Free Outposts by Simon Winchester Page B

palms above, and wondered how on earth the bureaucrats 8,000 miles away in London could ever have used such phrases as ‘rotating contract personnel’ to describe the peoplewho had lived and loved and worshipped here. This was a community, without doubt. The church had been built in 1932—a slab of stone by the west door said so. There was a little schoolhouse, and the shop, and the warehouse and the manager’s mansion. There was said to be an inn, where the workers bought their rum and their coconut toddy; and a small hospital, where the doctor prescribed medicines with names like ‘ Eau de Saturne’, ‘Onguent de la Mer ’ and ‘ Pierre Infernale ’. This was an island of labourers and millmen, rat-catchers, toddy-makers and fowl-keepers, where wives worked on the copra dryers and the children went to school, and the whole island went to church on Sunday. And now, thanks to a sale and a deal and a handshake and the exchanges of Notes between politicians in Whitehall and Foggy Bottom, this community was smashed and wrecked for ever, and the island was forcibly stripped of its people, to lie empty and half-silent, echoing only to the memories, and with the shuffling and scraping of the hermit crabs, and the endless sounds of wind and ocean.
    And then the plane flew over.
    It came suddenly out of a silent sky—a low hum, then an ominous growl, and a fierce roar as it swept overhead, no more than 200 feet above. It had four propellers, a bulbous nose and a trailing tail—I had seen just the same type of plane a few weeks before, on Bermuda. It was a Lockheed Orion anti-submarine reconnaissance aircraft, belonging to the United States Navy. On board would be twelve men: three in the cockpit, six hunched over screens and dials and gauges in the mid-section, one preparing to drop ‘ordnance’—detection buoys, flares, transponders—one manning a camera deep in the aircraft belly, and one man waiting in reserve in the galley, cooking hamburgers for his companions.
    The cameraman spotted the yacht, and the plane began a low and lazy circle, dipping down to examine us on each pass, waggling its wings when we waved up at him. After half a dozen times it straightened up and flew around the other ten islands of the group, checking each one for intruders. But there were none: Dog Island, Ile de la Passe, every tiny circle of palm and sand was utterly empty, and the plane soon tired of looking. It flew back over Boddam,roared so low the tops of the Afzelia trees rocked in its slipstream, and then soared high over the ocean and headed due west, for the next atoll of the colony.
    The oceanic quiet resumed; but the sense of utter isolation did not. We had been spotted. Our plan had been rumbled. The Americans knew we were in the vicinity, that the area they demanded be ‘swept clean’ was now contaminated by—I could read their report in my mind’s eye—unauthorised civilian personnel. When, we wondered, would the little gunboat appear over the horizon, and order us off?
    We stayed four more days on Boddam, pinned down by storm waves crashing deafeningly against the reef wall, and by the sight of thick, molasses-black clouds welling up from the south. A small cutter sailed into the lagoon one afternoon; it, too, had come from the north, and had been battered in a terrible storm; his batteries were soaked and his engine would not seem to work. He was French, and imperturbable, and he and his girlfriend swam, brown and naked, in the clear waters, caught fish and baked them, with freshly made bread, on a palm-log fire they built on the beach. They said it didn’t matter how long it took for the battery to dry. ‘I ’ave no work in Paris,’ said the girl, who was called Emanuelle. ‘So I am in no ’urry. This is ver’ lovely, no?’
    We walked together, silent and content, along the old island paths. The plane came by twice a day, morning and evening, circling, taking more pictures, reporting the various arrivals and