This single chapter of an otherwise unknown memoir, written in a pocket memorandum book with the title “Memoirs, etc.,” on the cover, was found in a steamer trunk purchased at a St. Vincent de Paul store in Monessen, Penna. It is not known whether any other chapters are extant, or indeed whether any others were ever written.

Many times I have asked myself whether it would not be best, after all, to leave this tale untold. I have given myself different answers on different occasions. Yes, I have said on one occasion (March 24 of last year), it would be better, but you have seldom chosen the better course, and no one expects it of you now. On another occasion, I answered, The truth will out, and it might as well out of you as of anyone else. On still another occasion (my aunt’s seventy-fifth birthday), I answered, I have been an adult for some time now, and I can do what I like. I have these conversations with myself often, but probably not as often as you think.

When I came home from my last trip to the Arctic, I decided that the time for exploring had passed, and I would devote myself to recording my many adventures. Instead, I found myself on a ship bound for the Antarctic. I had mistaken it for the No. 71 streetcar, you see. But once I was aboard there was no turning back, so the Antarctic adventures must be added to the catalogue, where they neatly balance the Arctic ones, although the latter include fewer penguins. Then there are the tropical adventures, the sea stories, and my time spent on a still-nameless desert island with no one but my valet and the Edgewood Symphony Orchestra for company. I have lived a full life, and though it may seem at first glance that my adventures are disconnected and episodic, yet you will find, if you have the patience, a principle of unity among them, a stream that runs through them all and makes the disparate episodes one single story.

My story, like every story, begins with the creation of the world. For the sake of brevity, however, let us begin a little later than that. I might begin with the prodigies that accompanied my birth, but any reasonably complete astronomical almanac should supply the relevant details. I might begin with my education, but it was not different in any remarkable way from that of any other young person with an unusual destiny: the classics, the better class of modern European languages, a smattering of the Polynesian dialects, and enough of anatomy not to embarrass myself too badly in a surgical theater should the occasion arise. I shall therefore leave those early periods of my life to the reader’s imagination or research, and instead begin with my discovery of the island that bears my name.

We had set sail from the port of Sailport, intending to reach the Fortunate Isles by late September. I was a young man, green in years, and was therefore brought in as the ship’s botanist; but you can imagine my disappointment when I found that, apart from a few strands of kelp dried on the anchor, there was not a green plant to be found on board the entire ship. I spent most of my time, therefore, either memorizing Gruenteufel’s Flora of the Undiscovered Tropical Isles (5th ed.) or observing the clouds, since the species, behavior, and complex mating rituals of clouds have always fascinated me.

On our sixth day out of port, we were hailed by a barque returning from the Fortunate Isles, whose crew being entirely Slovakian (though she was sailing under a Ruthenian flag), I was called upon to act as interpreter. They informed us that the Fortunate Isles were under quarantine for an outbreak of agoraphobia in a highly contagious strain; that the main harbor at Blessed Shore, the capital, had been filled in by the outflow of a pesky volcano; that the secondary harbor at Allswell was infested with ship-eating squid; and that the governor had lost the islands to the Spanish in a poker game.

Under these circumstances, it was clearly futile to continue on our present course. Thinking I might spare the captain some trouble, therefore, I gave the helmsman the order to come about hard to starboard, whereupon we immediately ran aground on an island I had not noticed on our right hand.

It had perhaps been an error to give the order without first checking for islands in the immediate vicinity. However, as our captain remarked, what’s done is done, and our unexpected grounding would give us a chance to catch up on some of the miscellaneous repairs to the ship that needed doing, such as the gaping hole near the prow caused by our unexpected grounding. The captain delegated a certain number of men who were familiar with the arcana of duct tape to perform the repairs, while I was to lead a party to the interior of the island, which did not appear on any of our charts, to see whether anything botanical was to be found there.

The walk through the open forest was delightful, and I was happy to be able to check off several species in Gruenteufel, which, since I had discovered the island, could be removed from the sixth edition of the Flora of the Undiscovered Tropical Isles. I observed that certain signs along the way indicated human habitation. One such sign, for example, was a pair of pictographs resembling a fork and knife rendered in white on a blue background, with an arrow pointing to the right. With natural curiosity directing us, we decided to follow the arrow, and soon found ourselves in a clearing around which were arranged a number of huts, on each of which was a sign bearing the image of some sort of comestible—a pig was roasting at the sign of the pig, at the sign of the pineapple a pineapple was turning on a spit, and so on. Presiding over them all was what I guessed must be the chief’s hut: it was a good bit larger than the rest, with a tall wicker dome reminiscent of that on the Basilica of St. Peter at Rome, and a prominent portico whose roof was supported by palm-trunk columns terminating in palm-frond capitals with the fronds turned down into a very passable rendition of Ionic volutes.

Making our way to that splendid edifice, we made our presence known and were greeted by the chief himself, whom we recognized at once by the superior height of his top hat, which was artistically woven from grass and feathers. I found that he spoke a dialect that was very close to pure classical Polynesian, so that we were able to understand each other perfectly; furthermore, he was the very model of affability and good breeding. He told me his name, which was Hunter of Musk-Ox on the Frozen Tundra (a family name whose meaning had been lost in the mists of antiquity), and politely asked mine. But when I told him my name was Milo Pettigrew, he was speechless with astonishment, and it took him some time to recover his normal loquacity, during which I wondered whether I had inadvertently committed some dreadful trespass against local etiquette.

“But that us the name of our island!” he said at last. “Mai-lo-pe-ti-ga-ru!” Then he laughed heartily, and I joined him. It was indeed a remarkably amusing coincidence, but not altogether, when I thought about it, a surprising name for an island. In the more refined dialects of classical Polynesian, the phrase Mai-lo-pe-ti-ga-ru may be roughly translated “Prime Beachfront Real Estate.”

That is the story of how I came to discover the island that still bears my name to this day. While our ship was undergoing the necessary duct-taping for several days, I was able to check off all the plants in Gruenteufel that grew on this now-discovered island, so that Prof. Gruenteufel was able to publish a considerably thinner sixth edition. I also showed the chief how he might profit by setting up a nursery to grow the native species of tropical plants, hitherto unseen in the civilized world, and sell them to the luxury horticultural trade; so that now Milo Pettigrew Island is the only island in the South Pacific inhabited entirely by millionaires. I have not visited personally since our ship, resplendent in its new hull of bright silver duct tape, pushed off from the beach; but from travelers’ reports I understand that there is a somewhat unflattering statue of me outside the entrance to the chief’s hut, which now covers eighteen acres and is built of imported Italian marble.