Robert Dean Frisbie - The Book of Puka-Puka: A Lone Trader in the South Pacific

O NE BY ONE REMOTE ISLANDS were left astern, trackless stretches of ocean crossed, storms weathered and long glassy calms wallowed through. The monotonous sea days wore slowly away and still the schooner moved farther and farther into a lonely sea, visiting islands even more remote from the populous haunts of men. I realised at last that the end of my journey was at hand.

Since childhood I have always liked to reach the ends of things, finding a curious fascination in walking to the farthest point of a promontory, in climbing to the top of a mountain or exploring the headwaters of a river; but I confess that I have never yet found the elusive apple of gold I have always hoped to find at the end of each journey. Nevertheless, I have wandered on, not over the well-travelled sea-tracks dear to the hearts of tourists, but to strange and lonely places dear to my own heart, hidden in the farthermost seas. Such a place, I knew, was the atoll Puka-Puka (or Danger Island, as it is commonly called), and I looked forward eagerly to my arrival there.

I had left Rarotonga as a representative of the Line Islands Trading Company, with a commission to take stock in Table Winnings store on Penrhyn Island, to transact a pearl deal on Manihiki, and to go on to Puka-Puka, where I was to open and manage a store of my own

We were three whites aboard the Tiar Captain Viggo, Prendergast the supercargo, and myself. The captain, Papa Viggo, as he is called among the islands, is a fair-haired man, rather under average height, and with a tendency towards rotundity. He is one of those lovable, convivial souls who bring good cheer by their mere presence; but when his path is crossed, or when he is played a shabby trick, a cold glint comes into his eyes and one realises that this quiet, easy-going Dane has another side to his character, compounded of all the sternness of his Viking forefathers. Viggo is the life of the Line Islands Trading Company, versatile, shrewd, generous and a past-master in the art of mixing rum punches.

Prendergast the supercargo, now a trader on one of the northern islands, is a cockney of forty, who spins long yarns about his pugilistic successes and his sanguinary sharp-shooting record in the war. He has a whole arsenal of guns and revolvers in the supercargos cabin and loves to fondle, polish and oil them, but I have never seen him shoot at anything except bottles thrown overboard or a dry piece of coral on a reef. He is much too kind-hearted even to slaughter edible sea birds and reserves all his ferocity for his tales of killing Germans or of how with his puissant fists he broke the head of some island champion. He himself believes the long, absurd stories with which he beguiles his friends when the punch is flowing freely. Although not particularly handsome, he is a great favourite with the island girls, much to the depletion of his purse, for he is as generous as he is boastful, and all the girls know this.

That was my first trip north with Viggo, but I had visited most of the islands before. By north I mean north of Rarotonga, for we never sail above the equator. Island after island was left astern: Mangaia, Mauke, Mitiaro, Atui, Aitutaki, and the farther we pushed on, the more clearly I realised that a barrier was falling between me and the outside world as impenetrable as the jungle curtain which fell behind Mungo Park when he sought the outlet to the Niger.

A month went by and we sighted our first atoll, Palmerston Island, a place inhabited by the descendants, in the second, third and fourth generation, of William Marsters, a sea captain who had retired to Palmerston with three wives and had followed the biblical counsel to increase and multiply.

I went ashore at Palmerston, weighed in thirty tons of copra, and met the son of the original William Marsters. He bears his fathers Christian name and is now an old man past seventy. He showed an odd pride in his white blood and was full of little mannerisms, particularly at table, which he had learned from his father and to which he held tenaciously.