Air-Raid Shelter In

Rotuma

By “Amelt

FIRST there was the news that Japan had opened up her war with America by launching a savage attack on Pearl Harbour. That was bad enough. But what followed was nearly as serious.

One by one, the enemy was taking strategic points •in the Pacific; and, when Tom came home and said, “They’re in the Gilberts,” I rejoined, flip pantly, “Well, it looks as if we’ll need that air-raid shelter now.”

“To-morrow,” he said, gravely. “We’re starting work on it to-morrow.”

What horrible thing was this, creeping evilly and relentlessly across the blue Pacific and giving rise to the necessity of having an air-raid shelter in this beautiful, peaceful, untouched little isle? But there it was. The cataclysm that was shaking the world must be felt, even here.

Tom produced the blue-prints of the shelter, which were duly examined by the handy man and the senior workman.

The latter, however, unused to such flights of architectural construction as a tunnel 7 by 3 x 12. got his angles a trifle mixed, and had to be painlessly removed to a less complicated job.

The handy man carried on very effi ciently. With the assistance of two understrappers, he sank a shaft, and then started on the tunnel. After bring ing a few hundredweight of earth down on top of themselves, they got the hang of the thing, and timbered neatly as they went along.

Every time I poked my head out of the window, the handy man treated me to an authoritative lecture on what would happen to us if some bombers came over and we hadn’t a shelter.

I shuddered, and on the fifth day of operations I was shocked to see the handy man whizz round the corner shouting something that sounded like “Look out! Look out!”

“Heavens!” I gasped, my hair stand ing on end. “Is it an air-raid, and the shelter not finished yet?”

“Oh, no,” said the cook, quite unruffled.

“He’s calling to Taukave, but he’s got no front teeth.” I subsided limply into the nearest chair.

Scores of people came to view the novelty of an air-raid shelter. Little children, giggling flappers, staid matrons and grave-faced men climbed down the ladder, filed through the short tunnel, climbed out the other end and solemnly declared it was very good.

When the shelter was finished, the handy man, very proud of his work, displayed an almost touching faith in its efficacy.

“All your good things that you don’t want to be damaged,” he said, “you could put in that shelter, and no harm would come to them.”

“Wish I had his optimism,” said Tom.

Mr. David Collins, who returned re cently to the Fiji service from second ment to the Gilbert and Ellice Colony service, has been appointed a district officer in Southern and Central Districts, Fiji.

Mr. A. E. Barker, who served in Suva, Fiji, as a member of the Methodist mis sion staff for many years, and who recently retired to live in Australia, has been appointed by the Methodist Church authorities to the charge of Elmore Cir cuit, Victoria.