SOUTH PACIFIC: The Reef at Rakahanga

In the dark of a windy evening last week a waterlogged raft drifted with the waves of the South Pacific, as it had for four months past. The deck was awash in 3 ft. of water; to the roof of the deckhouse there clung five sick and starving men, Eric de Bisschop and his four-man crew. Ahead of them lay the foam-edged sickle of the reef of Rakahanga in the northern Cook Islands. They had already missed landfalls at the Tuamotus, at Starbuck and Penrhyn Islands. There was no option but to shoot the reef at Rakahanga in...