South Pacific Island Mystery

[toxo]

This has been bouncing around in my head for a long time and without access to intelligent people who might be interested you guys are it. Sorry.

 

A PATTERN OF ISLANDS

By Arthur Grimble

This book has intrigued and fascinated me for years. I’ll be brief here but if there’s any serious interest I’ll gladly get into the detail.

An upper middle class white collar worker gets sent to some Pacific Islands as a young man to assist the Governor of a group of islands.

Some years later he gets promoted to Governor.

The big chief of a group of islands, on hearing the news, feels his biceps and declares that he’s not fat enough to be a chief and needs to out on some weight.

A date is agreed about a month ahead when the chief will arrange for the Porpoise Caller to come and start the fattening up process.

On the arranged day the chief collects him in the big canoe and takes him to one of the islands where all of the islanders were gathered on the beach.

The Porpoise Caller had a makeshift shack at the end of the semi circular beach. He goes into the shack and according to the chief he’ll have an out-of-body experience and flies over the ocean to call the Porpoise’.

He comes out of the shack and at a signal from the chief all the islanders gathered at the waters edge and joined hands. The new Governor was in the middle holding hands with the chief. They all start to walk out until they’re chest deep in the water where they stop.

The Governor looks at the chief with a look that said “What now?”. The chief nods his head toward the water and, looking down he sees a Porpoise just under the water about 3 feet in front and there was another next to that one on both sides and another and another and another.

At a signal from the chief everyone turned around, re-joined hands and slowly walked back to the shore closely followed by the Porpoise’.

When the Porpoise’ got to the shallow water and started thrashing about the islanders set about them with clubs and stuff.

This is how the islanders put their weight on.

OK, This is a serious story/book written by someone who’s as straight as a die. The rest of the book is “normal”. You tell me what’s going on?

Some years ago I recounted this story to a friend who was well travelled in that area and he didn’t bat an eyelid and said he’d seen weirder things than that.

The reason this has surfaced in my head at this time is watching something on TV recently that has given me a possible answer. Over to you guys.

Paul.