The White Queen

One of the world's loneliest places is the Cocos Islands, a group of 27 coral islets whose tall coconut palms are fanned by the soft trade winds of the Indian Ocean midway between Ceylon and Australia. Until last week, one of the loneliest men there was its benevolent ruler: king John Clunies-Ross, a slim young (22) Briton who rules the 1,200 copra-gathering islanders under a 999-year charter granted by Queen Victoria to his great-greatgrandfather, Ross I, a Scot from the Shetland Isles, who settled there in 1827.

To while away the hours on lonely Cocos, great-great-grandson Ross V has golf links, a fast yacht, a long-range radio transmitter, a tight little cellar of Scotch whisky and a 5,000-volume library (mostly whodunits). But ships call at the Cocos Islands only twice a year; the 19 resident whites are all men, and lonely John kept thinking of an English girl he had met last fall on a trip to England to study colonial administration at Oxford.

At an Oxford tea party, the shy young king had met a shy young thing--blonde 21-year-old Daphne Parkinson of Lancashire, who was studying occupational therapy. The king wanted Daphne to share his lonely throne, become mistress of the ten-bedroom palace, every stone of which was brought from Scotland in sailing ships. Only snag: Daphne was 11,000 miles away and the next ship was not due for some time. But kings, even the king of the Cocos, can command when lesser men may not. In answer to an impatient royal radio signal, the is15,000-ton Ceylon-bound S.S. Ormonde changed course, heaved-to off Cocos to pick up the lovelorn Ross V, sped him to his fiancee. This week the young king was back in London, all set to marry his queen.

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