WHEN ARIANE REALIZED Grandfather’s devotion for what it was, she was embarrassed to feel it resonating through her. She felt that she was taking something that wasn’t intended for her, even if she was only lapping up some of what had spilled over the edges, like a kitten, a stray invited into the kitchen to eat the scraps.

40

“MOST NIGHTS,” she said, “while John was upstairs standing at the window and talking to Eleanor—”  

“I WOULD TELL HIM all these ideas of mine, my suggestions, what I’d found in my research, usually in the kitchen, while I was cooking, or sometimes, while something was simmering, when we were sitting at the table on the back porch, with the door closed and whispering, and then I’d send him upstairs with a tray and something to say.”

ARIANE SPENT a lot of time in the kitchen, of course. She was intrigued by the idea of making the meals improve the illusion. She included a lot of fruit, and she used a lot of fish.

[continuing the entry on Rarotonga from Scented Isles, a guidebook to the South Sea Islands by the Christensen sisters]

[continuing the entry on Rarotonga from Scented Isles, a guidebook to the South Sea Islands by the Christensen sisters]

ARIANE THREW HERSELF into the task with great verve. She studied Rarotonga and the route that they would take to get there. She found from the start that Rarotonga itself interested and appealed to her more than sailing the sea to get there, ...

“I WANTED TO KNOW all about it,” she said. “Everything. More than John did. Enough to surprise him, anyway. So I went to the library. I was amazed to see how many books they had about Rarotonga.”

GRANDFATHER gave her his charts and the books he had about Rarotonga and points along the way, and Ariane took them home and studied them when she was alone in her room at night. This meant that she was more often alone in her room at night, and this made her family suspicious.

“THERE WAS A LOT OF WORK to be done,” she sa id, “and I threw myself right into it. If you think about it in terms of being on a boat—and I did think of it in those terms—I wasn’t really the first mate. I was the cook, and a deck hand, and the navigator—sort of—you’ll see—and also the boy—”     “—the young landlubber who runs away to sea and will do whatever dirty job gets thrown his way, just for the thrill of being on board and underway.”