stake, think of something that will uplift them and make them believe in the future.”
I took the microphone from Waltham and made my way out onto the catwalk, dragging the cord behind me.
“Remember, keep it short too!” he yelled out the open door.
I pressed the talk switch on the mike, and the words came. I said a few words of welcome and thanks in the little pidgin I knew, and then it all came gushing out. “Friends,” I began, “like Hank Williams said, I saw the light.”
Boy, did those words shortly become prophetic. I don’t remember much about what came next. I just did as Waltham had advised. I thought about how I got here and how it had affected me. Below, the lines of villagers holding their torches stood silent and still as the breeze blew their flames back and forth. I don’t really know how long I talked, but when I finished, the crowd roared with approval and began to sing the Keed song.
I put the mike back to my mouth and joined in the chorus. At that moment, the sky was ignited by a blinding flash of light. “Oh, shit,” I thought. “All of this is true.”
Another beam of light cut a bright silver hole in the sky, briefly illuminating the top of the crater and the summit of Poodi in the distance. Immediately I turned to see that the light was coming from the tower room. I knew at first sight that the source, which had been concealed earlier beneath the canvas cover, was a Fresnel lens.
Waltham walked out next to me and waved to the crowd. I followed his lead and waved too. “Excellent speech, Mr. Messenger. Look how happy they are.”
“That is a Fresnel lens!” I shouted.
“Yes, I told you that part was true. Wave to the crowd.” I was still waving, but my mind was elsewhere. I was very confused. I had found the soul of the light, but I hadn’t found anything I could take home.
“But it is your light. Not mine,” I said somewhat accusingly to Waltham. “I could never take that lens from you for Cayo Loco.”
“And I could never let you have our sacred beacon,” Waltham calmly replied.
“So what’s the fucking point?” I blurted out.
Waltham gave me a serious look, and then that devilish smile spread across his face. “There is a spare bulb,” he said.
Well, my message seemed to have worked. The party continued into the wee hours, but I had turned in my dance card. As strange as it may seem, I was actually back on the track of my self-appointed mission of scouring the Pacific for a Fresnel lens.
Waltham and I walked out of the crater, and as we topped the hill, I could hear the strains of Artie Shaw’s “Begin the Beguine” blaring from the speakers at the base. Small silhouettes and shadows of dancers jitterbugged up and down the grass strip.
As we made our way down the mountain trail, Waltham filled in the blanks of the story for me. Somewhere around the end of the winter of 1942, after several weeks of delivering mail, transporting military big shots to R & R locations, and doing goodwill trips for local island chiefs, Captain Keed had received new orders. He was to enlist the aid of his guerrilla fighters on Dalvalo, who were to join a Navy frogman team. All of them, under Keed’s direction, were flown up to the Santa Cruz Islands, where they were to capture and incapacitate a pair of lighthouses that marked the channel through the islands. They had specific orders not to destroy the lights themselves but to dismantle them and load them aboard a waiting transport, which would take them back to Espíritu Santo.
The mission started out badly, as weather had moved in, and Keed was forced to make a dangerous night landing in the ocean. But the landing and the mission were successful. Both lighthouses were secured with a minimum of casualties, and the first lens was loaded aboard a waiting PT boat that sped away to the safety of Espíritu Santo.
However, as the second light was being loaded onto a much slower transport, a Japanese patrol boat spotted them. Keed again took off at night and circled the ship as the gunners tried to cover the transport’s escape. The Japanese eventually gave up the chase, but the transport had been hit badly. Keed and his crew managed to rendezvous with the transport in the Torres Islands, where they