A Picnic On Savo

By K. S. Poole

WE started early from Point Cruz (Honiara, BSD in the little Rau mati, to go to Savo Island for a pic nic—twenty miles at about five knots.

None of the four of us had seen Savo.

It was all blue and sunny and sparkling at Point Cruz, with a windy sky. Raumati liked it, too—more and more when the long swell smacked her on the beam as we left the shelter of the bay. In fact, before long she felt as merry and frolic some as a young mare in Spring.

The swell had little white crests on it here and there. Presently, up the coast, against the blue-green shore line, came white specks flying northwards—frigate birds making up the coast, 40 and more of them—sure sign of a blow.

By the time we were an hour out, it was blowing nicely. Two hours out and the swell was more than somewhat, and the smell of dieseline from the exhaust had increased. We were still smoking cigarettes, but not so often and with less confidence.

Raumati pranced and olayfully rolled her decking almost under, again and again. The waves seemed to leap up now like dogs snapping at the launch’s side.

And we were over Iron Bottom Bay, where the ships lie so peacefully on the deep sea floor.

The launch’s movement strangely de tached mind from body, so that, while the body sat a little wearily on slatted hard wood, the mind coasted free and clear, making wartime pictures of flame and smoke and noise, and the blind excite ment of death against the sparkle of the bright empty sea.

“Half ower, half ower to Aberdour, It’s fifty fathoms deep, And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens” . . .

Canberra, Lexington, how many others, down below us under the swell, under the bottom of the little, white, dancing launch?

“And there they wait and whiten peaceably, Those conquerors, those poets, those so fair . .

In a way, their wives and sweethearts are below under the waves, too. They died with their men and grew a new self to look out of their eyes and go about the day’s work.

And, if the officers and men who saw death coming over this blue sea rose and marched over the water now? More than battalion strength, white, brown and yellow—more than a division maybe. No body will ever know. They seemed very near, those men, in their unsounded depths, their peace too deep for any waves to reach them.

THE boat’s crew landed us by dinghy near Sesiapa before noon, and we arranged to be picked up at 1.30.

It was decided to walk first, and have lunch on board later, to avoid the comedy of four hours’ rough trip there, four hours’ rough trip back, and U hours mostly taken up in unpacking and eating lunch.

That’s Savo —that was! I saw it for 10 minutes!

The rain came, good, honest-to-God tropical rain. The greenish tinge we had all worn afloat had warmed to pink again; but to spend the next Ij hours standing under a leaky tree seemed hardly a dream picnic of tropical glamour. Faces fell visibly. Was Savo to be only rain, flies, sand in the shoes and a faint smell of copra—no hot springs, no megapodes’ eggs hatching in the ground?

Through the rain came a cheerful per son in a very striped lap-lap. In five minutes, with unassuming politeness, he had organised the party into the shelter of a mission teacher’s leaf house, 50 yards away behind the trees. Lunch, and the party’s odds and ends of belongings, were carried to the verandah.

No, he was not a teacher himself, he said. A policeman on leave: “Vaisuni — Lance-Corporal.” He squared his shoulders with responsible pride.

The picnic party had lunch. Their host, the teacher (Gasipari), and his friends, accepted some tins and a sug gestion to eat too, and had a quiet party inside the house. Outside, the visitors lunched and watched the downpour, the usual leggy chickens, and the plantain leaves, and heard the waves beginning to roar ominously against the beach.

THE launch could not come in at 1.30, Vaisuni explained. The sea was too wavy, it would be dangerous. But, round on the other side, altogether knew it would be calm. The launch would be there, and we could walk along the beach to it, a long mile away.

The long mile over—in soft brown sand, accompanied by altogether, each politely carrying a shoe, or a haversack, or some other item of the picnic’s belongings— there was still no ship.

Suddenly, the rear party, keeping an eye on the former anchorage, saw three Solomon Islanders tumbling out of the sandhills at the double. The boat’s crew had cut across country to explain, and to show us the way.

Then began a rather charming half hour. The inland track, green-bordered and well kept, wandered smoothly through a neat little village. Nobody there had expected strangers; visitors are rare on Savo.

The men looked up, noncommittal but friendly, from their talking. The women, in clean bright calicoes, peered out shyly from doorways, whispering. There was a smell of damp earth and ferns and copra and woodsmoke. A dozen or so children came out and stared after the first half of the party, to run like rab bits when the second half took them in the rear.

Coconuts and greenness, and tidy little gardens; leaf and bamboo houses with highpitched roofs; peaceful little villages and quiet faces. There is a kind of magic in their peace and isolation and simplicity that our world lost centuries ago.

The track curved, ran straight, curved again to another neat, quiet village, then on again to the sea. And there was the launch, in smooth water, with the dinghy just nosing uo on to the sandbeach.

The way home was down the more sheltered side of Savo; then turning be tween the end of Savo, on the port side, and Cape Esperance, at the beginning of the long Guadalcanal coastline, to star board.

All down this long coast, at intervals, the rusty wrecks of Japanese ships are angled grotesquely on the beach, a re minder of days when life was no picnic.

The sight of them brought silence, till the wind freshened again, cold on shirts wet from rain and spray, calling for a drop of Nelson’s Blood and some tinned cheese.

The party was singing quietly, with an odd satisfactory mixed feeling of having enjoyed the day, and of knowing the worst was over, both at once, as the launch came into sheltered water again, fiery with phosphorescence, and neared the green beacon on the end of Point Cruz a little after sunset