beautiful, but it not only looks damn fragile, it is damn fragile-and I should know.”

There was no need to elaborate. I already knew that in the great hurricane of 1942, sixteen of the twenty-two islets in the lagoon had literally been washed away within a matter of hours. Frisbie had been trapped on Anchorage with his four small children and the coast-watchers during this hurricane. He had saved the children’s lives by lashing them in the forks of tamanu trees elastic enough to bend with the wind until the violence of the storm was spent.

I did not see Frisbie again for some time, but we corresponded regularly, and one day when I was feeling particularly low, I picked up his book, The Island of Desire. When I came to the second half I discovered it was all about Suvarov; how he had lived on the island with his children, how he had been caught in that great hurricane. I was enthralled and his descriptions were so vivid that no sooner had I finished the book than I sat down and wrote to him. “One of these days,” I wrote in my sloping, eager hand, “that’s where I’m going to live.” Frisbie replied, a half joking letter in which he suggested “Let’s both go. You can live on Motu Tuo and I can live on Anchorage, and we can visit each other.” It made sense. For like me, Frisbie was naturally a solitary man. Like me, he never had much money and yet, sadly, we were never to see the island together. In fact, Frisbie was never to see Suvarov again before he died in 1948.

There was another important reason for remaining in the Cooks. If ever I did go to Suvarov-if ever I had the luck or courage to “go it alone”-I would have to leave from Rarotonga, for Suvarov is in the Cook Islands, and though the interisland trading schooners rarely passed near the atoll, there might one day be an occasion when a ship would sail close enough to the island to be diverted. But only from Raro.

This is exactly what happened. Suddenly, in 1945, there came an opportunity to visit Suvarov for two days. It was Andy who broke the news to me in Rarotonga. He was under orders, he told me, to take the Tiare Taporo round the islands, calling in at Suvarov with stores for the coast-watchers there, on his way back from Manihiki.

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