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By Root 494 0

they had nothing to worry about, but I had visions of a wave washing over us and taking us all with it. I’d read a lot about hurricanes and cyclones in Tahiti and knew that they sometimes generated waves eighteen to twenty feet high, and we were in the middle of such a storm. As the waves got larger, rain started to fall in torrents and the lagoon began to wash over the beaches while the current in the channel became swifter and swifter until it must have been racing past us at twenty knots. On the main island the water level was soon up to our shins, and furniture began floating past. I kept telling everyone to relax, that this was just an unusually powerful storm and wasn’t it marvelous to be here and experience nature unleashed? I couldn’t admit that I was terrified waiting for that one wave that would wash over us and take us out to sea.

At dawn the winds were still blowing hard when I left my hut to inspect the damage. Palm fronds strong enough to pull a truck were strewn all over the island. In places the water was still rising, but the worst seemed to be over. For another two days the storm continued to batter the island, and everybody huddled together, singing and praying. I slept in my sou’wester and tried to keep everyone calm, including a woman who was staying with me, a New Yorker whose most serious bout with inclement weather until then had been being snowed in at a country house in Connecticut. When the winds finally subsided, everybody, including her, pitched in and began the cleanup. A few hours later the weathermen in Papeete radioed that another hurricane was on the way. I called for a plane from Papeete to evacuate the island, but when it arrived, four or five of the Tahitians refused to leave; they said they trusted in God and if they left, it would insult him and risk his wrath.

I thought the Tahitians who wanted to be evacuated were leaving because they were frightened, but when they boarded the plane, I heard them joke about the fun they were going to have in Papeete, and realized that all they were thinking about was getting to town, having a day off, drinking beer, chasing girls and having fun. I had intended to leave on the plane, but when some people said they wouldn’t leave, I couldn’t either. I was captain of the ship and it wouldn’t be right to let them fend for themselves.

The second storm was less severe than the first, but powerful nevertheless, and after it passed, I sat down in the lagoon in shallow water up to my waist with my friend from New York, a bright lady with whom I had shared much from the time I was nineteen or twenty. It was about five o’clock in the afternoon and the sky was spectacular. Every cloud appeared to have been torn in half, but the sky no longer seemed ominous and there was no wind. I had never seen a sky like it, nor have I since. Then suddenly it was sunset. Tahitian sunsets defy any ability to describe them, but if you have never believed in God, you are tempted to think otherwise when you see one there. They are celestial symphonies, a concerto of colors that shift in mood, tempo and color by the second: greens, grays, every shade of pink you can imagine, oranges, fiery reds and angel blues, while everything on the horizon changes constantly.

Once the sun sets, darkness arrives abruptly; you had better get home fast or you’ll be groping around in the dark. There is no twilight in the tropics, though Tahitians tell me that if you are lucky, every once in a while you may see a sudden green flash in the sky just as the sun disappears. It’s magic, they say. One of my favorite pastimes on Teti’aroa is to lie down on the grass at the end of the airstrip, wait for the sun to set and hope for a glimpse of that green flash. I never have, but many people I know have been luckier. A bright green light explodes in the sky, hangs there for an instant like a sudden, brief explosion of fireworks, then vanishes. Every time I go to Teti’aroa I wait for that magic, and someday I’ll see it.

For half an hour after the sun goes down, the horizon continues to change color as