Out of the East

The Plane That Came Out of the East

‘TpHAT brute of a hawk will be the end 1 of me yet,” said Mum, panting up the steps to the verandah.

We sat around the tea-table, waiting patiently for her return from one of her frequent and futile sorties in pursuit of the elusive bird—a pest well known in our Fiji isles.

"More likely of us,” retorted Pops, drily.

“For God’s sake, put that gun away!” He had been nervous ever since, rushing off the other day at the sight of her enemy, she had turned almost a somersault down the verandah steps—dogs, gun and all.

“Pops,” I broke in, hastily, to head off the inevitable hawk-story, which at the moment seemed somehow more than I could bear. (You are apt to get that way, after a stretch of unmitigated South-Sea- Island-Magic. It is locally known as “the Northerly wind”. I might add that there are only the three of us on this “Dead Man’s Chest”—not counting a handful of Fijian labour, and a copra plantation.) “Pops, did you see in the ‘PIM’ that the Clippers are to call at Suva, after all?

Those great American flying-boats—the mere thought thrills me.”

“Is that so?” he said, friendly, but not too enthusiastic—at which, with this black mood upon me, I took offence.

“Oh, can't you get up some steam?” I wailed. “You, of all people, after going around the Horn as a youth, in little sailing ships, time and again—and now you could fly Home—all this in one life time — ”

“You mean,” he laughed “a sort of a final flourish before I kick the bucket?

That’s not a bad idea. Let’s all go! How about it, Mum?”

“Count me out of that party,” and Mum shook her head emphatically. “I wouldn’t go in one of those contraptions for all the tea in China. It’s bad enough in the launch, when the engine peters out; or in a car, playing tricks miles from home.

But in the air—the mere thought makes my inside go queer.”

SUDDENLY, we pricked up our ears.

From somewhere there came a faint drone, like the starting of a motor.

We looked at each other in mute question.

The separator? Too early. Or the boy tuning up the Rattlesnake (our old bus)?

“It’s a boat!” I yelled, and rushed out —a boat, let me tell you, being the event in this isolation, with anything from four to six weeks between therh.

The word had hardly left my mouth before the drone increased to a roar, quite beyond the capacities of the dugouts which tootle around here.

And then, over the hill, in the centre of the island, there came the great Clipper plane—the first our island had seen!

She looked like a giant silver bird against the deep blue of the sky, seeming to tilt her blunt head ponderously to stare with great unblinking eyes down at our little world. Circling wide, she dipped

behind a headland, and reappeared to swoop, with the most terrific noise, quite low over our homestead. My stomach gave a lurch and my knees started wob bling, as she came straight at us. Just when it looked like a head-on collision with the bungalow, the plane rose without a flick of tail or wing, topped the last row of hurricane-battered palms on the sea-front, and roared away.

For a moment, pandemonium had raged.

Fowls, geese and turkeys rushed squawk ing in all directions, the ducklings sprint ing in the rear with wildly fluttering wings and legs; dogs, sows and piglets, our fat cook —I never saw them run so fast. Soon the place was empty. Only a little calf was left in the wash of this wave of terror.

We watched the plane disappear -into the western sky, and then made our way slowly back over the silent and deserted lawns to finish our tea.

EVERYONE seemed strangely de-pepped.

I felt excruciatingly left behind and out. Pops looked grim and Mum muttered something about the last so and-so Fiji canoe having brought a cold, as blinking hard, she fished a hanky from Pops’ shirt pocket.

I thought of the letters from England . . . their gay, off-hand accounts of dash ing around in ambulances during night raids taking on a different complexion, after sampling the sensation of having a bomber come right at one. That plane had suddenly made the ghastliness of war seem real.

“What with Japs and raiders, it's rather a relief to see that we aren’t left entirely to stew in our own stew,” mused Pops.

“They’ll be in Suva in a little more than an hour.”

A devastating thought struck me. “Oh there’s a dance in Suva, tonight, in the GPH! Oh, gosh, with a thing like that” — here I went into a mental tailspin—“in an hour to Suva! to Life! and everything.”

Mum jerked up in her chair, as if a hornet had stung her.

“Whatever is the matter now?” asked Pops.

“With a thing like that,” she said, dramatically, blue eyes afire, hands clenched tightly round the flyswatter, “My word! Couldn’t you get after that hawk!”

For a moment we stared at her, then broke into roars of laughter. Mum zoom ing around the sky, in baffled rage, after her old adversary—it was a riotous thought.

“Yes, darling,” I said, happily. “By all means. But, just as a finishing touch, do let me recommend a ‘Chicago organ’.”

E. Hennings.

Mr. A. S. Hart, of Toowoomba, Queens land, arrived in Lae, New Guinea, last month to open a new branch of the Commonwealth Bank. He was accom panied by Mr. J. Rowse, who has been a member of the bank staff at Rabaul for the past 18 months.

The “Fiji Times” says that, within a few hours of the outbreak of war, all Japanese in Fiji were rounded up and interned.

Two RAAF officers and six airmen were killed when a Catalina flying-boat crashed into a hillside, shortly after taking off from Port Moresby one evening in mid- December.

The British community in New Cale donia has subscribed no less than £350 to the Australian fund for the purchase of a new cruiser, to take the place of HMAS “Sydney”, lost recently through enemy action.

The Tahiti canning factory, of which Mr. Lewis Hershon is principal owner, has partly solved the problem of lost markets (caused by the war) by canning tomatoes, pineapple jam and by drying pineapples for the Islands market in Polynesia. Mr. Hershon has solved also the problem of a regular supply of onions. Having learned from the Philip pine Islands that onions will mature in the tropics from the seed of the Ber muda variety, he has imported a quan tity of this seed from the Bermuda Islands for planting on Tahiti.