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Updated: July 28, 2025
We loaded the hundred tons of copra, and were ready for sea by nine o'clock one morning, when a number of large sailing canoes came off, crowded with natives from a distant part of the island, all anxious to buy firearms and ammunition in view of a great expedition against the adjacent island of Tarawa.
And then, when everything had been said, and explained, and threatened, the whaleboat hoisted her anchor a coral stone and set a straight course for Tarawa. It was a long day a very long day quite the longest day in Daisy's tiny life. She successively exhausted the magic lantern, the dolly, and the chair.
"Oh, my lamb!" cried Mrs. Kirke, clasping her to her breast. "It breaks mamma's heart to leave her little girl on Christmas Day!" Altogether it was a damp moment in the Kirke family, and even the missionary's eyes were suspiciously moist as he knelt beside his wife and talked hurriedly about the magic lantern, and the dolly, and what a jolly evening they'd all have when they got back from Tarawa.
"I will tell you some other time," she replied; "not now, because I do not want Tepi to hear me talking about the place. With Tematau it would not matter, for although he knows the story, he is not a Tarawa man, and has nothing of which he need be afraid."
"That is Tematau, my husband's head boatman," said my hostess in her soft tones, as she watched him walking down to the beach; "he is so different from these noisy, quarrelsome Tarawa people, that I am always glad to have him about the house when he is not wanted in the boats. He is so quick, and yet so quiet."
Their lives ended in places called Belleau Wood, The Argonne, Omaha Beach, Salerno and halfway around the world on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pork Chop Hill, the Chosin Reservoir, and in a hundred rice paddies and jungles of a place called Vietnam. Under one such marker lies a young man Martin Treptow who left his job in a small town barber shop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division.
We have driven the enemy back more than 3,000 miles across the Central Pacific. A year ago, our conquest of Tarawa was a little more than a month old. A year ago, we were preparing for our invasion of Kwajalein, the second of our great strides across the Central Pacific to the Philippines.
The Spray, dancing over the waves, entered Albany Pass as the sun drew low in the west over the hills of Australia. At 7:30 P.M. the Spray, now through the pass, came to anchor in a cove in the mainland, near a pearl-fisherman, called the Tarawa, which was at anchor, her captain from the deck of his vessel directing me to a berth. This done, he at once came on board to clasp hands.
After a pleasant chat and good-by to the people of the Tarawa, and to Mr. and Mrs. Jardine, I again weighed anchor and stood across for Thursday Island, now in plain view, mid-channel in Torres Strait, where I arrived shortly after noon. Here the Spray remained over until June 24.
That was her story, and now I will relate something of the woman herself and of the white man of whom she had spoken, the German trader Krause. When I first landed on Tarawa, this man, whose name was Krause, according to the usual custom among us traders, called to see me.
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