Respite

Bound for Ceylon after an exhausting three-month-long visit to Australia and New Zealand. Britain's globe-girdling Queen Elizabeth last week stopped to pay a brief call on one of her quietest realms: Cocos Islands, a tiny atoll lying 800 miles south of Singapore in the Indian Ocean. In happy contrast to the wildly cheering crowds that greeted her elsewhere, Elizabeth's Cocosian subjects, gathered 560 strong on Home Island, stood in dignified silence as she stepped ashore with her husband. Clad, men and women alike, in sarongs and transparent ceremonial jackets, they waved little Union Jacks and smiled shyly until the ice was broken by a sudden ringing cheer from a group of Australian airmen from nearby West Island.

There was little need for the six-man detachment of special police sent over from Singapore, or for the Queen's own bodyguards, as Elizabeth strolled among her subjects in Cocos. There, everybody knows everybody else, and all security arrangements necessary were adequately handled by two Malay dancers who gyrated gracefully before the royal party, sweeping the evil spirits from the path. Even this precaution was excessive, for under the benevolent tyranny of five generations of Scottish copra growers named Clunies-Ross, who own the Cocos and rule there under the eye of the British government as virtual kings, the Cocosians have achieved a state of social security that is virtually free of crime, disease and the other evil spirits that plague most men.

When her brief inspection tour was over (distance traveled: 500 yards), Britain's Queen settled down to enjoy a garden party at Oceana House, the royal palace of the present "King" of Cocos, John Clunies-Ross, 25, and his beautiful "Queen" Daphne, whom he wooed and won in London in 1951. Garbed in a Molyneux gown and feathered hat flown from England for the occasion, Daphne Clunies-Ross, who in the last three years has grown used to island barefoot fashions, was plainly uncomfortable in her high-heeled shoes.

After a pleasant three hours spent chatting with the islanders and the local white population (Australian airmen and their wives from West Island and the cable station men from Direction) and listening to native music, the royal couple set forth again, bearing delicate ship models as gifts for their children. King Ross himself stood by the wheel of their barge to guide it through the atoll's tricky shoals back to the Gothic, bound for Ceylon and more ceremonies, more crowds.

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