The High Barbaree

The hundred and sixtieth meridian of east longitude bisects the island of Guadalcanal. The same meridian, nearly a thousand miles to the north, narrowly misses Ponapé, in the Caroline Group. Truk lies west of Ponapé, Kusaie east-southeast. Six hundred miles to the southeast and below the line is Nauru. Seven hundred miles west of Nauru, but above the Equator, is a tiny island with a formidable name: Kapingamarangi.

Charles Bernard Nordhoff (1 February 1887-10 April, 1947) was an American traveler and novelist who began life in London, England, born to American parents. Nordhoff's parents returned to the United States with him in 1889, living first in Pennsylvania, then Rhode Island, and finally settling in California by 1898. Nordhoff showed an early interest in writing. His first published work was an article in an ornithological journal, written in 1902 when he was just fifteen. At seventeen, he entered Stanford University, but transferred after one year to Harvard. After graduation in 1909, Nordhoff worked for his father's businesses, first spending two years in Mexico managing a sugar plantation, then four years as an executive of a tile and brick company in Redlands, California. He quit in 1916, signed up with the Ambulance Corps, and travelled to France. There he joined additional American expatriates as a pilot in the Lafayette Escadrille. He finished World War I as a lieutenant in the US Army Air Service. ...