A Memoir of an Accidental Meeting With Ruao

Crichton met Ruao as he called the old Palma II in Woman. A crowd of tourists, stopover passengers of a day, had somehow discovered the dim trail leading to his house. They were much pleased with it, he said, adding with restraint, they took a good many pictures. He meant to go to Makatea, a high phosphate island which stands like a gateway at the northwestern approach to the low archipelago. The phosphate would be worked out in time and the place abandoned, as other islands of that nature had been, to the seabirds. But Crichton overheard Ruao trying to persuade some of her relatives to return with her to now.