The place name transfixed him. "I like 'Christmas' so much! I think, There must be many nice things there." Imagining the bounty of a year-round, nonstop Yule-tide, Ambo signed a three-year contract and traveled hopefully to this magic-sounding place, 2,013 miles away. One morning, a few months after he arrived on the arid, empty, coral-crunchy shore, the British exploded an H-bomb over the island, shattering Ambo's eardrums. After that, he just worried and cowered under the coconut trees and prayed for deliverance. On that early morning, this, the largest atoll in the Pacific, trembled like a meringue, the earth and sea quaked, and millions of seabirds, the feathered glory of Christmas Island, were instantly blinded and scorched. The birds flopped and screamed piteously, and the whole lot of them starved to death under the horrified eyes of the several hundred islanders and the thousands of British soldiers. When a second bomb was announced, Ambo and his fellow islanders begged to be sent back to Tarawa.
