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I will pass briefly over the next morning’s conference with the governor. As I’ve said, all arrangements for taking over the island had been made in advance by our State Department; my talk with the governor concerned only the practical details of the business. He was courteous enough, but I could see that he was far from happy over this intrusion demanded by the harsh necessities of war. However, he was extremely businesslike and had everything down in black and white, even to the smallest details. It was a kind of leasing arrangement for the duration, and I was given full authority to make whatever changes might be necessary for converting the island into a base. When the war ended it was to be returned, and all installations such as wharves, hangars, barracks, machine shops, electric power plants, and the like were to be handed over to the government having sovereignty there. Boyle was at the conference, and I learned that he was, in fact, the sole owner of the island. He stood to profit handsomely by the arrangement. A schooner was ready to take me to my destination and I was told that I could leave the same evening if I wished to.

Boyle and I came away from the conference together. He was a curious fellow; I couldn’t make him out. There were, naturally, all sorts of questions I wanted to ask about the island, but he put me off with the briefest of replies or none at all. I had taken it for granted that he would be coming too, but he soon made it clear that he had no intention of doing so.

“No,” he said; “no more traveling for me till they take me to the local boneyard.”

The conference had tired him and when we reached the waterfront he suggested that we rest for a bit on a bench there.

Presently he said: “There’s one thing I want to speak about.” He was silent for so long I thought he’d forgotten what he meant to say, but at last he added: “I’ve got a nice place out there ... on my island, I mean. Used to spend two or three months on it every year. There’s a man and his daughter looking after it for me now.... I hope they won’t have to be disturbed?”

I told him I could make no promises about that, in advance.

“No ... I don’t suppose you can,” he replied, slowly. “Well ... that’s all.... I just wanted you to know about them.” At last he looked up at me with the bleakest smile I’ve ever seen on a human face. “When I sent ’em out there,” he said, “I thought I was doing a good turn for once in my life.... Guess I was too late makin’ a start.”

He left me a moment later without any explanation of what he meant by that statement.

The last leg of the journey was made in a two-masted, ninety-ton schooner used in the copra and pearl-shell trade amongst those islands. The only other passenger was the Resident Agent of the island I was bound for. His Christian name was Viggo and he was always called so, either that or “Papa Viggo.” He was a Dane with a round ruddy face and hair so blond it was almost white. His big belly was as sound as the rest of him. “My heart,” he called it; then he would smile and give it a resounding thump with his fist. When I knew him better I was convinced that a heart as big and kindly as his could have found room in no other part of his anatomy. I should not be surprised if, in Viggo, heart and stomach had been fused into one organ, digesting food and experience together, and never with the slightest touch of spleen. There are certain men who, you know at first glance, are good all the way through. Viggo was one of these. I never heard him say an unkind word of anyone.

The captain of the schooner was also called only by his first name—Tihoti, which is the native word for “George.” Viggo and George—what a pair they made! They were contemporaries in age, around sixty, but George, although he had the point of view of a white man, had a considerable mixture of Polynesian blood in his veins. He had a walrus mustache and bloodshot, protruding blue eyes that glared at you in a manner disconcerting at first until you learned that there was nothing hostile behind the glare. He was one of the most naturally courteous men I’ve ever met—that is, in his attitude toward strangers; with Viggo, of course, he stood on no ceremony since they had been friends from away back. There was a courtly, Old World charm about him, and while he could remove that manner as easily as taking off his coat, I became convinced that it was no veneer of good breeding but something native; a gift received, probably, through his Polynesian blood.

Before we had been an hour at sea I was on excellent terms with these two old cronies. I soon gathered that they had only a vague notion of the nature of my errand. They knew that some kind of base was to be made on the island, but their idea of it was a storage tank or two to contain fuel-oil for ships that might have to pass that way now and again. I decided not to give them the facts until I had to.

The captain had a short-wave radio, but it was an old contraption and static was so bad, he said, twenty-five days out of the month, that he didn’t bother to listen in often. However, on this first night he tried to get London and succeeded after a fashion. We heard Big Ben striking the hour and the voice of the announcer saying: “This is London calling in the Overseas Service of the B.B.C.” After that scarcely a word was distinguishable for several minutes; then we heard: “Some of our overseas listeners have written to ask whether nightingales still sing in wartime England. We are happy to let the nightingales answer that question for themselves.” Following that, we heard the faint song of a bird but the static soon drowned it out. The captain switched off the current in disgust.

“I wonder if that was an imitation?” said Viggo. “Surely, they couldn’t have had a nightingale right there by the what-you-may-call-it—microphone?”

“Viggo, you’re the dumbest man about radios,” said the captain. “Of course they didn’t have a nightingale there. The song was what they call transcribed, off a phonograph record.”

“Was it?” said Viggo, with a blank look. “Is that how they do it?”

Presently he added: “I expect that’s all the nightingales’ songs they’ll have left by the time the war’s over: what they’ve got on the phonograph records. My, my! What a world it is in Europe for the birds, with all the shells and aeroplanes and bombs!”

“I was reading a while back,” said the captain, “about a big flock of aeroplanes that had been making a daylight raid somewhere in France or Belgium. This was last spring. It told about how they’d flown right through a flock of small birds on the way home. They were going so fast they didn’t see the birds till they were right amongst ’em. It said all those planes came home plastered with blood and feathers and the bodies of little birds so flattened out they couldn’t tell what they were.”

“What’s happening to all the wild life over in Europe, Mr. Dodd?” Viggo asked. “There must be a lot about it in the papers. And the fish? You’d think the fish must be about wiped out in the Mediterranean and the North Sea, with the depth bombs and mines and torpedoes.”

I said that I’d seen no mention in the papers of the tragedies of the birds and fishes, but I didn’t confess, which was true, that I’d never myself given the matter a thought. It struck me as strange that I’d had to come all this distance to meet anyone who appeared to be concerned about these matters. I changed the subject by asking them to tell me something about Boyle.

The captain heaved himself out of his deck chair to spit over the rail, as though the mere mention of the name had brought a nauseating taste to his mouth.

“That old skunk!” he said. “He’s the biggest crook in the Pacific!”

“Now, Tihoti,” said Viggo, with an air of mild protest.

“He is,” said the captain, with even more heat. “Viggo knows it as well as I do. Mr. Dodd, that fellow has done more dirt in his lifetime than the devil himself could have thought up.”

“What about the Lehmanns?” asked Viggo.

“I knew you’d bring them in. Leave them aside for now. One good deed in forty-five years won’t make up for all the misery he’s caused.”

Viggo was about to make another protest but the captain cut him off.

“Just you be quiet, Viggo,” he said. “Mr. Dodd ought to know something about Boyle since it’s his island he’s going to, and I’m the man to tell him, not you.”

“His island!” he added, bitterly. “He’s got the legal rights to it, that’s true enough, but if he had his dues he’d be in jail for life. Thirty years ago the natives weren’t protected in their property rights the way they are now. Boyle took advantage of that. He was bound to have that island and he got it the way he’s gotten everything else he owns, by dirty underhand tricks. He’s smart, no doubt about that. He’s nobody’s fool except his own, and that’s the only thing that gives me a grain of comfort when I think about him. Maybe, now when he’s just about ready to tumble into his grave, he’s beginning to wonder what good all his skulduggery has done him.”

“Boyle told me that he had a man and his daughter living on the island, taking care of his house,” I said. “Are they the Lehmanns you spoke of just now?”

“Yes,” said the captain. “Viggo, you can tell him about them.”

I’ll not attempt to repeat the story as I heard it that night on the schooner. The captain would break in now and then and the two of them would argue back and forth about the motives that had prompted Boyle to do what he did. By the time I’d been told all the circumstances I had two strangely contrasted pictures of Boyle to set side by side. This is the gist of the tale:—

In the autumn of 1940, shortly after the fall of France, Boyle had gone to the British consul—of the island we’d just left—with a request that nearly bowled the consul over because of its unexpected nature. He said that he wanted to do something for a family of Jewish refugees—any family; it didn’t matter about that so long as it was one right up against it: homeless, friendless, desperate, not knowing which way to turn. He wanted the consul’s help in bringing such a family out to the islands from Europe. Boyle guaranteed to stand all expenses and he promised to take full responsibility for their support, for the rest of their lives, if need be.

Knowing Boyle well, the consul was more than suspicious. He wondered what kind of shady scheme that he would stand to profit by Boyle was cooking up now. Certain, at first, that there could be nothing altruistic about it, he told Boyle that such a plan was out of the question, in wartime. Continental Europe was in the hands of the barbarians. Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal were the only countries not yet in their clutches. No, it was an impossible plan. Nothing could be done about it.

But Boyle persisted. He came back again and again with his plea. He offered to place one thousand pounds in advance in the consul’s hands, as an evidence of good faith. At last the consul became convinced that the man was sincere; that, for once in his life, he really wanted to perform a generous, unselfish act. He promised to see what might be done. The business was outside his consular functions but that didn’t matter. The consul was a humane man. If, through his agency, a refuge might be found for one of the tens of thousands of Jewish families homeless in Europe, he was not the man to stay his hand. Having been assured by the governor that there would be no official objections, he wrote a letter explaining the circumstances to the British consul at Lisbon, Portugal, requesting him, if the plan seemed feasible and transportation could be found for such a family, to wireless the fact, whereupon money to cover all expenses would be immediately wirelessed in return.

Nearly a year passed without any reply to this letter. Then came a radiogram: passage available via panama, jewish family. wireless one hundred and fifty pounds. father, daughter. name, lehmann.

They arrived by a small British freighter New Zealand bound, and Captain George had brought them on to Boyle’s island. He was in port with his schooner on the day they arrived from Lisbon. He said that Boyle’s manner toward the refugees was consideration itself. He showed great delicacy of feeling, effacing himself as much as possible. It was the consul who acted as intermediary. He told them of Boyle’s home on the atoll; of his love for the place and how he was now too old and infirm to look after it himself. He wanted a dependable family to live there. They were to have the full use of this home for as long as they chose to remain, with all expenses paid and a small but comfortable salary in addition. They were also informed that the island was a lonely place, having no contact with the outside world save by the schooner that called there twice yearly. It offered no distractions except what they could devise for themselves.

“Mr. Dodd,” said the captain, “I wish you could have seen them the day they landed from the freighter. They couldn’t believe what was happening. They were afraid to believe in case they might wake up and find it was nothing but a dream. After the horrors they’d been through ... well, it was just too much, having such kindness shown them. The consul told me how they sat on his veranda, the daughter holding her father’s hand, neither of them able to speak from the fullness of their hearts. He said he had to leave them for a bit and fuss around in his office, to give them both time to pull themselves together.

“He’d received a letter from the consul in Lisbon, telling about the Lehmanns. He let me read it. Mr. Lehmann had been a professor in some university in Vienna at the time the Nazis came there. His only brother had been caught, and all he ever heard of him after that was when a box was sent containing his ashes. Mrs. Lehmann was dead. Mr. Lehmann and his daughter, Ruth—she’s a beautiful girl, eighteen or nineteen years old—escaped to Czechoslovakia. Then the Huns took that country, and, somehow, they managed to reach Poland. They went on from there, before war broke out, to France, by sea. They hoped they were safe, in France. Mr. Lehmann, who is a fine violinist, got a job playing in some orchestra. Then the Huns came tearing into France and the Lehmanns escaped from Paris just in time. They had a terrible journey from then on. They had no papers and only two hundred francs in money. They managed to cross the Spanish border at night. That was in September, and they made their way over the mountains on foot. How they got into Portugal the letter didn’t say.”

“Tell him about the piano,” Viggo put in.

The captain was silent for some little time.

“That Boyle!” he exclaimed, wonderingly. “That old crook! Whoever would have thought he had a spark of decency in him? But what he’s done for the Lehmanns ... there’s just no explaining it. It’s one of those things that goes to show how hard it is to size up any man, even when you’ve known him as long as I’ve known Boyle. My belief is that the old villain has softened up, now that he knows he hasn’t long to live. He’s scared, that’s the plain truth. He hopes he can ride into heaven on his one good action.”

“Tell him about the piano,” Viggo repeated.

“I’m coming to that,” said the captain, testily. “Give me time.

“There were some Russians crossed this part of the Pacific a few years back. They were refugees, too. They’d had to leave Russia at the time of the Revolution and had been wandering from one place to another ever since. They came out here from Shanghai and were trying to get to South America. But they were just about busted, and the only thing they had left that could be turned into money was a fine piano. ... What’s it called, Viggo?”

“A Bechstein.”

“That’s it. They’d held onto it as long as they could and it just about broke their hearts to part with it. Boyle bought it on spec. Here’s another thing I haven’t told you about that fellow: he has a real love for music. He can’t play a note, himself, but he has the finest phonograph and the biggest collection of records, I’d say, in the whole Pacific. None of your jazz and cheap stuff: classical pieces, Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart, and all that. He’s never had any friends; no one ever goes to see him except on business, and that’s how he spends his evenings, playing his phonograph.

“On the evening of the day the Lehmanns came they went with the consul to Boyle’s house, and when Miss Lehmann saw the piano she was drawn to it, the consul said, like a starving person at the sight of food. He said he’d never forget that evening, and I guess Boyle hasn’t forgotten it either. Mr. Lehmann had a violin, the only thing he’d carried with him all the time they were running from the Huns. That was sent for and father and daughter played the evening through. They couldn’t have found a better way of thanking Boyle for what he had done for them. They could say in music what it was hopeless trying to say in words. The consul said that Boyle was like another person, and when they came on to the island by my schooner, he sent the piano with them. I guess it was the one thing needed to make their happiness just about perfect.”

“And they like the island? They’re really happy there?” I asked.

The captain pondered this question for a moment.

“I don’t know that I should have called it happiness,” he said. “I’m afraid they’ve suffered too much ever to know real happiness again. But they think the island is heaven on earth. What’s your opinion, Viggo?”

“I’ll tell you,” said Viggo. “Whenever I see them, and that’s nearly every day, I have a warm feeling in my heart for old man Boyle. Whatever he’s done before is wiped off the slate, so far as I’m concerned.”

“I’m not that much of a Christian,” said the captain, grimly. “But I’ll give him his due for what he’s done for the Lehmanns.”

During the course of the voyage I learned of one other white resident of the island. The captain was carrying out half a dozen young fruit trees in tubs, and he and Viggo watered and cared for them as though they were the most precious trees on earth. They told me they were for Father Vincent. Both men spoke of him with a warmth that showed their affection for the old priest who was spiritual adviser to the inhabitants of this and three other atolls within a radius of two hundred miles.

“You’ll like Father Vincent,” said Viggo. “I’m not a Catholic and the father has never tried to make me one; but the natives are—my wife too. We think the world and all of Father Vincent. He’s a Christian first and a Catholic afterward. That’s the way it should be, as I see it.”

“And he’s none of your Scribes and Pharisees kind,” said the captain. “Viggo, you remember the time I brought out the young mango and breadfruit trees? I got in with my schooner on a Saturday evening,” he added, turning to me. “There’d been a long spell of dry weather, but next morning the rain was pouring down and it kept pouring all day. Father Vincent wouldn’t miss a chance like that. He rang the bell for Mass, as usual, but he’d sent word around that no one was to wear Sunday clothes. Instead of going to church he went with the whole congregation to his garden to set out the young trees while the weather favored. He said there was more than one way of worshiping the Lord.”

“He’s got what they call the planting hand,” said Viggo. “His garden is a real wonder, Mr. Dodd. It’s not for his private use. Everybody shares in it, the children most of all. There ain’t another like it on any of the coral islands. You know, none of the tropical fruits such as bananas, mangoes, breadfruit, papaias, and the like, grow on the atolls. They’ve got to have rich volcanic soil from the High Islands, so Father Vincent has Tihoti bring him some every time the schooner calls here.”

“I’ve got fifteen tons aboard this trip,” the captain added. “I wouldn’t be able to guess how much I’ve brought in all, in the last thirty years. It will be thirty years next June that the father started making the garden. What he’s done in that time ... but you’ll have a chance to see it for yourself.”

The interests of these two old friends were refreshingly wide from mine and new to me. They talked of islands whose names I had never so much as heard of, scattered over a thousand-mile area in that part of the Pacific, so far removed from steamship routes that the lives of their inhabitants had changed very little from what they had been in heathen times. The captain was born an islander—though his father, a prosperous trader, had sent him to school in England—and Viggo had lived for so long in that lonely sea that no more than George could he conceive of any great change taking place there even in the midst of a planetary war. As for myself, under the influence of their companionship, and lapped round as we were by the peace of mid-ocean, I could almost doubt the reality of what was happening elsewhere in the world. But at times, as I watched the foam patterns moving slowly aft along the sides of the vessel, I would see there the face of that paper hanger, that madman Schickelgruber, or Hitler as he calls himself, who had boasted that Germany would either conquer the world or pull it down in ruin. And I thought with a bitterness common to all of us in these days of the so-called statesmen who, until it was too late, remained so blandly indifferent to all the repeated warnings and danger signals.

Then perhaps Viggo would, to my great relief, break into the current of these musings by speaking of his turtle islet and how eager he was to be at home before the last of the pits of eggs laid by the great sea turtle should hatch. “I hope we get there in time, Mr. Dodd,” he would say. “There’s a sight worth seeing: when the baby turtles come out.”