Tales of the South Pacific Part 3

Our thoughts were broken by a crashing explosion outside. We rushed to the door of our tent and saw in the moonlight a cloud of dust rising by the trees.

"Fat's in the fire!" an Australian cried.

We hurried across the field to where the explosion had taken place. We found one of the smaller bulldozers blown to bits. Dynamite. "Those dirty b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" an Army engineer said. Then, in true military fashion, he got busy proving that it wasn't his fault. He shouted, "These things were supposed to be guarded. Sergeant! Didn't I tell you to have these guarded?" He ran toward some lights shouting, "Sergeant! Sergeant!"

I left the Australians and headed for the stone stables. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of a woman running ahead of me. I hurried as fast as I could and overtook fat Lucy. I grabbed her by the shoulders and started to shake her, but she burst into a heavy flow of tears and blubbered so that I could make nothing of her answers. I turned, therefore, toward old Teta's house and did so in time to see her door open and close. "Come along, Lucy!" I said. She scuffed her bare feet in the dust behind me.

In Teta's house Fry and the old woman were drinking rum. Teta was not puffing, but she seemed out of breath. Fry had obviously not moved for some time. "My father, Fletcher Christian," Teta said, "always told us that it did not matter whether you lived on Norfolk Island or Pitcairn Island so long as you lived in the love of G.o.d. My mother did not believe this. She said that this island was very good for people who had never lived on Pitcairn. But she could not see how a little more food and steamers from Australia could make up for the life we had on Pitcairn. She said that she would rather live there, on the cliff by the ocean, than anywhere else in the world. But when my father died at sea, she had a chance to go back to her home on Pitcairn. A boat was going there. I begged her to go on the boat, and take us all. But she said, 'No. Fletcher is buried out there at sea. My place is here.' It was shortly after this that my brother, Fletcher Christian, was killed up north. Like my father he was a very saintly man. But the religion in the family was all in the men. Not the women. Although I did know Bishop Paton. He was a fine man."

The old woman droned on and on until it was obvious to me that she was drunk again from too much of Tony's rum. Toward morning she left us and went into her bedroom. I sat drumming my fingers on the table and Tony said, "Come on! We'll drive Lucy home."

"I don't want to go home!" she cried.

"Get in the jeep!" Tony commanded, adding in a low voice, "You've done enough for one night."

The crazy girl climbed in behind us. At the hill Tony drove very slowly and pushed on the horn. The reaction was delayed, but when it came it was more explosive than before. Kids from everywhere piled out of the old house and came screaming in the night. "It's Lucy!" they shouted. "Lucy comin' home in the American jeep!"

"So she blew up the bulldozer?" I asked.

"That's right," Tony said sleepily. "She and Teta."

"Fry," I said coldly. "Those two women could never in a million years figure out how to explode dynamite." A guard stopped us.

"Good evening, commander," he said. "Saboteurs about. Blew up a half-track."

"They couldn't figure it in a million years, Tony."

"It was an old bulldozer anyway," Fry said as we drove back to Teta's. "Something somebody in the States didn't want. Commander, I can just see him, rubbing his hands and saying, 'Look! I can sell it to the guv'mint. Make money on the deal, too. And it's patriotic! You can't beat a deal like that!' Well, his tractor did a lot of good."

"We need that bulldozer for the airstrip."

"I don't think you do," Tony replied. "As a matter of fact, I'm d.a.m.ned sure you don't. Because that's the one that broke down this afternoon and the Army man said it couldn't be fixed." He brought the jeep to a stop by Teta's fence.

"Fry," I said. "You could be court-martialed for this."

Tony turned to face me. "Who would believe you?" he asked.

"By G.o.d, man," I said grimly. "If I had the facts I'd press this case."

"With whom?" he asked. "With Ghormley? With Admiral Kester? You tell your story. Then I'll tell mine. Can you imagine the look on Kester's face? There was an old, useless bulldozer. A couple of women blew it up as a last gesture of defiance. A woman ninety and a crazy girl. That story wouldn't stand up. Especially if I said how you came here to do a job and just couldn't make up your mind to knock down a few trees. It's too fantastic, commander. Kester would never believe that."

"I could understand your helping them, in peacetime," I said. "But this is war."

"That's when people need help, commander!" Fry said quietly. "Not when everything is going smoothly."

"It's all so d.a.m.ned futile," I said, looking away toward the stone stables. "Blowing up one bulldozer."

"Commander," Fry said with quiet pa.s.sion. "Right now I can see it. Some sawed-off runt of a Jew in Dachau prison. Plotting his escape. Plotting to kill the guards. Working against the n.a.z.is. One little Hebrew. You probably wouldn't invite him to your house for dinner. He smells. So futile. One little Jew. But by G.o.d, I'm for him. I'm on his side, commander." Fry punched me lightly on the shoulder. I hate being mauled.

"These people on Norfolk can't be dismissed lightly," he continued. "They're like the little Jew. Some smart scientists can come down here and prove they're all nuts. But do you believe it? We took down a map the other day, Teta and I. We figured where her grandsons are fighting. She can't remember whether they're grandsons or great-grandsons. All the same names. They're in Africa, Malaya, India, New Guinea, England. One was at Narvik. Crete. They may be stupid, but they know what they want. They knew what they wanted when they mocked that n.a.z.i Bligh off his ship. They knew what they wanted when they turned their backs on the prison lands. Refused convict homes all ready waiting for them. The saints knew what they wanted when they went north as missionaries. I'm on their side. If blowing up a broken bulldozer helps keep the spirit alive, that's OK with me."

Tony submitted a vague report on the bulldozer. I endorsed it and sent it on to my own files in Noumea. I don't know where it is now. When Fry handed it to me he said, "Doesn't it seem horrible? The trees all down. We don't destroy one single memento of the prison days. Not one building do we touch. The airstrip runs twenty yards from the stone stables, but they're as safe as the Gallows Gate. We won't touch a rock of b.l.o.o.d.y Bridge, where they buried the murdered guards, nor that obscene officers' bath. But the cathedral of the spirit, that we knock to h.e.l.l."

"Fry," I said. "The Melanesian Mission's safe."

That lousy thing!" Fry shouted. "A rustic English mission built on a savage island. A rotten, sentimental chapel with Burne-Jones' emaciated angels on an island like this. If you wanted to build an airstrip, why couldn't you have built it over there? Let the real chapel stand?"

My father, Fletcher Christian," Teta said on my last night, when graders were working by flares to speed the airstrip. "He told us that G.o.d meant to build Norfolk this way. A man has to love the island to get here, because there are no harbors and no landings. My father said, 'A man has to fight his way ash.o.r.e on this island!' That's what he was doing when the boat crashed on the rocks. Am I boring you with this, commander?"

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN.

IT WAS too bad that Ensign Bill Harbison joined the Navy. He was tall and slim. He wore his uniform superbly, had a small black mustache, a slow deep voice, and a fine manner. He had a sharp mind. In almost any group he was outstanding.

But in the Navy he was merely another ensign. And no matter how good he was, he would stay an ensign for about a year. Then he, and every other ensign, would be promoted. The ill-kempt, stupid, lazy officers would be promoted, just like him. It was too bad. In the Army Bill would surely have been a lieutenant-colonel. In the Air Corps he might even have become a full colonel.

Of course, Bill would never remotely consider shifting to the Army; that would be little better than being an enlisted man. He might b.i.t.c.h about the fact that he could progress no faster than farm boys from Iowa and plodding clerks from East St. Louis. But he loved the Navy.

Inwardly, Bill admitted that he was good. He had ample reason to think so. In college he had been a master athlete. Had played basketball in the Mountain States, where the game is rough and fast. His height and grace made him a star. In the six times he appeared in Madison Square Garden he outshone the compet.i.tion. He was a crack tennis player, a bit of a golfer, a wizard at table tennis, and a good first baseman. In his studies he was also quite a man. Not an honor student, but he got far more A's than C's. He was a member of the best fraternity, a welcomed guest at the sororities, and a popular man among the younger set in Denver, Salt Lake, and Albuquerque. He was, in short, the kind of man the Navy sought. He was an officer and a gentleman.

In Albuquerque Harbison married the daughter of a wealthy family. She was a Va.s.sar graduate and found Bill a fine combination of dashing Western manhood and modest cultural attainment. He at least knew what the Atlantic Monthly was. That was more than could be said for the rest of her suitors. And he could write the sweetest letters.

Bill was working for her father when the war started. Two evenings a week he ran a boys' club, where the roughest kids in Albuquerque met and worshipped the lithe athlete who taught them how to play basketball and keep out of trouble. When he volunteered for a commission, these tough kids collected more than $35 and bought Bill a watch.

Lenore was pleased when Bill got his commission. She thought he deserved to be more than an ensign. But she liked being able to say to her friends, "My husband, who is in the Navy..." or "Bill finds Navy life..." She had to admit that even though her brother did get a higher rank in the Army, it was rather nice to be a Navy wife.

Lenore followed Bill to Dartmouth, where he took his indoctrination in freezing weather, and then on to Princeton, where she knew dozens of other young Va.s.sar graduates. Her father gave her money for rooms at the Princeton Inn. There she kept open house for hundreds of young married women whose husbands were taking the Princeton course in small boats and Diesel engines.

Lenore Harbison graced Princeton in the way that Bill had graced Denver and Albuquerque. She was doubly sorry to find Bill's stay at Princeton drawing to an end. It meant that her man was on his way to sea. It meant their wonderful days were over. Sadly she packed her things and waited in her sunny rooms for Bill to come back after the end-of-term review.

Bill hurried across the campus to take her to the train. He was solemn, but he was handsome in his blue uniform and white-covered cap. The gold on his sleeve, the brilliant b.u.t.tons, and the carefully tied black tie graced his thin, sharp body. Lenore doubted if ever again he would appear so handsome.

Bill was quiet when he kissed her. He liked her flattering comments on his appearance. He had his orders! They took him to the South Pacific! Together they traced out the long Navy sentences. "To whatever port ComSoPac may be located in."

"The sentence dangles!" Lenore said, half crying.

I wonder what it means?" Bill said half aloud. "I wonder what kind of small boats they have out there?"

And so, like millions of others, Bill and Lenore trekked across continent to San Francisco, waited there in the steam and flurry of the grand old city, and went their separate ways. Lenore returned to an empty Albuquerque. Bill reported in at Noumea.

All the way across the Pacific he hoped that ComSoPac "had something good for him." He thought of what he might do in a staff job.

Travel about and check up on units that were slacking off. Might be flag secretary to an admiral. Might get on some pretty important committee. Might help to draft orders and sit on flag courts-martial. There was practically nothing available to an ensign that Bill overlooked, and to play safe, he also considered jobs usually a.s.signed to full lieutenants and even commanders.

He was not, therefore, prepared when he was a.s.signed as recreation officer to a small unit in Efate! In fact, he was astonished and asked frankly if some mistake had not been made. "No, there's no mistake." He heard the words in complete disbelief. It was not until he went aboard an ugly Dutch freighter heading north from Noumea that he accepted his temporary fate.

The freighter was slow and dirty. It had a roll that kept him seasick. Harbison hated every minute of his trip to Efate. He was even more disgusted when he found that he was stationed, not at Vila, the capital town of the New Hebrides, but miles away. He was stuck off in a remote corner of a remote island with a useless job to do. Ensign Bill Harbison, USNR, had found his Navy niche. And he did not like it.

He could do his work with one hand tied behind his back. He had some enlisted men to keep happy. He had two a.s.sistants to help him. In addition he did some censoring and once a month he had to audit the accounts of the Wine Mess. After he got his job organized, he found that he had to work about half an hour a day and censor letters for about twenty minutes. The rest of the time was his own.

Landbased Aircraft Repair Unit Eight, his unit was called. In Navy style it was LARU-8. Enlisted men knew it as URIN-8. It had no clear-cut duties, no job. It was waiting. One of Bill's friends ran a crash boat, in case an airplane should go down at sea. Another sat for hours each day in a tower, in case an airplane should need to establish radio communication. Another officer with eighty men waited in case certain types of planes should land and need overhaul. A friend waited with another eighty men to service another kind of plane, in case it should land. A doctor was present in case sickness should break out. A skipper and his exec kept things on an even keel and filled out reports that everything was in readiness, in case...

At the end of three weeks Harbison applied for transfer. "To what?" his skipper, a fat, bald, easy-going duck hunter from Louisiana asked.

"Some activity that needs a man like me," Harbison said frankly.

"What can you do?" the skipper asked.

"Small boats. Landing craft. Anything."

The skipper looked at the handsome young man before him. "Better relax, son!" he said. "You're doing a fine job here. Boys all like you. Better relax!"

"But I came out here to fight a war, sir!" Bill insisted. He wasn't afraid to press a point with the Old Man. The skipper was mighty easygoing.

"You'll never get anywhere in the Navy that way, son," the Old Man said quietly. "Most young men find you get along much better taking things as they come. If they want you to pilot a battleship into Truk, they'll come and get you!" The Old Man chuckled to himself. "They'll know right where you are! As a matter of fact, Bill, you'll be right here on Efate! Taking care of LARU-8."

Such manner of doing business appalled Harbison. Again in five weeks he applied for transfer, and again he was advised to take it easy. "You can write out the letter if you wish," the Old Man suggested, "But I'll tell you frankly what I'll do. I'll write at the bottom, 'First Endors.e.m.e.nt: Forwarded but not approved.' Don't you see that we can't have every young feller deciding what he can do and can't do? You're needed where you are. You're a good influence in LARU-8. Everything's going along smoothly. Now don't upset the apple cart By the way, you ought to come hunting with me one of these days. We're going up to Vanicoro!"

But Bill had no taste for hunting. And especially he had no taste for the Old Man. As a matter of fact in all the complement of his unit, officers and enlisted men alike, he found no one with whom he could be truly congenial. Day after day he read the stupid letters of his men and listened to the stupid conversations of his fellow officers. He got so that he dreaded the pile of letters that appeared on his desk each morning: Dear Bessie, Just like you said your getting fat but I dont mind because if your fat there will be more of you to love. Goodness nos somebody must be getting the food G.o.d nos we aint.

He could shuffle through a dozen of them and not find one intelligent letter. Of course, when he did find one, he ignored it and refused to think, "Here is a human being like me. He thinks and feels and hates to be here. He reacts the way I do. Strange, he must be a lot like me."

Bill never saw human dignity in the letters he read. They all fell into the slightly ridiculous, largely naive cla.s.sification: Dear Mom, You tell Joe that if he wants to go through with it and join the Navy he had better get used to handling his temper cause the first time he lets go at a chief or an officer he's going to learn what for and it aint going to be like flying off the handle at me because in this mans Navy they play for keeps. You tell Joe that and it will save him a lot of trouble.

The officers were no better. The crash boat skipper was a moron. Thank heavens no pilot lost at sea had to depend on him! The operations officer came from some hick town in Kentucky, and the engineering officer was an apple-knocker from upstate New York. Only Dr. Benoway was of any interest, and he was largely ineffectual. Harbison thought of Benoway as a mild-mannered, unsuccessful small town doctor who had joined the Navy as the easy way out of financial difficulties. "Probably makes more now than he ever did before!" Bill reasoned.

If it were not for sports Bill might have lost his sanity. But on the diamond or basketball court he was superb. Enlisted men loved to watch him play or to play with him. They put two men on him in basketball, and still he scored almost at will. They played on an open concrete court which Bill helped them to build. Even on its rough surface Bill could dribble and pivot so easily that he got away for one basket after another. In a way, it pleased the men to see him score against their own team mates. "Boy," they would write home. "Have we got a smoothie on our staff? He was All-American and set Long Island U on its ear last year in the Garden!"

Unlike most naval officers in the South Pacific, Bill kept in fine condition. There was no fat on his stomach muscles. He kicked a football half an hour a day, played an hour of basketball, went swimming for two hours in the morning, and usually found time for some badminton in the afternoon. But it was volleyball that captured his enthusiasm!

At first Harbison ridiculed the game. Wouldn't play it. But that was before he was inveigled into a match against the old hands. He played on a green team. Against him were the Old Man and Benoway plus four other officers. Bill smashed the round ball furiously, but he found to his surprise that the fat Old Man usually popped it into the air right where Dr. Benoway could tap it out of reach. This went on all afternoon, and Bill said to himself, "Say, there's something to this game!"

From then on he studied it in earnest. He found a place on the Old Man's team. He played on one side of the skipper and Benoway played on the other. Patiently and with great skill the Old Man would push the ball high and near the net. Bill would smash it for a point. He thought he was getting pretty good until one day the Old Man couldn't play. A stranger took his place, and that afternoon Bill missed most of his shots. He thought at first he was off his game. Then he realized with astonishment that the Old Man was unbelievably good as a "setter-upper." >From then on he, Benoway, and the Old Man formed an invincible team. "Have we got a fine volleyball team?" the men wrote home. "Usually we play the officers, and mostly they win. But when we get a game with some other team, we have a mixed team. We haven't lost yet!"

Shortly after Bill learned to play volleyball, he made junior grade lieutenant, automatically. He was chagrined at the promotion, especially when he read in a letter from home that Lenore's brother Eddie, who had joined the Army, was already a captain! The news made Bill restless. He wanted to be doing something. There was great activity in the air. Things were happening in the world, and he was sitting on Efate, sunning himself, becoming a volleyball champion.

Tormented by the inchoate drives of a healthy young man who has left a beautiful wife at home, Bill went impatiently to the Old Man. "Won't you reconsider now?" he asked. "I'd like to get farther north."

"But Bill, we need you here," the skipper replied. "If you went, we'd only have to find somebody else. Our unit specifies a recreation officer. We'd have to have a replacement, and where would we find one as good? Don't you see, Bill? You want to break up a smooth team. And what better job would you get? We leave you to yourself. You're your own boss. And you have everybody's respect. I can't let you go. It would only mess us up!"

From then on Bill Harbison started to relax in earnest. He missed breakfast because he wanted to stay slim. Appearing at his recreation shack about nine o'clock he would eat a papaya with a bit of lime juice. His admiring a.s.sistants supplied them from the near-by jungle. By ten he was through with censoring and ordinary routine. He would then have a catch with any men who might be around. At ten-thirty he would head for the beach four miles away, and there he would lie in the sun, perhaps swim a while, perhaps dive with the deep-sea mask his men had made him. At eleven-thirty he would return to his hut, shower, rub his feet with talc.u.m, and lie on his sack until twelve-thirty. After lunch he would sleep until two, when he might play some badminton or read. At four sharp he would appear at the volley-, ball court and warm up for the afternoon game. In the evenings he would attend the movies and after that have a beer in the Officers' Club. He usually went to bed at ten o'clock.

Each week he read Time, Life, the Denver Post, and at least two good books. He listened to news broadcasts four times a day from Australia on a radio set his men had built for him, and once or twice a week he tried to get Tokyo Rose, whom he found most amusing. He wrote a long letter to his wife every other day, and received one from her every day.

Bill's main contributions to LARU-8 were his splendid personal appearance, which everyone envied and some tried to copy, his neatness and bearing as an officer, and the fact that he found a French plantation owner who would butcher steers at regular intervals. Thanks to Bill, his fellow officers ate some of the finest food in the South Pacific. They had fresh papaya, those excellent pepsin melons, fresh limes and lemons, fresh oranges, fresh pineapple, fresh corn on the cob, and steak at least once a week. As a matter of principle Bill insisted that the Officers' Mess must never have steak more than twice before the enlisted men had it once. They got the tougher cuts, it was true, but a steer gave only so many filets.

In nine more months Bill would be a full lieutenant. In ten more months he would be eligible to return to the States. Everything would have turned out all right for Bill if a slight accident hadn't intervened. Nurses came to Efate!

They came late one afternoon, on the other side of the island. They were Navy nurses and were attached to a hospital that was temporarily established on Efate. They arrived with inadequate provisions and among the would-be gallants on the island a great rush developed as to who would help them first and most. An Army unit provided cots and blankets. One of the airfields found a refrigerator. Eight electric fans, valuable as rubies, were given the nurses outright as a gift. But Bill Harbison topped them all. He got a small truck, butchered a steer, got twelve bushels of fresh vegetables and set out for the hospital.

He drove up to the locked gate of the nurses' quarters and started to shout. "Here's the butcher boy! Come and get it!" From their windows the nurses looked down at the strange sight below. "Isn't he cute?" several of them whispered to one another.

"Here it is, girls!" Bill shouted, and soon his truck was surrounded by the nurses. They were hungry. Their stores had not yet been unpacked. They had been living on meager rations.

"Where's the kitchen?" he cried. Suddenly, after all the indifferent months on Efate, he felt good. He was smiling and almost excited. The girls led him off to a big, empty wooden structure that would one day be the mess hall.

"Light up the stoves!" he cried merrily. "We'll have a steak fry right here. See if you have any salt." The nurses made a quick survey and provided salt, a few onions, some bread, some potatoes and a surly mess attendant.

"You can't fool around in here," he whined.

"The lieutenant brought us some food!" one of the older nurses said.

"He ain't got no right in here," the attendant replied.

"Look, Oscar!" Harbison said. Some girls giggled. "How do you suppose I could start that fire? 'Cause listen, Oscar. If I get it started, you get a steak!"

The attendant snarled something. He was a thin, small man and disliked everybody. "Mess hall won't be opened for two more days," he said. "And you better quit fooling around here, too." He stood defiantly by the stoves as he spoke.

"All right, Oscar!" Harbison cried. "You keep the stoves! We'll keep the steaks. Grab some of this stuff, girls!" With that he started throwing pots and pans to nurses who caught them. "We'll have a barbecue outside!" he announced.

"You'll get into trouble for this," the attendant said dolefully.

"It's our funeral!" Harbison replied. All his lethargy was gone. Here was something to do, and it was fun! He led the nurses out of the forbidden mess hall and into the edge of the jungle beneath some large trees. Acting as general manager, he directed them to build a fire and cut long sticks. Then, with some rocks, he built several grills, and before long steaks and onions and dehydrated potatoes were cooking. Bill showed the girls where to find papayas and how to select the ripe ones. Soon the smell of sizzling steaks, expertly cut by Harbison, filled the air. A fat doctor, catching a whiff of the delectable odor, waddled out to see what was going on. Pretty soon another followed, and before long a collection of doctors and nurses stood around the four fires.

Harbison acted as toastmaster, chef, and fireman. He was a delight-pi man for such an affair, and he bore himself with distinction. The steaks were good. One doctor had three. Bill ate sparingly of one choice let. A young nurse prepared it for him, and he thanked her graciously. There were, among the nurses, several attractive girls. They looked lovelier, perhaps, than they were, for Bill had seen no white women for some time. They were witty and neat, two wonderful attributes for any girl; and they were exotic, standing as they did at the very edge of the jungle. Bill watched them as they ate. Some wore slacks becomingly; others wore seersucker dresses, and one or two wore mixed clothes. Three were in white uniform, for they had official duties. Bill particularly liked the manner in which many of the girls wore bandanas to control their hair. They looked doubly colorful against the dull green of the jungle.

It is probable that several of the young nurses would have enjoyed knowing Bill Harbison. But Bill was already married and had no wish to set up illicit amours of any kind on the side. He smiled at the girls, showed courtesies to the women, and was the very spirit of a naval officer to all. When the party was over, he helped pack the remaining steaks in the ice box. As he drove off, the nurses cl.u.s.tered about his truck and thanked him again. Bill smiled at everyone, waved his hand out the side and started back over the hill to his camp. "He was nice," one of the nurses said to another. "Not like those Army men. They bring you a fan or something and think it's an introduction to spend the night."

When the hospital was established Bill became a frequent visitor. He would bring the nurses things, take them swimming in large groups, show them how to build equipment they needed, and introduce them to his circle of acquaintances. He became a familiar sight on the hospital grounds, but never in the manner of other officers who came, gaped at the pretty nurses, and started a flirtation immediately. Harbison, it might be said, flirted with the entire hospital staff. He never told any of the girls that he was married, but he conducted himself as if he were. That made him doubly intriguing.

In time Bill naturally gravitated toward two or three nurses in particular, and after the first month of ma.s.s gallantry he had selected for himself one nurse to whom he paid special attention. It was she who first ate at Bill's mess; it was she who accompanied him on the boat trip to Vanicoro.

She was, it might have seemed, the least likely of all candidates for the honor. Her name was Dinah Culbert, a woman about 42 years old, from some nondescript place in Indiana. She was taller than the average nurse, quiet, not good looking. She had minor intellectual pretensions, and she worshipped Bill. Thus, in one deft maneuver, Bill accomplished what would have eluded many a lesser man. He had a feminine cheering section without danger of emotional complications.

No one can say what the precise arrangement was between Bill Harbison and Dinah Culbert. Two good looking young nurses who would have enjoyed going places with Bill were sure it meant he was a pansy. Three shrewd gals on Wing Three got half the diagnosis correct: He's got a mother-complex and will probably never get married. One little fluff who was soon sent back to the States said, "I don't care what's wrong with him. I think he's cute!"

There was much for an officer and a nurse to do on Efate. There were boat trips to near-by islands, trips inland toward the volcanoes of Vanicoro, pig roasts, fishing for tuna and barracuda, visits to native villages, work in carpentry shops, and swimming. Sometimes in the evening there were informal dances, and every night there was some officers' club to visit for light conversation and c.o.kes, or beer, or whiskey. But most of all, over your entire life there hung the great Pacific tropics. At night you would be aimlessly driving home and suddenly, around a bend you would come upon a vista of the ocean, framed in palm trees, under a moon so large and brilliant that the night seemed day! Or again, driving along the sh.o.r.e your jeep would reach a point where ocean spray spumed across the road and engulfed you in a million rainbows. Or hiking into the jungles for ivory nuts you might meet a naked native with his naked wives and children, walking somewhere, going to do some unimportant thing. The tropics never left you, and in time you accustomed yourself to them. They were a vast relaxation, nature growing free and wild. An officer and a nurse in such surroundings usually fell in love.

There was one nurse, for example, who was escorted everywhere by a weak-chinned naval ensign. She did not like him, but he was a kindly young man. One night driving home from a dance he unexpectedly turned a bend in the road and there before them, across the ocean, the volcanoes on Vanicoro were in eruption! Great lights played from the jagged cones, and pillars of ashen cloud spiraled into the darkness. The nurse had never seen anything so magnificent, and on he impulse of the moment put her head on the ensign's shoulder. He kissed her. "It was strange," she said afterward. "No chin. That's a funny kiss." She never went with the young ensign again.

It is not certain whether Bill and Dinah ever saw the volcanoes in eruption. It is not even certain that they ever kissed. There was some speculation on this point, but no one knew anything definitely. Had not Lenore Harbison's brother Eddie been promoted to a major in the Army, Bill and Dinah might have gone on for many more months in their fine aimless manner.

But when Bill heard that Eddie, who was his own age, had been jumped to a major, he could not restrain himself. "Why is it," he asked himself over and over again, "that a guy can go up so fast in one service and not in another? Eddie's a good boy, but he hasn't half my stuff. This is a d.a.m.ned raw deal!" He brooded over the situation for several days and called Dinah to tell her he wouldn't be able to take her to the beach. He stayed in his sack for the better part of two days, reading War and Peace. He didn't even get up for his meals. Just ambled down to the shack and ate some papayas and canned soup his men provided. He played no volleyball and did not go swimming. He was disgusted with everything. He wrote to his wife every day for six days and tried to get the poison out of his system. But when he was done two facts remained: He was getting nowhere, and he had given up a good life in Albuquerque to do so.

The thought of Dinah Culbert infuriated him. He had been playing a game, that was all. He closed War and Peace, which he could not follow anyway, and thought of good old Aunt Dinah. He was ashamed of himself, a young man of twenty-three escorting a woman of forty. From that moment in his own mind he never referred to Dinah as anything but Grandmom. He even used the word aloud once or twice, and soon it was common gossip at the hospital that Bill Harbison, the fine naval lieutenant, had joked about Aunt Dinah as his Grandmom.

Otherwise Bill let Dinah down easily. He took her to lunch at the restaurant in Vila once more, took her to dinner at his own mess, had drinks with her at the hospital club, and that was all. Dinah was not dismayed. When rumor first reached her that he had called her his grandmother, there was a sharp pang of unbelief. Then she laughed, right heartily. She was a nurse and no dumb cluck. She thought she knew pretty well what Bill's trouble was. "I pity the next girl he goes with," she said to herself.

The next girl was Nellie Forbush. She was a slender, pretty nurse of twenty-two. She came from a small town in Arkansas and loved being in the Navy. Never in a hundred years would Bill Harbison have noticed her in the States. She wouldn't have moved in his crowd at all. In Denver she would have lived somewhere in the indiscriminate northern part of the city, by the viaduct. In Albuquerque she would have lived near the Mexican quarter. But on the island of Efate where white women were the exception and pretty white women rarities, Nellie Forbush was a queen. She suffered no social distinctions.