Hawaii - James Michener [510]
The other occupants of the PBY were equally impressed by the island, but for other reasons. It possessed an enormous anchorage, and if necessary an entire invasion fleet could find refuge within the lagoon; but more important, the little islands along the outer reef were long, smooth and flat. "Throw a couple of bulldozers there for three days, and a plane could land right now," an engineer volunteered.
"We'll fly around once more," the general announced, "and see if we can agree on which of the outer islands looks best." So while the military people looked outward, to study the fringing reef, Hoxworth Hale looked inward, to see the spires of rock and the scintillating bays that cut far inland, so that every home on Bora Bora that he could spot lay near the sea. How marvelous that island was, how like a sacred home in a turbulent sea.
Now the PBY leveled off and started descending toward the lagoon, and Hoxworth thought how exciting it was to be within an airplane that had the capacity to land on water, for this must have been the characteristic of the first great beasts on earth who mastered flight. They must have risen from the sea and landed on it, as the PBY now prepared to do. When it was near the water, speeding along at more than a hundred miles an hour, Hoxworth realized for the first time how swiftly this bird was flying, and as it reached down with its underbelly step to find the waves, he caught himself straining with his buttocks, adjusting them to insure level flight, and then seeking to let them down into the waves, and he flew his bottom so well that soon the plane was rushing along the tiptop particles of the sea, half bird, half fish, and then it lost its flight and subsided into the primordial element, a plane that had conquered the Pacific and come at last to rest upon it.
"Halloo, Joe!" a native cried at the door, and in a moment the plane was surrounded by Bora Borans in their swift, small canoes.
Among the first to go ashore was Hale, because he knew a few words of Polynesian and many of French, and as he sat precariously on the thwarts of one of the canoes, and felt himself speeding across the limpid waters of the lagoon toward a sprawling, coconut-fringed village whose roofs were made of grass, he thought: "Hawaii has nothing to compare with this."
In a way he was right, for after the general and his staff had been fed with good sweet fish from the lagoon and red wine from Paris, the headman of the village approached with some embarrassment and said in French, which Hale had to interpret: "General, we people of Bora Bora know that you have come here to save us. God himself knows the French would do nothing to rescue us, because they hate Bora Borans, and do you know why? Because in all history we have never been conquered, not even by the French, and officially we are a voluntary part of their empire. They have never forgiven us for not surrendering peacefully like the others, but we say to hell with the French."
"Shut him up!” the general commanded. "The French have been damned good to us, Hale, and I want to hear no more of this sedition."
But the headman was already past his preamble and into more serious business: "So we Bora Borans want to help you in every way we can. You say you want to build an airstrip. Good! We'll help. You say you'll need water and food. Good! We'll help there too. But there is one matter you seem not to have thought about, and on this we will help too.
"While your flying boat sleeps in the lagoon, you will have to have some place to sleep on shore. We will put aside seven houses for you."
"Tell him we need only two," the general interrupted. "We don't want to disrupt native life."
The proud headman, dressed in a brown lava-lava and flowered wreath about his temples, did not allow the interruption to divert him: "The biggest house will be for the general, and the rest are about the same size. Now because it is not comfortable for a man to sleep alone in such a house, we have asked seven of our young girls if they will take care of everything."
It was here that