Easter Island By Jennifer Vanderbes
For my parents and my brother
One evening, as Hau Maka lay beneath the full moon on the island Marae-toe-hau, he had a dream.
The dream soul of Hau Maka flew toward the rising sun and she passed above seven lands, each of which she inspected. But none of the seven was to her liking. So she continued on her journey, flying farther, over the vast and empty ocean, and for a long time she saw no lands below, only the rolling sea, until finally she reached a sandy shore. Here, the dream soul descended. She stood upon a glistening white beach and saw in the water the fish Mahore. Then the dream soul walked across the land and saw plump fruits of all colors, which she tasted, and were to her pleasure. Each fragrant flower she smelled, plucking a white one to tuck behind her ear. And then the dream soul climbed to the highest point on the land from where she could see the ocean and sky meeting all around her. As she looked at the island, she felt a gentle breeze coming toward her. . . .
Here was where she wanted to live.
When Hau Maka awakened, he found the King Hotu Matua and told him what his dream soul had seen.
“We shall find that land,” said the king.
—The Legend of Hotu Matua, and the
discovery of the island Te Pito O Te Henua
1
The decisive moment for Germany’s fleet in the Great War was, indisputably, its ill-timed arrival at the Falkland Islands. Having avoided detection by the Allies for three months since the outbreak of hostilities, it was their great misfortune to head straight for the Falklands just hours after the British fleet put in to coal there. Had they borne in and launched an offensive, they would have caught the British in the disarray of refueling. Instead, and for unknown reasons, all eight ships, under the command of Vice Admiral Graf von Spee, tried to escape. Compounding this fatal decision was atypical weather—a bright, cloudless sky hung overhead; there were neither the usual fog banks nor the low-lying squall clouds to afford even momentary concealment. The British, with their superior cruisers, were quick to pursue. From all sides gunfire bombarded the Germans. After three hours of battle, von Spee’s flagship, theScharnhorst, turned over on her beam, heeled gradually to port, and slid into the icy Atlantic, a cloud of black smoke shooting up from the boilers as she submerged. Only a coal collier, which was later interned in Argentina, and the small cruiserDresden , which was to be run down and blown up in three months, escaped the fiery battle. Within hours, the rest of the squadron met its fate at the bottom of the sea.
The question, then, is what brought about this decisive event. What accounts for von Spee’s inopportune arrival at the Falklands? Why did he order his ships to flee? How did so gallant and skilled an admiral, a man known for his precision, bring about the destruction of the German East Asiatic Squadron and turn, forever, the tides of the Great War?
—Fleet of Misfortune: Graf von Spee and the Impossible Journey Home