ÑThere is one island in the Indian Ocean, close to Mauritius, which is miraculously unspoilt, and that is Round Island. In fact it isn't a miracle at all, there's a very simple reason for it, which we discovered when we talked to Carl and Richard about going there.
'You can't,' said Carl. 'Well, you can try, but I doubt if you'd manage it.'
'Why not?' I asked.
Ñ 'Waves. You know, the sea,' said Carl. 'Goes like this.' He made big heaving motions with his arms.
'It's extremely difficult to get on,' said Richard. 'It has no beaches or harbours. You can only go there on very calm days, and even then you have to jump from the boat to the island. 'It's quite dangerous. You've got to judge it exactly right or you'll get thrown against the rocks. We haven't lost anybody yet, but ...'
Ñ They almost lost me.
We hitched a ride on a boat trip with some naturalists going to Round Island, anchored about a hundred yards from the rocky coastline and ferried ourselves across in a dinghy to the best thing that Round Island has to offer by way of a landing spot - a slippery outcrop called Pigeon House Rock.
Ñ A couple of men in wetsuits first leapt out of the dinghy into the tossing sea, swam to the rock, climbed with difficulty up the side of it and at last slithered, panting on to the top.
Ñ Everyone else in turn then made the trip across in the dinghy, three or four at a time. To land, you had to make the tricky jump across on to the rock, matching the crests of the incoming waves to the top of the rock, and leaping just an instant before the wave reached its height, so that the boat was still bearing you upwards.
ÑThose already on the rock would be tugging at the dinghy's rope, shouting instructions and encouragement over the crashing of the waves, then catching and hauling people as they jumped.
Ñ I was to the last one to land.
By this time the sea swell was getting heavier and rougher, and it was suggested that I should landing on the other side of the rock, where it was a lot steeper but a little less obviously slippery with algae.
Ñ I tried it. I leaped from edge of the heaving boat, lunged for the rock, found it to be every bit as slippery as the other side, merely much steeper, and slithered gracelessly down it into the sea, grazing my legs and arms against the jagged edges. The sea closed over my head.
ÑI thrashed about under the surface trying desperately to get my head up, but the dinghy was directly above me, and kept bashing me against the rockface whenever I tried to make for the surface.
Ñ OK, I thought, I've got the point. This is why the island is relatively unspoilt. I made one more lunge upwards, just as those on shore succeeded at last in pushing the boat away from me. This allowed me to get my head up above water and cling on to a crack in the rock.
ÑWith a lot more slipping and sliding and thrashing in the heavy swell I managed finally to manoeuvre myself up to within arm's reach of Mark and the others, who yanked me urgently up and on to the rock. I sat in a spluttering, bleeding heap protesting that I was fine and all I needed was a quiet corner to go and die in and everything would be all right.
Ñ The sea had been swelling heavily for the two or three hours it had taken us to reach the island and it seemed as if my stomach had heaved something approaching my entire body weight into the sea, so by this time I was feeling pretty wobbly and strung out and my day on Round Island passed in rather a blur.
Ñ
While Mark went with Wendy Strahm, the botanist, to try and find some of the species of plants and animals that exist only here on this single island, I went and sat in the sun near a palm tree called Beverly and felt dazed and sorry for myself.
Ñ I knew that the palm tree was called Beverly because Wendy told me that was what she had christened it. It was a bottle palm, so called because it is shaped like a Chianti bottle, and it was one of the eight that remain on Round Island, the only eight wild ones in the world.
Ñ Who on earth, I wondered, as I sat next to Beverly in a sort of companionable gloom, gets to name the actual islands?
I mean, here was one of the most amazing islands in the world. It looked utterly extraordinary, as if the moon itself was rising from the sea - except that where the moon would be cold and still, this was hot and darting with life.
ÑThough it appeared to be dusty and barren at first sight, the craters with which the surface was pocked were full of dazzling white-tailed tropicbirds, brilliant Telfair's skinks and Guenther's geckos.
Ñ You would think that if you had to come up with a name for an island like this you'd invite a couple of friends round, get some wine and make an evening of it. Not just say, oh it's a little bit round, let's call it 'Round Island'. Apart from anything else it isn't even particularly round.
ÑThere was another island just visible on the horizon, which was much more nearly round, but that is called Serpent Island, presumably to honour the fact that, unlike Round Island, it hasn't got any snakes on it. And there was yet another island I could see which sloped steadily from a peak at one end down to the sea at the other, and that, unaccountably, was called Flat Island.
ÑI began to see that whoever had named the islands probably had made a bit of an evening of it after all.
The reason that Round Island has remained a refuge for unique species of skinks, geckos, boas, palm trees, and even grasses that died out long ago on Mauritius is not simply that it is hard for man to get on to the island, but that it has proved completely impossible for rats to get ashore.
ÑRound Island is one of the largest tropical islands in the world (at a bit over three hundred acres) on which rats do not occur.
Not that Round Island is undamaged - far from it. A hundred and fifty years ago, before sailors introduced goats and rabbits on to the island it was covered in hardwood forest, which the foreign animals destroyed.
ÑThat is why from a distance and to the untutored eye, such as mine, the island appeared to be more or less barren at first sight. Only a naturalist would be able to tell you that the few odd-shaped palms and clumps of grass dotted about the place on the hot, dry, dusty land were unique and unspeakably precious.
