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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cruise of the Snark, by Jack London
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Cruise of the Snark
+
+Author: Jack London
+
+Release Date: March 26, 2000 [eBook #2512]
+[Most recently updated: August 1, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Price
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRUISE OF THE SNARK ***
+
+
+
+
+THE CRUISE OF THE
+SNARK
+
+
+BY
+JACK LONDON
+
+AUTHOR OF “VALLEY OF THE MOON,” “JOHN BARLEYCORN”
+“MUTINY OF THE ELSINORE,” ETC.
+
+
+“Yes have heard the beat of the offshore wind,
+And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;
+You have heard the song—how long! how long!
+Pull out on the trail again!”
+
+
+MILLS & BOON, LIMITED
+49 RUPERT STREET
+LONDON, W.1
+
+
+_Copyright in the United States of America_ by The Macmillan Company
+
+
+To
+CHARMIAN
+THE MATE OF THE “SNARK”
+WHO TOOK THE WHEEL, NIGHT OR DAY,
+WHEN ENTERING
+OR LEAVING PORT OR RUNNING A PASSAGE,
+WHO TOOK THE WHEEL IN EVERY EMERGENCY, AND
+WHO WEPT
+AFTER TWO YEARS OF SAILING, WHEN THE
+VOYAGE WAS DISCONTINUED
+
+Contents
+
+  CHAPTER I FOREWORD
+ CHAPTER II THE INCONCEIVABLE AND MONSTROUS
+ CHAPTER III ADVENTURE
+ CHAPTER IV FINDING ONE’S WAY ABOUT
+ CHAPTER V THE FIRST LANDFALL
+ CHAPTER VI A ROYAL SPORT
+ CHAPTER VII THE LEPERS OF MOLOKAI
+ CHAPTER VIII THE HOUSE OF THE SUN
+ CHAPTER IX A PACIFIC TRAVERSE
+ CHAPTER X TYPEE
+ CHAPTER XI THE NATURE MAN
+ CHAPTER XII THE HIGH SEAT OF ABUNDANCE
+ CHAPTER XIII THE STONE-FISHING OF BORA BORA
+ CHAPTER XIV THE AMATEUR NAVIGATOR
+ CHAPTER XV CRUISING IN THE SOLOMONS
+ CHAPTER XVI BÊCHE DE MER ENGLISH
+ CHAPTER XVII THE AMATEUR M.D.
+ BACKWORD
+ FOOTNOTES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+FOREWORD
+
+
+It began in the swimming pool at Glen Ellen. Between swims it was our
+wont to come out and lie in the sand and let our skins breathe the warm
+air and soak in the sunshine. Roscoe was a yachtsman. I had followed
+the sea a bit. It was inevitable that we should talk about boats. We
+talked about small boats, and the seaworthiness of small boats. We
+instanced Captain Slocum and his three years’ voyage around the world
+in the _Spray_.
+
+We asserted that we were not afraid to go around the world in a small
+boat, say forty feet long. We asserted furthermore that we would like
+to do it. We asserted finally that there was nothing in this world we’d
+like better than a chance to do it.
+
+“Let us do it,” we said . . . in fun.
+
+Then I asked Charmian privily if she’d really care to do it, and she
+said that it was too good to be true.
+
+The next time we breathed our skins in the sand by the swimming pool I
+said to Roscoe, “Let us do it.”
+
+I was in earnest, and so was he, for he said:
+
+“When shall we start?”
+
+I had a house to build on the ranch, also an orchard, a vineyard, and
+several hedges to plant, and a number of other things to do. We thought
+we would start in four or five years. Then the lure of the adventure
+began to grip us. Why not start at once? We’d never be younger, any of
+us. Let the orchard, vineyard, and hedges be growing up while we were
+away. When we came back, they would be ready for us, and we could live
+in the barn while we built the house.
+
+So the trip was decided upon, and the building of the _Snark_ began. We
+named her the _Snark_ because we could not think of any other name—this
+information is given for the benefit of those who otherwise might think
+there is something occult in the name.
+
+Our friends cannot understand why we make this voyage. They shudder,
+and moan, and raise their hands. No amount of explanation can make them
+comprehend that we are moving along the line of least resistance; that
+it is easier for us to go down to the sea in a small ship than to
+remain on dry land, just as it is easier for them to remain on dry land
+than to go down to the sea in the small ship. This state of mind comes
+of an undue prominence of the ego. They cannot get away from
+themselves. They cannot come out of themselves long enough to see that
+their line of least resistance is not necessarily everybody else’s line
+of least resistance. They make of their own bundle of desires, likes,
+and dislikes a yardstick wherewith to measure the desires, likes, and
+dislikes of all creatures. This is unfair. I tell them so. But they
+cannot get away from their own miserable egos long enough to hear me.
+They think I am crazy. In return, I am sympathetic. It is a state of
+mind familiar to me. We are all prone to think there is something wrong
+with the mental processes of the man who disagrees with us.
+
+The ultimate word is I LIKE. It lies beneath philosophy, and is twined
+about the heart of life. When philosophy has maundered ponderously for
+a month, telling the individual what he must do, the individual says,
+in an instant, “I LIKE,” and does something else, and philosophy goes
+glimmering. It is I LIKE that makes the drunkard drink and the martyr
+wear a hair shirt; that makes one man a reveller and another man an
+anchorite; that makes one man pursue fame, another gold, another love,
+and another God. Philosophy is very often a man’s way of explaining his
+own I LIKE.
+
+But to return to the _Snark_, and why I, for one, want to journey in
+her around the world. The things I like constitute my set of values.
+The thing I like most of all is personal achievement—not achievement
+for the world’s applause, but achievement for my own delight. It is the
+old “I did it! I did it! With my own hands I did it!” But personal
+achievement, with me, must be concrete. I’d rather win a water-fight in
+the swimming pool, or remain astride a horse that is trying to get out
+from under me, than write the great American novel. Each man to his
+liking. Some other fellow would prefer writing the great American novel
+to winning the water-fight or mastering the horse.
+
+Possibly the proudest achievement of my life, my moment of highest
+living, occurred when I was seventeen. I was in a three-masted schooner
+off the coast of Japan. We were in a typhoon. All hands had been on
+deck most of the night. I was called from my bunk at seven in the
+morning to take the wheel. Not a stitch of canvas was set. We were
+running before it under bare poles, yet the schooner fairly tore along.
+The seas were all of an eighth of a mile apart, and the wind snatched
+the whitecaps from their summits, filling. The air so thick with
+driving spray that it was impossible to see more than two waves at a
+time. The schooner was almost unmanageable, rolling her rail under to
+starboard and to port, veering and yawing anywhere between south-east
+and south-west, and threatening, when the huge seas lifted under her
+quarter, to broach to. Had she broached to, she would ultimately have
+been reported lost with all hands and no tidings.
+
+I took the wheel. The sailing-master watched me for a space. He was
+afraid of my youth, feared that I lacked the strength and the nerve.
+But when he saw me successfully wrestle the schooner through several
+bouts, he went below to breakfast. Fore and aft, all hands were below
+at breakfast. Had she broached to, not one of them would ever have
+reached the deck. For forty minutes I stood there alone at the wheel,
+in my grasp the wildly careering schooner and the lives of twenty-two
+men. Once we were pooped. I saw it coming, and, half-drowned, with tons
+of water crushing me, I checked the schooner’s rush to broach to. At
+the end of the hour, sweating and played out, I was relieved. But I had
+done it! With my own hands I had done my trick at the wheel and guided
+a hundred tons of wood and iron through a few million tons of wind and
+waves.
+
+My delight was in that I had done it—not in the fact that twenty-two
+men knew I had done it. Within the year over half of them were dead and
+gone, yet my pride in the thing performed was not diminished by half. I
+am willing to confess, however, that I do like a small audience. But it
+must be a very small audience, composed of those who love me and whom I
+love. When I then accomplish personal achievement, I have a feeling
+that I am justifying their love for me. But this is quite apart from
+the delight of the achievement itself. This delight is peculiarly my
+own and does not depend upon witnesses. When I have done some such
+thing, I am exalted. I glow all over. I am aware of a pride in myself
+that is mine, and mine alone. It is organic. Every fibre of me is
+thrilling with it. It is very natural. It is a mere matter of
+satisfaction at adjustment to environment. It is success.
+
+Life that lives is life successful, and success is the breath of its
+nostrils. The achievement of a difficult feat is successful adjustment
+to a sternly exacting environment. The more difficult the feat, the
+greater the satisfaction at its accomplishment. Thus it is with the man
+who leaps forward from the springboard, out over the swimming pool, and
+with a backward half-revolution of the body, enters the water head
+first. Once he leaves the springboard his environment becomes
+immediately savage, and savage the penalty it will exact should he fail
+and strike the water flat. Of course, the man does not have to run the
+risk of the penalty. He could remain on the bank in a sweet and placid
+environment of summer air, sunshine, and stability. Only he is not made
+that way. In that swift mid-air moment he lives as he could never live
+on the bank.
+
+As for myself, I’d rather be that man than the fellows who sit on the
+bank and watch him. That is why I am building the _Snark_. I am so
+made. I like, that is all. The trip around the world means big moments
+of living. Bear with me a moment and look at it. Here am I, a little
+animal called a man—a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and
+sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and
+brain,—all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and
+frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous
+horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water
+for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air,
+and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one
+way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few
+degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the
+raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life
+and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from
+a snake, and I cease to move—for ever I cease to move. A splinter of
+lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the
+eternal blackness.
+
+Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life—it is all I am.
+About me are the great natural forces—colossal menaces, Titans of
+destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern for me than
+I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no
+concern at all for me. They do not know me. They are unconscious,
+unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning
+flashes and cloud-bursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, undertows and
+waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and
+volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts and seas that leap
+aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or
+licking them off into the sea and to death—and these insensate monsters
+do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses,
+whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and
+quite a superior being.
+
+In the maze and chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty
+Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that
+is I will exult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it
+succeeds in baffling them or in bitting them to its service, will
+imagine that it is godlike. It is good to ride the tempest and feel
+godlike. I dare to assert that for a finite speck of pulsating jelly to
+feel godlike is a far more glorious feeling than for a god to feel
+godlike.
+
+Here is the sea, the wind, and the wave. Here are the seas, the winds,
+and the waves of all the world. Here is ferocious environment. And here
+is difficult adjustment, the achievement of which is delight to the
+small quivering vanity that is I. I like. I am so made. It is my own
+particular form of vanity, that is all.
+
+There is also another side to the voyage of the _Snark_. Being alive, I
+want to see, and all the world is a bigger thing to see than one small
+town or valley. We have done little outlining of the voyage. Only one
+thing is definite, and that is that our first port of call will be
+Honolulu. Beyond a few general ideas, we have no thought of our next
+port after Hawaii. We shall make up our minds as we get nearer, in a
+general way we know that we shall wander through the South Seas, take
+in Samoa, New Zealand, Tasmania, Australia, New Guinea, Borneo, and
+Sumatra, and go on up through the Philippines to Japan. Then will come
+Korea, China, India, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean. After that the
+voyage becomes too vague to describe, though we know a number of things
+we shall surely do, and we expect to spend from one to several months
+in every country in Europe.
+
+The _Snark_ is to be sailed. There will be a gasolene engine on board,
+but it will be used only in case of emergency, such as in bad water
+among reefs and shoals, where a sudden calm in a swift current leaves a
+sailing-boat helpless. The rig of the _Snark_ is to be what is called
+the “ketch.” The ketch rig is a compromise between the yawl and the
+schooner. Of late years the yawl rig has proved the best for cruising.
+The ketch retains the cruising virtues of the yawl, and in addition
+manages to embrace a few of the sailing virtues of the schooner. The
+foregoing must be taken with a pinch of salt. It is all theory in my
+head. I’ve never sailed a ketch, nor even seen one. The theory commends
+itself to me. Wait till I get out on the ocean, then I’ll be able to
+tell more about the cruising and sailing qualities of the ketch.
+
+As originally planned, the _Snark_ was to be forty feet long on the
+water-line. But we discovered there was no space for a bath-room, and
+for that reason we have increased her length to forty-five feet. Her
+greatest beam is fifteen feet. She has no house and no hold. There is
+six feet of headroom, and the deck is unbroken save for two
+companionways and a hatch for’ard. The fact that there is no house to
+break the strength of the deck will make us feel safer in case great
+seas thunder their tons of water down on board. A large and roomy
+cockpit, sunk beneath the deck, with high rail and self-bailing, will
+make our rough-weather days and nights more comfortable.
+
+There will be no crew. Or, rather, Charmian, Roscoe, and I are the
+crew. We are going to do the thing with our own hands. With our own
+hands we’re going to circumnavigate the globe. Sail her or sink her,
+with our own hands we’ll do it. Of course there will be a cook and a
+cabin-boy. Why should we stew over a stove, wash dishes, and set the
+table? We could stay on land if we wanted to do those things. Besides,
+we’ve got to stand watch and work the ship. And also, I’ve got to work
+at my trade of writing in order to feed us and to get new sails and
+tackle and keep the _Snark_ in efficient working order. And then
+there’s the ranch; I’ve got to keep the vineyard, orchard, and hedges
+growing.
+
+When we increased the length of the _Snark_ in order to get space for a
+bath-room, we found that all the space was not required by the
+bath-room. Because of this, we increased the size of the engine.
+Seventy horse-power our engine is, and since we expect it to drive us
+along at a nine-knot clip, we do not know the name of a river with a
+current swift enough to defy us.
+
+We expect to do a lot of inland work. The smallness of the _Snark_
+makes this possible. When we enter the land, out go the masts and on
+goes the engine. There are the canals of China, and the Yang-tse River.
+We shall spend months on them if we can get permission from the
+government. That will be the one obstacle to our inland
+voyaging—governmental permission. But if we can get that permission,
+there is scarcely a limit to the inland voyaging we can do.
+
+When we come to the Nile, why we can go up the Nile. We can go up the
+Danube to Vienna, up the Thames to London, and we can go up the Seine
+to Paris and moor opposite the Latin Quarter with a bow-line out to
+Notre Dame and a stern-line fast to the Morgue. We can leave the
+Mediterranean and go up the Rhône to Lyons, there enter the Saône,
+cross from the Saône to the Maine through the Canal de Bourgogne, and
+from the Marne enter the Seine and go out the Seine at Havre. When we
+cross the Atlantic to the United States, we can go up the Hudson, pass
+through the Erie Canal, cross the Great Lakes, leave Lake Michigan at
+Chicago, gain the Mississippi by way of the Illinois River and the
+connecting canal, and go down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
+And then there are the great rivers of South America. We’ll know
+something about geography when we get back to California.
+
+People that build houses are often sore perplexed; but if they enjoy
+the strain of it, I’ll advise them to build a boat like the _Snark_.
+Just consider, for a moment, the strain of detail. Take the engine.
+What is the best kind of engine—the two cycle? three cycle? four cycle?
+My lips are mutilated with all kinds of strange jargon, my mind is
+mutilated with still stranger ideas and is foot-sore and weary from
+travelling in new and rocky realms of thought.—Ignition methods; shall
+it be make-and-break or jump-spark? Shall dry cells or storage
+batteries be used? A storage battery commends itself, but it requires a
+dynamo. How powerful a dynamo? And when we have installed a dynamo and
+a storage battery, it is simply ridiculous not to light the boat with
+electricity. Then comes the discussion of how many lights and how many
+candle-power. It is a splendid idea. But electric lights will demand a
+more powerful storage battery, which, in turn, demands a more powerful
+dynamo.
+
+And now that we’ve gone in for it, why not have a searchlight? It would
+be tremendously useful. But the searchlight needs so much electricity
+that when it runs it will put all the other lights out of commission.
+Again we travel the weary road in the quest after more power for
+storage battery and dynamo. And then, when it is finally solved, some
+one asks, “What if the engine breaks down?” And we collapse. There are
+the sidelights, the binnacle light, and the anchor light. Our very
+lives depend upon them. So we have to fit the boat throughout with oil
+lamps as well.
+
+But we are not done with that engine yet. The engine is powerful. We
+are two small men and a small woman. It will break our hearts and our
+backs to hoist anchor by hand. Let the engine do it. And then comes the
+problem of how to convey power for’ard from the engine to the winch.
+And by the time all this is settled, we redistribute the allotments of
+space to the engine-room, galley, bath-room, state-rooms, and cabin,
+and begin all over again. And when we have shifted the engine, I send
+off a telegram of gibberish to its makers at New York, something like
+this: _Toggle-joint abandoned change thrust-bearing accordingly
+distance from forward side of flywheel to face of stern post sixteen
+feet six inches_.
+
+Just potter around in quest of the best steering gear, or try to decide
+whether you will set up your rigging with old-fashioned lanyards or
+with turnbuckles, if you want strain of detail. Shall the binnacle be
+located in front of the wheel in the centre of the beam, or shall it be
+located to one side in front of the wheel?—there’s room right there for
+a library of sea-dog controversy. Then there’s the problem of gasolene,
+fifteen hundred gallons of it—what are the safest ways to tank it and
+pipe it? and which is the best fire-extinguisher for a gasolene fire?
+Then there is the pretty problem of the life-boat and the stowage of
+the same. And when that is finished, come the cook and cabin-boy to
+confront one with nightmare possibilities. It is a small boat, and
+we’ll be packed close together. The servant-girl problem of landsmen
+pales to insignificance. We did select one cabin-boy, and by that much
+were our troubles eased. And then the cabin-boy fell in love and
+resigned.
+
+And in the meanwhile how is a fellow to find time to study
+navigation—when he is divided between these problems and the earning of
+the money wherewith to settle the problems? Neither Roscoe nor I know
+anything about navigation, and the summer is gone, and we are about to
+start, and the problems are thicker than ever, and the treasury is
+stuffed with emptiness. Well, anyway, it takes years to learn
+seamanship, and both of us are seamen. If we don’t find the time, we’ll
+lay in the books and instruments and teach ourselves navigation on the
+ocean between San Francisco and Hawaii.
+
+There is one unfortunate and perplexing phase of the voyage of the
+_Snark_. Roscoe, who is to be my co-navigator, is a follower of one,
+Cyrus R. Teed. Now Cyrus R. Teed has a different cosmology from the one
+generally accepted, and Roscoe shares his views. Wherefore Roscoe
+believes that the surface of the earth is concave and that we live on
+the inside of a hollow sphere. Thus, though we shall sail on the one
+boat, the _Snark_, Roscoe will journey around the world on the inside,
+while I shall journey around on the outside. But of this, more anon. We
+threaten to be of the one mind before the voyage is completed. I am
+confident that I shall convert him into making the journey on the
+outside, while he is equally confident that before we arrive back in
+San Francisco I shall be on the inside of the earth. How he is going to
+get me through the crust I don’t know, but Roscoe is ay a masterful
+man.
+
+
+P.S.—That engine! While we’ve got it, and the dynamo, and the storage
+battery, why not have an ice-machine? Ice in the tropics! It is more
+necessary than bread. Here goes for the ice-machine! Now I am plunged
+into chemistry, and my lips hurt, and my mind hurts, and how am I ever
+to find the time to study navigation?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE INCONCEIVABLE AND MONSTROUS
+
+
+“Spare no money,” I said to Roscoe. “Let everything on the _Snark_ be
+of the best. And never mind decoration. Plain pine boards is good
+enough finishing for me. But put the money into the construction. Let
+the _Snark_ be as staunch and strong as any boat afloat. Never mind
+what it costs to make her staunch and strong; you see that she is made
+staunch and strong, and I’ll go on writing and earning the money to pay
+for it.”
+
+And I did . . . as well as I could; for the _Snark_ ate up money faster
+than I could earn it. In fact, every little while I had to borrow money
+with which to supplement my earnings. Now I borrowed one thousand
+dollars, now I borrowed two thousand dollars, and now I borrowed five
+thousand dollars. And all the time I went on working every day and
+sinking the earnings in the venture. I worked Sundays as well, and I
+took no holidays. But it was worth it. Every time I thought of the
+_Snark_ I knew she was worth it.
+
+For know, gentle reader, the staunchness of the _Snark_. She is
+forty-five feet long on the waterline. Her garboard strake is three
+inches thick; her planking two and one-half inches thick; her
+deck-planking two inches thick and in all her planking there are no
+butts. I know, for I ordered that planking especially from Puget Sound.
+Then the _Snark_ has four water-tight compartments, which is to say
+that her length is broken by three water-tight bulkheads. Thus, no
+matter how large a leak the _Snark_ may spring, Only one compartment
+can fill with water. The other three compartments will keep her afloat,
+anyway, and, besides, will enable us to mend the leak. There is another
+virtue in these bulkheads. The last compartment of all, in the very
+stern, contains six tanks that carry over one thousand gallons of
+gasolene. Now gasolene is a very dangerous article to carry in bulk on
+a small craft far out on the wide ocean. But when the six tanks that do
+not leak are themselves contained in a compartment hermetically sealed
+off from the rest of the boat, the danger will be seen to be very small
+indeed.
+
+The _Snark_ is a sail-boat. She was built primarily to sail. But
+incidentally, as an auxiliary, a seventy-horse-power engine was
+installed. This is a good, strong engine. I ought to know. I paid for
+it to come out all the way from New York City. Then, on deck, above the
+engine, is a windlass. It is a magnificent affair. It weighs several
+hundred pounds and takes up no end of deck-room. You see, it is
+ridiculous to hoist up anchor by hand-power when there is a
+seventy-horse-power engine on board. So we installed the windlass,
+transmitting power to it from the engine by means of a gear and
+castings specially made in a San Francisco foundry.
+
+The _Snark_ was made for comfort, and no expense was spared in this
+regard. There is the bath-room, for instance, small and compact, it is
+true, but containing all the conveniences of any bath-room upon land.
+The bath-room is a beautiful dream of schemes and devices, pumps, and
+levers, and sea-valves. Why, in the course of its building, I used to
+lie awake nights thinking about that bath-room. And next to the
+bath-room come the life-boat and the launch. They are carried on deck,
+and they take up what little space might have been left us for
+exercise. But then, they beat life insurance; and the prudent man, even
+if he has built as staunch and strong a craft as the _Snark_, will see
+to it that he has a good life-boat as well. And ours is a good one. It
+is a dandy. It was stipulated to cost one hundred and fifty dollars,
+and when I came to pay the bill, it turned out to be three hundred and
+ninety-five dollars. That shows how good a life-boat it is.
+
+I could go on at great length relating the various virtues and
+excellences of the _Snark_, but I refrain. I have bragged enough as it
+is, and I have bragged to a purpose, as will be seen before my tale is
+ended. And please remember its title, “The Inconceivable and
+Monstrous.” It was planned that the _Snark_ should sail on October 1,
+1906. That she did not so sail was inconceivable and monstrous. There
+was no valid reason for not sailing except that she was not ready to
+sail, and there was no conceivable reason why she was not ready. She
+was promised on November first, on November fifteenth, on December
+first; and yet she was never ready. On December first Charmian and I
+left the sweet, clean Sonoma country and came down to live in the
+stifling city—but not for long, oh, no, only for two weeks, for we
+would sail on December fifteenth. And I guess we ought to know, for
+Roscoe said so, and it was on his advice that we came to the city to
+stay two weeks. Alas, the two weeks went by, four weeks went by, six
+weeks went by, eight weeks went by, and we were farther away from
+sailing than ever. Explain it? Who?—me? I can’t. It is the one thing in
+all my life that I have backed down on. There is no explaining it; if
+there were, I’d do it. I, who am an artisan of speech, confess my
+inability to explain why the _Snark_ was not ready. As I have said, and
+as I must repeat, it was inconceivable and monstrous.
+
+The eight weeks became sixteen weeks, and then, one day, Roscoe cheered
+us up by saying: “If we don’t sail before April first, you can use my
+head for a football.”
+
+Two weeks later he said, “I’m getting my head in training for that
+match.”
+
+“Never mind,” Charmian and I said to each other; “think of the
+wonderful boat it is going to be when it is completed.”
+
+Whereat we would rehearse for our mutual encouragement the manifold
+virtues and excellences of the _Snark_. Also, I would borrow more
+money, and I would get down closer to my desk and write harder, and I
+refused heroically to take a Sunday off and go out into the hills with
+my friends. I was building a boat, and by the eternal it was going to
+be a boat, and a boat spelled out all in capitals—B—O—A—T; and no
+matter what it cost I didn’t care. So long as it was a B O A T.
+
+And, oh, there is one other excellence of the _Snark_, upon which I
+must brag, namely, her bow. No sea could ever come over it. It laughs
+at the sea, that bow does; it challenges the sea; it snorts defiance at
+the sea. And withal it is a beautiful bow; the lines of it are
+dreamlike; I doubt if ever a boat was blessed with a more beautiful and
+at the same time a more capable bow. It was made to punch storms. To
+touch that bow is to rest one’s hand on the cosmic nose of things. To
+look at it is to realize that expense cut no figure where it was
+concerned. And every time our sailing was delayed, or a new expense was
+tacked on, we thought of that wonderful bow and were content.
+
+The _Snark_ is a small boat. When I figured seven thousand dollars as
+her generous cost, I was both generous and correct. I have built barns
+and houses, and I know the peculiar trait such things have of running
+past their estimated cost. This knowledge was mine, was already mine,
+when I estimated the probable cost of the building of the _Snark_ at
+seven thousand dollars. Well, she cost thirty thousand. Now don’t ask
+me, please. It is the truth. I signed the cheques and I raised the
+money. Of course there is no explaining it, inconceivable and monstrous
+is what it is, as you will agree, I know, ere my tale is done.
+
+Then there was the matter of delay. I dealt with forty-seven different
+kinds of union men and with one hundred and fifteen different firms.
+And not one union man and not one firm of all the union men and all the
+firms ever delivered anything at the time agreed upon, nor ever was on
+time for anything except pay-day and bill-collection. Men pledged me
+their immortal souls that they would deliver a certain thing on a
+certain date; as a rule, after such pledging, they rarely exceeded
+being three months late in delivery. And so it went, and Charmian and I
+consoled each other by saying what a splendid boat the _Snark_ was, so
+staunch and strong; also, we would get into the small boat and row
+around the _Snark_, and gloat over her unbelievably wonderful bow.
+
+“Think,” I would say to Charmian, “of a gale off the China coast, and
+of the _Snark_ hove to, that splendid bow of hers driving into the
+storm. Not a drop will come over that bow. She’ll be as dry as a
+feather, and we’ll be all below playing whist while the gale howls.”
+
+And Charmian would press my hand enthusiastically and exclaim: “It’s
+worth every bit of it—the delay, and expense, and worry, and all the
+rest. Oh, what a truly wonderful boat!”
+
+Whenever I looked at the bow of the _Snark_ or thought of her
+water-tight compartments, I was encouraged. Nobody else, however, was
+encouraged. My friends began to make bets against the various sailing
+dates of the _Snark_. Mr. Wiget, who was left behind in charge of our
+Sonoma ranch was the first to cash his bet. He collected on New Year’s
+Day, 1907. After that the bets came fast and furious. My friends
+surrounded me like a gang of harpies, making bets against every sailing
+date I set. I was rash, and I was stubborn. I bet, and I bet, and I
+continued to bet; and I paid them all. Why, the women-kind of my
+friends grew so brave that those among them who never bet before began
+to bet with me. And I paid them, too.
+
+“Never mind,” said Charmian to me; “just think of that bow and of being
+hove to on the China Seas.”
+
+“You see,” I said to my friends, when I paid the latest bunch of
+wagers, “neither trouble nor cash is being spared in making the _Snark_
+the most seaworthy craft that ever sailed out through the Golden
+Gate—that is what causes all the delay.”
+
+In the meantime editors and publishers with whom I had contracts
+pestered me with demands for explanations. But how could I explain to
+them, when I was unable to explain to myself, or when there was nobody,
+not even Roscoe, to explain to me? The newspapers began to laugh at me,
+and to publish rhymes anent the _Snark’s_ departure with refrains like,
+“Not yet, but soon.” And Charmian cheered me up by reminding me of the
+bow, and I went to a banker and borrowed five thousand more. There was
+one recompense for the delay, however. A friend of mine, who happens to
+be a critic, wrote a roast of me, of all I had done, and of all I ever
+was going to do; and he planned to have it published after I was out on
+the ocean. I was still on shore when it came out, and he has been busy
+explaining ever since.
+
+And the time continued to go by. One thing was becoming apparent,
+namely, that it was impossible to finish the _Snark_ in San Francisco.
+She had been so long in the building that she was beginning to break
+down and wear out. In fact, she had reached the stage where she was
+breaking down faster than she could be repaired. She had become a joke.
+Nobody took her seriously; least of all the men who worked on her. I
+said we would sail just as she was and finish building her in Honolulu.
+Promptly she sprang a leak that had to be attended to before we could
+sail. I started her for the boat-ways. Before she got to them she was
+caught between two huge barges and received a vigorous crushing. We got
+her on the ways, and, part way along, the ways spread and dropped her
+through, stern-first, into the mud.
+
+It was a pretty tangle, a job for wreckers, not boat-builders. There
+are two high tides every twenty-four hours, and at every high tide,
+night and day, for a week, there were two steam tugs pulling and
+hauling on the _Snark_. There she was, stuck, fallen between the ways
+and standing on her stern. Next, and while still in that predicament,
+we started to use the gears and castings made in the local foundry
+whereby power was conveyed from the engine to the windlass. It was the
+first time we ever tried to use that windlass. The castings had flaws;
+they shattered asunder, the gears ground together, and the windlass was
+out of commission. Following upon that, the seventy-horse-power engine
+went out of commission. This engine came from New York; so did its
+bed-plate; there was a flaw in the bed-plate; there were a lot of flaws
+in the bed-plate; and the seventy-horse-power engine broke away from
+its shattered foundations, reared up in the air, smashed all
+connections and fastenings, and fell over on its side. And the _Snark_
+continued to stick between the spread ways, and the two tugs continued
+to haul vainly upon her.
+
+“Never mind,” said Charmian, “think of what a staunch, strong boat she
+is.”
+
+“Yes,” said I, “and of that beautiful bow.”
+
+So we took heart and went at it again. The ruined engine was lashed
+down on its rotten foundation; the smashed castings and cogs of the
+power transmission were taken down and stored away—all for the purpose
+of taking them to Honolulu where repairs and new castings could be
+made. Somewhere in the dim past the _Snark_ had received on the outside
+one coat of white paint. The intention of the colour was still evident,
+however, when one got it in the right light. The _Snark_ had never
+received any paint on the inside. On the contrary, she was coated
+inches thick with the grease and tobacco-juice of the multitudinous
+mechanics who had toiled upon her. Never mind, we said; the grease and
+filth could be planed off, and later, when we fetched Honolulu, the
+_Snark_ could be painted at the same time as she was being rebuilt.
+
+By main strength and sweat we dragged the _Snark_ off from the wrecked
+ways and laid her alongside the Oakland City Wharf. The drays brought
+all the outfit from home, the books and blankets and personal luggage.
+Along with this, everything else came on board in a torrent of
+confusion—wood and coal, water and water-tanks, vegetables, provisions,
+oil, the life-boat and the launch, all our friends, all the friends of
+our friends and those who claimed to be their friends, to say nothing
+of some of the friends of the friends of the friends of our crew. Also
+there were reporters, and photographers, and strangers, and cranks, and
+finally, and over all, clouds of coal-dust from the wharf.
+
+We were to sail Sunday at eleven, and Saturday afternoon had arrived.
+The crowd on the wharf and the coal-dust were thicker than ever. In one
+pocket I carried a cheque-book, a fountain-pen, a dater, and a blotter;
+in another pocket I carried between one and two thousand dollars in
+paper money and gold. I was ready for the creditors, cash for the small
+ones and cheques for the large ones, and was waiting only for Roscoe to
+arrive with the balances of the accounts of the hundred and fifteen
+firms who had delayed me so many months. And then—
+
+And then the inconceivable and monstrous happened once more. Before
+Roscoe could arrive there arrived another man. He was a United States
+marshal. He tacked a notice on the _Snark’s_ brave mast so that all on
+the wharf could read that the _Snark_ had been libelled for debt. The
+marshal left a little old man in charge of the _Snark_, and himself
+went away. I had no longer any control of the _Snark_, nor of her
+wonderful bow. The little old man was now her lord and master, and I
+learned that I was paying him three dollars a day for being lord and
+master. Also, I learned the name of the man who had libelled the
+_Snark_. It was Sellers; the debt was two hundred and thirty-two
+dollars; and the deed was no more than was to be expected from the
+possessor of such a name. Sellers! Ye gods! Sellers!
+
+But who under the sun was Sellers? I looked in my cheque-book and saw
+that two weeks before I had made him out a cheque for five hundred
+dollars. Other cheque-books showed me that during the many months of
+the building of the _Snark_ I had paid him several thousand dollars.
+Then why in the name of common decency hadn’t he tried to collect his
+miserable little balance instead of libelling the _Snark_? I thrust my
+hands into my pockets, and in one pocket encountered the cheque-hook
+and the dater and the pen, and in the other pocket the gold money and
+the paper money. There was the wherewithal to settle his pitiful
+account a few score of times and over—why hadn’t he given me a chance?
+There was no explanation; it was merely the inconceivable and
+monstrous.
+
+To make the matter worse, the _Snark_ had been libelled late Saturday
+afternoon; and though I sent lawyers and agents all over Oakland and
+San Francisco, neither United States judge, nor United States marshal,
+nor Mr. Sellers, nor Mr. Sellers’ attorney, nor anybody could be found.
+They were all out of town for the weekend. And so the _Snark_ did not
+sail Sunday morning at eleven. The little old man was still in charge,
+and he said no. And Charmian and I walked out on an opposite wharf and
+took consolation in the _Snark’s_ wonderful bow and thought of all the
+gales and typhoons it would proudly punch.
+
+“A bourgeois trick,” I said to Charmian, speaking of Mr. Sellers and
+his libel; “a petty trader’s panic. But never mind; our troubles will
+cease when once we are away from this and out on the wide ocean.”
+
+And in the end we sailed away, on Tuesday morning, April 23, 1907. We
+started rather lame, I confess. We had to hoist anchor by hand, because
+the power transmission was a wreck. Also, what remained of our
+seventy-horse-power engine was lashed down for ballast on the bottom of
+the _Snark_. But what of such things? They could be fixed in Honolulu,
+and in the meantime think of the magnificent rest of the boat! It is
+true, the engine in the launch wouldn’t run, and the life-boat leaked
+like a sieve; but then they weren’t the _Snark_; they were mere
+appurtenances. The things that counted were the water-tight bulkheads,
+the solid planking without butts, the bath-room devices—they were the
+_Snark_. And then there was, greatest of all, that noble, wind-punching
+bow.
+
+We sailed out through the Golden Gate and set our course south toward
+that part of the Pacific where we could hope to pick up with the
+north-east trades. And right away things began to happen. I had
+calculated that youth was the stuff for a voyage like that of the
+_Snark_, and I had taken three youths—the engineer, the cook, and the
+cabin-boy. My calculation was only two-thirds _off_; I had forgotten to
+calculate on seasick youth, and I had two of them, the cook and the
+cabin boy. They immediately took to their bunks, and that was the end
+of their usefulness for a week to come. It will be understood, from the
+foregoing, that we did not have the hot meals we might have had, nor
+were things kept clean and orderly down below. But it did not matter
+very much anyway, for we quickly discovered that our box of oranges had
+at some time been frozen; that our box of apples was mushy and
+spoiling; that the crate of cabbages, spoiled before it was ever
+delivered to us, had to go overboard instanter; that kerosene had been
+spilled on the carrots, and that the turnips were woody and the beets
+rotten, while the kindling was dead wood that wouldn’t burn, and the
+coal, delivered in rotten potato-sacks, had spilled all over the deck
+and was washing through the scuppers.
+
+But what did it matter? Such things were mere accessories. There was
+the boat—she was all right, wasn’t she? I strolled along the deck and
+in one minute counted fourteen butts in the beautiful planking ordered
+specially from Puget Sound in order that there should be no butts in
+it. Also, that deck leaked, and it leaked badly. It drowned Roscoe out
+of his bunk and ruined the tools in the engine-room, to say nothing of
+the provisions it ruined in the galley. Also, the sides of the _Snark_
+leaked, and the bottom leaked, and we had to pump her every day to keep
+her afloat. The floor of the galley is a couple of feet above the
+inside bottom of the _Snark_; and yet I have stood on the floor of the
+galley, trying to snatch a cold bite, and been wet to the knees by the
+water churning around inside four hours after the last pumping.
+
+Then those magnificent water-tight compartments that cost so much time
+and money—well, they weren’t water-tight after all. The water moved
+free as the air from one compartment to another; furthermore, a strong
+smell of gasolene from the after compartment leads me to suspect that
+some one or more of the half-dozen tanks there stored have sprung a
+leak. The tanks leak, and they are not hermetically sealed in their
+compartment. Then there was the bath-room with its pumps and levers and
+sea-valves—it went out of commission inside the first twenty hours.
+Powerful iron levers broke off short in one’s hand when one tried to
+pump with them. The bath-room was the swiftest wreck of any portion of
+the _Snark_.
+
+And the iron-work on the _Snark_, no matter what its source, proved to
+be mush. For instance, the bed-plate of the engine came from New York,
+and it was mush; so were the casting and gears for the windlass that
+came from San Francisco. And finally, there was the wrought iron used
+in the rigging, that carried away in all directions when the first
+strains were put upon it. Wrought iron, mind you, and it snapped like
+macaroni.
+
+A gooseneck on the gaff of the mainsail broke short off. We replaced it
+with the gooseneck from the gaff of the storm trysail, and the second
+gooseneck broke short off inside fifteen minutes of use, and, mind you,
+it had been taken from the gaff of the storm trysail, upon which we
+would have depended in time of storm. At the present moment the _Snark_
+trails her mainsail like a broken wing, the gooseneck being replaced by
+a rough lashing. We’ll see if we can get honest iron in Honolulu.
+
+Man had betrayed us and sent us to sea in a sieve, but the Lord must
+have loved us, for we had calm weather in which to learn that we must
+pump every day in order to keep afloat, and that more trust could be
+placed in a wooden toothpick than in the most massive piece of iron to
+be found aboard. As the staunchness and the strength of the _Snark_
+went glimmering, Charmian and I pinned our faith more and more to the
+_Snark’s_ wonderful bow. There was nothing else left to pin to. It was
+all inconceivable and monstrous, we knew, but that bow, at least, was
+rational. And then, one evening, we started to heave to.
+
+How shall I describe it? First of all, for the benefit of the tyro, let
+me explain that heaving to is that sea manœuvre which, by means of
+short and balanced canvas, compels a vessel to ride bow-on to wind and
+sea. When the wind is too strong, or the sea is too high, a vessel of
+the size of the _Snark_ can heave to with ease, whereupon there is no
+more work to do on deck. Nobody needs to steer. The lookout is
+superfluous. All hands can go below and sleep or play whist.
+
+Well, it was blowing half of a small summer gale, when I told Roscoe
+we’d heave to. Night was coming on. I had been steering nearly all day,
+and all hands on deck (Roscoe and Bert and Charmian) were tired, while
+all hands below were seasick. It happened that we had already put two
+reefs in the big mainsail. The flying-jib and the jib were taken in,
+and a reef put in the fore-staysail. The mizzen was also taken in.
+About this time the flying jib-boom buried itself in a sea and broke
+short off. I started to put the wheel down in order to heave to. The
+_Snark_ at the moment was rolling in the trough. She continued rolling
+in the trough. I put the spokes down harder and harder. She never
+budged from the trough. (The trough, gentle reader, is the most
+dangerous position all in which to lay a vessel.) I put the wheel hard
+down, and still the _Snark_ rolled in the trough. Eight points was the
+nearest I could get her to the wind. I had Roscoe and Bert come in on
+the main-sheet. The _Snark_ rolled on in the trough, now putting her
+rail under on one side and now under on the other side.
+
+Again the inconceivable and monstrous was showing its grizzly head. It
+was grotesque, impossible. I refused to believe it. Under double-reefed
+mainsail and single-reefed staysail the _Snark_ refused to heave to. We
+flattened the mainsail down. It did not alter the _Snark’s_ course a
+tenth of a degree. We slacked the mainsail off with no more result. We
+set a storm trysail on the mizzen, and took in the mainsail. No change.
+The _Snark_ roiled on in the trough. That beautiful bow of hers refused
+to come up and face the wind.
+
+Next we took in the reefed staysail. Thus, the only bit of canvas left
+on her was the storm trysail on the mizzen. If anything would bring her
+bow up to the wind, that would. Maybe you won’t believe me when I say
+it failed, but I do say it failed. And I say it failed because I saw it
+fail, and not because I believe it failed. I don’t believe it did fail.
+It is unbelievable, and I am not telling you what I believe; I am
+telling you what I saw.
+
+Now, gentle reader, what would you do if you were on a small boat,
+rolling in the trough of the sea, a trysail on that small boat’s stern
+that was unable to swing the bow up into the wind? Get out the
+sea-anchor. It’s just what we did. We had a patent one, made to order
+and warranted not to dive. Imagine a hoop of steel that serves to keep
+open the mouth of a large, conical, canvas bag, and you have a
+sea-anchor. Well, we made a line fast to the sea-anchor and to the bow
+of the _Snark_, and then dropped the sea-anchor overboard. It promptly
+dived. We had a tripping line on it, so we tripped the sea-anchor and
+hauled it in. We attached a big timber as a float, and dropped the
+sea-anchor over again. This time it floated. The line to the bow grew
+taut. The trysail on the mizzen tended to swing the bow into the wind,
+but, in spite of this tendency, the _Snark_ calmly took that sea-anchor
+in her teeth, and went on ahead, dragging it after her, still in the
+trough of the sea. And there you are. We even took in the trysail,
+hoisted the full mizzen in its place, and hauled the full mizzen down
+flat, and the _Snark_ wallowed in the trough and dragged the sea-anchor
+behind her. Don’t believe me. I don’t believe it myself. I am merely
+telling you what I saw.
+
+Now I leave it to you. Who ever heard of a sailing-boat that wouldn’t
+heave to?—that wouldn’t heave to with a sea-anchor to help it? Out of
+my brief experience with boats I know I never did. And I stood on deck
+and looked on the naked face of the inconceivable and monstrous—the
+_Snark_ that wouldn’t heave to. A stormy night with broken moonlight
+had come on. There was a splash of wet in the air, and up to windward
+there was a promise of rain-squalls; and then there was the trough of
+the sea, cold and cruel in the moonlight, in which the _Snark_
+complacently rolled. And then we took in the sea-anchor and the mizzen,
+hoisted the reefed staysail, ran the _Snark_ off before it, and went
+below—not to the hot meal that should have awaited us, but to skate
+across the slush and slime on the cabin floor, where cook and cabin-boy
+lay like dead men in their bunks, and to lie down in our own bunks,
+with our clothes on ready for a call, and to listen to the bilge-water
+spouting knee-high on the galley floor.
+
+In the Bohemian Club of San Francisco there are some crack sailors. I
+know, because I heard them pass judgment on the _Snark_ during the
+process of her building. They found only one vital thing the matter
+with her, and on this they were all agreed, namely, that she could not
+run. She was all right in every particular, they said, except that I’d
+never be able to run her before it in a stiff wind and sea. “Her
+lines,” they explained enigmatically, “it is the fault of her lines.
+She simply cannot be made to run, that is all.” Well, I wish I’d only
+had those crack sailors of the Bohemian Club on board the _Snark_ the
+other night for them to see for themselves their one, vital, unanimous
+judgment absolutely reversed. Run? It is the one thing the _Snark_ does
+to perfection. Run? She ran with a sea-anchor fast for’ard and a full
+mizzen flattened down aft. Run? At the present moment, as I write this,
+we are bowling along before it, at a six-knot clip, in the north-east
+trades. Quite a tidy bit of sea is running. There is nobody at the
+wheel, the wheel is not even lashed and is set over a half-spoke
+weather helm. To be precise, the wind is north-east; the _Snark’s_
+mizzen is furled, her mainsail is over to starboard, her head-sheets
+are hauled flat: and the _Snark’s_ course is south-south-west. And yet
+there are men who have sailed the seas for forty years and who hold
+that no boat can run before it without being steered. They’ll call me a
+liar when they read this; it’s what they called Captain Slocum when he
+said the same of his _Spray_.
+
+As regards the future of the _Snark_ I’m all at sea. I don’t know. If I
+had the money or the credit, I’d build another _Snark_ that _would_
+heave to. But I am at the end of my resources. I’ve got to put up with
+the present _Snark_ or quit—and I can’t quit. So I guess I’ll have to
+try to get along with heaving the _Snark_ to stern first. I am waiting
+for the next gale to see how it will work. I think it can be done. It
+all depends on how her stern takes the seas. And who knows but that
+some wild morning on the China Sea, some gray-beard skipper will stare,
+rub his incredulous eyes and stare again, at the spectacle of a weird,
+small craft very much like the _Snark_, hove to stern-first and riding
+out the gale?
+
+P.S. On my return to California after the voyage, I learned that the
+_Snark_ was forty-three feet on the water-line instead of forty-five.
+This was due to the fact that the builder was not on speaking terms
+with the tape-line or two-foot rule.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+ADVENTURE
+
+
+No, adventure is not dead, and in spite of the steam engine and of
+Thomas Cook & Son. When the announcement of the contemplated voyage of
+the _Snark_ was made, young men of “roving disposition” proved to be
+legion, and young women as well—to say nothing of the elderly men and
+women who volunteered for the voyage. Why, among my personal friends
+there were at least half a dozen who regretted their recent or imminent
+marriages; and there was one marriage I know of that almost failed to
+come off because of the _Snark_.
+
+
+Every mail to me was burdened with the letters of applicants who were
+suffocating in the “man-stifled towns,” and it soon dawned upon me that
+a twentieth century Ulysses required a corps of stenographers to clear
+his correspondence before setting sail. No, adventure is certainly not
+dead—not while one receives letters that begin:
+
+“There is no doubt that when you read this soul-plea from a female
+stranger in New York City,” etc.; and wherein one learns, a little
+farther on, that this female stranger weighs only ninety pounds, wants
+to be cabin-boy, and “yearns to see the countries of the world.”
+
+The possession of a “passionate fondness for geography,” was the way
+one applicant expressed the wander-lust that was in him; while another
+wrote, “I am cursed with an eternal yearning to be always on the move,
+consequently this letter to you.” But best of all was the fellow who
+said he wanted to come because his feet itched.
+
+There were a few who wrote anonymously, suggesting names of friends and
+giving said friends’ qualifications; but to me there was a hint of
+something sinister in such proceedings, and I went no further in the
+matter.
+
+With two or three exceptions, all the hundreds that volunteered for my
+crew were very much in earnest. Many of them sent their photographs.
+Ninety per cent. offered to work in any capacity, and ninety-nine per
+cent. offered to work without salary. “Contemplating your voyage on the
+_Snark_,” said one, “and notwithstanding its attendant dangers, to
+accompany you (in any capacity whatever) would be the climax of my
+ambitions.” Which reminds me of the young fellow who was “seventeen
+years old and ambicious,” and who, at the end of his letter, earnestly
+requested “but please do not let this git into the papers or
+magazines.” Quite different was the one who said, “I would be willing
+to work like hell and not demand pay.” Almost all of them wanted me to
+telegraph, at their expense, my acceptance of their services; and quite
+a number offered to put up a bond to guarantee their appearance on
+sailing date.
+
+Some were rather vague in their own minds concerning the work to be
+done on the _Snark_; as, for instance, the one who wrote: “I am taking
+the liberty of writing you this note to find out if there would be any
+possibility of my going with you as one of the crew of your boat to
+make sketches and illustrations.” Several, unaware of the needful work
+on a small craft like the _Snark_, offered to serve, as one of them
+phrased it, “as assistant in filing materials collected for books and
+novels.” That’s what one gets for being prolific.
+
+“Let me give my qualifications for the job,” wrote one. “I am an orphan
+living with my uncle, who is a hot revolutionary socialist and who says
+a man without the red blood of adventure is an animated dish-rag.” Said
+another: “I can swim some, though I don’t know any of the new strokes.
+But what is more important than strokes, the water is a friend of
+mine.” “If I was put alone in a sail-boat, I could get her anywhere I
+wanted to go,” was the qualification of a third—and a better
+qualification than the one that follows, “I have also watched the
+fish-boats unload.” But possibly the prize should go to this one, who
+very subtly conveys his deep knowledge of the world and life by saying:
+“My age, in years, is twenty-two.”
+
+Then there were the simple straight-out, homely, and unadorned letters
+of young boys, lacking in the felicities of expression, it is true, but
+desiring greatly to make the voyage. These were the hardest of all to
+decline, and each time I declined one it seemed as if I had struck
+Youth a slap in the face. They were so earnest, these boys, they wanted
+so much to go. “I am sixteen but large for my age,” said one; and
+another, “Seventeen but large and healthy.” “I am as strong at least as
+the average boy of my size,” said an evident weakling. “Not afraid of
+any kind of work,” was what many said, while one in particular, to lure
+me no doubt by inexpensiveness, wrote: “I can pay my way to the Pacific
+coast, so that part would probably be acceptable to you.” “Going around
+the world is _the one thing_ I want to do,” said one, and it seemed to
+be the one thing that a few hundred wanted to do. “I have no one who
+cares whether I go or not,” was the pathetic note sounded by another.
+One had sent his photograph, and speaking of it, said, “I’m a
+homely-looking sort of a chap, but looks don’t always count.” And I am
+confident that the lad who wrote the following would have turned out
+all right: “My age is 19 years, but I am rather small and consequently
+won’t take up much room, but I’m tough as the devil.” And there was one
+thirteen-year-old applicant that Charmian and I fell in love with, and
+it nearly broke our hearts to refuse him.
+
+But it must not be imagined that most of my volunteers were boys; on
+the contrary, boys constituted a very small proportion. There were men
+and women from every walk in life. Physicians, surgeons, and dentists
+offered in large numbers to come along, and, like all the professional
+men, offered to come without pay, to serve in any capacity, and to pay,
+even, for the privilege of so serving.
+
+There was no end of compositors and reporters who wanted to come, to
+say nothing of experienced valets, chefs, and stewards. Civil engineers
+were keen on the voyage; “lady” companions galore cropped up for
+Charmian; while I was deluged with the applications of would-be private
+secretaries. Many high school and university students yearned for the
+voyage, and every trade in the working class developed a few
+applicants, the machinists, electricians, and engineers being
+especially strong on the trip. I was surprised at the number, who, in
+musty law offices, heard the call of adventure; and I was more than
+surprised by the number of elderly and retired sea captains who were
+still thralls to the sea. Several young fellows, with millions coming
+to them later on, were wild for the adventure, as were also several
+county superintendents of schools.
+
+Fathers and sons wanted to come, and many men with their wives, to say
+nothing of the young woman stenographer who wrote: “Write immediately
+if you need me. I shall bring my typewriter on the first train.” But
+the best of all is the following—observe the delicate way in which he
+worked in his wife: “I thought I would drop you a line of inquiry as to
+the possibility of making the trip with you, am 24 years of age,
+married and broke, and a trip of that kind would be just what we are
+looking for.”
+
+Come to think of it, for the average man it must be fairly difficult to
+write an honest letter of self-recommendation. One of my correspondents
+was so stumped that he began his letter with the words, “This is a hard
+task”; and, after vainly trying to describe his good points, he wound
+up with, “It is a hard job writing about one’s self.” Nevertheless,
+there was one who gave himself a most glowing and lengthy character,
+and in conclusion stated that he had greatly enjoyed writing it.
+
+“But suppose this: your cabin-boy could run your engine, could repair
+it when out of order. Suppose he could take his turn at the wheel,
+could do any carpenter or machinist work. Suppose he is strong,
+healthy, and willing to work. Would you not rather have him than a kid
+that gets seasick and can’t do anything but wash dishes?” It was
+letters of this sort that I hated to decline. The writer of it,
+self-taught in English, had been only two years in the United States,
+and, as he said, “I am not wishing to go with you to earn my living,
+but I wish to learn and see.” At the time of writing to me he was a
+designer for one of the big motor manufacturing companies; he had been
+to sea quite a bit, and had been used all his life to the handling of
+small boats.
+
+“I have a good position, but it matters not so with me as I prefer
+travelling,” wrote another. “As to salary, look at me, and if I am
+worth a dollar or two, all right, and if I am not, nothing said. As to
+my honesty and character, I shall be pleased to show you my employers.
+Never drink, no tobacco, but to be honest, I myself, after a little
+more experience, want to do a little writing.”
+
+“I can assure you that I am eminently respectable, but find other
+respectable people tiresome.” The man who wrote the foregoing certainly
+had me guessing, and I am still wondering whether or not he’d have
+found me tiresome, or what the deuce he did mean.
+
+“I have seen better days than what I am passing through to-day,” wrote
+an old salt, “but I have seen them a great deal worse also.”
+
+But the willingness to sacrifice on the part of the man who wrote the
+following was so touching that I could not accept: “I have a father, a
+mother, brothers and sisters, dear friends and a lucrative position,
+and yet I will sacrifice all to become one of your crew.”
+
+Another volunteer I could never have accepted was the finicky young
+fellow who, to show me how necessary it was that I should give him a
+chance, pointed out that “to go in the ordinary boat, be it schooner or
+steamer, would be impracticable, for I would have to mix among and live
+with the ordinary type of seamen, which as a rule is not a clean sort
+of life.”
+
+Then there was the young fellow of twenty-six, who had “run through the
+gamut of human emotions,” and had “done everything from cooking to
+attending Stanford University,” and who, at the present writing, was “A
+vaquero on a fifty-five-thousand-acre range.” Quite in contrast was the
+modesty of the one who said, “I am not aware of possessing any
+particular qualities that would be likely to recommend me to your
+consideration. But should you be impressed, you might consider it worth
+a few minutes’ time to answer. Otherwise, there’s always work at the
+trade. Not expecting, but hoping, I remain, etc.”
+
+But I have held my head in both my hands ever since, trying to figure
+out the intellectual kinship between myself and the one who wrote:
+“Long before I knew of you, I had mixed political economy and history
+and deducted therefrom many of your conclusions in concrete.”
+
+Here, in its way, is one of the best, as it is the briefest, that I
+received: “If any of the present company signed on for cruise happens
+to get cold feet and you need one more who understands boating,
+engines, etc., would like to hear from you, etc.” Here is another brief
+one: “Point blank, would like to have the job of cabin-boy on your trip
+around the world, or any other job on board. Am nineteen years old,
+weigh one hundred and forty pounds, and am an American.”
+
+And here is a good one from a man a “little over five feet long”: “When
+I read about your manly plan of sailing around the world in a small
+boat with Mrs. London, I was so much rejoiced that I felt I was
+planning it myself, and I thought to write you about filling either
+position of cook or cabin-boy myself, but for some reason I did not do
+it, and I came to Denver from Oakland to join my friend’s business last
+month, but everything is worse and unfavourable. But fortunately you
+have postponed your departure on account of the great earthquake, so I
+finally decided to propose you to let me fill either of the positions.
+I am not very strong, being a man of a little over five feet long,
+although I am of sound health and capability.”
+
+“I think I can add to your outfit an additional method of utilizing the
+power of the wind,” wrote a well-wisher, “which, while not interfering
+with ordinary sails in light breezes, will enable you to use the whole
+force of the wind in its mightiest blows, so that even when its force
+is so great that you may have to take in every inch of canvas used in
+the ordinary way, you may carry the fullest spread with my method. With
+my attachment your craft could not be UPSET.”
+
+The foregoing letter was written in San Francisco under the date of
+April 16, 1906. And two days later, on April 18, came the Great
+Earthquake. And that’s why I’ve got it in for that earthquake, for it
+made a refugee out of the man who wrote the letter, and prevented us
+from ever getting together.
+
+Many of my brother socialists objected to my making the cruise, of
+which the following is typical: “The Socialist Cause and the millions
+of oppressed victims of Capitalism has a right and claim upon your life
+and services. If, however, you persist, then, when you swallow the last
+mouthful of salt chuck you can hold before sinking, remember that we at
+least protested.”
+
+One wanderer over the world who “could, if opportunity afforded,
+recount many unusual scenes and events,” spent several pages ardently
+trying to get to the point of his letter, and at last achieved the
+following: “Still I am neglecting the point I set out to write you
+about. So will say at once that it has been stated in print that you
+and one or two others are going to take a cruize around the world a
+little fifty- or sixty-foot boat. I therefore cannot get myself to
+think that a man of your attainments and experience would attempt such
+a proceeding, which is nothing less than courting death in that way.
+And even if you were to escape for some time, your whole Person, and
+those with you would be bruised from the ceaseless motion of a craft of
+the above size, even if she were padded, a thing not usual at sea.”
+Thank you, kind friend, thank you for that qualification, “a thing not
+usual at sea.” Nor is this friend ignorant of the sea. As he says of
+himself, “I am not a land-lubber, and I have sailed every sea and
+ocean.” And he winds up his letter with: “Although not wishing to
+offend, it would be madness to take any woman outside the bay even, in
+such a craft.”
+
+And yet, at the moment of writing this, Charmian is in her state-room
+at the typewriter, Martin is cooking dinner, Tochigi is setting the
+table, Roscoe and Bert are caulking the deck, and the _Snark_ is
+steering herself some five knots an hour in a rattling good sea—and the
+_Snark_ is not padded, either.
+
+“Seeing a piece in the paper about your intended trip, would like to
+know if you would like a good crew, as there is six of us boys all good
+sailor men, with good discharges from the Navy and Merchant Service,
+all true Americans, all between the ages of 20 and 22, and at present
+are employed as riggers at the Union Iron Works, and would like very
+much to sail with you.”—It was letters like this that made me regret
+the boat was not larger.
+
+And here writes the one woman in all the world—outside of Charmian—for
+the cruise: “If you have not succeeded in getting a cook I would like
+very much to take the trip in that capacity. I am a woman of fifty,
+healthy and capable, and can do the work for the small company that
+compose the crew of the _Snark_. I am a very good cook and a very good
+sailor and something of a traveller, and the length of the voyage, if
+of ten years’ duration, would suit me better than one. References,
+etc.”
+
+Some day, when I have made a lot of money, I’m going to build a big
+ship, with room in it for a thousand volunteers. They will have to do
+all the work of navigating that boat around the world, or they’ll stay
+at home. I believe that they’ll work the boat around the world, for I
+know that Adventure is not dead. I know Adventure is not dead because I
+have had a long and intimate correspondence with Adventure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+FINDING ONE’S WAY ABOUT
+
+
+“But,” our friends objected, “how dare you go to sea without a
+navigator on board? You’re not a navigator, are you?”
+
+I had to confess that I was not a navigator, that I had never looked
+through a sextant in my life, and that I doubted if I could tell a
+sextant from a nautical almanac. And when they asked if Roscoe was a
+navigator, I shook my head. Roscoe resented this. He had glanced at the
+“Epitome,” bought for our voyage, knew how to use logarithm tables, had
+seen a sextant at some time, and, what of this and of his seafaring
+ancestry, he concluded that he did know navigation. But Roscoe was
+wrong, I still insist. When a young boy he came from Maine to
+California by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and that was the only time
+in his life that he was out of sight of land. He had never gone to a
+school of navigation, nor passed an examination in the same; nor had he
+sailed the deep sea and learned the art from some other navigator. He
+was a San Francisco Bay yachtsman, where land is always only several
+miles away and the art of navigation is never employed.
+
+So the _Snark_ started on her long voyage without a navigator. We beat
+through the Golden Gate on April 23, and headed for the Hawaiian
+Islands, twenty-one hundred sea-miles away as the gull flies. And the
+outcome was our justification. We arrived. And we arrived, furthermore,
+without any trouble, as you shall see; that is, without any trouble to
+amount to anything. To begin with, Roscoe tackled the navigating. He
+had the theory all right, but it was the first time he had ever applied
+it, as was evidenced by the erratic behaviour of the _Snark_. Not but
+what the _Snark_ was perfectly steady on the sea; the pranks she cut
+were on the chart. On a day with a light breeze she would make a jump
+on the chart that advertised “a wet sail and a flowing sheet,” and on a
+day when she just raced over the ocean, she scarcely changed her
+position on the chart. Now when one’s boat has logged six knots for
+twenty-four consecutive hours, it is incontestable that she has covered
+one hundred and forty-four miles of ocean. The ocean was all right, and
+so was the patent log; as for speed, one saw it with his own eyes.
+Therefore the thing that was not all right was the figuring that
+refused to boost the _Snark_ along over the chart. Not that this
+happened every day, but that it did happen. And it was perfectly proper
+and no more than was to be expected from a first attempt at applying a
+theory.
+
+The acquisition of the knowledge of navigation has a strange effect on
+the minds of men. The average navigator speaks of navigation with deep
+respect. To the layman navigation is a deed and awful mystery, which
+feeling has been generated in him by the deep and awful respect for
+navigation that the layman has seen displayed by navigators. I have
+known frank, ingenuous, and modest young men, open as the day, to learn
+navigation and at once betray secretiveness, reserve, and
+self-importance as if they had achieved some tremendous intellectual
+attainment. The average navigator impresses the layman as a priest of
+some holy rite. With bated breath, the amateur yachtsman navigator
+invites one in to look at his chronometer. And so it was that our
+friends suffered such apprehension at our sailing without a navigator.
+
+During the building of the _Snark_, Roscoe and I had an agreement,
+something like this: “I’ll furnish the books and instruments,” I said,
+“and do you study up navigation now. I’ll be too busy to do any
+studying. Then, when we get to sea, you can teach me what you have
+learned.” Roscoe was delighted. Furthermore, Roscoe was as frank and
+ingenuous and modest as the young men I have described. But when we got
+out to sea and he began to practise the holy rite, while I looked on
+admiringly, a change, subtle and distinctive, marked his bearing. When
+he shot the sun at noon, the glow of achievement wrapped him in lambent
+flame. When he went below, figured out his observation, and then
+returned on deck and announced our latitude and longitude, there was an
+authoritative ring in his voice that was new to all of us. But that was
+not the worst of it. He became filled with incommunicable information.
+And the more he discovered the reasons for the erratic jumps of the
+_Snark_ over the chart, and the less the _Snark_ jumped, the more
+incommunicable and holy and awful became his information. My mild
+suggestions that it was about time that I began to learn, met with no
+hearty response, with no offers on his part to help me. He displayed
+not the slightest intention of living up to our agreement.
+
+Now this was not Roscoe’s fault; he could not help it. He had merely
+gone the way of all the men who learned navigation before him. By an
+understandable and forgivable confusion of values, plus a loss of
+orientation, he felt weighted by responsibility, and experienced the
+possession of power that was like unto that of a god. All his life
+Roscoe had lived on land, and therefore in sight of land. Being
+constantly in sight of land, with landmarks to guide him, he had
+managed, with occasional difficulties, to steer his body around and
+about the earth. Now he found himself on the sea, wide-stretching,
+bounded only by the eternal circle of the sky. This circle looked
+always the same. There were no landmarks. The sun rose to the east and
+set to the west and the stars wheeled through the night. But who may
+look at the sun or the stars and say, “My place on the face of the
+earth at the present moment is four and three-quarter miles to the west
+of Jones’s Cash Store of Smithersville”? or “I know where I am now, for
+the Little Dipper informs me that Boston is three miles away on the
+second turning to the right”? And yet that was precisely what Roscoe
+did. That he was astounded by the achievement, is putting it mildly. He
+stood in reverential awe of himself; he had performed a miraculous
+feat. The act of finding himself on the face of the waters became a
+rite, and he felt himself a superior being to the rest of us who knew
+not this rite and were dependent on him for being shepherded across the
+heaving and limitless waste, the briny highroad that connects the
+continents and whereon there are no mile-stones. So, with the sextant
+he made obeisance to the sun-god, he consulted ancient tomes and tables
+of magic characters, muttered prayers in a strange tongue that sounded
+like _Indexerrorparallaxrefraction_, made cabalistic signs on paper,
+added and carried one, and then, on a piece of holy script called the
+Grail—I mean the Chart—he placed his finger on a certain space
+conspicuous for its blankness and said, “Here we are.” When we looked
+at the blank space and asked, “And where is that?” he answered in the
+cipher-code of the higher priesthood, “31-15-47 north, 133-5-30 west.”
+And we said “Oh,” and felt mighty small.
+
+So I aver, it was not Roscoe’s fault. He was like unto a god, and he
+carried us in the hollow of his hand across the blank spaces on the
+chart. I experienced a great respect for Roscoe; this respect grew so
+profound that had he commanded, “Kneel down and worship me,” I know
+that I should have flopped down on the deck and yammered. But, one day,
+there came a still small thought to me that said: “This is not a god;
+this is Roscoe, a mere man like myself. What he has done, I can do. Who
+taught him? Himself. Go you and do likewise—be your own teacher.” And
+right there Roscoe crashed, and he was high priest of the _Snark_ no
+longer. I invaded the sanctuary and demanded the ancient tomes and
+magic tables, also the prayer-wheel—the sextant, I mean.
+
+And now, in simple language. I shall describe how I taught myself
+navigation. One whole afternoon I sat in the cockpit, steering with one
+hand and studying logarithms with the other. Two afternoons, two hours
+each, I studied the general theory of navigation and the particular
+process of taking a meridian altitude. Then I took the sextant, worked
+out the index error, and shot the sun. The figuring from the data of
+this observation was child’s play. In the “Epitome” and the “Nautical
+Almanac” were scores of cunning tables, all worked out by
+mathematicians and astronomers. It was like using interest tables and
+lightning-calculator tables such as you all know. The mystery was
+mystery no longer. I put my finger on the chart and announced that that
+was where we were. I was right too, or at least I was as right as
+Roscoe, who selected a spot a quarter of a mile away from mine. Even he
+was willing to split the distance with me. I had exploded the mystery,
+and yet, such was the miracle of it, I was conscious of new power in
+me, and I felt the thrill and tickle of pride. And when Martin asked
+me, in the same humble and respectful way I had previously asked
+Roscoe, as to where we were, it was with exaltation and spiritual
+chest-throwing that I answered in the cipher-code of the higher
+priesthood and heard Martin’s self-abasing and worshipful “Oh.” As for
+Charmian, I felt that in a new way I had proved my right to her; and I
+was aware of another feeling, namely, that she was a most fortunate
+woman to have a man like me.
+
+I couldn’t help it. I tell it as a vindication of Roscoe and all the
+other navigators. The poison of power was working in me. I was not as
+other men—most other men; I knew what they did not know,—the mystery of
+the heavens, that pointed out the way across the deep. And the taste of
+power I had received drove me on. I steered at the wheel long hours
+with one hand, and studied mystery with the other. By the end of the
+week, teaching myself, I was able to do divers things. For instance, I
+shot the North Star, at night, of course; got its altitude, corrected
+for index error, dip, etc., and found our latitude. And this latitude
+agreed with the latitude of the previous noon corrected by dead
+reckoning up to that moment. Proud? Well, I was even prouder with my
+next miracle. I was going to turn in at nine o’clock. I worked out the
+problem, self-instructed, and learned what star of the first magnitude
+would be passing the meridian around half-past eight. This star proved
+to be Alpha Crucis. I had never heard of the star before. I looked it
+up on the star map. It was one of the stars of the Southern Cross.
+What! thought I; have we been sailing with the Southern Cross in the
+sky of nights and never known it? Dolts that we are! Gudgeons and
+moles! I couldn’t believe it. I went over the problem again, and
+verified it. Charmian had the wheel from eight till ten that evening. I
+told her to keep her eyes open and look due south for the Southern
+Cross. And when the stars came out, there shone the Southern Cross low
+on the horizon. Proud? No medicine man nor high priest was ever
+prouder. Furthermore, with the prayer-wheel I shot Alpha Crucis and
+from its altitude worked out our latitude. And still furthermore, I
+shot the North Star, too, and it agreed with what had been told me by
+the Southern Cross. Proud? Why, the language of the stars was mine, and
+I listened and heard them telling me my way over the deep.
+
+Proud? I was a worker of miracles. I forgot how easily I had taught
+myself from the printed page. I forgot that all the work (and a
+tremendous work, too) had been done by the masterminds before me, the
+astronomers and mathematicians, who had discovered and elaborated the
+whole science of navigation and made the tables in the “Epitome.” I
+remembered only the everlasting miracle of it—that I had listened to
+the voices of the stars and been told my place upon the highway of the
+sea. Charmian did not know, Martin did not know, Tochigi, the
+cabin-boy, did not know. But I told them. I was God’s messenger. I
+stood between them and infinity. I translated the high celestial speech
+into terms of their ordinary understanding. We were heaven-directed,
+and it was I who could read the sign-post of the sky!—I! I!
+
+And now, in a cooler moment, I hasten to blab the whole simplicity of
+it, to blab on Roscoe and the other navigators and the rest of the
+priesthood, all for fear that I may become even as they, secretive,
+immodest, and inflated with self-esteem. And I want to say this now:
+any young fellow with ordinary gray matter, ordinary education, and
+with the slightest trace of the student-mind, can get the books, and
+charts, and instruments and teach himself navigation. Now I must not be
+misunderstood. Seamanship is an entirely different matter. It is not
+learned in a day, nor in many days; it requires years. Also, navigating
+by dead reckoning requires long study and practice. But navigating by
+observations of the sun, moon, and stars, thanks to the astronomers and
+mathematicians, is child’s play. Any average young fellow can teach
+himself in a week. And yet again I must not be misunderstood. I do not
+mean to say that at the end of a week a young fellow could take charge
+of a fifteen-thousand-ton steamer, driving twenty knots an hour through
+the brine, racing from land to land, fair weather and foul, clear sky
+or cloudy, steering by degrees on the compass card and making landfalls
+with most amazing precision. But what I do mean is just this: the
+average young fellow I have described can get into a staunch sail-boat
+and put out across the ocean, without knowing anything about
+navigation, and at the end of the week he will know enough to know
+where he is on the chart. He will be able to take a meridian
+observation with fair accuracy, and from that observation, with ten
+minutes of figuring, work out his latitude and longitude. And, carrying
+neither freight nor passengers, being under no press to reach his
+destination, he can jog comfortably along, and if at any time he doubts
+his own navigation and fears an imminent landfall, he can heave to all
+night and proceed in the morning.
+
+Joshua Slocum sailed around the world a few years ago in a
+thirty-seven-foot boat all by himself. I shall never forget, in his
+narrative of the voyage, where he heartily indorsed the idea of young
+men, in similar small boats, making similar voyage. I promptly indorsed
+his idea, and so heartily that I took my wife along. While it certainly
+makes a Cook’s tour look like thirty cents, on top of that, amid on top
+of the fun and pleasure, it is a splendid education for a young man—oh,
+not a mere education in the things of the world outside, of lands, and
+peoples, and climates, but an education in the world inside, an
+education in one’s self, a chance to learn one’s own self, to get on
+speaking terms with one’s soul. Then there is the training and the
+disciplining of it. First, naturally, the young fellow will learn his
+limitations; and next, inevitably, he will proceed to press back those
+limitations. And he cannot escape returning from such a voyage a bigger
+and better man. And as for sport, it is a king’s sport, taking one’s
+self around the world, doing it with one’s own hands, depending on no
+one but one’s self, and at the end, back at the starting-point,
+contemplating with inner vision the planet rushing through space, and
+saying, “I did it; with my own hands I did it. I went clear around that
+whirling sphere, and I can travel alone, without any nurse of a
+sea-captain to guide my steps across the seas. I may not fly to other
+stars, but of this star I myself am master.”
+
+As I write these lines I lift my eyes and look seaward. I am on the
+beach of Waikiki on the island of Oahu. Far, in the azure sky, the
+trade-wind clouds drift low over the blue-green turquoise of the deep
+sea. Nearer, the sea is emerald and light olive-green. Then comes the
+reef, where the water is all slaty purple flecked with red. Still
+nearer are brighter greens and tans, lying in alternate stripes and
+showing where sandbeds lie between the living coral banks. Through and
+over and out of these wonderful colours tumbles and thunders a
+magnificent surf. As I say, I lift my eyes to all this, and through the
+white crest of a breaker suddenly appears a dark figure, erect, a
+man-fish or a sea-god, on the very forward face of the crest where the
+top falls over and down, driving in toward shore, buried to his loins
+in smoking spray, caught up by the sea and flung landward, bodily, a
+quarter of a mile. It is a Kanaka on a surf-board. And I know that when
+I have finished these lines I shall be out in that riot of colour and
+pounding surf, trying to bit those breakers even as he, and failing as
+he never failed, but living life as the best of us may live it. And the
+picture of that coloured sea and that flying sea-god Kanaka becomes
+another reason for the young man to go west, and farther west, beyond
+the Baths of Sunset, and still west till he arrives home again.
+
+But to return. Please do not think that I already know it all. I know
+only the rudiments of navigation. There is a vast deal yet for me to
+learn. On the _Snark_ there is a score of fascinating books on
+navigation waiting for me. There is the danger-angle of Lecky, there is
+the line of Sumner, which, when you know least of all where you are,
+shows most conclusively where you are, and where you are not. There are
+dozens and dozens of methods of finding one’s location on the deep, and
+one can work years before he masters it all in all its fineness.
+
+Even in the little we did learn there were slips that accounted for the
+apparently antic behaviour of the _Snark_. On Thursday, May 16, for
+instance, the trade wind failed us. During the twenty-four hours that
+ended Friday at noon, by dead reckoning we had not sailed twenty miles.
+Yet here are our positions, at noon, for the two days, worked out from
+our observations:
+Thursday
+20°
+57′
+9″
+N
+
+152°
+40′
+30″
+W
+Friday
+21°
+15′
+33″
+N
+
+154°
+12′
+
+
+
+The difference between the two positions was something like eighty
+miles. Yet we knew we had not travelled twenty miles. Now our figuring
+was all right. We went over it several times. What was wrong was the
+observations we had taken. To take a correct observation requires
+practice and skill, and especially so on a small craft like the
+_Snark_. The violently moving boat and the closeness of the observer’s
+eye to the surface of the water are to blame. A big wave that lifts up
+a mile off is liable to steal the horizon away.
+
+But in our particular case there was another perturbing factor. The
+sun, in its annual march north through the heavens, was increasing its
+declination. On the 19th parallel of north latitude in the middle of
+May the sun is nearly overhead. The angle of arc was between
+eighty-eight and eighty-nine degrees. Had it been ninety degrees it
+would have been straight overhead. It was on another day that we
+learned a few things about taking the altitude of the almost
+perpendicular sun. Roscoe started in drawing the sun down to the
+eastern horizon, and he stayed by that point of the compass despite the
+fact that the sun would pass the meridian to the south. I, on the other
+hand, started in to draw the sun down to south-east and strayed away to
+the south-west. You see, we were teaching ourselves. As a result, at
+twenty-five minutes past twelve by the ship’s time, I called twelve
+o’clock by the sun. Now this signified that we had changed our location
+on the face of the world by twenty-five minutes, which was equal to
+something like six degrees of longitude, or three hundred and fifty
+miles. This showed the _Snark_ had travelled fifteen knots per hour for
+twenty-four consecutive hours—and we had never noticed it! It was
+absurd and grotesque. But Roscoe, still looking east, averred that it
+was not yet twelve o’clock. He was bent on giving us a twenty-knot
+clip. Then we began to train our sextants rather wildly all around the
+horizon, and wherever we looked, there was the sun, puzzlingly close to
+the sky-line, sometimes above it and sometimes below it. In one
+direction the sun was proclaiming morning, in another direction it was
+proclaiming afternoon. The sun was all right—we knew that; therefore we
+were all wrong. And the rest of the afternoon we spent in the cockpit
+reading up the matter in the books and finding out what was wrong. We
+missed the observation that day, but we didn’t the next. We had
+learned.
+
+And we learned well, better than for a while we thought we had. At the
+beginning of the second dog-watch one evening, Charmian and I sat down
+on the forecastle-head for a rubber of cribbage. Chancing to glance
+ahead, I saw cloud-capped mountains rising from the sea. We were
+rejoiced at the sight of land, but I was in despair over our
+navigation. I thought we had learned something, yet our position at
+noon, plus what we had run since, did not put us within a hundred miles
+of land. But there was the land, fading away before our eyes in the
+fires of sunset. The land was all right. There was no disputing it.
+Therefore our navigation was all wrong. But it wasn’t. That land we saw
+was the summit of Haleakala, the House of the Sun, the greatest extinct
+volcano in the world. It towered ten thousand feet above the sea, and
+it was all of a hundred miles away. We sailed all night at a seven-knot
+clip, and in the morning the House of the Sun was still before us, and
+it took a few more hours of sailing to bring it abreast of us. “That
+island is Maui,” we said, verifying by the chart. “That next island
+sticking out is Molokai, where the lepers are. And the island next to
+that is Oahu. There is Makapuu Head now. We’ll be in Honolulu
+to-morrow. Our navigation is all right.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE FIRST LANDFALL
+
+
+“It will not be so monotonous at sea,” I promised my fellow-voyagers on
+the _Snark_. “The sea is filled with life. It is so populous that every
+day something new is happening. Almost as soon as we pass through the
+Golden Gate and head south we’ll pick up with the flying fish. We’ll be
+having them fried for breakfast. We’ll be catching bonita and dolphin,
+and spearing porpoises from the bowsprit. And then there are the
+sharks—sharks without end.”
+
+We passed through the Golden Gate and headed south. We dropped the
+mountains of California beneath the horizon, and daily the surf grew
+warmer. But there were no flying fish, no bonita and dolphin. The ocean
+was bereft of life. Never had I sailed on so forsaken a sea. Always,
+before, in the same latitudes, had I encountered flying fish.
+
+“Never mind,” I said. “Wait till we get off the coast of Southern
+California. Then we’ll pick up the flying fish.”
+
+We came abreast of Southern California, abreast of the Peninsula of
+Lower California, abreast of the coast of Mexico; and there were no
+flying fish. Nor was there anything else. No life moved. As the days
+went by the absence of life became almost uncanny.
+
+“Never mind,” I said. “When we do pick up with the flying fish we’ll
+pick up with everything else. The flying fish is the staff of life for
+all the other breeds. Everything will come in a bunch when we find the
+flying fish.”
+
+When I should have headed the _Snark_ south-west for Hawaii, I still
+held her south. I was going to find those flying fish. Finally the time
+came when, if I wanted to go to Honolulu, I should have headed the
+_Snark_ due west, instead of which I kept her south. Not until latitude
+19° did we encounter the first flying fish. He was very much alone. I
+saw him. Five other pairs of eager eyes scanned the sea all day, but
+never saw another. So sparse were the flying fish that nearly a week
+more elapsed before the last one on board saw his first flying fish. As
+for the dolphin, bonita, porpoise, and all the other hordes of
+life—there weren’t any.
+
+Not even a shark broke surface with his ominous dorsal fin. Bert took a
+dip daily under the bowsprit, hanging on to the stays and dragging his
+body through the water. And daily he canvassed the project of letting
+go and having a decent swim. I did my best to dissuade him. But with
+him I had lost all standing as an authority on sea life.
+
+“If there are sharks,” he demanded, “why don’t they show up?”
+
+I assured him that if he really did let go and have a swim the sharks
+would promptly appear. This was a bluff on my part. I didn’t believe
+it. It lasted as a deterrent for two days. The third day the wind fell
+calm, and it was pretty hot. The _Snark_ was moving a knot an hour.
+Bert dropped down under the bowsprit and let go. And now behold the
+perversity of things. We had sailed across two thousand miles and more
+of ocean and had met with no sharks. Within five minutes after Bert
+finished his swim, the fin of a shark was cutting the surface in
+circles around the _Snark_.
+
+There was something wrong about that shark. It bothered me. It had no
+right to be there in that deserted ocean. The more I thought about it,
+the more incomprehensible it became. But two hours later we sighted
+land and the mystery was cleared up. He had come to us from the land,
+and not from the uninhabited deep. He had presaged the landfall. He was
+the messenger of the land.
+
+Twenty-seven days out from San Francisco we arrived at the island of
+Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. In the early morning we drifted around
+Diamond Head into full view of Honolulu; and then the ocean burst
+suddenly into life. Flying fish cleaved the air in glittering
+squadrons. In five minutes we saw more of them than during the whole
+voyage. Other fish, large ones, of various sorts, leaped into the air.
+There was life everywhere, on sea and shore. We could see the masts and
+funnels of the shipping in the harbour, the hotels and bathers along
+the beach at Waikiki, the smoke rising from the dwelling-houses high up
+on the volcanic slopes of the Punch Bowl and Tantalus. The custom-house
+tug was racing toward us and a big school of porpoises got under our
+bow and began cutting the most ridiculous capers. The port doctor’s
+launch came charging out at us, and a big sea turtle broke the surface
+with his back and took a look at us. Never was there such a burgeoning
+of life. Strange faces were on our decks, strange voices were speaking,
+and copies of that very morning’s newspaper, with cable reports from
+all the world, were thrust before our eyes. Incidentally, we read that
+the _Snark_ and all hands had been lost at sea, and that she had been a
+very unseaworthy craft anyway. And while we read this information a
+wireless message was being received by the congressional party on the
+summit of Haleakala announcing the safe arrival of the _Snark_.
+
+It was the _Snark’s_ first landfall—and such a landfall! For
+twenty-seven days we had been on the deserted deep, and it was pretty
+hard to realize that there was so much life in the world. We were made
+dizzy by it. We could not take it all in at once. We were like awakened
+Rip Van Winkles, and it seemed to us that we were dreaming. On one side
+the azure sea lapped across the horizon into the azure sky; on the
+other side the sea lifted itself into great breakers of emerald that
+fell in a snowy smother upon a white coral beach. Beyond the beach,
+green plantations of sugar-cane undulated gently upward to steeper
+slopes, which, in turn, became jagged volcanic crests, drenched with
+tropic showers and capped by stupendous masses of trade-wind clouds. At
+any rate, it was a most beautiful dream. The _Snark_ turned and headed
+directly in toward the emerald surf, till it lifted and thundered on
+either hand; and on either hand, scarce a biscuit-toss away, the reef
+showed its long teeth, pale green and menacing.
+
+Abruptly the land itself, in a riot of olive-greens of a thousand hues,
+reached out its arms and folded the _Snark_ in. There was no perilous
+passage through the reef, no emerald surf and azure sea—nothing but a
+warm soft land, a motionless lagoon, and tiny beaches on which swam
+dark-skinned tropic children. The sea had disappeared. The _Snark’s_
+anchor rumbled the chain through the hawse-pipe, and we lay without
+movement on a “lineless, level floor.” It was all so beautiful and
+strange that we could not accept it as real. On the chart this place
+was called Pearl Harbour, but we called it Dream Harbour.
+
+A launch came off to us; in it were members of the Hawaiian Yacht Club,
+come to greet us and make us welcome, with true Hawaiian hospitality,
+to all they had. They were ordinary men, flesh and blood and all the
+rest; but they did not tend to break our dreaming. Our last memories of
+men were of United States marshals and of panicky little merchants with
+rusty dollars for souls, who, in a reeking atmosphere of soot and
+coal-dust, laid grimy hands upon the _Snark_ and held her back from her
+world adventure. But these men who came to meet us were clean men. A
+healthy tan was on their cheeks, and their eyes were not dazzled and
+bespectacled from gazing overmuch at glittering dollar-heaps. No, they
+merely verified the dream. They clinched it with their unsmirched
+souls.
+
+So we went ashore with them across a level flashing sea to the
+wonderful green land. We landed on a tiny wharf, and the dream became
+more insistent; for know that for twenty-seven days we had been rocking
+across the ocean on the tiny _Snark_. Not once in all those
+twenty-seven days had we known a moment’s rest, a moment’s cessation
+from movement. This ceaseless movement had become ingrained. Body and
+brain we had rocked and rolled so long that when we climbed out on the
+tiny wharf kept on rocking and rolling. This, naturally, we attributed
+to the wharf. It was projected psychology. I spraddled along the wharf
+and nearly fell into the water. I glanced at Charmian, and the way she
+walked made me sad. The wharf had all the seeming of a ship’s deck. It
+lifted, tilted, heaved and sank; and since there were no handrails on
+it, it kept Charmian and me busy avoiding falling in. I never saw such
+a preposterous little wharf. Whenever I watched it closely, it refused
+to roll; but as soon as I took my attention off from it, away it went,
+just like the _Snark_. Once, I caught it in the act, just as it
+upended, and I looked down the length of it for two hundred feet, and
+for all the world it was like the deck of a ship ducking into a huge
+head-sea.
+
+At last, however, supported by our hosts, we negotiated the wharf and
+gained the land. But the land was no better. The very first thing it
+did was to tilt up on one side, and far as the eye could see I watched
+it tilt, clear to its jagged, volcanic backbone, and I saw the clouds
+above tilt, too. This was no stable, firm-founded land, else it would
+not cut such capers. It was like all the rest of our landfall, unreal.
+It was a dream. At any moment, like shifting vapour, it might dissolve
+away. The thought entered my head that perhaps it was my fault, that my
+head was swimming or that something I had eaten had disagreed with me.
+But I glanced at Charmian and her sad walk, and even as I glanced I saw
+her stagger and bump into the yachtsman by whose side she walked. I
+spoke to her, and she complained about the antic behaviour of the land.
+
+We walked across a spacious, wonderful lawn and down an avenue of royal
+palms, and across more wonderful lawn in the gracious shade of stately
+trees. The air was filled with the songs of birds and was heavy with
+rich warm fragrances—wafture from great lilies, and blazing blossoms of
+hibiscus, and other strange gorgeous tropic flowers. The dream was
+becoming almost impossibly beautiful to us who for so long had seen
+naught but the restless, salty sea. Charmian reached out her hand and
+clung to me—for support against the ineffable beauty of it, thought I.
+But no. As I supported her I braced my legs, while the flowers and
+lawns reeled and swung around me. It was like an earthquake, only it
+quickly passed without doing any harm. It was fairly difficult to catch
+the land playing these tricks. As long as I kept my mind on it, nothing
+happened. But as soon as my attention was distracted, away it went, the
+whole panorama, swinging and heaving and tilting at all sorts of
+angles. Once, however, I turned my head suddenly and caught that
+stately line of royal palms swinging in a great arc across the sky. But
+it stopped, just as soon as I caught it, and became a placid dream
+again.
+
+Next we came to a house of coolness, with great sweeping veranda, where
+lotus-eaters might dwell. Windows and doors were wide open to the
+breeze, and the songs and fragrances blew lazily in and out. The walls
+were hung with tapa-cloths. Couches with grass-woven covers invited
+everywhere, and there was a grand piano, that played, I was sure,
+nothing more exciting than lullabies. Servants—Japanese maids in native
+costume—drifted around and about, noiselessly, like butterflies.
+Everything was preternaturally cool. Here was no blazing down of a
+tropic sun upon an unshrinking sea. It was too good to be true. But it
+was not real. It was a dream-dwelling. I knew, for I turned suddenly
+and caught the grand piano cavorting in a spacious corner of the room.
+I did not say anything, for just then we were being received by a
+gracious woman, a beautiful Madonna, clad in flowing white and shod
+with sandals, who greeted us as though she had known us always.
+
+We sat at table on the lotus-eating veranda, served by the butterfly
+maids, and ate strange foods and partook of a nectar called poi. But
+the dream threatened to dissolve. It shimmered and trembled like an
+iridescent bubble about to break. I was just glancing out at the green
+grass and stately trees and blossoms of hibiscus, when suddenly I felt
+the table move. The table, and the Madonna across from me, and the
+veranda of the lotus-eaters, the scarlet hibiscus, the greensward and
+the trees—all lifted and tilted before my eyes, and heaved and sank
+down into the trough of a monstrous sea. I gripped my chair
+convulsively and held on. I had a feeling that I was holding on to the
+dream as well as the chair. I should not have been surprised had the
+sea rushed in and drowned all that fairyland and had I found myself at
+the wheel of the _Snark_ just looking up casually from the study of
+logarithms. But the dream persisted. I looked covertly at the Madonna
+and her husband. They evidenced no perturbation. The dishes had not
+moved upon the table. The hibiscus and trees and grass were still
+there. Nothing had changed. I partook of more nectar, and the dream was
+more real than ever.
+
+“Will you have some iced tea?” asked the Madonna; and then her side of
+the table sank down gently and I said yes to her at an angle of
+forty-five degrees.
+
+“Speaking of sharks,” said her husband, “up at Niihau there was a man—”
+And at that moment the table lifted and heaved, and I gazed upward at
+him at an angle of forty-five degrees.
+
+So the luncheon went on, and I was glad that I did not have to bear the
+affliction of watching Charmian walk. Suddenly, however, a mysterious
+word of fear broke from the lips of the lotus-eaters. “Ah, ah,” thought
+I, “now the dream goes glimmering.” I clutched the chair desperately,
+resolved to drag back to the reality of the _Snark_ some tangible
+vestige of this lotus land. I felt the whole dream lurching and pulling
+to be gone. Just then the mysterious word of fear was repeated. It
+sounded like _Reporters_. I looked and saw three of them coming across
+the lawn. Oh, blessed reporters! Then the dream was indisputably real
+after all. I glanced out across the shining water and saw the _Snark_
+at anchor, and I remembered that I had sailed in her from San Francisco
+to Hawaii, and that this was Pearl Harbour, and that even then I was
+acknowledging introductions and saying, in reply to the first question,
+“Yes, we had delightful weather all the way down.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+A ROYAL SPORT
+
+
+That is what it is, a royal sport for the natural kings of earth. The
+grass grows right down to the water at Waikiki Beach, and within fifty
+feet of the everlasting sea. The trees also grow down to the salty edge
+of things, and one sits in their shade and looks seaward at a majestic
+surf thundering in on the beach to one’s very feet. Half a mile out,
+where is the reef, the white-headed combers thrust suddenly skyward out
+of the placid turquoise-blue and come rolling in to shore. One after
+another they come, a mile long, with smoking crests, the white
+battalions of the infinite army of the sea. And one sits and listens to
+the perpetual roar, and watches the unending procession, and feels tiny
+and fragile before this tremendous force expressing itself in fury and
+foam and sound. Indeed, one feels microscopically small, and the
+thought that one may wrestle with this sea raises in one’s imagination
+a thrill of apprehension, almost of fear. Why, they are a mile long,
+these bull-mouthed monsters, and they weigh a thousand tons, and they
+charge in to shore faster than a man can run. What chance? No chance at
+all, is the verdict of the shrinking ego; and one sits, and looks, and
+listens, and thinks the grass and the shade are a pretty good place in
+which to be.
+
+And suddenly, out there where a big smoker lifts skyward, rising like a
+sea-god from out of the welter of spume and churning white, on the
+giddy, toppling, overhanging and downfalling, precarious crest appears
+the dark head of a man. Swiftly he rises through the rushing white. His
+black shoulders, his chest, his loins, his limbs—all is abruptly
+projected on one’s vision. Where but the moment before was only the
+wide desolation and invincible roar, is now a man, erect,
+full-statured, not struggling frantically in that wild movement, not
+buried and crushed and buffeted by those mighty monsters, but standing
+above them all, calm and superb, poised on the giddy summit, his feet
+buried in the churning foam, the salt smoke rising to his knees, and
+all the rest of him in the free air and flashing sunlight, and he is
+flying through the air, flying forward, flying fast as the surge on
+which he stands. He is a Mercury—a brown Mercury. His heels are winged,
+and in them is the swiftness of the sea. In truth, from out of the sea
+he has leaped upon the back of the sea, and he is riding the sea that
+roars and bellows and cannot shake him from its back. But no frantic
+outreaching and balancing is his. He is impassive, motionless as a
+statue carved suddenly by some miracle out of the sea’s depth from
+which he rose. And straight on toward shore he flies on his winged
+heels and the white crest of the breaker. There is a wild burst of
+foam, a long tumultuous rushing sound as the breaker falls futile and
+spent on the beach at your feet; and there, at your feet steps calmly
+ashore a Kanaka, burnt, golden and brown by the tropic sun. Several
+minutes ago he was a speck a quarter of a mile away. He has “bitted the
+bull-mouthed breaker” and ridden it in, and the pride in the feat shows
+in the carriage of his magnificent body as he glances for a moment
+carelessly at you who sit in the shade of the shore. He is a Kanaka—and
+more, he is a man, a member of the kingly species that has mastered
+matter and the brutes and lorded it over creation.
+
+And one sits and thinks of Tristram’s last wrestle with the sea on that
+fatal morning; and one thinks further, to the fact that that Kanaka has
+done what Tristram never did, and that he knows a joy of the sea that
+Tristram never knew. And still further one thinks. It is all very well,
+sitting here in cool shade of the beach, but you are a man, one of the
+kingly species, and what that Kanaka can do, you can do yourself. Go
+to. Strip off your clothes that are a nuisance in this mellow clime.
+Get in and wrestle with the sea; wing your heels with the skill and
+power that reside in you; bit the sea’s breakers, master them, and ride
+upon their backs as a king should.
+
+And that is how it came about that I tackled surf-riding. And now that
+I have tackled it, more than ever do I hold it to be a royal sport. But
+first let me explain the physics of it. A wave is a communicated
+agitation. The water that composes the body of a wave does not move. If
+it did, when a stone is thrown into a pond and the ripples spread away
+in an ever widening circle, there would appear at the centre an ever
+increasing hole. No, the water that composes the body of a wave is
+stationary. Thus, you may watch a particular portion of the ocean’s
+surface and you will see the same water rise and fall a thousand times
+to the agitation communicated by a thousand successive waves. Now
+imagine this communicated agitation moving shoreward. As the bottom
+shoals, the lower portion of the wave strikes land first and is
+stopped. But water is fluid, and the upper portion has not struck
+anything, wherefore it keeps on communicating its agitation, keeps on
+going. And when the top of the wave keeps on going, while the bottom of
+it lags behind, something is bound to happen. The bottom of the wave
+drops out from under and the top of the wave falls over, forward, and
+down, curling and cresting and roaring as it does so. It is the bottom
+of a wave striking against the top of the land that is the cause of all
+surfs.
+
+But the transformation from a smooth undulation to a breaker is not
+abrupt except where the bottom shoals abruptly. Say the bottom shoals
+gradually for from quarter of a mile to a mile, then an equal distance
+will be occupied by the transformation. Such a bottom is that off the
+beach of Waikiki, and it produces a splendid surf-riding surf. One
+leaps upon the back of a breaker just as it begins to break, and stays
+on it as it continues to break all the way in to shore.
+
+And now to the particular physics of surf-riding. Get out on a flat
+board, six feet long, two feet wide, and roughly oval in shape. Lie
+down upon it like a small boy on a coaster and paddle with your hands
+out to deep water, where the waves begin to crest. Lie out there
+quietly on the board. Sea after sea breaks before, behind, and under
+and over you, and rushes in to shore, leaving you behind. When a wave
+crests, it gets steeper. Imagine yourself, on your hoard, on the face
+of that steep slope. If it stood still, you would slide down just as a
+boy slides down a hill on his coaster. “But,” you object, “the wave
+doesn’t stand still.” Very true, but the water composing the wave
+stands still, and there you have the secret. If ever you start sliding
+down the face of that wave, you’ll keep on sliding and you’ll never
+reach the bottom. Please don’t laugh. The face of that wave may be only
+six feet, yet you can slide down it a quarter of a mile, or half a
+mile, and not reach the bottom. For, see, since a wave is only a
+communicated agitation or impetus, and since the water that composes a
+wave is changing every instant, new water is rising into the wave as
+fast as the wave travels. You slide down this new water, and yet remain
+in your old position on the wave, sliding down the still newer water
+that is rising and forming the wave. You slide precisely as fast as the
+wave travels. If it travels fifteen miles an hour, you slide fifteen
+miles an hour. Between you and shore stretches a quarter of mile of
+water. As the wave travels, this water obligingly heaps itself into the
+wave, gravity does the rest, and down you go, sliding the whole length
+of it. If you still cherish the notion, while sliding, that the water
+is moving with you, thrust your arms into it and attempt to paddle; you
+will find that you have to be remarkably quick to get a stroke, for
+that water is dropping astern just as fast as you are rushing ahead.
+
+And now for another phase of the physics of surf-riding. All rules have
+their exceptions. It is true that the water in a wave does not travel
+forward. But there is what may be called the send of the sea. The water
+in the overtoppling crest does move forward, as you will speedily
+realize if you are slapped in the face by it, or if you are caught
+under it and are pounded by one mighty blow down under the surface
+panting and gasping for half a minute. The water in the top of a wave
+rests upon the water in the bottom of the wave. But when the bottom of
+the wave strikes the land, it stops, while the top goes on. It no
+longer has the bottom of the wave to hold it up. Where was solid water
+beneath it, is now air, and for the first time it feels the grip of
+gravity, and down it falls, at the same time being torn asunder from
+the lagging bottom of the wave and flung forward. And it is because of
+this that riding a surf-board is something more than a mere placid
+sliding down a hill. In truth, one is caught up and hurled shoreward as
+by some Titan’s hand.
+
+I deserted the cool shade, put on a swimming suit, and got hold of a
+surf-board. It was too small a board. But I didn’t know, and nobody
+told me. I joined some little Kanaka boys in shallow water, where the
+breakers were well spent and small—a regular kindergarten school. I
+watched the little Kanaka boys. When a likely-looking breaker came
+along, they flopped upon their stomachs on their boards, kicked like
+mad with their feet, and rode the breaker in to the beach. I tried to
+emulate them. I watched them, tried to do everything that they did, and
+failed utterly. The breaker swept past, and I was not on it. I tried
+again and again. I kicked twice as madly as they did, and failed. Half
+a dozen would be around. We would all leap on our boards in front of a
+good breaker. Away our feet would churn like the stern-wheels of river
+steamboats, and away the little rascals would scoot while I remained in
+disgrace behind.
+
+I tried for a solid hour, and not one wave could I persuade to boost me
+shoreward. And then arrived a friend, Alexander Hume Ford, a globe
+trotter by profession, bent ever on the pursuit of sensation. And he
+had found it at Waikiki. Heading for Australia, he had stopped off for
+a week to find out if there were any thrills in surf-riding, and he had
+become wedded to it. He had been at it every day for a month and could
+not yet see any symptoms of the fascination lessening on him. He spoke
+with authority.
+
+“Get off that board,” he said. “Chuck it away at once. Look at the way
+you’re trying to ride it. If ever the nose of that board hits bottom,
+you’ll be disembowelled. Here, take my board. It’s a man’s size.”
+
+I am always humble when confronted by knowledge. Ford knew. He showed
+me how properly to mount his board. Then he waited for a good breaker,
+gave me a shove at the right moment, and started me in. Ah, delicious
+moment when I felt that breaker grip and fling me.
+
+On I dashed, a hundred and fifty feet, and subsided with the breaker on
+the sand. From that moment I was lost. I waded back to Ford with his
+board. It was a large one, several inches thick, and weighed all of
+seventy-five pounds. He gave me advice, much of it. He had had no one
+to teach him, and all that he had laboriously learned in several weeks
+he communicated to me in half an hour. I really learned by proxy. And
+inside of half an hour I was able to start myself and ride in. I did it
+time after time, and Ford applauded and advised. For instance, he told
+me to get just so far forward on the board and no farther. But I must
+have got some farther, for as I came charging in to land, that
+miserable board poked its nose down to bottom, stopped abruptly, and
+turned a somersault, at the same time violently severing our relations.
+I was tossed through the air like a chip and buried ignominiously under
+the downfalling breaker. And I realized that if it hadn’t been for
+Ford, I’d have been disembowelled. That particular risk is part of the
+sport, Ford says. Maybe he’ll have it happen to him before he leaves
+Waikiki, and then, I feel confident, his yearning for sensation will be
+satisfied for a time.
+
+When all is said and done, it is my steadfast belief that homicide is
+worse than suicide, especially if, in the former case, it is a woman.
+Ford saved me from being a homicide. “Imagine your legs are a rudder,”
+he said. “Hold them close together, and steer with them.” A few minutes
+later I came charging in on a comber. As I neared the beach, there, in
+the water, up to her waist, dead in front of me, appeared a woman. How
+was I to stop that comber on whose back I was? It looked like a dead
+woman. The board weighed seventy-five pounds, I weighed a hundred and
+sixty-five. The added weight had a velocity of fifteen miles per hour.
+The board and I constituted a projectile. I leave it to the physicists
+to figure out the force of the impact upon that poor, tender woman. And
+then I remembered my guardian angel, Ford. “Steer with your legs!” rang
+through my brain. I steered with my legs, I steered sharply, abruptly,
+with all my legs and with all my might. The board sheered around
+broadside on the crest. Many things happened simultaneously. The wave
+gave me a passing buffet, a light tap as the taps of waves go, but a
+tap sufficient to knock me off the board and smash me down through the
+rushing water to bottom, with which I came in violent collision and
+upon which I was rolled over and over. I got my head out for a breath
+of air and then gained my feet. There stood the woman before me. I felt
+like a hero. I had saved her life. And she laughed at me. It was not
+hysteria. She had never dreamed of her danger. Anyway, I solaced
+myself, it was not I but Ford that saved her, and I didn’t have to feel
+like a hero. And besides, that leg-steering was great. In a few minutes
+more of practice I was able to thread my way in and out past several
+bathers and to remain on top my breaker instead of going under it.
+
+“To-morrow,” Ford said, “I am going to take you out into the blue
+water.”
+
+I looked seaward where he pointed, and saw the great smoking combers
+that made the breakers I had been riding look like ripples. I don’t
+know what I might have said had I not recollected just then that I was
+one of a kingly species. So all that I did say was, “All right, I’ll
+tackle them to-morrow.”
+
+The water that rolls in on Waikiki Beach is just the same as the water
+that laves the shores of all the Hawaiian Islands; and in ways,
+especially from the swimmer’s standpoint, it is wonderful water. It is
+cool enough to be comfortable, while it is warm enough to permit a
+swimmer to stay in all day without experiencing a chill. Under the sun
+or the stars, at high noon or at midnight, in midwinter or in
+midsummer, it does not matter when, it is always the same
+temperature—not too warm, not too cold, just right. It is wonderful
+water, salt as old ocean itself, pure and crystal-clear. When the
+nature of the water is considered, it is not so remarkable after all
+that the Kanakas are one of the most expert of swimming races.
+
+So it was, next morning, when Ford came along, that I plunged into the
+wonderful water for a swim of indeterminate length. Astride of our
+surf-boards, or, rather, flat down upon them on our stomachs, we
+paddled out through the kindergarten where the little Kanaka boys were
+at play. Soon we were out in deep water where the big smokers came
+roaring in. The mere struggle with them, facing them and paddling
+seaward over them and through them, was sport enough in itself. One had
+to have his wits about him, for it was a battle in which mighty blows
+were struck, on one side, and in which cunning was used on the other
+side—a struggle between insensate force and intelligence. I soon
+learned a bit. When a breaker curled over my head, for a swift instant
+I could see the light of day through its emerald body; then down would
+go my head, and I would clutch the board with all my strength. Then
+would come the blow, and to the onlooker on shore I would be blotted
+out. In reality the board and I have passed through the crest and
+emerged in the respite of the other side. I should not recommend those
+smashing blows to an invalid or delicate person. There is weight behind
+them, and the impact of the driven water is like a sandblast. Sometimes
+one passes through half a dozen combers in quick succession, and it is
+just about that time that he is liable to discover new merits in the
+stable land and new reasons for being on shore.
+
+Out there in the midst of such a succession of big smoky ones, a third
+man was added to our party, one Freeth. Shaking the water from my eyes
+as I emerged from one wave and peered ahead to see what the next one
+looked like, I saw him tearing in on the back of it, standing upright
+on his board, carelessly poised, a young god bronzed with sunburn. We
+went through the wave on the back of which he rode. Ford called to him.
+He turned an airspring from his wave, rescued his board from its maw,
+paddled over to us and joined Ford in showing me things. One thing in
+particular I learned from Freeth, namely, how to encounter the
+occasional breaker of exceptional size that rolled in. Such breakers
+were really ferocious, and it was unsafe to meet them on top of the
+board. But Freeth showed me, so that whenever I saw one of that calibre
+rolling down on me, I slid off the rear end of the board and dropped
+down beneath the surface, my arms over my head and holding the board.
+Thus, if the wave ripped the board out of my hands and tried to strike
+me with it (a common trick of such waves), there would be a cushion of
+water a foot or more in depth, between my head and the blow. When the
+wave passed, I climbed upon the board and paddled on. Many men have
+been terribly injured, I learn, by being struck by their boards.
+
+The whole method of surf-riding and surf-fighting, learned, is one of
+non-resistance. Dodge the blow that is struck at you. Dive through the
+wave that is trying to slap you in the face. Sink down, feet first,
+deep under the surface, and let the big smoker that is trying to smash
+you go by far overhead. Never be rigid. Relax. Yield yourself to the
+waters that are ripping and tearing at you. When the undertow catches
+you and drags you seaward along the bottom, don’t struggle against it.
+If you do, you are liable to be drowned, for it is stronger than you.
+Yield yourself to that undertow. Swim with it, not against it, and you
+will find the pressure removed. And, swimming with it, fooling it so
+that it does not hold you, swim upward at the same time. It will be no
+trouble at all to reach the surface.
+
+The man who wants to learn surf-riding must be a strong swimmer, and he
+must be used to going under the water. After that, fair strength and
+common-sense are all that is required. The force of the big comber is
+rather unexpected. There are mix-ups in which board and rider are torn
+apart and separated by several hundred feet. The surf-rider must take
+care of himself. No matter how many riders swim out with him, he cannot
+depend upon any of them for aid. The fancied security I had in the
+presence of Ford and Freeth made me forget that it was my first swim
+out in deep water among the big ones. I recollected, however, and
+rather suddenly, for a big wave came in, and away went the two men on
+its back all the way to shore. I could have been drowned a dozen
+different ways before they got back to me.
+
+One slides down the face of a breaker on his surf-board, but he has to
+get started to sliding. Board and rider must be moving shoreward at a
+good rate before the wave overtakes them. When you see the wave coming
+that you want to ride in, you turn tail to it and paddle shoreward with
+all your strength, using what is called the windmill stroke. This is a
+sort of spurt performed immediately in front of the wave. If the board
+is going fast enough, the wave accelerates it, and the board begins its
+quarter-of-a-mile slide.
+
+I shall never forget the first big wave I caught out there in the deep
+water. I saw it coming, turned my back on it and paddled for dear life.
+Faster and faster my board went, till it seemed my arms would drop off.
+What was happening behind me I could not tell. One cannot look behind
+and paddle the windmill stroke. I heard the crest of the wave hissing
+and churning, and then my board was lifted and flung forward. I
+scarcely knew what happened the first half-minute. Though I kept my
+eyes open, I could not see anything, for I was buried in the rushing
+white of the crest. But I did not mind. I was chiefly conscious of
+ecstatic bliss at having caught the wave. At the end of the
+half-minute, however, I began to see things, and to breathe. I saw that
+three feet of the nose of my board was clear out of water and riding on
+the air. I shifted my weight forward, and made the nose come down. Then
+I lay, quite at rest in the midst of the wild movement, and watched the
+shore and the bathers on the beach grow distinct. I didn’t cover quite
+a quarter of a mile on that wave, because, to prevent the board from
+diving, I shifted my weight back, but shifted it too far and fell down
+the rear slope of the wave.
+
+It was my second day at surf-riding, and I was quite proud of myself. I
+stayed out there four hours, and when it was over, I was resolved that
+on the morrow I’d come in standing up. But that resolution paved a
+distant place. On the morrow I was in bed. I was not sick, but I was
+very unhappy, and I was in bed. When describing the wonderful water of
+Hawaii I forgot to describe the wonderful sun of Hawaii. It is a tropic
+sun, and, furthermore, in the first part of June, it is an overhead
+sun. It is also an insidious, deceitful sun. For the first time in my
+life I was sunburned unawares. My arms, shoulders, and back had been
+burned many times in the past and were tough; but not so my legs. And
+for four hours I had exposed the tender backs of my legs, at
+right-angles, to that perpendicular Hawaiian sun. It was not until
+after I got ashore that I discovered the sun had touched me. Sunburn at
+first is merely warm; after that it grows intense and the blisters come
+out. Also, the joints, where the skin wrinkles, refuse to bend. That is
+why I spent the next day in bed. I couldn’t walk. And that is why,
+to-day, I am writing this in bed. It is easier to than not to. But
+to-morrow, ah, to-morrow, I shall be out in that wonderful water, and I
+shall come in standing up, even as Ford and Freeth. And if I fail
+to-morrow, I shall do it the next day, or the next. Upon one thing I am
+resolved: the _Snark_ shall not sail from Honolulu until I, too, wing
+my heels with the swiftness of the sea, and become a sun-burned,
+skin-peeling Mercury.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+THE LEPERS OF MOLOKAI
+
+
+When the _Snark_ sailed along the windward coast of Molokai, on her way
+to Honolulu, I looked at the chart, then pointed to a low-lying
+peninsula backed by a tremendous cliff varying from two to four
+thousand feet in height, and said: “The pit of hell, the most cursed
+place on earth.” I should have been shocked, if, at that moment, I
+could have caught a vision of myself a month later, ashore in the most
+cursed place on earth and having a disgracefully good time along with
+eight hundred of the lepers who were likewise having a good time. Their
+good time was not disgraceful; but mine was, for in the midst of so
+much misery it was not meet for me to have a good time. That is the way
+I felt about it, and my only excuse is that I couldn’t help having a
+good time.
+
+For instance, in the afternoon of the Fourth of July all the lepers
+gathered at the race-track for the sports. I had wandered away from the
+Superintendent and the physicians in order to get a snapshot of the
+finish of one of the races. It was an interesting race, and
+partisanship ran high. Three horses were entered, one ridden by a
+Chinese, one by an Hawaiian, and one by a Portuguese boy. All three
+riders were lepers; so were the judges and the crowd. The race was
+twice around the track. The Chinese and the Hawaiian got away together
+and rode neck and neck, the Portuguese boy toiling along two hundred
+feet behind. Around they went in the same positions. Halfway around on
+the second and final lap the Chinese pulled away and got one length
+ahead of the Hawaiian. At the same time the Portuguese boy was
+beginning to crawl up. But it looked hopeless. The crowd went wild. All
+the lepers were passionate lovers of horseflesh. The Portuguese boy
+crawled nearer and nearer. I went wild, too. They were on the home
+stretch. The Portuguese boy passed the Hawaiian. There was a thunder of
+hoofs, a rush of the three horses bunched together, the jockeys plying
+their whips, and every last onlooker bursting his throat, or hers, with
+shouts and yells. Nearer, nearer, inch by inch, the Portuguese boy
+crept up, and passed, yes, passed, winning by a head from the Chinese.
+I came to myself in a group of lepers. They were yelling, tossing their
+hats, and dancing around like fiends. So was I. When I came to I was
+waving my hat and murmuring ecstatically: “By golly, the boy wins! The
+boy wins!”
+
+I tried to check myself. I assured myself that I was witnessing one of
+the horrors of Molokai, and that it was shameful for me, under such
+circumstances, to be so light-hearted and light-headed. But it was no
+use. The next event was a donkey-race, and it was just starting; so was
+the fun. The last donkey in was to win the race, and what complicated
+the affair was that no rider rode his own donkey. They rode one
+another’s donkeys, the result of which was that each man strove to make
+the donkey he rode beat his own donkey ridden by some one else,
+Naturally, only men possessing very slow or extremely obstreperous
+donkeys had entered them for the race. One donkey had been trained to
+tuck in its legs and lie down whenever its rider touched its sides with
+his heels. Some donkeys strove to turn around and come back; others
+developed a penchant for the side of the track, where they stuck their
+heads over the railing and stopped; while all of them dawdled. Halfway
+around the track one donkey got into an argument with its rider. When
+all the rest of the donkeys had crossed the wire, that particular
+donkey was still arguing. He won the race, though his rider lost it and
+came in on foot. And all the while nearly a thousand lepers were
+laughing uproariously at the fun. Anybody in my place would have joined
+with them in having a good time.
+
+All the foregoing is by way of preamble to the statement that the
+horrors of Molokai, as they have been painted in the past, do not
+exist. The Settlement has been written up repeatedly by
+sensationalists, and usually by sensationalists who have never laid
+eyes on it. Of course, leprosy is leprosy, and it is a terrible thing;
+but so much that is lurid has been written about Molokai that neither
+the lepers, nor those who devote their lives to them, have received a
+fair deal. Here is a case in point. A newspaper writer, who, of course,
+had never been near the Settlement, vividly described Superintendent
+McVeigh, crouching in a grass hut and being besieged nightly by
+starving lepers on their knees, wailing for food. This hair-raising
+account was copied by the press all over the United States and was the
+cause of many indignant and protesting editorials. Well, I lived and
+slept for five days in Mr. McVeigh’s “grass hut” (which was a
+comfortable wooden cottage, by the way; and there isn’t a grass house
+in the whole Settlement), and I heard the lepers wailing for food—only
+the wailing was peculiarly harmonious and rhythmic, and it was
+accompanied by the music of stringed instruments, violins, guitars,
+_ukuleles_, and banjos. Also, the wailing was of various sorts. The
+leper brass band wailed, and two singing societies wailed, and lastly a
+quintet of excellent voices wailed. So much for a lie that should never
+have been printed. The wailing was the serenade which the glee clubs
+always give Mr. McVeigh when he returns from a trip to Honolulu.
+
+Leprosy is not so contagious as is imagined. I went for a week’s visit
+to the Settlement, and I took my wife along—all of which would not have
+happened had we had any apprehension of contracting the disease. Nor
+did we wear long, gauntleted gloves and keep apart from the lepers. On
+the contrary, we mingled freely with them, and before we left, knew
+scores of them by sight and name. The precautions of simple cleanliness
+seem to be all that is necessary. On returning to their own houses,
+after having been among and handling lepers, the non-lepers, such as
+the physicians and the superintendent, merely wash their faces and
+hands with mildly antiseptic soap and change their coats.
+
+That a leper is unclean, however, should be insisted upon; and the
+segregation of lepers, from what little is known of the disease, should
+be rigidly maintained. On the other hand, the awful horror with which
+the leper has been regarded in the past, and the frightful treatment he
+has received, have been unnecessary and cruel. In order to dispel some
+of the popular misapprehensions of leprosy, I want to tell something of
+the relations between the lepers and non-lepers as I observed them at
+Molokai. On the morning after our arrival Charmian and I attended a
+shoot of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, and caught our first glimpse of the
+democracy of affliction and alleviation that obtains. The club was just
+beginning a prize shoot for a cup put up by Mr. McVeigh, who is also a
+member of the club, as also are Dr. Goodhue and Dr. Hollmann, the
+resident physicians (who, by the way, live in the Settlement with their
+wives). All about us, in the shooting booth, were the lepers. Lepers
+and non-lepers were using the same guns, and all were rubbing shoulders
+in the confined space. The majority of the lepers were Hawaiians.
+Sitting beside me on a bench was a Norwegian. Directly in front of me,
+in the stand, was an American, a veteran of the Civil War, who had
+fought on the Confederate side. He was sixty-five years of age, but
+that did not prevent him from running up a good score. Strapping
+Hawaiian policemen, lepers, khaki-clad, were also shooting, as were
+Portuguese, Chinese, and kokuas—the latter are native helpers in the
+Settlement who are non-lepers. And on the afternoon that Charmian and I
+climbed the two-thousand-foot _pali_ and looked our last upon the
+Settlement, the superintendent, the doctors, and the mixture of
+nationalities and of diseased and non-diseased were all engaged in an
+exciting baseball game.
+
+Not so was the leper and his greatly misunderstood and feared disease
+treated during the middle ages in Europe. At that time the leper was
+considered legally and politically dead. He was placed in a funeral
+procession and led to the church, where the burial service was read
+over him by the officiating clergyman. Then a spadeful of earth was
+dropped upon his chest and he was dead-living dead. While this rigorous
+treatment was largely unnecessary, nevertheless, one thing was learned
+by it. Leprosy was unknown in Europe until it was introduced by the
+returning Crusaders, whereupon it spread slowly until it had seized
+upon large numbers of the people. Obviously, it was a disease that
+could be contracted by contact. It was a contagion, and it was equally
+obvious that it could be eradicated by segregation. Terrible and
+monstrous as was the treatment of the leper in those days, the great
+lesson of segregation was learned. By its means leprosy was stamped
+out.
+
+And by the same means leprosy is even now decreasing in the Hawaiian
+Islands. But the segregation of the lepers on Molokai is not the
+horrible nightmare that has been so often exploited by _yellow_
+writers. In the first place, the leper is not torn ruthlessly from his
+family. When a suspect is discovered, he is invited by the Board of
+Health to come to the Kalihi receiving station at Honolulu. His fare
+and all expenses are paid for him. He is first passed upon by
+microscopical examination by the bacteriologist of the Board of Health.
+If the _bacillus lepræ_ is found, the patient is examined by the Board
+of Examining Physicians, five in number. If found by them to be a
+leper, he is so declared, which finding is later officially confirmed
+by the Board of Health, and the leper is ordered straight to Molokai.
+Furthermore, during the thorough trial that is given his case, the
+patient has the right to be represented by a physician whom he can
+select and employ for himself. Nor, after having been declared a leper,
+is the patient immediately rushed off to Molokai. He is given ample
+time, weeks, and even months, sometimes, during which he stays at
+Kalihi and winds up or arranges all his business affairs. At Molokai,
+in turn, he may be visited by his relatives, business agents, etc.,
+though they are not permitted to eat and sleep in his house. Visitors’
+houses, kept “clean,” are maintained for this purpose.
+
+I saw an illustration of the thorough trial given the suspect, when I
+visited Kalihi with Mr. Pinkham, president of the Board of Health. The
+suspect was an Hawaiian, seventy years of age, who for thirty-four
+years had worked in Honolulu as a pressman in a printing office. The
+bacteriologist had decided that he was a leper, the Examining Board had
+been unable to make up its mind, and that day all had come out to
+Kalihi to make another examination.
+
+When at Molokai, the declared leper has the privilege of
+re-examination, and patients are continually coming back to Honolulu
+for that purpose. The steamer that took me to Molokai had on board two
+returning lepers, both young women, one of whom had come to Honolulu to
+settle up some property she owned, and the other had come to Honolulu
+to see her sick mother. Both had remained at Kalihi for a month.
+
+The Settlement of Molokai enjoys a far more delightful climate than
+even Honolulu, being situated on the windward side of the island in the
+path of the fresh north-east trades. The scenery is magnificent; on one
+side is the blue sea, on the other the wonderful wall of the _pali_,
+receding here and there into beautiful mountain valleys. Everywhere are
+grassy pastures over which roam the hundreds of horses which are owned
+by the lepers. Some of them have their own carts, rigs, and traps. In
+the little harbour of Kalaupapa lie fishing boats and a steam launch,
+all of which are privately owned and operated by lepers. Their bounds
+upon the sea are, of course, determined: otherwise no restriction is
+put upon their sea-faring. Their fish they sell to the Board of Health,
+and the money they receive is their own. While I was there, one night’s
+catch was four thousand pounds.
+
+And as these men fish, others farm. All trades are followed. One leper,
+a pure Hawaiian, is the boss painter. He employs eight men, and takes
+contracts for painting buildings from the Board of Health. He is a
+member of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, where I met him, and I must confess
+that he was far better dressed than I. Another man, similarly situated,
+is the boss carpenter. Then, in addition to the Board of Health store,
+there are little privately owned stores, where those with shopkeeper’s
+souls may exercise their peculiar instincts. The Assistant
+Superintendent, Mr. Waiamau, a finely educated and able man, is a pure
+Hawaiian and a leper. Mr. Bartlett, who is the present storekeeper, is
+an American who was in business in Honolulu before he was struck down
+by the disease. All that these men earn is that much in their own
+pockets. If they do not work, they are taken care of anyway by the
+territory, given food, shelter, clothes, and medical attendance. The
+Board of Health carries on agriculture, stock-raising, and dairying,
+for local use, and employment at fair wages is furnished to all that
+wish to work. They are not compelled to work, however, for they are the
+wards of the territory. For the young, and the very old, and the
+helpless there are homes and hospitals.
+
+Major Lee, an American and long a marine engineer for the Inter Island
+Steamship Company, I met actively at work in the new steam laundry,
+where he was busy installing the machinery. I met him often,
+afterwards, and one day he said to me:
+
+“Give us a good breeze about how we live here. For heaven’s sake write
+us up straight. Put your foot down on this chamber-of-horrors rot and
+all the rest of it. We don’t like being misrepresented. We’ve got some
+feelings. Just tell the world how we really are in here.”
+
+Man after man that I met in the Settlement, and woman after woman, in
+one way or another expressed the same sentiment. It was patent that
+they resented bitterly the sensational and untruthful way in which they
+have been exploited in the past.
+
+In spite of the fact that they are afflicted by disease, the lepers
+form a happy colony, divided into two villages and numerous country and
+seaside homes, of nearly a thousand souls. They have six churches, a
+Young Men’s Christian Association building, several assembly halls, a
+band stand, a race-track, baseball grounds, shooting ranges, an
+athletic club, numerous glee clubs, and two brass bands.
+
+“They are so contented down there,” Mr. Pinkham told me, “that you
+can’t drive them away with a shot-gun.”
+
+This I later verified for myself. In January of this year, eleven of
+the lepers, on whom the disease, after having committed certain
+ravages, showed no further signs of activity, were brought back to
+Honolulu for re-examination. They were loath to come; and, on being
+asked whether or not they wanted to go free if found clean of leprosy,
+one and all answered, “Back to Molokai.”
+
+In the old days, before the discovery of the leprosy bacillus, a small
+number of men and women, suffering from various and wholly different
+diseases, were adjudged lepers and sent to Molokai. Years afterward
+they suffered great consternation when the bacteriologists declared
+that they were not afflicted with leprosy and never had been. They
+fought against being sent away from Molokai, and in one way or another,
+as helpers and nurses, they got jobs from the Board of Health and
+remained. The present jailer is one of these men. Declared to be a
+non-leper, he accepted, on salary, the charge of the jail, in order to
+escape being sent away.
+
+At the present moment, in Honolulu, there is a bootblack. He is an
+American negro. Mr. McVeigh told me about him. Long ago, before the
+bacteriological tests, he was sent to Molokai as a leper. As a ward of
+the state he developed a superlative degree of independence and
+fomented much petty mischief. And then, one day, after having been for
+years a perennial source of minor annoyances, the bacteriological test
+was applied, and he was declared a non-leper.
+
+“Ah, ha!” chortled Mr. McVeigh. “Now I’ve got you! Out you go on the
+next steamer and good riddance!”
+
+But the negro didn’t want to go. Immediately he married an old woman,
+in the last stages of leprosy, and began petitioning the Board of
+Health for permission to remain and nurse his sick wife. There was no
+one, he said pathetically, who could take care of his poor wife as well
+as he could. But they saw through his game, and he was deported on the
+steamer and given the freedom of the world. But he preferred Molokai.
+Landing on the leeward side of Molokai, he sneaked down the _pali_ one
+night and took up his abode in the Settlement. He was apprehended,
+tried and convicted of trespass, sentenced to pay a small fine, and
+again deported on the steamer with the warning that if he trespassed
+again, he would be fined one hundred dollars and be sent to prison in
+Honolulu. And now, when Mr. McVeigh comes up to Honolulu, the bootblack
+shines his shoes for him and says:
+
+“Say, Boss, I lost a good home down there. Yes, sir, I lost a good
+home.” Then his voice sinks to a confidential whisper as he says, “Say,
+Boss, can’t I go back? Can’t you fix it for me so as I can go back?”
+
+He had lived nine years on Molokai, and he had had a better time there
+than he has ever had, before and after, on the outside.
+
+As regards the fear of leprosy itself, nowhere in the Settlement among
+lepers, or non-lepers, did I see any sign of it. The chief horror of
+leprosy obtains in the minds of those who have never seen a leper and
+who do not know anything about the disease. At the hotel at Waikiki a
+lady expressed shuddering amazement at my having the hardihood to pay a
+visit to the Settlement. On talking with her I learned that she had
+been born in Honolulu, had lived there all her life, and had never laid
+eyes on a leper. That was more than I could say of myself in the United
+States, where the segregation of lepers is loosely enforced and where I
+have repeatedly seen lepers on the streets of large cities.
+
+Leprosy is terrible, there is no getting away from that; but from what
+little I know of the disease and its degree of contagiousness, I would
+by far prefer to spend the rest of my days in Molokai than in any
+tuberculosis sanatorium. In every city and county hospital for poor
+people in the United States, or in similar institutions in other
+countries, sights as terrible as those in Molokai can be witnessed, and
+the sum total of these sights is vastly more terrible. For that matter,
+if it were given me to choose between being compelled to live in
+Molokai for the rest of my life, or in the East End of London, the East
+Side of New York, or the Stockyards of Chicago, I would select Molokai
+without debate. I would prefer one year of life in Molokai to five
+years of life in the above-mentioned cesspools of human degradation and
+misery.
+
+In Molokai the people are happy. I shall never forget the celebration
+of the Fourth of July I witnessed there. At six o’clock in the morning
+the “horribles” were out, dressed fantastically, astride horses, mules,
+and donkeys (their own property), and cutting capers all over the
+Settlement. Two brass bands were out as well. Then there were the
+_pa-u_ riders, thirty or forty of them, Hawaiian women all, superb
+horsewomen dressed gorgeously in the old, native riding costume, and
+dashing about in twos and threes and groups. In the afternoon Charmian
+and I stood in the judge’s stand and awarded the prizes for
+horsemanship and costume to the _pa-u_ riders. All about were the
+hundreds of lepers, with wreaths of flowers on heads and necks and
+shoulders, looking on and making merry. And always, over the brows of
+hills and across the grassy level stretches, appearing and
+disappearing, were the groups of men and women, gaily dressed, on
+galloping horses, horses and riders flower-bedecked and
+flower-garlanded, singing, and laughing, and riding like the wind. And
+as I stood in the judge’s stand and looked at all this, there came to
+my recollection the lazar house of Havana, where I had once beheld some
+two hundred lepers, prisoners inside four restricted walls until they
+died. No, there are a few thousand places I wot of in this world over
+which I would select Molokai as a place of permanent residence. In the
+evening we went to one of the leper assembly halls, where, before a
+crowded audience, the singing societies contested for prizes, and where
+the night wound up with a dance. I have seen the Hawaiians living in
+the slums of Honolulu, and, having seen them, I can readily understand
+why the lepers, brought up from the Settlement for re-examination,
+shouted one and all, “Back to Molokai!”
+
+One thing is certain. The leper in the Settlement is far better off
+than the leper who lies in hiding outside. Such a leper is a lonely
+outcast, living in constant fear of discovery and slowly and surely
+rotting away. The action of leprosy is not steady. It lays hold of its
+victim, commits a ravage, and then lies dormant for an indeterminate
+period. It may not commit another ravage for five years, or ten years,
+or forty years, and the patient may enjoy uninterrupted good health.
+Rarely, however, do these first ravages cease of themselves. The
+skilled surgeon is required, and the skilled surgeon cannot be called
+in for the leper who is in hiding. For instance, the first ravage may
+take the form of a perforating ulcer in the sole of the foot. When the
+bone is reached, necrosis sets in. If the leper is in hiding, he cannot
+be operated upon, the necrosis will continue to eat its way up the bone
+of the leg, and in a brief and horrible time that leper will die of
+gangrene or some other terrible complication. On the other hand, if
+that same leper is in Molokai, the surgeon will operate upon the foot,
+remove the ulcer, cleanse the bone, and put a complete stop to that
+particular ravage of the disease. A month after the operation the leper
+will be out riding horseback, running foot races, swimming in the
+breakers, or climbing the giddy sides of the valleys for mountain
+apples. And as has been stated before, the disease, lying dormant, may
+not again attack him for five, ten, or forty years.
+
+The old horrors of leprosy go back to the conditions that obtained
+before the days of antiseptic surgery, and before the time when
+physicians like Dr. Goodhue and Dr. Hollmann went to live at the
+Settlement. Dr. Goodhue is the pioneer surgeon there, and too much
+praise cannot be given him for the noble work he has done. I spent one
+morning in the operating room with him and of the three operations he
+performed, two were on men, newcomers, who had arrived on the same
+steamer with me. In each case, the disease had attacked in one spot
+only. One had a perforating ulcer in the ankle, well advanced, and the
+other man was suffering from a similar affliction, well advanced, under
+his arm. Both cases were well advanced because the man had been on the
+outside and had not been treated. In each case. Dr. Goodhue put an
+immediate and complete stop to the ravage, and in four weeks those two
+men will be as well and able-bodied as they ever were in their lives.
+The only difference between them and you or me is that the disease is
+lying dormant in their bodies and may at any future time commit another
+ravage.
+
+Leprosy is as old as history. References to it are found in the
+earliest written records. And yet to-day practically nothing more is
+known about it than was known then. This much was known then, namely,
+that it was contagious and that those afflicted by it should be
+segregated. The difference between then and now is that to-day the
+leper is more rigidly segregated and more humanely treated. But leprosy
+itself still remains the same awful and profound mystery. A reading of
+the reports of the physicians and specialists of all countries reveals
+the baffling nature of the disease. These leprosy specialists are
+unanimous on no one phase of the disease. They do not know. In the past
+they rashly and dogmatically generalized. They generalize no longer.
+The one possible generalization that can be drawn from all the
+investigation that has been made is that leprosy is _feebly
+contagious_. But in what manner it is feebly contagious is not known.
+They have isolated the bacillus of leprosy. They can determine by
+bacteriological examination whether or not a person is a leper; but
+they are as far away as ever from knowing how that bacillus finds its
+entrance into the body of a non-leper. They do not know the length of
+time of incubation. They have tried to inoculate all sorts of animals
+with leprosy, and have failed.
+
+They are baffled in the discovery of a serum wherewith to fight the
+disease. And in all their work, as yet, they have found no clue, no
+cure. Sometimes there have been blazes of hope, theories of causation
+and much heralded cures, but every time the darkness of failure
+quenched the flame. A doctor insists that the cause of leprosy is a
+long-continued fish diet, and he proves his theory voluminously till a
+physician from the highlands of India demands why the natives of that
+district should therefore be afflicted by leprosy when they have never
+eaten fish, nor all the generations of their fathers before them. A man
+treats a leper with a certain kind of oil or drug, announces a cure,
+and five, ten, or forty years afterwards the disease breaks out again.
+It is this trick of leprosy lying dormant in the body for indeterminate
+periods that is responsible for many alleged cures. But this much is
+certain: _as yet there has been no authentic case of a cure_.
+
+Leprosy is _feebly contagious_, but how is it contagious? An Austrian
+physician has inoculated himself and his assistants with leprosy and
+failed to catch it. But this is not conclusive, for there is the famous
+case of the Hawaiian murderer who had his sentence of death commuted to
+life imprisonment on his agreeing to be inoculated with the _bacillus
+lepræ_. Some time after inoculation, leprosy made its appearance, and
+the man died a leper on Molokai. Nor was this conclusive, for it was
+discovered that at the time he was inoculated several members of his
+family were already suffering from the disease on Molokai. He may have
+contracted the disease from them, and it may have been well along in
+its mysterious period of incubation at the time he was officially
+inoculated. Then there is the case of that hero of the Church, Father
+Damien, who went to Molokai a clean man and died a leper. There have
+been many theories as to how he contracted leprosy, but nobody knows.
+He never knew himself. But every chance that he ran has certainly been
+run by a woman at present living in the Settlement; who has lived there
+many years; who has had five leper husbands, and had children by them;
+and who is to-day, as she always has been, free of the disease.
+
+As yet no light has been shed upon the mystery of leprosy. When more is
+learned about the disease, a cure for it may be expected. Once an
+efficacious serum is discovered, and leprosy, because it is so feebly
+contagious, will pass away swiftly from the earth. The battle waged
+with it will be short and sharp. In the meantime, how to discover that
+serum, or some other unguessed weapon? In the present it is a serious
+matter. It is estimated that there are half a million lepers, not
+segregated, in India alone. Carnegie libraries, Rockefeller
+universities, and many similar benefactions are all very well; but one
+cannot help thinking how far a few thousands of dollars would go, say
+in the leper Settlement of Molokai. The residents there are accidents
+of fate, scapegoats to some mysterious natural law of which man knows
+nothing, isolated for the welfare of their fellows who else might catch
+the dread disease, even as they have caught it, nobody knows how. Not
+for their sakes merely, but for the sake of future generations, a few
+thousands of dollars would go far in a legitimate and scientific search
+after a cure for leprosy, for a serum, or for some undreamed discovery
+that will enable the medical world to exterminate the _bacillus lepræ_.
+There’s the place for your money, you philanthropists.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+THE HOUSE OF THE SUN
+
+
+There are hosts of people who journey like restless spirits round and
+about this earth in search of seascapes and landscapes and the wonders
+and beauties of nature. They overrun Europe in armies; they can be met
+in droves and herds in Florida and the West Indies, at the Pyramids,
+and on the slopes and summits of the Canadian and American Rockies; but
+in the House of the Sun they are as rare as live and wriggling
+dinosaurs. Haleakala is the Hawaiian name for “the House of the Sun.”
+It is a noble dwelling, situated on the Island of Maui; but so few
+tourists have ever peeped into it, much less entered it, that their
+number may be practically reckoned as zero. Yet I venture to state that
+for natural beauty and wonder the nature-lover may see dissimilar
+things as great as Haleakala, but no greater, while he will never see
+elsewhere anything more beautiful or wonderful. Honolulu is six days’
+steaming from San Francisco; Maui is a night’s run on the steamer from
+Honolulu; and six hours more if he is in a hurry, can bring the
+traveller to Kolikoli, which is ten thousand and thirty-two feet above
+the sea and which stands hard by the entrance portal to the House of
+the Sun. Yet the tourist comes not, and Haleakala sleeps on in lonely
+and unseen grandeur.
+
+Not being tourists, we of the _Snark_ went to Haleakala. On the slopes
+of that monster mountain there is a cattle ranch of some fifty thousand
+acres, where we spent the night at an altitude of two thousand feet.
+The next morning it was boots and saddles, and with cow-boys and
+packhorses we climbed to Ukulele, a mountain ranch-house, the altitude
+of which, fifty-five hundred feet, gives a severely temperate climate,
+compelling blankets at night and a roaring fireplace in the
+living-room. Ukulele, by the way, is the Hawaiian for “jumping flea” as
+it is also the Hawaiian for a certain musical instrument that may be
+likened to a young guitar. It is my opinion that the mountain
+ranch-house was named after the young guitar. We were not in a hurry,
+and we spent the day at Ukulele, learnedly discussing altitudes and
+barometers and shaking our particular barometer whenever any one’s
+argument stood in need of demonstration. Our barometer was the most
+graciously acquiescent instrument I have ever seen. Also, we gathered
+mountain raspberries, large as hen’s eggs and larger, gazed up the
+pasture-covered lava slopes to the summit of Haleakala, forty-five
+hundred feet above us, and looked down upon a mighty battle of the
+clouds that was being fought beneath us, ourselves in the bright
+sunshine.
+
+Every day and every day this unending battle goes on. Ukiukiu is the
+name of the trade-wind that comes raging down out of the north-east and
+hurls itself upon Haleakala. Now Haleakala is so bulky and tall that it
+turns the north-east trade-wind aside on either hand, so that in the
+lee of Haleakala no trade-wind blows at all. On the contrary, the wind
+blows in the counter direction, in the teeth of the north-east trade.
+This wind is called Naulu. And day and night and always Ukiukiu and
+Naulu strive with each other, advancing, retreating, flanking, curving,
+curling, and turning and twisting, the conflict made visible by the
+cloud-masses plucked from the heavens and hurled back and forth in
+squadrons, battalions, armies, and great mountain ranges. Once in a
+while, Ukiukiu, in mighty gusts, flings immense cloud-masses clear over
+the summit of Haleakala; whereupon Naulu craftily captures them, lines
+them up in new battle-formation, and with them smites back at his
+ancient and eternal antagonist. Then Ukiukiu sends a great cloud-army
+around the eastern-side of the mountain. It is a flanking movement,
+well executed. But Naulu, from his lair on the leeward side, gathers
+the flanking army in, pulling and twisting and dragging it, hammering
+it into shape, and sends it charging back against Ukiukiu around the
+western side of the mountain. And all the while, above and below the
+main battle-field, high up the slopes toward the sea, Ukiukiu and Naulu
+are continually sending out little wisps of cloud, in ragged skirmish
+line, that creep and crawl over the ground, among the trees and through
+the canyons, and that spring upon and capture one another in sudden
+ambuscades and sorties. And sometimes Ukiukiu or Naulu, abruptly
+sending out a heavy charging column, captures the ragged little
+skirmishers or drives them skyward, turning over and over, in vertical
+whirls, thousands of feet in the air.
+
+But it is on the western slopes of Haleakala that the main battle goes
+on. Here Naulu masses his heaviest formations and wins his greatest
+victories. Ukiukiu grows weak toward late afternoon, which is the way
+of all trade-winds, and is driven backward by Naulu. Naulu’s
+generalship is excellent. All day he has been gathering and packing
+away immense reserves. As the afternoon draws on, he welds them into a
+solid column, sharp-pointed, miles in length, a mile in width, and
+hundreds of feet thick. This column he slowly thrusts forward into the
+broad battle-front of Ukiukiu, and slowly and surely Ukiukiu, weakening
+fast, is split asunder. But it is not all bloodless. At times Ukiukiu
+struggles wildly, and with fresh accessions of strength from the
+limitless north-east, smashes away half a mile at a time of Naulu’s
+column and sweeps it off and away toward West Maui. Sometimes, when the
+two charging armies meet end-on, a tremendous perpendicular whirl
+results, the cloud-masses, locked together, mounting thousands of feet
+into the air and turning over and over. A favourite device of Ukiukiu
+is to send a low, squat formation, densely packed, forward along the
+ground and under Naulu. When Ukiukiu is under, he proceeds to buck.
+Naulu’s mighty middle gives to the blow and bends upward, but usually
+he turns the attacking column back upon itself and sets it milling. And
+all the while the ragged little skirmishers, stray and detached, sneak
+through the trees and canyons, crawl along and through the grass, and
+surprise one another with unexpected leaps and rushes; while above, far
+above, serene and lonely in the rays of the setting sun, Haleakala
+looks down upon the conflict. And so, the night. But in the morning,
+after the fashion of trade-winds, Ukiukiu gathers strength and sends
+the hosts of Naulu rolling back in confusion and rout. And one day is
+like another day in the battle of the clouds, where Ukiukiu and Naulu
+strive eternally on the slopes of Haleakala.
+
+Again in the morning, it was boots and saddles, cow-boys, and
+packhorses, and the climb to the top began. One packhorse carried
+twenty gallons of water, slung in five-gallon bags on either side; for
+water is precious and rare in the crater itself, in spite of the fact
+that several miles to the north and east of the crater-rim more rain
+comes down than in any other place in the world. The way led upward
+across countless lava flows, without regard for trails, and never have
+I seen horses with such perfect footing as that of the thirteen that
+composed our outfit. They climbed or dropped down perpendicular places
+with the sureness and coolness of mountain goats, and never a horse
+fell or baulked.
+
+There is a familiar and strange illusion experienced by all who climb
+isolated mountains. The higher one climbs, the more of the earth’s
+surface becomes visible, and the effect of this is that the horizon
+seems up-hill from the observer. This illusion is especially notable on
+Haleakala, for the old volcano rises directly from the sea without
+buttresses or connecting ranges. In consequence, as fast as we climbed
+up the grim slope of Haleakala, still faster did Haleakala, ourselves,
+and all about us, sink down into the centre of what appeared a profound
+abyss. Everywhere, far above us, towered the horizon. The ocean sloped
+down from the horizon to us. The higher we climbed, the deeper did we
+seem to sink down, the farther above us shone the horizon, and the
+steeper pitched the grade up to that horizontal line where sky and
+ocean met. It was weird and unreal, and vagrant thoughts of Simm’s Hole
+and of the volcano through which Jules Verne journeyed to the centre of
+the earth flitted through one’s mind.
+
+And then, when at last we reached the summit of that monster mountain,
+which summit was like the bottom of an inverted cone situated in the
+centre of an awful cosmic pit, we found that we were at neither top nor
+bottom. Far above us was the heaven-towering horizon, and far beneath
+us, where the top of the mountain should have been, was a deeper deep,
+the great crater, the House of the Sun. Twenty-three miles around
+stretched the dizzy walls of the crater. We stood on the edge of the
+nearly vertical western wall, and the floor of the crater lay nearly
+half a mile beneath. This floor, broken by lava-flows and cinder-cones,
+was as red and fresh and uneroded as if it were but yesterday that the
+fires went out. The cinder-cones, the smallest over four hundred feet
+in height and the largest over nine hundred, seemed no more than puny
+little sand-hills, so mighty was the magnitude of the setting. Two
+gaps, thousands of feet deep, broke the rim of the crater, and through
+these Ukiukiu vainly strove to drive his fleecy herds of trade-wind
+clouds. As fast as they advanced through the gaps, the heat of the
+crater dissipated them into thin air, and though they advanced always,
+they got nowhere.
+
+It was a scene of vast bleakness and desolation, stern, forbidding,
+fascinating. We gazed down upon a place of fire and earthquake. The
+tie-ribs of earth lay bare before us. It was a workshop of nature still
+cluttered with the raw beginnings of world-making. Here and there great
+dikes of primordial rock had thrust themselves up from the bowels of
+earth, straight through the molten surface-ferment that had evidently
+cooled only the other day. It was all unreal and unbelievable. Looking
+upward, far above us (in reality beneath us) floated the cloud-battle
+of Ukiukiu and Naulu. And higher up the slope of the seeming abyss,
+above the cloud-battle, in the air and sky, hung the islands of Lanai
+and Molokai. Across the crater, to the south-east, still apparently
+looking upward, we saw ascending, first, the turquoise sea, then the
+white surf-line of the shore of Hawaii; above that the belt of
+trade-clouds, and next, eighty miles away, rearing their stupendous
+hulks out of the azure sky, tipped with snow, wreathed with cloud,
+trembling like a mirage, the peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa hung
+poised on the wall of heaven.
+
+It is told that long ago, one Maui, the son of Hina, lived on what is
+now known as West Maui. His mother, Hina, employed her time in the
+making of _kapas_. She must have made them at night, for her days were
+occupied in trying to dry the _kapas_. Each morning, and all morning,
+she toiled at spreading them out in the sun. But no sooner were they
+out, than she began taking them in, in order to have them all under
+shelter for the night. For know that the days were shorter then than
+now. Maui watched his mother’s futile toil and felt sorry for her. He
+decided to do something—oh, no, not to help her hang out and take in
+the _kapas_. He was too clever for that. His idea was to make the sun
+go slower. Perhaps he was the first Hawaiian astronomer. At any rate,
+he took a series of observations of the sun from various parts of the
+island. His conclusion was that the sun’s path was directly across
+Haleakala. Unlike Joshua, he stood in no need of divine assistance. He
+gathered a huge quantity of coconuts, from the fibre of which he
+braided a stout cord, and in one end of which he made a noose, even as
+the cow-boys of Haleakala do to this day. Next he climbed into the
+House of the Sun and laid in wait. When the sun came tearing along the
+path, bent on completing its journey in the shortest time possible, the
+valiant youth threw his lariat around one of the sun’s largest and
+strongest beams. He made the sun slow down some; also, he broke the
+beam short off. And he kept on roping and breaking off beams till the
+sun said it was willing to listen to reason. Maui set forth his terms
+of peace, which the sun accepted, agreeing to go more slowly
+thereafter. Wherefore Hina had ample time in which to dry her _kapas_,
+and the days are longer than they used to be, which last is quite in
+accord with the teachings of modern astronomy.
+
+We had a lunch of jerked beef and hard _poi_ in a stone corral, used of
+old time for the night-impounding of cattle being driven across the
+island. Then we skirted the rim for half a mile and began the descent
+into the crater. Twenty-five hundred feet beneath lay the floor, and
+down a steep slope of loose volcanic cinders we dropped, the
+sure-footed horses slipping and sliding, but always keeping their feet.
+The black surface of the cinders, when broken by the horses’ hoofs,
+turned to a yellow ochre dust, virulent in appearance and acid of
+taste, that arose in clouds. There was a gallop across a level stretch
+to the mouth of a convenient blow-hole, and then the descent continued
+in clouds of volcanic dust, winding in and out among cinder-cones,
+brick-red, old rose, and purplish black of colour. Above us, higher and
+higher, towered the crater-walls, while we journeyed on across
+innumerable lava-flows, turning and twisting a devious way among the
+adamantine billows of a petrified sea. Saw-toothed waves of lava vexed
+the surface of this weird ocean, while on either hand arose jagged
+crests and spiracles of fantastic shape. Our way led on past a
+bottomless pit and along and over the main stream of the latest
+lava-flow for seven miles.
+
+At the lower end of the crater was our camping spot, in a small grove
+of _olapa_ and _kolea_ trees, tucked away in a corner of the crater at
+the base of walls that rose perpendicularly fifteen hundred feet. Here
+was pasturage for the horses, but no water, and first we turned aside
+and picked our way across a mile of lava to a known water-hole in a
+crevice in the crater-wall. The water-hole was empty. But on climbing
+fifty feet up the crevice, a pool was found containing half a dozen
+barrels of water. A pail was carried up, and soon a steady stream of
+the precious liquid was running down the rock and filling the lower
+pool, while the cow-boys below were busy fighting the horses back, for
+there was room for one only to drink at a time. Then it was on to camp
+at the foot of the wall, up which herds of wild goats scrambled and
+blatted, while the tent arose to the sound of rifle-firing. Jerked
+beef, hard _poi_, and broiled kid were the menu. Over the crest of the
+crater, just above our heads, rolled a sea of clouds, driven on by
+Ukiukiu. Though this sea rolled over the crest unceasingly, it never
+blotted out nor dimmed the moon, for the heat of the crater dissolved
+the clouds as fast as they rolled in. Through the moonlight, attracted
+by the camp-fire, came the crater cattle to peer and challenge. They
+were rolling fat, though they rarely drank water, the morning dew on
+the grass taking its place. It was because of this dew that the tent
+made a welcome bedchamber, and we fell asleep to the chanting of
+_hulas_ by the unwearied Hawaiian cow-boys, in whose veins, no doubt,
+ran the blood of Maui, their valiant forebear.
+
+The camera cannot do justice to the House of the Sun. The sublimated
+chemistry of photography may not lie, but it certainly does not tell
+all the truth. The Koolau Gap may be faithfully reproduced, just as it
+impinged on the retina of the camera, yet in the resulting picture the
+gigantic scale of things would be missing. Those walls that seem
+several hundred feet in height are almost as many thousand; that
+entering wedge of cloud is a mile and a half wide in the gap itself,
+while beyond the gap it is a veritable ocean; and that foreground of
+cinder-cone and volcanic ash, mushy and colourless in appearance, is in
+truth gorgeous-hued in brick-red, terra-cotta rose, yellow ochre, and
+purplish black. Also, words are a vain thing and drive to despair. To
+say that a crater-wall is two thousand feet high is to say just
+precisely that it is two thousand feet high; but there is a vast deal
+more to that crater-wall than a mere statistic. The sun is ninety-three
+millions of miles distant, but to mortal conception the adjoining
+county is farther away. This frailty of the human brain is hard on the
+sun. It is likewise hard on the House of the Sun. Haleakala has a
+message of beauty and wonder for the human soul that cannot be
+delivered by proxy. Kolikoli is six hours from Kahului; Kahului is a
+night’s run from Honolulu; Honolulu is six days from San Francisco; and
+there you are.
+
+We climbed the crater-walls, put the horses over impossible places,
+rolled stones, and shot wild goats. I did not get any goats. I was too
+busy rolling stones. One spot in particular I remember, where we
+started a stone the size of a horse. It began the descent easy enough,
+rolling over, wobbling, and threatening to stop; but in a few minutes
+it was soaring through the air two hundred feet at a jump. It grew
+rapidly smaller until it struck a slight slope of volcanic sand, over
+which it darted like a startled jackrabbit, kicking up behind it a tiny
+trail of yellow dust. Stone and dust diminished in size, until some of
+the party said the stone had stopped. That was because they could not
+see it any longer. It had vanished into the distance beyond their ken.
+Others saw it rolling farther on—I know I did; and it is my firm
+conviction that that stone is still rolling.
+
+Our last day in the crater, Ukiukiu gave us a taste of his strength. He
+smashed Naulu back all along the line, filled the House of the Sun to
+overflowing with clouds, and drowned us out. Our rain-gauge was a pint
+cup under a tiny hole in the tent. That last night of storm and rain
+filled the cup, and there was no way of measuring the water that
+spilled over into the blankets. With the rain-gauge out of business
+there was no longer any reason for remaining; so we broke camp in the
+wet-gray of dawn, and plunged eastward across the lava to the Kaupo
+Gap. East Maui is nothing more or less than the vast lava stream that
+flowed long ago through the Kaupo Gap; and down this stream we picked
+our way from an altitude of six thousand five hundred feet to the sea.
+This was a day’s work in itself for the horses; but never were there
+such horses. Safe in the bad places, never rushing, never losing their
+heads, as soon as they found a trail wide and smooth enough to run on,
+they ran. There was no stopping them until the trail became bad again,
+and then they stopped of themselves. Continuously, for days, they had
+performed the hardest kind of work, and fed most of the time on grass
+foraged by themselves at night while we slept, and yet that day they
+covered twenty-eight leg-breaking miles and galloped into Hana like a
+bunch of colts. Also, there were several of them, reared in the dry
+region on the leeward side of Haleakala, that had never worn shoes in
+all their lives. Day after day, and all day long, unshod, they had
+travelled over the sharp lava, with the extra weight of a man on their
+backs, and their hoofs were in better condition than those of the shod
+horses.
+
+The scenery between Vieiras’s (where the Kaupo Gap empties into the
+sea) and Lana, which we covered in half a day, is well worth a week or
+month; but, wildly beautiful as it is, it becomes pale and small in
+comparison with the wonderland that lies beyond the rubber plantations
+between Hana and the Honomanu Gulch. Two days were required to cover
+this marvellous stretch, which lies on the windward side of Haleakala.
+The people who dwell there call it the “ditch country,” an
+unprepossessing name, but it has no other. Nobody else ever comes
+there. Nobody else knows anything about it. With the exception of a
+handful of men, whom business has brought there, nobody has heard of
+the ditch country of Maui. Now a ditch is a ditch, assumably muddy, and
+usually traversing uninteresting and monotonous landscapes. But the
+Nahiku Ditch is not an ordinary ditch. The windward side of Haleakala
+is serried by a thousand precipitous gorges, down which rush as many
+torrents, each torrent of which achieves a score of cascades and
+waterfalls before it reaches the sea. More rain comes down here than in
+any other region in the world. In 1904 the year’s downpour was four
+hundred and twenty inches. Water means sugar, and sugar is the backbone
+of the territory of Hawaii, wherefore the Nahiku Ditch, which is not a
+ditch, but a chain of tunnels. The water travels underground, appearing
+only at intervals to leap a gorge, travelling high in the air on a
+giddy flume and plunging into and through the opposing mountain. This
+magnificent waterway is called a “ditch,” and with equal
+appropriateness can Cleopatra’s barge be called a box-car.
+
+There are no carriage roads through the ditch country, and before the
+ditch was built, or bored, rather, there was no horse-trail. Hundreds
+of inches of rain annually, on fertile soil, under a tropic sun, means
+a steaming jungle of vegetation. A man, on foot, cutting his way
+through, might advance a mile a day, but at the end of a week he would
+be a wreck, and he would have to crawl hastily back if he wanted to get
+out before the vegetation overran the passage way he had cut.
+O’Shaughnessy was the daring engineer who conquered the jungle and the
+gorges, ran the ditch and made the horse-trail. He built enduringly, in
+concrete and masonry, and made one of the most remarkable water-farms
+in the world. Every little runlet and dribble is harvested and conveyed
+by subterranean channels to the main ditch. But so heavily does it rain
+at times that countless spillways let the surplus escape to the sea.
+
+The horse-trail is not very wide. Like the engineer who built it, it
+dares anything. Where the ditch plunges through the mountain, it climbs
+over; and where the ditch leaps a gorge on a flume, the horse-trail
+takes advantage of the ditch and crosses on top of the flume. That
+careless trail thinks nothing of travelling up or down the faces of
+precipices. It gouges its narrow way out of the wall, dodging around
+waterfalls or passing under them where they thunder down in white fury;
+while straight overhead the wall rises hundreds of feet, and straight
+beneath it sinks a thousand. And those marvellous mountain horses are
+as unconcerned as the trail. They fox-trot along it as a matter of
+course, though the footing is slippery with rain, and they will gallop
+with their hind feet slipping over the edge if you let them. I advise
+only those with steady nerves and cool heads to tackle the Nahiku Ditch
+trail. One of our cow-boys was noted as the strongest and bravest on
+the big ranch. He had ridden mountain horses all his life on the rugged
+western slopes of Haleakala. He was first in the horse-breaking; and
+when the others hung back, as a matter of course, he would go in to
+meet a wild bull in the cattle-pen. He had a reputation. But he had
+never ridden over the Nahiku Ditch. It was there he lost his
+reputation. When he faced the first flume, spanning a hair-raising
+gorge, narrow, without railings, with a bellowing waterfall above,
+another below, and directly beneath a wild cascade, the air filled with
+driving spray and rocking to the clamour and rush of sound and
+motion—well, that cow-boy dismounted from his horse, explained briefly
+that he had a wife and two children, and crossed over on foot, leading
+the horse behind him.
+
+The only relief from the flumes was the precipices; and the only relief
+from the precipices was the flumes, except where the ditch was far
+under ground, in which case we crossed one horse and rider at a time,
+on primitive log-bridges that swayed and teetered and threatened to
+carry away. I confess that at first I rode such places with my feet
+loose in the stirrups, and that on the sheer walls I saw to it, by a
+definite, conscious act of will, that the foot in the outside stirrup,
+overhanging the thousand feet of fall, was exceedingly loose. I say “at
+first”; for, as in the crater itself we quickly lost our conception of
+magnitude, so, on the Nahiku Ditch, we quickly lost our apprehension of
+depth. The ceaseless iteration of height and depth produced a state of
+consciousness in which height and depth were accepted as the ordinary
+conditions of existence; and from the horse’s back to look sheer down
+four hundred or five hundred feet became quite commonplace and
+non-productive of thrills. And as carelessly as the trail and the
+horses, we swung along the dizzy heights and ducked around or through
+the waterfalls.
+
+And such a ride! Falling water was everywhere. We rode above the
+clouds, under the clouds, and through the clouds! and every now and
+then a shaft of sunshine penetrated like a search-light to the depths
+yawning beneath us, or flashed upon some pinnacle of the crater-rim
+thousands of feet above. At every turn of the trail a waterfall or a
+dozen waterfalls, leaping hundreds of feet through the air, burst upon
+our vision. At our first night’s camp, in the Keanae Gulch, we counted
+thirty-two waterfalls from a single viewpoint. The vegetation ran riot
+over that wild land. There were forests of koa and kolea trees, and
+candlenut trees; and then there were the trees called ohia-ai, which
+bore red mountain apples, mellow and juicy and most excellent to eat.
+Wild bananas grew everywhere, clinging to the sides of the gorges, and,
+overborne by their great bunches of ripe fruit, falling across the
+trail and blocking the way. And over the forest surged a sea of green
+life, the climbers of a thousand varieties, some that floated airily,
+in lacelike filaments, from the tallest branches others that coiled and
+wound about the trees like huge serpents; and one, the ei-ei, that was
+for all the world like a climbing palm, swinging on a thick stem from
+branch to branch and tree to tree and throttling the supports whereby
+it climbed. Through the sea of green, lofty tree-ferns thrust their
+great delicate fronds, and the lehua flaunted its scarlet blossoms.
+Underneath the climbers, in no less profusion, grew the warm-coloured,
+strangely-marked plants that in the United States one is accustomed to
+seeing preciously conserved in hot-houses. In fact, the ditch country
+of Maui is nothing more nor less than a huge conservatory. Every
+familiar variety of fern flourishes, and more varieties that are
+unfamiliar, from the tiniest maidenhair to the gross and voracious
+staghorn, the latter the terror of the woodsmen, interlacing with
+itself in tangled masses five or six feet deep and covering acres.
+
+Never was there such a ride. For two days it lasted, when we emerged
+into rolling country, and, along an actual wagon-road, came home to the
+ranch at a gallop. I know it was cruel to gallop the horses after such
+a long, hard journey; but we blistered our hands in vain effort to hold
+them in. That’s the sort of horses they grow on Haleakala. At the ranch
+there was great festival of cattle-driving, branding, and
+horse-breaking. Overhead Ukiukiu and Naulu battled valiantly, and far
+above, in the sunshine, towered the mighty summit of Haleakala.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+A PACIFIC TRAVERSE
+
+
+_Sandwich Islands to Tahiti_.—_There is great difficulty in making this
+passage across the trades_. _The whalers and all others speak with
+great doubt of fetching Tahiti from the Sandwich islands_. _Capt. Bruce
+says that a vessel should keep to the northward until she gets a start
+of wind before bearing for her destination_. _In his passage between
+them in November_, 1837, _he had no variables near the line in coming
+south_, _and never could make easting on either tack_, _though he
+endeavoured by every means to do so_.
+
+So say the sailing directions for the South Pacific Ocean; and that is
+all they say. There is not a word more to help the weary voyager in
+making this long traverse—nor is there any word at all concerning the
+passage from Hawaii to the Marquesas, which lie some eight hundred
+miles to the northeast of Tahiti and which are the more difficult to
+reach by just that much. The reason for the lack of directions is, I
+imagine, that no voyager is supposed to make himself weary by
+attempting so impossible a traverse. But the impossible did not deter
+the _Snark_,—principally because of the fact that we did not read that
+particular little paragraph in the sailing directions until after we
+had started. We sailed from Hilo, Hawaii, on October 7, and arrived at
+Nuka-hiva, in the Marquesas, on December 6. The distance was two
+thousand miles as the crow flies, while we actually travelled at least
+four thousand miles to accomplish it, thus proving for once and for
+ever that the shortest distance between two points is not always a
+straight line. Had we headed directly for the Marquesas, we might have
+travelled five or six thousand miles.
+
+Upon one thing we were resolved: we would not cross the Line west of
+130° west longitude. For here was the problem. To cross the Line to the
+west of that point, if the southeast trades were well around to the
+southeast, would throw us so far to leeward of the Marquesas that a
+head-beat would be maddeningly impossible. Also, we had to remember the
+equatorial current, which moves west at a rate of anywhere from twelve
+to seventy-five miles a day. A pretty pickle, indeed, to be to leeward
+of our destination with such a current in our teeth. No; not a minute,
+nor a second, west of 130° west longitude would we cross the Line. But
+since the southeast trades were to be expected five or six degrees
+north of the Line (which, if they were well around to the southeast or
+south-southeast, would necessitate our sliding off toward
+south-southwest), we should have to hold to the eastward, north of the
+Line, and north of the southeast trades, until we gained at least 128°
+west longitude.
+
+I have forgotten to mention that the seventy-horse-power gasolene
+engine, as usual, was not working, and that we could depend upon wind
+alone. Neither was the launch engine working. And while I am about it,
+I may as well confess that the five-horse-power, which ran the lights,
+fans, and pumps, was also on the sick-list. A striking title for a book
+haunts me, waking and sleeping. I should like to write that book some
+day and to call it “Around the World with Three Gasolene Engines and a
+Wife.” But I am afraid I shall not write it, for fear of hurting the
+feelings of some of the young gentlemen of San Francisco, Honolulu, and
+Hilo, who learned their trades at the expense of the _Snark’s_ engines.
+
+It looked easy on paper. Here was Hilo and there was our objective,
+128° west longitude. With the northeast trade blowing we could travel a
+straight line between the two points, and even slack our sheets off a
+goodly bit. But one of the chief troubles with the trades is that one
+never knows just where he will pick them up and just in what direction
+they will be blowing. We picked up the northeast trade right outside of
+Hilo harbour, but the miserable breeze was away around into the east.
+Then there was the north equatorial current setting westward like a
+mighty river. Furthermore, a small boat, by the wind and bucking into a
+big headsea, does not work to advantage. She jogs up and down and gets
+nowhere. Her sails are full and straining, every little while she
+presses her lee-rail under, she flounders, and bumps, and splashes, and
+that is all. Whenever she begins to gather way, she runs ker-chug into
+a big mountain of water and is brought to a standstill. So, with the
+_Snark_, the resultant of her smallness, of the trade around into the
+east, and of the strong equatorial current, was a long sag south. Oh,
+she did not go quite south. But the easting she made was distressing.
+On October 11, she made forty miles easting; October 12, fifteen miles;
+October 13, no easting; October 14, thirty miles; October 15,
+twenty-three miles; October 16, eleven miles; and on October 17, she
+actually went to the westward four miles. Thus, in a week she made one
+hundred and fifteen miles easting, which was equivalent to sixteen
+miles a day. But, between the longitude of Hilo and 128° west longitude
+is a difference of twenty-seven degrees, or, roughly, sixteen hundred
+miles. At sixteen miles a day, one hundred days would be required to
+accomplish this distance. And even then, our objective, 128° west
+longitude, was five degrees north of the Line, while Nuka-hiva, in the
+Marquesas, lay nine degrees south of the Line and twelve degrees to the
+west!
+
+There remained only one thing to do—to work south out of the trade and
+into the variables. It is true that Captain Bruce found no variables on
+his traverse, and that he “never could make easting on either tack.” It
+was the variables or nothing with us, and we prayed for better luck
+than he had had. The variables constitute the belt of ocean lying
+between the trades and the doldrums, and are conjectured to be the
+draughts of heated air which rise in the doldrums, flow high in the air
+counter to the trades, and gradually sink down till they fan the
+surface of the ocean where they are found. And they are found where
+they are found; for they are wedged between the trades and the
+doldrums, which same shift their territory from day to day and month to
+month.
+
+We found the variables in 11° north latitude, and 11° north latitude we
+hugged jealously. To the south lay the doldrums. To the north lay the
+northeast trade that refused to blow from the northeast. The days came
+and went, and always they found the _Snark_ somewhere near the eleventh
+parallel. The variables were truly variable. A light head-wind would
+die away and leave us rolling in a calm for forty-eight hours. Then a
+light head-wind would spring up, blow for three hours, and leave us
+rolling in another calm for forty-eight hours. Then—hurrah!—the wind
+would come out of the west, fresh, beautifully fresh, and send the
+_Snark_ along, wing and wing, her wake bubbling, the log-line straight
+astern. At the end of half an hour, while we were preparing to set the
+spinnaker, with a few sickly gasps the wind would die away. And so it
+went. We wagered optimistically on every favourable fan of air that
+lasted over five minutes; but it never did any good. The fans faded out
+just the same.
+
+But there were exceptions. In the variables, if you wait long enough,
+something is bound to happen, and we were so plentifully stocked with
+food and water that we could afford to wait. On October 26, we actually
+made one hundred and three miles of easting, and we talked about it for
+days afterwards. Once we caught a moderate gale from the south, which
+blew itself out in eight hours, but it helped us to seventy-one miles
+of easting in that particular twenty-four hours. And then, just as it
+was expiring, the wind came straight out from the north (the directly
+opposite quarter), and fanned us along over another degree of easting.
+
+In years and years no sailing vessel has attempted this traverse, and
+we found ourselves in the midst of one of the loneliest of the Pacific
+solitudes. In the sixty days we were crossing it we sighted no sail,
+lifted no steamer’s smoke above the horizon. A disabled vessel could
+drift in this deserted expanse for a dozen generations, and there would
+be no rescue. The only chance of rescue would be from a vessel like the
+_Snark_, and the _Snark_ happened to be there principally because of
+the fact that the traverse had been begun before the particular
+paragraph in the sailing directions had been read. Standing upright on
+deck, a straight line drawn from the eye to the horizon would measure
+three miles and a half. Thus, seven miles was the diameter of the
+circle of the sea in which we had our centre. Since we remained always
+in the centre, and since we constantly were moving in some direction,
+we looked upon many circles. But all circles looked alike. No tufted
+islets, gray headlands, nor glistening patches of white canvas ever
+marred the symmetry of that unbroken curve. Clouds came and went,
+rising up over the rim of the circle, flowing across the space of it,
+and spilling away and down across the opposite rim.
+
+The world faded as the procession of the weeks marched by. The world
+faded until at last there ceased to be any world except the little
+world of the _Snark_, freighted with her seven souls and floating on
+the expanse of the waters. Our memories of the world, the great world,
+became like dreams of former lives we had lived somewhere before we
+came to be born on the _Snark_. After we had been out of fresh
+vegetables for some time, we mentioned such things in much the same way
+I have heard my father mention the vanished apples of his boyhood. Man
+is a creature of habit, and we on the _Snark_ had got the habit of the
+_Snark_. Everything about her and aboard her was as a matter of course,
+and anything different would have been an irritation and an offence.
+
+There was no way by which the great world could intrude. Our bell rang
+the hours, but no caller ever rang it. There were no guests to dinner,
+no telegrams, no insistent telephone jangles invading our privacy. We
+had no engagements to keep, no trains to catch, and there were no
+morning newspapers over which to waste time in learning what was
+happening to our fifteen hundred million other fellow-creatures.
+
+But it was not dull. The affairs of our little world had to be
+regulated, and, unlike the great world, our world had to be steered in
+its journey through space. Also, there were cosmic disturbances to be
+encountered and baffled, such as do not afflict the big earth in its
+frictionless orbit through the windless void. And we never knew, from
+moment to moment, what was going to happen next. There were spice and
+variety enough and to spare. Thus, at four in the morning, I relieve
+Hermann at the wheel.
+
+“East-northeast,” he gives me the course. “She’s eight points off, but
+she ain’t steering.”
+
+Small wonder. The vessel does not exist that can be steered in so
+absolute a calm.
+
+“I had a breeze a little while ago—maybe it will come back again,”
+Hermann says hopefully, ere he starts forward to the cabin and his
+bunk.
+
+The mizzen is in and fast furled. In the night, what of the roll and
+the absence of wind, it had made life too hideous to be permitted to go
+on rasping at the mast, smashing at the tackles, and buffeting the
+empty air into hollow outbursts of sound. But the big mainsail is still
+on, and the staysail, jib, and flying-jib are snapping and slashing at
+their sheets with every roll. Every star is out. Just for luck I put
+the wheel hard over in the opposite direction to which it had been left
+by Hermann, and I lean back and gaze up at the stars. There is nothing
+else for me to do. There is nothing to be done with a sailing vessel
+rolling in a stark calm.
+
+Then I feel a fan on my cheek, faint, so faint, that I can just sense
+it ere it is gone. But another comes, and another, until a real and
+just perceptible breeze is blowing. How the _Snark’s_ sails manage to
+feel it is beyond me, but feel it they do, as she does as well, for the
+compass card begins slowly to revolve in the binnacle. In reality, it
+is not revolving at all. It is held by terrestrial magnetism in one
+place, and it is the _Snark_ that is revolving, pivoted upon that
+delicate cardboard device that floats in a closed vessel of alcohol.
+
+So the _Snark_ comes back on her course. The breath increases to a tiny
+puff. The _Snark_ feels the weight of it and actually heels over a
+trifle. There is flying scud overhead, and I notice the stars being
+blotted out. Walls of darkness close in upon me, so that, when the last
+star is gone, the darkness is so near that it seems I can reach out and
+touch it on every side. When I lean toward it, I can feel it loom
+against my face. Puff follows puff, and I am glad the mizzen is furled.
+Phew! that was a stiff one! The _Snark_ goes over and down until her
+lee-rail is buried and the whole Pacific Ocean is pouring in. Four or
+five of these gusts make me wish that the jib and flying-jib were in.
+The sea is picking up, the gusts are growing stronger and more
+frequent, and there is a splatter of wet in the air. There is no use in
+attempting to gaze to windward. The wall of blackness is within arm’s
+length. Yet I cannot help attempting to see and gauge the blows that
+are being struck at the _Snark_. There is something ominous and
+menacing up there to windward, and I have a feeling that if I look long
+enough and strong enough, I shall divine it. Futile feeling. Between
+two gusts I leave the wheel and run forward to the cabin companionway,
+where I light matches and consult the barometer. “29-90” it reads. That
+sensitive instrument refuses to take notice of the disturbance which is
+humming with a deep, throaty voice in the rigging. I get back to the
+wheel just in time to meet another gust, the strongest yet. Well,
+anyway, the wind is abeam and the _Snark_ is on her course, eating up
+easting. That at least is well.
+
+The jib and flying-jib bother me, and I wish they were in. She would
+make easier weather of it, and less risky weather likewise. The wind
+snorts, and stray raindrops pelt like birdshot. I shall certainly have
+to call all hands, I conclude; then conclude the next instant to hang
+on a little longer. Maybe this is the end of it, and I shall have
+called them for nothing. It is better to let them sleep. I hold the
+_Snark_ down to her task, and from out of the darkness, at right
+angles, comes a deluge of rain accompanied by shrieking wind. Then
+everything eases except the blackness, and I rejoice in that I have not
+called the men.
+
+No sooner does the wind ease than the sea picks up. The combers are
+breaking now, and the boat is tossing like a cork. Then out of the
+blackness the gusts come harder and faster than before. If only I knew
+what was up there to windward in the blackness! The _Snark_ is making
+heavy weather of it, and her lee-rail is buried oftener than not. More
+shrieks and snorts of wind. Now, if ever, is the time to call the men.
+I _will_ call them, I resolve. Then there is a burst of rain, a
+slackening of the wind, and I do not call. But it is rather lonely,
+there at the wheel, steering a little world through howling blackness.
+It is quite a responsibility to be all alone on the surface of a little
+world in time of stress, doing the thinking for its sleeping
+inhabitants. I recoil from the responsibility as more gusts begin to
+strike and as a sea licks along the weather rail and splashes over into
+the cockpit. The salt water seems strangely warm to my body and is shot
+through with ghostly nodules of phosphorescent light. I shall surely
+call all hands to shorten sail. Why should they sleep? I am a fool to
+have any compunctions in the matter. My intellect is arrayed against my
+heart. It was my heart that said, “Let them sleep.” Yes, but it was my
+intellect that backed up my heart in that judgment. Let my intellect
+then reverse the judgment; and, while I am speculating as to what
+particular entity issued that command to my intellect, the gusts die
+away. Solicitude for mere bodily comfort has no place in practical
+seamanship, I conclude sagely; but study the feel of the next series of
+gusts and do not call the men. After all, it _is_ my intellect, behind
+everything, procrastinating, measuring its knowledge of what the
+_Snark_ can endure against the blows being struck at her, and waiting
+the call of all hands against the striking of still severer blows.
+
+Daylight, gray and violent, steals through the cloud-pall and shows a
+foaming sea that flattens under the weight of recurrent and increasing
+squalls. Then comes the rain, filling the windy valleys of the sea with
+milky smoke and further flattening the waves, which but wait for the
+easement of wind and rain to leap more wildly than before. Come the men
+on deck, their sleep out, and among them Hermann, his face on the broad
+grin in appreciation of the breeze of wind I have picked up. I turn the
+wheel over to Warren and start to go below, pausing on the way to
+rescue the galley stovepipe which has gone adrift. I am barefooted, and
+my toes have had an excellent education in the art of clinging; but, as
+the rail buries itself in a green sea, I suddenly sit down on the
+streaming deck. Hermann good-naturedly elects to question my selection
+of such a spot. Then comes the next roll, and he sits down, suddenly,
+and without premeditation. The _Snark_ heels over and down, the rail
+takes it green, and Hermann and I, clutching the precious stove-pipe,
+are swept down into the lee-scuppers. After that I finish my journey
+below, and while changing my clothes grin with satisfaction—the _Snark_
+is making easting.
+
+No, it is not all monotony. When we had worried along our easting to
+126° west longitude, we left the variables and headed south through the
+doldrums, where was much calm weather and where, taking advantage of
+every fan of air, we were often glad to make a score of miles in as
+many hours. And yet, on such a day, we might pass through a dozen
+squalls and be surrounded by dozens more. And every squall was to be
+regarded as a bludgeon capable of crushing the _Snark_. We were struck
+sometimes by the centres and sometimes by the sides of these squalls,
+and we never knew just where or how we were to be hit. The squall that
+rose up, covering half the heavens, and swept down upon us, as likely
+as not split into two squalls which passed us harmlessly on either side
+while the tiny, innocent looking squall that appeared to carry no more
+than a hogshead of water and a pound of wind, would abruptly assume
+cyclopean proportions, deluging us with rain and overwhelming us with
+wind. Then there were treacherous squalls that went boldly astern and
+sneaked back upon us from a mile to leeward. Again, two squalls would
+tear along, one on each side of us, and we would get a fillip from each
+of them. Now a gale certainly grows tiresome after a few hours, but
+squalls never. The thousandth squall in one’s experience is as
+interesting as the first one, and perhaps a bit more so. It is the tyro
+who has no apprehension of them. The man of a thousand squalls respects
+a squall. He knows what they are.
+
+It was in the doldrums that our most exciting event occurred. On
+November 20, we discovered that through an accident we had lost over
+one-half of the supply of fresh water that remained to us. Since we
+were at that time forty-three days out from Hilo, our supply of fresh
+water was not large. To lose over half of it was a catastrophe. On
+close allowance, the remnant of water we possessed would last twenty
+days. But we were in the doldrums; there was no telling where the
+southeast trades were, nor where we would pick them up.
+
+The handcuffs were promptly put upon the pump, and once a day the water
+was portioned out. Each of us received a quart for personal use, and
+eight quarts were given to the cook. Enters now the psychology of the
+situation. No sooner had the discovery of the water shortage been made
+than I, for one, was afflicted with a burning thirst. It seemed to me
+that I had never been so thirsty in my life. My little quart of water I
+could easily have drunk in one draught, and to refrain from doing so
+required a severe exertion of will. Nor was I alone in this. All of us
+talked water, thought water, and dreamed water when we slept. We
+examined the charts for possible islands to which to run in extremity,
+but there were no such islands. The Marquesas were the nearest, and
+they were the other side of the Line, and of the doldrums, too, which
+made it even worse. We were in 3° north latitude, while the Marquesas
+were 9° south latitude—a difference of over a thousand miles.
+Furthermore, the Marquesas lay some fourteen degrees to the west of our
+longitude. A pretty pickle for a handful of creatures sweltering on the
+ocean in the heat of tropic calms.
+
+We rigged lines on either side between the main and mizzen riggings. To
+these we laced the big deck awning, hoisting it up aft with a sailing
+pennant so that any rain it might collect would run forward where it
+could be caught. Here and there squalls passed across the circle of the
+sea. All day we watched them, now to port or starboard, and again ahead
+or astern. But never one came near enough to wet us. In the afternoon a
+big one bore down upon us. It spread out across the ocean as it
+approached, and we could see it emptying countless thousands of gallons
+into the salt sea. Extra attention was paid to the awning and then we
+waited. Warren, Martin, and Hermann made a vivid picture. Grouped
+together, holding on to the rigging, swaying to the roll, they were
+gazing intently at the squall. Strain, anxiety, and yearning were in
+every posture of their bodies. Beside them was the dry and empty
+awning. But they seemed to grow limp and to droop as the squall broke
+in half, one part passing on ahead, the other drawing astern and going
+to leeward.
+
+But that night came rain. Martin, whose psychological thirst had
+compelled him to drink his quart of water early, got his mouth down to
+the lip of the awning and drank the deepest draught I ever have seen
+drunk. The precious water came down in bucketfuls and tubfuls, and in
+two hours we caught and stored away in the tanks one hundred and twenty
+gallons. Strange to say, in all the rest of our voyage to the Marquesas
+not another drop of rain fell on board. If that squall had missed us,
+the handcuffs would have remained on the pump, and we would have busied
+ourselves with utilizing our surplus gasolene for distillation
+purposes.
+
+Then there was the fishing. One did not have to go in search of it, for
+it was there at the rail. A three-inch steel hook, on the end of a
+stout line, with a piece of white rag for bait, was all that was
+necessary to catch bonitas weighing from ten to twenty-five pounds.
+Bonitas feed on flying-fish, wherefore they are unaccustomed to
+nibbling at the hook. They strike as gamely as the gamest fish in the
+sea, and their first run is something that no man who has ever caught
+them will forget. Also, bonitas are the veriest cannibals. The instant
+one is hooked he is attacked by his fellows. Often and often we hauled
+them on board with fresh, clean-bitten holes in them the size of
+teacups.
+
+One school of bonitas, numbering many thousands, stayed with us day and
+night for more than three weeks. Aided by the _Snark_, it was great
+hunting; for they cut a swath of destruction through the ocean half a
+mile wide and fifteen hundred miles in length. They ranged along
+abreast of the _Snark_ on either side, pouncing upon the flying-fish
+her forefoot scared up. Since they were continually pursuing astern the
+flying-fish that survived for several flights, they were always
+overtaking the _Snark_, and at any time one could glance astern and on
+the front of a breaking wave see scores of their silvery forms coasting
+down just under the surface. When they had eaten their fill, it was
+their delight to get in the shadow of the boat, or of her sails, and a
+hundred or so were always to be seen lazily sliding along and keeping
+cool.
+
+But the poor flying-fish! Pursued and eaten alive by the bonitas and
+dolphins, they sought flight in the air, where the swooping seabirds
+drove them back into the water. Under heaven there was no refuge for
+them. Flying-fish do not play when they essay the air. It is a
+life-and-death affair with them. A thousand times a day we could lift
+our eyes and see the tragedy played out. The swift, broken circling of
+a guny might attract one’s attention. A glance beneath shows the back
+of a dolphin breaking the surface in a wild rush. Just in front of its
+nose a shimmering palpitant streak of silver shoots from the water into
+the air—a delicate, organic mechanism of flight, endowed with
+sensation, power of direction, and love of life. The guny swoops for it
+and misses, and the flying-fish, gaining its altitude by rising,
+kite-like, against the wind, turns in a half-circle and skims off to
+leeward, gliding on the bosom of the wind. Beneath it, the wake of the
+dolphin shows in churning foam. So he follows, gazing upward with large
+eyes at the flashing breakfast that navigates an element other than his
+own. He cannot rise to so lofty occasion, but he is a thorough-going
+empiricist, and he knows, sooner or later, if not gobbled up by the
+guny, that the flying-fish must return to the water. And
+then—breakfast. We used to pity the poor winged fish. It was sad to see
+such sordid and bloody slaughter. And then, in the night watches, when
+a forlorn little flying-fish struck the mainsail and fell gasping and
+splattering on the deck, we would rush for it just as eagerly, just as
+greedily, just as voraciously, as the dolphins and bonitas. For know
+that flying-fish are most toothsome for breakfast. It is always a
+wonder to me that such dainty meat does not build dainty tissue in the
+bodies of the devourers. Perhaps the dolphins and bonitas are
+coarser-fibred because of the high speed at which they drive their
+bodies in order to catch their prey. But then again, the flying-fish
+drive their bodies at high speed, too.
+
+Sharks we caught occasionally, on large hooks, with chain-swivels, bent
+on a length of small rope. And sharks meant pilot-fish, and remoras,
+and various sorts of parasitic creatures. Regular man-eaters some of
+the sharks proved, tiger-eyed and with twelve rows of teeth,
+razor-sharp. By the way, we of the _Snark_ are agreed that we have
+eaten many fish that will not compare with baked shark smothered in
+tomato dressing. In the calms we occasionally caught a fish called
+“haké” by the Japanese cook. And once, on a spoon-hook trolling a
+hundred yards astern, we caught a snake-like fish, over three feet in
+length and not more than three inches in diameter, with four fangs in
+his jaw. He proved the most delicious fish—delicious in meat and
+flavour—that we have ever eaten on board.
+
+The most welcome addition to our larder was a green sea-turtle,
+weighing a full hundred pounds and appearing on the table most
+appetizingly in steaks, soups, and stews, and finally in a wonderful
+curry which tempted all hands into eating more rice than was good for
+them. The turtle was sighted to windward, calmly sleeping on the
+surface in the midst of a huge school of curious dolphins. It was a
+deep-sea turtle of a surety, for the nearest land was a thousand miles
+away. We put the _Snark_ about and went back for him, Hermann driving
+the granes into his head and neck. When hauled aboard, numerous remora
+were clinging to his shell, and out of the hollows at the roots of his
+flippers crawled several large crabs. It did not take the crew of the
+_Snark_ longer than the next meal to reach the unanimous conclusion
+that it would willingly put the _Snark_ about any time for a turtle.
+
+But it is the dolphin that is the king of deep-sea fishes. Never is his
+colour twice quite the same. Swimming in the sea, an ethereal creature
+of palest azure, he displays in that one guise a miracle of colour. But
+it is nothing compared with the displays of which he is capable. At one
+time he will appear green—pale green, deep green, phosphorescent green;
+at another time blue—deep blue, electric blue, all the spectrum of
+blue. Catch him on a hook, and he turns to gold, yellow gold, all gold.
+Haul him on deck, and he excels the spectrum, passing through
+inconceivable shades of blues, greens, and yellows, and then, suddenly,
+turning a ghostly white, in the midst of which are bright blue spots,
+and you suddenly discover that he is speckled like a trout. Then back
+from white he goes, through all the range of colours, finally turning
+to a mother-of-pearl.
+
+For those who are devoted to fishing, I can recommend no finer sport
+than catching dolphin. Of course, it must be done on a thin line with
+reel and pole. A No. 7, O’Shaughnessy tarpon hook is just the thing,
+baited with an entire flying-fish. Like the bonita, the dolphin’s fare
+consists of flying-fish, and he strikes like lightning at the bait. The
+first warning is when the reel screeches and you see the line smoking
+out at right angles to the boat. Before you have time to entertain
+anxiety concerning the length of your line, the fish rises into the air
+in a succession of leaps. Since he is quite certain to be four feet
+long or over, the sport of landing so gamey a fish can be realized.
+When hooked, he invariably turns golden. The idea of the series of
+leaps is to rid himself of the hook, and the man who has made the
+strike must be of iron or decadent if his heart does not beat with an
+extra flutter when he beholds such gorgeous fish, glittering in golden
+mail and shaking itself like a stallion in each mid-air leap. ’Ware
+slack! If you don’t, on one of those leaps the hook will be flung out
+and twenty feet away. No slack, and away he will go on another run,
+culminating in another series of leaps. About this time one begins to
+worry over the line, and to wish that he had had nine hundred feet on
+the reel originally instead of six hundred. With careful playing the
+line can be saved, and after an hour of keen excitement the fish can be
+brought to gaff. One such dolphin I landed on the _Snark_ measured four
+feet and seven inches.
+
+Hermann caught dolphins more prosaically. A hand-line and a chunk of
+shark-meat were all he needed. His hand-line was very thick, but on
+more than one occasion it parted and lost the fish. One day a dolphin
+got away with a lure of Hermann’s manufacture, to which were lashed
+four O’Shaughnessy hooks. Within an hour the same dolphin was landed
+with the rod, and on dissecting him the four hooks were recovered. The
+dolphins, which remained with us over a month, deserted us north of the
+line, and not one was seen during the remainder of the traverse.
+
+So the days passed. There was so much to be done that time never
+dragged. Had there been little to do, time could not have dragged with
+such wonderful seascapes and cloudscapes—dawns that were like burning
+imperial cities under rainbows that arched nearly to the zenith;
+sunsets that bathed the purple sea in rivers of rose-coloured light,
+flowing from a sun whose diverging, heaven-climbing rays were of the
+purest blue. Overside, in the heat of the day, the sea was an azure
+satiny fabric, in the depths of which the sunshine focussed in funnels
+of light. Astern, deep down, when there was a breeze, bubbled a
+procession of milky-turquoise ghosts—the foam flung down by the hull of
+the _Snark_ each time she floundered against a sea. At night the wake
+was phosphorescent fire, where the medusa slime resented our passing
+bulk, while far down could be observed the unceasing flight of comets,
+with long, undulating, nebulous tails—caused by the passage of the
+bonitas through the resentful medusa slime. And now and again, from out
+of the darkness on either hand, just under the surface, larger
+phosphorescent organisms flashed up like electric lights, marking
+collisions with the careless bonitas skurrying ahead to the good
+hunting just beyond our bowsprit.
+
+We made our easting, worked down through the doldrums, and caught a
+fresh breeze out of south-by-west. Hauled up by the wind, on such a
+slant, we would fetch past the Marquesas far away to the westward. But
+the next day, on Tuesday, November 26, in the thick of a heavy squall,
+the wind shifted suddenly to the southeast. It was the trade at last.
+There were no more squalls, naught but fine weather, a fair wind, and a
+whirling log, with sheets slacked off and with spinnaker and mainsail
+swaying and bellying on either side. The trade backed more and more,
+until it blew out of the northeast, while we steered a steady course to
+the southwest. Ten days of this, and on the morning of December 6, at
+five o’clock, we sighted land “just where it ought to have been,” dead
+ahead. We passed to leeward of Ua-huka, skirted the southern edge of
+Nuka-hiva, and that night, in driving squalls and inky darkness, fought
+our way in to an anchorage in the narrow bay of Taiohae. The anchor
+rumbled down to the blatting of wild goats on the cliffs, and the air
+we breathed was heavy with the perfume of flowers. The traverse was
+accomplished. Sixty days from land to land, across a lonely sea above
+whose horizons never rise the straining sails of ships.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+TYPEE
+
+
+To the eastward Ua-huka was being blotted out by an evening rain-squall
+that was fast overtaking the _Snark_. But that little craft, her big
+spinnaker filled by the southeast trade, was making a good race of it.
+Cape Martin, the southeasternmost point of Nuku-hiva, was abeam, and
+Comptroller Bay was opening up as we fled past its wide entrance, where
+Sail Rock, for all the world like the spritsail of a Columbia River
+salmon-boat, was making brave weather of it in the smashing southeast
+swell.
+
+“What do you make that out to be?” I asked Hermann, at the wheel.
+
+“A fishing-boat, sir,” he answered after careful scrutiny.
+
+Yet on the chart it was plainly marked, “Sail Rock.”
+
+But we were more interested in the recesses of Comptroller Bay, where
+our eyes eagerly sought out the three bights of land and centred on the
+midmost one, where the gathering twilight showed the dim walls of a
+valley extending inland. How often we had pored over the chart and
+centred always on that midmost bight and on the valley it opened—the
+Valley of Typee. “Taipi” the chart spelled it, and spelled it
+correctly, but I prefer “Typee,” and I shall always spell it “Typee.”
+When I was a little boy, I read a book spelled in that manner—Herman
+Melville’s “Typee”; and many long hours I dreamed over its pages. Nor
+was it all dreaming. I resolved there and then, mightily, come what
+would, that when I had gained strength and years, I, too, would voyage
+to Typee. For the wonder of the world was penetrating to my tiny
+consciousness—the wonder that was to lead me to many lands, and that
+leads and never pails. The years passed, but Typee was not forgotten.
+Returned to San Francisco from a seven months’ cruise in the North
+Pacific, I decided the time had come. The brig _Galilee_ was sailing
+for the Marquesas, but her crew was complete and I, who was an
+able-seaman before the mast and young enough to be overweeningly proud
+of it, was willing to condescend to ship as cabin-boy in order to make
+the pilgrimage to Typee. Of course, the _Galilee_ would have sailed
+from the Marquesas without me, for I was bent on finding another
+Fayaway and another Kory-Kory. I doubt that the captain read desertion
+in my eye. Perhaps even the berth of cabin-boy was already filled. At
+any rate, I did not get it.
+
+Then came the rush of years, filled brimming with projects,
+achievements, and failures; but Typee was not forgotten, and here I was
+now, gazing at its misty outlines till the squall swooped down and the
+_Snark_ dashed on into the driving smother. Ahead, we caught a glimpse
+and took the compass bearing of Sentinel Rock, wreathed with pounding
+surf. Then it, too, was effaced by the rain and darkness. We steered
+straight for it, trusting to hear the sound of breakers in time to
+sheer clear. We had to steer for it. We had naught but a compass
+bearing with which to orientate ourselves, and if we missed Sentinel
+Rock, we missed Taiohae Bay, and we would have to throw the _Snark_ up
+to the wind and lie off and on the whole night—no pleasant prospect for
+voyagers weary from a sixty days’ traverse of the vast Pacific
+solitude, and land-hungry, and fruit-hungry, and hungry with an
+appetite of years for the sweet vale of Typee.
+
+Abruptly, with a roar of sound, Sentinel Rock loomed through the rain
+dead ahead. We altered our course, and, with mainsail and spinnaker
+bellying to the squall, drove past. Under the lea of the rock the wind
+dropped us, and we rolled in an absolute calm. Then a puff of air
+struck us, right in our teeth, out of Taiohae Bay. It was in spinnaker,
+up mizzen, all sheets by the wind, and we were moving slowly ahead,
+heaving the lead and straining our eyes for the fixed red light on the
+ruined fort that would give us our bearings to anchorage. The air was
+light and baffling, now east, now west, now north, now south; while
+from either hand came the roar of unseen breakers. From the looming
+cliffs arose the blatting of wild goats, and overhead the first stars
+were peeping mistily through the ragged train of the passing squall. At
+the end of two hours, having come a mile into the bay, we dropped
+anchor in eleven fathoms. And so we came to Taiohae.
+
+In the morning we awoke in fairyland. The _Snark_ rested in a placid
+harbour that nestled in a vast amphitheatre, the towering, vine-clad
+walls of which seemed to rise directly from the water. Far up, to the
+east, we glimpsed the thin line of a trail, visible in one place, where
+it scoured across the face of the wall.
+
+“The path by which Toby escaped from Typee!” we cried.
+
+We were not long in getting ashore and astride horses, though the
+consummation of our pilgrimage had to be deferred for a day. Two months
+at sea, bare-footed all the time, without space in which to exercise
+one’s limbs, is not the best preliminary to leather shoes and walking.
+Besides, the land had to cease its nauseous rolling before we could
+feel fit for riding goat-like horses over giddy trails. So we took a
+short ride to break in, and crawled through thick jungle to make the
+acquaintance of a venerable moss-grown idol, where had foregathered a
+German trader and a Norwegian captain to estimate the weight of said
+idol, and to speculate upon depreciation in value caused by sawing him
+in half. They treated the old fellow sacrilegiously, digging their
+knives into him to see how hard he was and how deep his mossy mantle,
+and commanding him to rise up and save them trouble by walking down to
+the ship himself. In lieu of which, nineteen Kanakas slung him on a
+frame of timbers and toted him to the ship, where, battened down under
+hatches, even now he is cleaving the South Pacific Hornward and toward
+Europe—the ultimate abiding-place for all good heathen idols, save for
+the few in America and one in particular who grins beside me as I
+write, and who, barring shipwreck, will grin somewhere in my
+neighbourhood until I die. And he will win out. He will be grinning
+when I am dust.
+
+Also, as a preliminary, we attended a feast, where one Taiara Tamarii,
+the son of an Hawaiian sailor who deserted from a whaleship,
+commemorated the death of his Marquesan mother by roasting fourteen
+whole hogs and inviting in the village. So we came along, welcomed by a
+native herald, a young girl, who stood on a great rock and chanted the
+information that the banquet was made perfect by our presence—which
+information she extended impartially to every arrival. Scarcely were we
+seated, however, when she changed her tune, while the company
+manifested intense excitement. Her cries became eager and piercing.
+From a distance came answering cries, in men’s voices, which blended
+into a wild, barbaric chant that sounded incredibly savage, smacking of
+blood and war. Then, through vistas of tropical foliage appeared a
+procession of savages, naked save for gaudy loin-cloths. They advanced
+slowly, uttering deep guttural cries of triumph and exaltation. Slung
+from young saplings carried on their shoulders were mysterious objects
+of considerable weight, hidden from view by wrappings of green leaves.
+
+Nothing but pigs, innocently fat and roasted to a turn, were inside
+those wrappings, but the men were carrying them into camp in imitation
+of old times when they carried in “long-pig.” Now long-pig is not pig.
+Long-pig is the Polynesian euphemism for human flesh; and these
+descendants of man-eaters, a king’s son at their head, brought in the
+pigs to table as of old their grandfathers had brought in their slain
+enemies. Every now and then the procession halted in order that the
+bearers should have every advantage in uttering particularly ferocious
+shouts of victory, of contempt for their enemies, and of gustatory
+desire. So Melville, two generations ago, witnessed the bodies of slain
+Happar warriors, wrapped in palm-leaves, carried to banquet at the Ti.
+At another time, at the Ti, he “observed a curiously carved vessel of
+wood,” and on looking into it his eyes “fell upon the disordered
+members of a human skeleton, the bones still fresh with moisture, and
+with particles of flesh clinging to them here and there.”
+
+Cannibalism has often been regarded as a fairy story by ultracivilized
+men who dislike, perhaps, the notion that their own savage forebears
+have somewhere in the past been addicted to similar practices. Captain
+Cook was rather sceptical upon the subject, until, one day, in a
+harbour of New Zealand, he deliberately tested the matter. A native
+happened to have brought on board, for sale, a nice, sun-dried head. At
+Cook’s orders strips of the flesh were cut away and handed to the
+native, who greedily devoured them. To say the least, Captain Cook was
+a rather thorough-going empiricist. At any rate, by that act he
+supplied one ascertained fact of which science had been badly in need.
+Little did he dream of the existence of a certain group of islands,
+thousands of miles away, where in subsequent days there would arise a
+curious suit at law, when an old chief of Maui would be charged with
+defamation of character because he persisted in asserting that his body
+was the living repository of Captain Cook’s great toe. It is said that
+the plaintiffs failed to prove that the old chief was not the tomb of
+the navigator’s great toe, and that the suit was dismissed.
+
+I suppose I shall not have the chance in these degenerate days to see
+any long-pig eaten, but at least I am already the possessor of a duly
+certified Marquesan calabash, oblong in shape, curiously carved, over a
+century old, from which has been drunk the blood of two shipmasters.
+One of those captains was a mean man. He sold a decrepit whale-boat, as
+good as new what of the fresh white paint, to a Marquesan chief. But no
+sooner had the captain sailed away than the whale-boat dropped to
+pieces. It was his fortune, some time afterwards, to be wrecked, of all
+places, on that particular island. The Marquesan chief was ignorant of
+rebates and discounts; but he had a primitive sense of equity and an
+equally primitive conception of the economy of nature, and he balanced
+the account by eating the man who had cheated him.
+
+We started in the cool dawn for Typee, astride ferocious little
+stallions that pawed and screamed and bit and fought one another quite
+oblivious of the fragile humans on their backs and of the slippery
+boulders, loose rocks, and yawning gorges. The way led up an ancient
+road through a jungle of _hau_ trees. On every side were the vestiges
+of a one-time dense population. Wherever the eye could penetrate the
+thick growth, glimpses were caught of stone walls and of stone
+foundations, six to eight feet in height, built solidly throughout, and
+many yards in width and depth. They formed great stone platforms, upon
+which, at one time, there had been houses. But the houses and the
+people were gone, and huge trees sank their roots through the platforms
+and towered over the under-running jungle. These foundations are called
+_pae-paes_—the _pi-pis_ of Melville, who spelled phonetically.
+
+The Marquesans of the present generation lack the energy to hoist and
+place such huge stones. Also, they lack incentive. There are plenty of
+_pae-paes_ to go around, with a few thousand unoccupied ones left over.
+Once or twice, as we ascended the valley, we saw magnificent _pae-paes_
+bearing on their general surface pitiful little straw huts, the
+proportions being similar to a voting booth perched on the broad
+foundation of the Pyramid of Cheops. For the Marquesans are perishing,
+and, to judge from conditions at Taiohae, the one thing that retards
+their destruction is the infusion of fresh blood. A pure Marquesan is a
+rarity. They seem to be all half-breeds and strange conglomerations of
+dozens of different races. Nineteen able labourers are all the trader
+at Taiohae can muster for the loading of copra on shipboard, and in
+their veins runs the blood of English, American, Dane, German, French,
+Corsican, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hawaiian, Paumotan, Tahitian,
+and Easter Islander. There are more races than there are persons, but
+it is a wreckage of races at best. Life faints and stumbles and gasps
+itself away. In this warm, equable clime—a truly terrestrial
+paradise—where are never extremes of temperature and where the air is
+like balm, kept ever pure by the ozone-laden southeast trade, asthma,
+phthisis, and tuberculosis flourish as luxuriantly as the vegetation.
+Everywhere, from the few grass huts, arises the racking cough or
+exhausted groan of wasted lungs. Other horrible diseases prosper as
+well, but the most deadly of all are those that attack the lungs. There
+is a form of consumption called “galloping,” which is especially
+dreaded. In two months’ time it reduces the strongest man to a skeleton
+under a grave-cloth. In valley after valley the last inhabitant has
+passed and the fertile soil has relapsed to jungle. In Melville’s day
+the valley of Hapaa (spelled by him “Happar”) was peopled by a strong
+and warlike tribe. A generation later, it contained but two hundred
+persons. To-day it is an untenanted, howling, tropical wilderness.
+
+We climbed higher and higher in the valley, our unshod stallions
+picking their steps on the disintegrating trail, which led in and out
+through the abandoned _pae-paes_ and insatiable jungle. The sight of
+red mountain apples, the _ohias_, familiar to us from Hawaii, caused a
+native to be sent climbing after them. And again he climbed for
+cocoa-nuts. I have drunk the cocoanuts of Jamaica and of Hawaii, but I
+never knew how delicious such draught could be till I drank it here in
+the Marquesas. Occasionally we rode under wild limes and oranges—great
+trees which had survived the wilderness longer than the motes of humans
+who had cultivated them.
+
+We rode through endless thickets of yellow-pollened cassi—if riding it
+could be called; for those fragrant thickets were inhabited by wasps.
+And such wasps! Great yellow fellows the size of small canary birds,
+darting through the air with behind them drifting a bunch of legs a
+couple of inches long. A stallion abruptly stands on his forelegs and
+thrusts his hind legs skyward. He withdraws them from the sky long
+enough to make one wild jump ahead, and then returns them to their
+index position. It is nothing. His thick hide has merely been punctured
+by a flaming lance of wasp virility. Then a second and a third
+stallion, and all the stallions, begin to cavort on their forelegs over
+the precipitous landscape. Swat! A white-hot poniard penetrates my
+cheek. Swat again!! I am stabbed in the neck. I am bringing up the rear
+and getting more than my share. There is no retreat, and the plunging
+horses ahead, on a precarious trail, promise little safety. My horse
+overruns Charmian’s horse, and that sensitive creature, fresh-stung at
+the psychological moment, planks one of his hoofs into my horse and the
+other hoof into me. I thank my stars that he is not steel-shod, and
+half-arise from the saddle at the impact of another flaming dagger. I
+am certainly getting more than my share, and so is my poor horse, whose
+pain and panic are only exceeded by mine.
+
+“Get out of the way! I’m coming!” I shout, frantically dashing my cap
+at the winged vipers around me.
+
+On one side of the trail the landscape rises straight up. On the other
+side it sinks straight down. The only way to get out of my way is to
+keep on going. How that string of horses kept their feet is a miracle;
+but they dashed ahead, over-running one another, galloping, trotting,
+stumbling, jumping, scrambling, and kicking methodically skyward every
+time a wasp landed on them. After a while we drew breath and counted
+our injuries. And this happened not once, nor twice, but time after
+time. Strange to say, it never grew monotonous. I know that I, for one,
+came through each brush with the undiminished zest of a man flying from
+sudden death. No; the pilgrim from Taiohae to Typee will never suffer
+from _ennui_ on the way.
+
+At last we arose above the vexation of wasps. It was a matter of
+altitude, however, rather than of fortitude. All about us lay the
+jagged back-bones of ranges, as far as the eye could see, thrusting
+their pinnacles into the trade-wind clouds. Under us, from the way we
+had come, the _Snark_ lay like a tiny toy on the calm water of Taiohae
+Bay. Ahead we could see the inshore indentation of Comptroller Bay. We
+dropped down a thousand feet, and Typee lay beneath us. “Had a glimpse
+of the gardens of paradise been revealed to me I could scarcely have
+been more ravished with the sight”—so said Melville on the moment of
+his first view of the valley. He saw a garden. We saw a wilderness.
+Where were the hundred groves of the breadfruit tree he saw? We saw
+jungle, nothing but jungle, with the exception of two grass huts and
+several clumps of cocoanuts breaking the primordial green mantle. Where
+was the _Ti_ of Mehevi, the bachelors’ hall, the palace where women
+were taboo, and where he ruled with his lesser chieftains, keeping the
+half-dozen dusty and torpid ancients to remind them of the valorous
+past? From the swift stream no sounds arose of maids and matrons
+pounding _tapa_. And where was the hut that old Narheyo eternally
+builded? In vain I looked for him perched ninety feet from the ground
+in some tall cocoanut, taking his morning smoke.
+
+We went down a zigzag trail under overarching, matted jungle, where
+great butterflies drifted by in the silence. No tattooed savage with
+club and javelin guarded the path; and when we forded the stream, we
+were free to roam where we pleased. No longer did the taboo, sacred and
+merciless, reign in that sweet vale. Nay, the taboo still did reign, a
+new taboo, for when we approached too near the several wretched native
+women, the taboo was uttered warningly. And it was well. They were
+lepers. The man who warned us was afflicted horribly with
+elephantiasis. All were suffering from lung trouble. The valley of
+Typee was the abode of death, and the dozen survivors of the tribe were
+gasping feebly the last painful breaths of the race.
+
+Certainly the battle had not been to the strong, for once the Typeans
+were very strong, stronger than the Happars, stronger than the
+Taiohaeans, stronger than all the tribes of Nuku-hiva. The word
+“typee,” or, rather, “taipi,” originally signified an eater of human
+flesh. But since all the Marquesans were human-flesh eaters, to be so
+designated was the token that the Typeans were the human-flesh eaters
+par excellence. Not alone to Nuku-hiva did the Typean reputation for
+bravery and ferocity extend. In all the islands of the Marquesas the
+Typeans were named with dread. Man could not conquer them. Even the
+French fleet that took possession of the Marquesas left the Typeans
+alone. Captain Porter, of the frigate _Essex_, once invaded the valley.
+His sailors and marines were reinforced by two thousand warriors of
+Happar and Taiohae. They penetrated quite a distance into the valley,
+but met with so fierce a resistance that they were glad to retreat and
+get away in their flotilla of boats and war-canoes.
+
+Of all inhabitants of the South Seas, the Marquesans were adjudged the
+strongest and the most beautiful. Melville said of them: “I was
+especially struck by the physical strength and beauty they displayed .
+. . In beauty of form they surpassed anything I had ever seen. Not a
+single instance of natural deformity was observable in all the throng
+attending the revels. Every individual appeared free from those
+blemishes which sometimes mar the effect of an otherwise perfect form.
+But their physical excellence did not merely consist in an exemption
+from these evils; nearly every individual of the number might have been
+taken for a sculptor’s model.” Mendaña, the discoverer of the
+Marquesas, described the natives as wondrously beautiful to behold.
+Figueroa, the chronicler of his voyage, said of them: “In complexion
+they were nearly white; of good stature and finely formed.” Captain
+Cook called the Marquesans the most splendid islanders in the South
+Seas. The men were described, as “in almost every instance of lofty
+stature, scarcely ever less than six feet in height.”
+
+And now all this strength and beauty has departed, and the valley of
+Typee is the abode of some dozen wretched creatures, afflicted by
+leprosy, elephantiasis, and tuberculosis. Melville estimated the
+population at two thousand, not taking into consideration the small
+adjoining valley of Ho-o-u-mi. Life has rotted away in this wonderful
+garden spot, where the climate is as delightful and healthful as any to
+be found in the world. Not alone were the Typeans physically
+magnificent; they were pure. Their air did not contain the bacilli and
+germs and microbes of disease that fill our own air. And when the white
+men imported in their ships these various micro-organisms or disease,
+the Typeans crumpled up and went down before them.
+
+When one considers the situation, one is almost driven to the
+conclusion that the white race flourishes on impurity and corruption.
+Natural selection, however, gives the explanation. We of the white race
+are the survivors and the descendants of the thousands of generations
+of survivors in the war with the micro-organisms. Whenever one of us
+was born with a constitution peculiarly receptive to these minute
+enemies, such a one promptly died. Only those of us survived who could
+withstand them. We who are alive are the immune, the fit—the ones best
+constituted to live in a world of hostile micro-organisms. The poor
+Marquesans had undergone no such selection. They were not immune. And
+they, who had made a custom of eating their enemies, were now eaten by
+enemies so microscopic as to be invisible, and against whom no war of
+dart and javelin was possible. On the other hand, had there been a few
+hundred thousand Marquesans to begin with, there might have been
+sufficient survivors to lay the foundation for a new race—a regenerated
+race, if a plunge into a festering bath of organic poison can be called
+regeneration.
+
+We unsaddled our horses for lunch, and after we had fought the
+stallions apart—mine with several fresh chunks bitten out of his
+back—and after we had vainly fought the sand-flies, we ate bananas and
+tinned meats, washed down by generous draughts of cocoanut milk. There
+was little to be seen. The jungle had rushed back and engulfed the puny
+works of man. Here and there _pai-pais_ were to be stumbled upon, but
+there were no inscriptions, no hieroglyphics, no clues to the past they
+attested—only dumb stones, builded and carved by hands that were
+forgotten dust. Out of the _pai-pais_ grew great trees, jealous of the
+wrought work of man, splitting and scattering the stones back into the
+primeval chaos.
+
+We gave up the jungle and sought the stream with the idea of evading
+the sand-flies. Vain hope! To go in swimming one must take off his
+clothes. The sand-flies are aware of the fact, and they lurk by the
+river bank in countless myriads. In the native they are called the
+_nau-nau_, which is pronounced “now-now.” They are certainly well
+named, for they are the insistent present. There is no past nor future
+when they fasten upon one’s epidermis, and I am willing to wager that
+Omer Khayyám could never have written the Rubáiyat in the valley of
+Typee—it would have been psychologically impossible. I made the
+strategic mistake of undressing on the edge of a steep bank where I
+could dive in but could not climb out. When I was ready to dress, I had
+a hundred yards’ walk on the bank before I could reach my clothes. At
+the first step, fully ten thousand _nau-naus_ landed upon me. At the
+second step I was walking in a cloud. By the third step the sun was
+dimmed in the sky. After that I don’t know what happened. When I
+arrived at my clothes, I was a maniac. And here enters my grand
+tactical error. There is only one rule of conduct in dealing with
+_nau-naus_. Never swat them. Whatever you do, don’t swat them. They are
+so vicious that in the instant of annihilation they eject their last
+atom of poison into your carcass. You must pluck them delicately,
+between thumb and forefinger, and persuade them gently to remove their
+proboscides from your quivering flesh. It is like pulling teeth. But
+the difficulty was that the teeth sprouted faster than I could pull
+them, so I swatted, and, so doing, filled myself full with their
+poison. This was a week ago. At the present moment I resemble a sadly
+neglected smallpox convalescent.
+
+Ho-o-u-mi is a small valley, separated from Typee by a low ridge, and
+thither we started when we had knocked our indomitable and insatiable
+riding-animals into submission. As it was, Warren’s mount, after a mile
+run, selected the most dangerous part of the trail for an exhibition
+that kept us all on the anxious seat for fully five minutes. We rode by
+the mouth of Typee valley and gazed down upon the beach from which
+Melville escaped. There was where the whale-boat lay on its oars close
+in to the surf; and there was where Karakoee, the taboo Kanaka, stood
+in the water and trafficked for the sailor’s life. There, surely, was
+where Melville gave Fayaway the parting embrace ere he dashed for the
+boat. And there was the point of land from which Mehevi and Mow-mow and
+their following swam off to intercept the boat, only to have their
+wrists gashed by sheath-knives when they laid hold of the gunwale,
+though it was reserved for Mow-mow to receive the boat-hook full in the
+throat from Melville’s hands.
+
+We rode on to Ho-o-u-mi. So closely was Melville guarded that he never
+dreamed of the existence of this valley, though he must continually
+have met its inhabitants, for they belonged to Typee. We rode through
+the same abandoned _pae-paes_, but as we neared the sea we found a
+profusion of cocoanuts, breadfruit trees and taro patches, and fully a
+dozen grass dwellings. In one of these we arranged to pass the night,
+and preparations were immediately put on foot for a feast. A young pig
+was promptly despatched, and while he was being roasted among hot
+stones, and while chickens were stewing in cocoanut milk, I persuaded
+one of the cooks to climb an unusually tall cocoanut palm. The cluster
+of nuts at the top was fully one hundred and twenty-five feet from the
+ground, but that native strode up to the tree, seized it in both hands,
+jack-knived at the waist so that the soles of his feet rested flatly
+against the trunk, and then he walked right straight up without
+stopping. There were no notches in the tree. He had no ropes to help
+him. He merely walked up the tree, one hundred and twenty-five feet in
+the air, and cast down the nuts from the summit. Not every man there
+had the physical stamina for such a feat, or the lungs, rather, for
+most of them were coughing their lives away. Some of the women kept up
+a ceaseless moaning and groaning, so badly were their lungs wasted.
+Very few of either sex were full-blooded Marquesans. They were mostly
+half-breeds and three-quarter-breeds of French, English, Danish, and
+Chinese extraction. At the best, these infusions of fresh blood merely
+delayed the passing, and the results led one to wonder whether it was
+worth while.
+
+The feast was served on a broad _pae-pae_, the rear portion of which
+was occupied by the house in which we were to sleep. The first course
+was raw fish and _poi-poi_, the latter sharp and more acrid of taste
+than the _poi_ of Hawaii, which is made from taro. The _poi-poi_ of the
+Marquesas is made from breadfruit. The ripe fruit, after the core is
+removed, is placed in a calabash and pounded with a stone pestle into a
+stiff, sticky paste. In this stage of the process, wrapped in leaves,
+it can be buried in the ground, where it will keep for years. Before it
+can be eaten, however, further processes are necessary. A leaf-covered
+package is placed among hot stones, like the pig, and thoroughly baked.
+After that it is mixed with cold water and thinned out—not thin enough
+to run, but thin enough to be eaten by sticking one’s first and second
+fingers into it. On close acquaintance it proves a pleasant and most
+healthful food. And breadfruit, ripe and well boiled or roasted! It is
+delicious. Breadfruit and taro are kingly vegetables, the pair of them,
+though the former is patently a misnomer and more resembles a sweet
+potato than anything else, though it is not mealy like a sweet potato,
+nor is it so sweet.
+
+The feast ended, we watched the moon rise over Typee. The air was like
+balm, faintly scented with the breath of flowers. It was a magic night,
+deathly still, without the slightest breeze to stir the foliage; and
+one caught one’s breath and felt the pang that is almost hurt, so
+exquisite was the beauty of it. Faint and far could be heard the thin
+thunder of the surf upon the beach. There were no beds; and we drowsed
+and slept wherever we thought the floor softest. Near by, a woman
+panted and moaned in her sleep, and all about us the dying islanders
+coughed in the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+THE NATURE MAN
+
+
+I first met him on Market Street in San Francisco. It was a wet and
+drizzly afternoon, and he was striding along, clad solely in a pair of
+abbreviated knee-trousers and an abbreviated shirt, his bare feet going
+slick-slick through the pavement-slush. At his heels trooped a score of
+excited gamins. Every head—and there were thousands—turned to glance
+curiously at him as he went by. And I turned, too. Never had I seen
+such lovely sunburn. He was all sunburn, of the sort a blond takes on
+when his skin does not peel. His long yellow hair was burnt, so was his
+beard, which sprang from a soil unploughed by any razor. He was a tawny
+man, a golden-tawny man, all glowing and radiant with the sun. Another
+prophet, thought I, come up to town with a message that will save the
+world.
+
+A few weeks later I was with some friends in their bungalow in the
+Piedmont hills overlooking San Francisco Bay. “We’ve got him, we’ve got
+him,” they barked. “We caught him up a tree; but he’s all right now,
+he’ll feed from the hand. Come on and see him.” So I accompanied them
+up a dizzy hill, and in a rickety shack in the midst of a eucalyptus
+grove found my sunburned prophet of the city pavements.
+
+He hastened to meet us, arriving in the whirl and blur of a handspring.
+He did not shake hands with us; instead, his greeting took the form of
+stunts. He turned more handsprings. He twisted his body sinuously, like
+a snake, until, having sufficiently limbered up, he bent from the hips,
+and, with legs straight and knees touching, beat a tattoo on the ground
+with the palms of his hands. He whirligigged and pirouetted, dancing
+and cavorting round like an inebriated ape. All the sun-warmth of his
+ardent life beamed in his face. I am so happy, was the song without
+words he sang.
+
+He sang it all evening, ringing the changes on it with an endless
+variety of stunts. “A fool! a fool! I met a fool in the forest!”
+thought I, and a worthy fool he proved. Between handsprings and
+whirligigs he delivered his message that would save the world. It was
+twofold. First, let suffering humanity strip off its clothing and run
+wild in the mountains and valleys; and, second, let the very miserable
+world adopt phonetic spelling. I caught a glimpse of the great social
+problems being settled by the city populations swarming naked over the
+landscape, to the popping of shot-guns, the barking of ranch-dogs, and
+countless assaults with pitchforks wielded by irate farmers.
+
+The years passed, and, one sunny morning, the _Snark_ poked her nose
+into a narrow opening in a reef that smoked with the crashing impact of
+the trade-wind swell, and beat slowly up Papeete harbour. Coming off to
+us was a boat, flying a yellow flag. We knew it contained the port
+doctor. But quite a distance off, in its wake, was a tiny out rigger
+canoe that puzzled us. It was flying a red flag. I studied it through
+the glasses, fearing that it marked some hidden danger to navigation,
+some recent wreck or some buoy or beacon that had been swept away. Then
+the doctor came on board. After he had examined the state of our health
+and been assured that we had no live rats hidden away in the _Snark_, I
+asked him the meaning of the red flag. “Oh, that is Darling,” was the
+answer.
+
+And then Darling, Ernest Darling flying the red flag that is indicative
+of the brotherhood of man, hailed us. “Hello, Jack!” he called. “Hello,
+Charmian!” He paddled swiftly nearer, and I saw that he was the tawny
+prophet of the Piedmont hills. He came over the side, a sun-god clad in
+a scarlet loin-cloth, with presents of Arcady and greeting in both his
+hands—a bottle of golden honey and a leaf-basket filled _with_ great
+golden mangoes, golden bananas specked with freckles of deeper gold,
+golden pine-apples and golden limes, and juicy oranges minted from the
+same precious ore of sun and soil. And in this fashion under the
+southern sky, I met once more Darling, the Nature Man.
+
+Tahiti is one of the most beautiful spots in the world, inhabited by
+thieves and robbers and liars, also by several honest and truthful men
+and women. Wherefore, because of the blight cast upon Tahiti’s
+wonderful beauty by the spidery human vermin that infest it, I am
+minded to write, not of Tahiti, but of the Nature Man. He, at least, is
+refreshing and wholesome. The spirit that emanates from him is so
+gentle and sweet that it would harm nothing, hurt nobody’s feelings
+save the feelings of a predatory and plutocratic capitalist.
+
+“What does this red flag mean?” I asked.
+
+“Socialism, of course.”
+
+“Yes, yes, I know that,” I went on; “but what does it mean in your
+hands?”
+
+“Why, that I’ve found my message.”
+
+“And that you are delivering it to Tahiti?” I demanded incredulously.
+
+“Sure,” he answered simply; and later on I found that he was, too.
+
+When we dropped anchor, lowered a small boat into the water, and
+started ashore, the Nature Man joined us. Now, thought I, I shall be
+pestered to death by this crank. Waking or sleeping I shall never be
+quit of him until I sail away from here.
+
+But never in my life was I more mistaken. I took a house and went to
+live and work in it, and the Nature Man never came near me. He was
+waiting for the invitation. In the meantime he went aboard the _Snark_
+and took possession of her library, delighted by the quantity of
+scientific books, and shocked, as I learned afterwards, by the
+inordinate amount of fiction. The Nature Man never wastes time on
+fiction.
+
+After a week or so, my conscience smote me, and I invited him to dinner
+at a downtown hotel.
+
+He arrived, looking unwontedly stiff and uncomfortable in a cotton
+jacket. When invited to peel it off, he beamed his gratitude and joy,
+and did so, revealing his sun-gold skin, from waist to shoulder,
+covered only by a piece of fish-net of coarse twine and large of mesh.
+A scarlet loin-cloth completed his costume. I began my acquaintance
+with him that night, and during my long stay in Tahiti that
+acquaintance ripened into friendship.
+
+“So you write books,” he said, one day when, tired and sweaty, I
+finished my morning’s work.
+
+“I, too, write books,” he announced.
+
+Aha, thought I, now at last is he going to pester me with his literary
+efforts. My soul was in revolt. I had not come all the way to the South
+Seas to be a literary bureau.
+
+“This is the book I write,” he explained, smashing himself a resounding
+blow on the chest with his clenched fist. “The gorilla in the African
+jungle pounds his chest till the noise of it can be heard half a mile
+away.”
+
+“A pretty good chest,” quoth I, admiringly; “it would even make a
+gorilla envious.”
+
+And then, and later, I learned the details of the marvellous book
+Ernest Darling had written. Twelve years ago he lay close to death. He
+weighed but ninety pounds, and was too weak to speak. The doctors had
+given him up. His father, a practising physician, had given him up.
+Consultations with other physicians had been held upon him. There was
+no hope for him. Overstudy (as a school-teacher and as a university
+student) and two successive attacks of pneumonia were responsible for
+his breakdown. Day by day he was losing strength. He could extract no
+nutrition from the heavy foods they gave him; nor could pellets and
+powders help his stomach to do the work of digestion. Not only was he a
+physical wreck, but he was a mental wreck. His mind was overwrought. He
+was sick and tired of medicine, and he was sick and tired of persons.
+Human speech jarred upon him. Human attentions drove him frantic. The
+thought came to him that since he was going to die, he might as well
+die in the open, away from all the bother and irritation. And behind
+this idea lurked a sneaking idea that perhaps he would not die after
+all if only he could escape from the heavy foods, the medicines, and
+the well-intentioned persons who made him frantic.
+
+So Ernest Darling, a bag of bones and a death’s-head, a perambulating
+corpse, with just the dimmest flutter of life in it to make it
+perambulate, turned his back upon men and the habitations of men and
+dragged himself for five miles through the brush, away from the city of
+Portland, Oregon. Of course he was crazy. Only a lunatic would drag
+himself out of his death-bed.
+
+But in the brush, Darling found what he was looking for—rest. Nobody
+bothered him with beefsteaks and pork. No physicians lacerated his
+tired nerves by feeling his pulse, nor tormented his tired stomach with
+pellets and powders. He began to feel soothed. The sun was shining
+warm, and he basked in it. He had the feeling that the sun shine was an
+elixir of health. Then it seemed to him that his whole wasted wreck of
+a body was crying for the sun. He stripped off his clothes and bathed
+in the sunshine. He felt better. It had done him good—the first relief
+in weary months of pain.
+
+As he grew better, he sat up and began to take notice. All about him
+were the birds fluttering and chirping, the squirrels chattering and
+playing. He envied them their health and spirits, their happy,
+care-free existence. That he should contrast their condition with his
+was inevitable; and that he should question why they were splendidly
+vigorous while he was a feeble, dying wraith of a man, was likewise
+inevitable. His conclusion was the very obvious one, namely, that they
+lived naturally, while he lived most unnaturally; therefore, if he
+intended to live, he must return to nature.
+
+Alone, there in the brush, he worked out his problem and began to apply
+it. He stripped off his clothing and leaped and gambolled about,
+running on all fours, climbing trees; in short, doing physical
+stunts,—and all the time soaking in the sunshine. He imitated the
+animals. He built a nest of dry leaves and grasses in which to sleep at
+night, covering it over with bark as a protection against the early
+fall rains. “Here is a beautiful exercise,” he told me, once, flapping
+his arms mightily against his sides; “I learned it from watching the
+roosters crow.” Another time I remarked the loud, sucking intake with
+which he drank cocoanut-milk. He explained that he had noticed the cows
+drinking that way and concluded there must be something in it. He tried
+it and found it good, and thereafter he drank only in that fashion.
+
+He noted that the squirrels lived on fruits and nuts. He started on a
+fruit-and-nut diet, helped out by bread, and he grew stronger and put
+on weight. For three months he continued his primordial existence in
+the brush, and then the heavy Oregon rains drove him back to the
+habitations of men. Not in three months could a ninety-pound survivor
+of two attacks of pneumonia develop sufficient ruggedness to live
+through an Oregon winter in the open.
+
+He had accomplished much, but he had been driven in. There was no place
+to go but back to his father’s house, and there, living in close rooms
+with lungs that panted for all the air of the open sky, he was brought
+down by a third attack of pneumonia. He grew weaker even than before.
+In that tottering tabernacle of flesh, his brain collapsed. He lay like
+a corpse, too weak to stand the fatigue of speaking, too irritated and
+tired in his miserable brain to care to listen to the speech of others.
+The only act of will of which he was capable was to stick his fingers
+in his ears and resolutely to refuse to hear a single word that was
+spoken to him. They sent for the insanity experts. He was adjudged
+insane, and also the verdict was given that he would not live a month.
+
+By one such mental expert he was carted off to a sanatorium on Mt.
+Tabor. Here, when they learned that he was harmless, they gave him his
+own way. They no longer dictated as to the food he ate, so he resumed
+his fruits and nuts—olive oil, peanut butter, and bananas the chief
+articles of his diet. As he regained his strength he made up his mind
+to live thenceforth his own life. If he lived like others, according to
+social conventions, he would surely die. And he did not want to die.
+The fear of death was one of the strongest factors in the genesis of
+the Nature Man. To live, he must have a natural diet, the open air, and
+the blessed sunshine.
+
+Now an Oregon winter has no inducements for those who wish to return to
+Nature, so Darling started out in search of a climate. He mounted a
+bicycle and headed south for the sunlands. Stanford University claimed
+him for a year. Here he studied and worked his way, attending lectures
+in as scant garb as the authorities would allow and applying as much as
+possible the principles of living that he had learned in squirrel-town.
+His favourite method of study was to go off in the hills back of the
+University, and there to strip off his clothes and lie on the grass,
+soaking in sunshine and health at the same time that he soaked in
+knowledge.
+
+But Central California has her winters, and the quest for a Nature
+Man’s climate drew him on. He tried Los Angeles and Southern
+California, being arrested a few times and brought before the insanity
+commissions because, forsooth, his mode of life was not modelled after
+the mode of life of his fellow-men. He tried Hawaii, where, unable to
+prove him insane, the authorities deported him. It was not exactly a
+deportation. He could have remained by serving a year in prison. They
+gave him his choice. Now prison is death to the Nature Man, who thrives
+only in the open air and in God’s sunshine. The authorities of Hawaii
+are not to be blamed. Darling was an undesirable citizen. Any man is
+undesirable who disagrees with one. And that any man should disagree to
+the extent Darling did in his philosophy of the simple life is ample
+vindication of the Hawaiian authorities verdict of his undesirableness.
+
+So Darling went thence in search of a climate which would not only be
+desirable, but wherein he would not be undesirable. And he found it in
+Tahiti, the garden-spot of garden-spots. And so it was, according to
+the narrative as given, that he wrote the pages of his book. He wears
+only a loin-cloth and a sleeveless fish-net shirt. His stripped weight
+is one hundred and sixty-five pounds. His health is perfect. His
+eyesight, that at one time was considered ruined, is excellent. The
+lungs that were practically destroyed by three attacks of pneumonia
+have not only recovered, but are stronger than ever before.
+
+I shall never forget the first time, while talking to me, that he
+squashed a mosquito. The stinging pest had settled in the middle of his
+back between his shoulders. Without interrupting the flow of
+conversation, without dropping even a syllable, his clenched fist shot
+up in the air, curved backward, and smote his back between the
+shoulders, killing the mosquito and making his frame resound like a
+bass drum. It reminded me of nothing so much as of horses kicking the
+woodwork in their stalls.
+
+“The gorilla in the African jungle pounds his chest until the noise of
+it can be heard half a mile away,” he will announce suddenly, and
+thereat beat a hair-raising, devil’s tattoo on his own chest.
+
+One day he noticed a set of boxing-gloves hanging on the wall, and
+promptly his eyes brightened.
+
+“Do you box?” I asked.
+
+“I used to give lessons in boxing when I was at Stanford,” was the
+reply.
+
+And there and then we stripped and put on the gloves. Bang! a long,
+gorilla arm flashed out, landing the gloved end on my nose. Biff! he
+caught me, in a duck, on the side of the head nearly knocking me over
+sidewise. I carried the lump raised by that blow for a week. I ducked
+under a straight left, and landed a straight right on his stomach. It
+was a fearful blow. The whole weight of my body was behind it, and his
+body had been met as it lunged forward. I looked for him to crumple up
+and go down. Instead of which his face beamed approval, and he said,
+“That was beautiful.” The next instant I was covering up and striving
+to protect myself from a hurricane of hooks, jolts, and uppercuts. Then
+I watched my chance and drove in for the solar plexus. I hit the mark.
+The Nature Man dropped his arms, gasped, and sat down suddenly.
+
+“I’ll be all right,” he said. “Just wait a moment.”
+
+And inside thirty seconds he was on his feet—ay, and returning the
+compliment, for he hooked me in the solar plexus, and I gasped, dropped
+my hands, and sat down just a trifle more suddenly than he had.
+
+All of which I submit as evidence that the man I boxed with was a
+totally different man from the poor, ninety-pound weight of eight years
+before, who, given up by physicians and alienists, lay gasping his life
+away in a closed room in Portland, Oregon. The book that Ernest Darling
+has written is a good book, and the binding is good, too.
+
+Hawaii has wailed for years her need for desirable immigrants. She has
+spent much time, and thought, and money, in importing desirable
+citizens, and she has, as yet, nothing much to show for it. Yet Hawaii
+deported the Nature Man. She refused to give him a chance. So it is, to
+chasten Hawaii’s proud spirit, that I take this opportunity to show her
+what she has lost in the Nature Man. When he arrived in Tahiti, he
+proceeded to seek out a piece of land on which to grow the food he ate.
+But land was difficult to find—that is, inexpensive land. The Nature
+Man was not rolling in wealth. He spent weeks in wandering over the
+steep hills, until, high up the mountain, where clustered several tiny
+canyons, he found eighty acres of brush-jungle which were apparently
+unrecorded as the property of any one. The government officials told
+him that if he would clear the land and till it for thirty years he
+would be given a title for it.
+
+Immediately he set to work. And never was there such work. Nobody
+farmed that high up. The land was covered with matted jungle and
+overrun by wild pigs and countless rats. The view of Papeete and the
+sea was magnificent, but the outlook was not encouraging. He spent
+weeks in building a road in order to make the plantation accessible.
+The pigs and the rats ate up whatever he planted as fast as it
+sprouted. He shot the pigs and trapped the rats. Of the latter, in two
+weeks he caught fifteen hundred. Everything had to be carried up on his
+back. He usually did his packhorse work at night.
+
+Gradually he began to win out. A grass-walled house was built. On the
+fertile, volcanic soil he had wrested from the jungle and jungle beasts
+were growing five hundred cocoanut trees, five hundred papaia trees,
+three hundred mango trees, many breadfruit trees and alligator-pear
+trees, to say nothing of vines, bushes, and vegetables. He developed
+the drip of the hills in the canyons and worked out an efficient
+irrigation scheme, ditching the water from canyon to canyon and
+paralleling the ditches at different altitudes. His narrow canyons
+became botanical gardens. The arid shoulders of the hills, where
+formerly the blazing sun had parched the jungle and beaten it close to
+earth, blossomed into trees and shrubs and flowers. Not only had the
+Nature Man become self-supporting, but he was now a prosperous
+agriculturist with produce to sell to the city-dwellers of Papeete.
+
+Then it was discovered that his land, which the government officials
+had informed him was without an owner, really had an owner, and that
+deeds, descriptions, etc., were on record. All his work bade fare to be
+lost. The land had been valueless when he took it up, and the owner, a
+large landholder, was unaware of the extent to which the Nature Man had
+developed it. A just price was agreed upon, and Darling’s deed was
+officially filed.
+
+Next came a more crushing blow. Darling’s access to market was
+destroyed. The road he had built was fenced across by triple barb-wire
+fences. It was one of those jumbles in human affairs that is so common
+in this absurdest of social systems. Behind it was the fine hand of the
+same conservative element that haled the Nature Man before the Insanity
+Commission in Los Angeles and that deported him from Hawaii. It is so
+hard for self-satisfied men to understand any man whose satisfactions
+are fundamentally different. It seems clear that the officials have
+connived with the conservative element, for to this day the road the
+Nature Man built is closed; nothing has been done about it, while an
+adamant unwillingness to do anything about it is evidenced on every
+hand. But the Nature Man dances and sings along his way. He does not
+sit up nights thinking about the wrong which has been done him; he
+leaves the worrying to the doers of the wrong. He has no time for
+bitterness. He believes he is in the world for the purpose of being
+happy, and he has not a moment to waste in any other pursuit.
+
+The road to his plantation is blocked. He cannot build a new road, for
+there is no ground on which he can build it. The government has
+restricted him to a wild-pig trail which runs precipitously up the
+mountain. I climbed the trail with him, and we had to climb with hands
+and feet in order to get up. Nor can that wild-pig trail be made into a
+road by any amount of toil less than that of an engineer, a
+steam-engine, and a steel cable. But what does the Nature Man care? In
+his gentle ethics the evil men do him he requites with goodness. And
+who shall say he is not happier than they?
+
+“Never mind their pesky road,” he said to me as we dragged ourselves up
+a shelf of rock and sat down, panting, to rest. “I’ll get an air
+machine soon and fool them. I’m clearing a level space for a landing
+stage for the airships, and next time you come to Tahiti you will
+alight right at my door.”
+
+Yes, the Nature Man has some strange ideas besides that of the gorilla
+pounding his chest in the African jungle. The Nature Man has ideas
+about levitation. “Yes, sir,” he said to me, “levitation is not
+impossible. And think of the glory of it—lifting one’s self from the
+ground by an act of will. Think of it! The astronomers tell us that our
+whole solar system is dying; that, barring accidents, it will all be so
+cold that no life can live upon it. Very well. In that day all men will
+be accomplished levitationists, and they will leave this perishing
+planet and seek more hospitable worlds. How can levitation be
+accomplished? By progressive fasts. Yes, I have tried them, and toward
+the end I could feel myself actually getting lighter.”
+
+The man is a maniac, thought I.
+
+“Of course,” he added, “these are only theories of mine. I like to
+speculate upon the glorious future of man. Levitation may not be
+possible, but I like to think of it as possible.”
+
+One evening, when he yawned, I asked him how much sleep he allowed
+himself.
+
+“Seven hours,” was the answer. “But in ten years I’ll be sleeping only
+six hours, and in twenty years only five hours. You see, I shall cut
+off an hour’s sleep every ten years.”
+
+“Then when you are a hundred you won’t be sleeping at all,” I
+interjected.
+
+“Just that. Exactly that. When I am a hundred I shall not require
+sleep. Also, I shall be living on air. There are plants that live on
+air, you know.”
+
+“But has any man ever succeeded in doing it?”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“I never heard of him if he did. But it is only a theory of mine, this
+living on air. It would be fine, wouldn’t it? Of course it may be
+impossible—most likely it is. You see, I am not unpractical. I never
+forget the present. When I soar ahead into the future, I always leave a
+string by which to find my way back again.”
+
+I fear me the Nature Man is a joker. At any rate he lives the simple
+life. His laundry bill cannot be large. Up on his plantation he lives
+on fruit the labour cost of which, in cash, he estimates at five cents
+a day. At present, because of his obstructed road and because he is
+head over heels in the propaganda of socialism, he is living in town,
+where his expenses, including rent, are twenty-five cents a day. In
+order to pay those expenses he is running a night school for Chinese.
+
+The Nature Man is not bigoted. When there is nothing better to eat than
+meat, he eats meat, as, for instance, when in jail or on shipboard and
+the nuts and fruits give out. Nor does he seem to crystallize into
+anything except sunburn.
+
+“Drop anchor anywhere and the anchor will drag—that is, if your soul is
+a limitless, fathomless sea, and not dog-pound,” he quoted to me, then
+added: “You see, my anchor is always dragging. I live for human health
+and progress, and I strive to drag my anchor always in that direction.
+To me, the two are identical. Dragging anchor is what has saved me. My
+anchor did not hold me to my death-bed. I dragged anchor into the brush
+and fooled the doctors. When I recovered health and strength, I
+started, by preaching and by example, to teach the people to become
+nature men and nature women. But they had deaf ears. Then, on the
+steamer coming to Tahiti, a quarter-master expounded socialism to me.
+He showed me that an economic square deal was necessary before men and
+women could live naturally. So I dragged anchor once more, and now I am
+working for the co-operative commonwealth. When that arrives, it will
+be easy to bring about nature living.
+
+“I had a dream last night,” he went on thoughtfully, his face slowly
+breaking into a glow. “It seemed that twenty-five nature men and nature
+women had just arrived on the steamer from California, and that I was
+starting to go with them up the wild-pig trail to the plantation.”
+
+Ah, me, Ernest Darling, sun-worshipper and nature man, there are times
+when I am compelled to envy you and your carefree existence. I see you
+now, dancing up the steps and cutting antics on the veranda; your hair
+dripping from a plunge in the salt sea, your eyes sparkling, your
+sun-gilded body flashing, your chest resounding to the devil’s own
+tattoo as you chant: “The gorilla in the African jungle pounds his
+chest until the noise of it can be heard half a mile away.” And I shall
+see you always as I saw you that last day, when the _Snark_ poked her
+nose once more through the passage in the smoking reef, outward bound,
+and I waved good-bye to those on shore. Not least in goodwill and
+affection was the wave I gave to the golden sun-god in the scarlet
+loin-cloth, standing upright in his tiny outrigger canoe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+THE HIGH SEAT OF ABUNDANCE
+
+
+On the arrival of strangers, every man endeavoured to obtain one as a
+friend and carry him off to his own habitation, where he is treated
+with the greatest kindness by the inhabitants of the district; they
+place him on a high seat and feed him with abundance of the finest
+food.—_Polynesian Researches_.
+
+The _Snark_ was lying at anchor at Raiatea, just off the village of
+Uturoa. She had arrived the night before, after dark, and we were
+preparing to pay our first visit ashore. Early in the morning I had
+noticed a tiny outrigger canoe, with an impossible spritsail, skimming
+the surface of the lagoon. The canoe itself was coffin-shaped, a mere
+dugout, fourteen feet long, a scant twelve inches wide, and maybe
+twenty-four inches deep. It had no lines, except in so far that it was
+sharp at both ends. Its sides were perpendicular. Shorn of the
+outrigger, it would have capsized of itself inside a tenth of a second.
+It was the outrigger that kept it right side up.
+
+I have said that the sail was impossible. It was. It was one of those
+things, not that you have to see to believe, but that you cannot
+believe after you have seen it. The hoist of it and the length of its
+boom were sufficiently appalling; but, not content with that, its
+artificer had given it a tremendous head. So large was the head that no
+common sprit could carry the strain of it in an ordinary breeze. So a
+spar had been lashed to the canoe, projecting aft over the water. To
+this had been made fast a sprit guy: thus, the foot of the sail was
+held by the main-sheet, and the peak by the guy to the sprit.
+
+It was not a mere boat, not a mere canoe, but a sailing machine. And
+the man in it sailed it by his weight and his nerve—principally by the
+latter. I watched the canoe beat up from leeward and run in toward the
+village, its sole occupant far out on the outrigger and luffing up and
+spilling the wind in the puffs.
+
+“Well, I know one thing,” I announced; “I don’t leave Raiatea till I
+have a ride in that canoe.”
+
+A few minutes later Warren called down the companionway, “Here’s that
+canoe you were talking about.”
+
+Promptly I dashed on deck and gave greeting to its owner, a tall,
+slender Polynesian, ingenuous of face, and with clear, sparkling,
+intelligent eyes. He was clad in a scarlet loin-cloth and a straw hat.
+In his hands were presents—a fish, a bunch of greens, and several
+enormous yams. All of which acknowledged by smiles (which are coinage
+still in isolated spots of Polynesia) and by frequent repetitions of
+_mauruuru_ (which is the Tahitian “thank you”), I proceeded to make
+signs that I desired to go for a sail in his canoe.
+
+His face lighted with pleasure and he uttered the single word, “Tahaa,”
+turning at the same time and pointing to the lofty, cloud-draped peaks
+of an island three miles away—the island of Tahaa. It was fair wind
+over, but a head-beat back. Now I did not want to go to Tahaa. I had
+letters to deliver in Raiatea, and officials to see, and there was
+Charmian down below getting ready to go ashore. By insistent signs I
+indicated that I desired no more than a short sail on the lagoon. Quick
+was the disappointment in his face, yet smiling was the acquiescence.
+
+“Come on for a sail,” I called below to Charmian. “But put on your
+swimming suit. It’s going to be wet.”
+
+It wasn’t real. It was a dream. That canoe slid over the water like a
+streak of silver. I climbed out on the outrigger and supplied the
+weight to hold her down, while Tehei (pronounced Tayhayee) supplied the
+nerve. He, too, in the puffs, climbed part way out on the outrigger, at
+the same time steering with both hands on a large paddle and holding
+the mainsheet with his foot.
+
+“Ready about!” he called.
+
+I carefully shifted my weight inboard in order to maintain the
+equilibrium as the sail emptied.
+
+“Hard a-lee!” he called, shooting her into the wind.
+
+I slid out on the opposite side over the water on a spar lashed across
+the canoe, and we were full and away on the other tack.
+
+“All right,” said Tehei.
+
+Those three phrases, “Ready about,” “Hard a-lee,” and “All right,”
+comprised Tehei’s English vocabulary and led me to suspect that at some
+time he had been one of a Kanaka crew under an American captain.
+Between the puffs I made signs to him and repeatedly and
+interrogatively uttered the word _sailor_. Then I tried it in atrocious
+French. _Marin_ conveyed no meaning to him; nor did _matelot_. Either
+my French was bad, or else he was not up in it. I have since concluded
+that both conjectures were correct. Finally, I began naming over the
+adjacent islands. He nodded that he had been to them. By the time my
+quest reached Tahiti, he caught my drift. His thought-processes were
+almost visible, and it was a joy to watch him think. He nodded his head
+vigorously. Yes, he had been to Tahiti, and he added himself names of
+islands such as Tikihau, Rangiroa, and Fakarava, thus proving that he
+had sailed as far as the Paumotus—undoubtedly one of the crew of a
+trading schooner.
+
+After our short sail, when he had returned on board, he by signs
+inquired the destination of the _Snark_, and when I had mentioned
+Samoa, Fiji, New Guinea, France, England, and California in their
+geographical sequence, he said “Samoa,” and by gestures intimated that
+he wanted to go along. Whereupon I was hard put to explain that there
+was no room for him. “_Petit bateau_” finally solved it, and again the
+disappointment in his face was accompanied by smiling acquiescence, and
+promptly came the renewed invitation to accompany him to Tahaa.
+
+Charmian and I looked at each other. The exhilaration of the ride we
+had taken was still upon us. Forgotten were the letters to Raiatea, the
+officials we had to visit. Shoes, a shirt, a pair of trousers,
+cigarettes, matches, and a book to read were hastily crammed into a
+biscuit tin and wrapped in a rubber blanket, and we were over the side
+and into the canoe.
+
+“When shall we look for you?” Warren called, as the wind filled the
+sail and sent Tehei and me scurrying out on the outrigger.
+
+“I don’t know,” I answered. “When we get back, as near as I can figure
+it.”
+
+And away we went. The wind had increased, and with slacked sheets we
+ran off before it. The freeboard of the canoe was no more than two and
+a half inches, and the little waves continually lapped over the side.
+This required bailing. Now bailing is one of the principal functions of
+the vahine. Vahine is the Tahitian for woman, and Charmian being the
+only vahine aboard, the bailing fell appropriately to her. Tehei and I
+could not very well do it, the both of us being perched part way out on
+the outrigger and busied with keeping the canoe bottom-side down. So
+Charmian bailed, with a wooden scoop of primitive design, and so well
+did she do it that there were occasions when she could rest off almost
+half the time.
+
+Raiatea and Tahaa are unique in that they lie inside the same
+encircling reef. Both are volcanic islands, ragged of sky-line, with
+heaven-aspiring peaks and minarets. Since Raiatea is thirty miles in
+circumference, and Tahaa fifteen miles, some idea may be gained of the
+magnitude of the reef that encloses them. Between them and the reef
+stretches from one to two miles of water, forming a beautiful lagoon.
+The huge Pacific seas, extending in unbroken lines sometimes a mile or
+half as much again in length, hurl themselves upon the reef,
+overtowering and falling upon it with tremendous crashes, and yet the
+fragile coral structure withstands the shock and protects the land.
+Outside lies destruction to the mightiest ship afloat. Inside reigns
+the calm of untroubled water, whereon a canoe like ours can sail with
+no more than a couple of inches of free-board.
+
+We flew over the water. And such water!—clear as the clearest
+spring-water, and crystalline in its clearness, all intershot with a
+maddening pageant of colours and rainbow ribbons more magnificently
+gorgeous than any rainbow. Jade green alternated with turquoise,
+peacock blue with emerald, while now the canoe skimmed over reddish
+purple pools, and again over pools of dazzling, shimmering white where
+pounded coral sand lay beneath and upon which oozed monstrous
+sea-slugs. One moment we were above wonder-gardens of coral, wherein
+coloured fishes disported, fluttering like marine butterflies; the next
+moment we were dashing across the dark surface of deep channels, out of
+which schools of flying fish lifted their silvery flight; and a third
+moment we were above other gardens of living coral, each more wonderful
+than the last. And above all was the tropic, trade-wind sky with its
+fluffy clouds racing across the zenith and heaping the horizon with
+their soft masses.
+
+Before we were aware, we were close in to Tahaa (pronounced Tah-hah-ah,
+with equal accents), and Tehei was grinning approval of the vahine’s
+proficiency at bailing. The canoe grounded on a shallow shore, twenty
+feet from land, and we waded out on a soft bottom where big slugs
+curled and writhed under our feet and where small octopuses advertised
+their existence by their superlative softness when stepped upon. Close
+to the beach, amid cocoanut palms and banana trees, erected on stilts,
+built of bamboo, with a grass-thatched roof, was Tehei’s house. And out
+of the house came Tehei’s vahine, a slender mite of a woman, kindly
+eyed and Mongolian of feature—when she was not North American Indian.
+“Bihaura,” Tehei called her, but he did not pronounce it according to
+English notions of spelling. Spelled “Bihaura,” it sounded like
+Bee-ah-oo-rah, with every syllable sharply emphasized.
+
+She took Charmian by the hand and led her into the house, leaving Tehei
+and me to follow. Here, by sign-language unmistakable, we were informed
+that all they possessed was ours. No hidalgo was ever more generous in
+the expression of giving, while I am sure that few hidalgos were ever
+as generous in the actual practice. We quickly discovered that we dare
+not admire their possessions, for whenever we did admire a particular
+object it was immediately presented to us. The two vahines, according
+to the way of vahines, got together in a discussion and examination of
+feminine fripperies, while Tehei and I, manlike, went over
+fishing-tackle and wild-pig-hunting, to say nothing of the device
+whereby bonitas are caught on forty-foot poles from double canoes.
+Charmian admired a sewing basket—the best example she had seen of
+Polynesian basketry; it was hers. I admired a bonita hook, carved in
+one piece from a pearl-shell; it was mine. Charmian was attracted by a
+fancy braid of straw sennit, thirty feet of it in a roll, sufficient to
+make a hat of any design one wished; the roll of sennit was hers. My
+gaze lingered upon a poi-pounder that dated back to the old stone days;
+it was mine. Charmian dwelt a moment too long on a wooden poi-bowl,
+canoe-shaped, with four legs, all carved in one piece of wood; it was
+hers. I glanced a second time at a gigantic cocoanut calabash; it was
+mine. Then Charmian and I held a conference in which we resolved to
+admire no more—not because it did not pay well enough, but because it
+paid too well. Also, we were already racking our brains over the
+contents of the _Snark_ for suitable return presents. Christmas is an
+easy problem compared with a Polynesian giving-feast.
+
+We sat on the cool porch, on Bihaura’s best mats while dinner was
+preparing, and at the same time met the villagers. In twos and threes
+and groups they strayed along, shaking hands and uttering the Tahitian
+word of greeting—Ioarana, pronounced yo-rah-nah. The men, big strapping
+fellows, were in loin-cloths, with here and there no shirt, while the
+women wore the universal _ahu_, a sort of adult pinafore that flows in
+graceful lines from the shoulders to the ground. Sad to see was the
+elephantiasis that afflicted some of them. Here would be a comely woman
+of magnificent proportions, with the port of a queen, yet marred by one
+arm four times—or a dozen times—the size of the other. Beside her might
+stand a six-foot man, erect, mighty-muscled, bronzed, with the body of
+a god, yet with feet and calves so swollen that they ran together,
+forming legs, shapeless, monstrous, that were for all the world like
+elephant legs.
+
+No one seems really to know the cause of the South Sea elephantiasis.
+One theory is that it is caused by the drinking of polluted water.
+Another theory attributes it to inoculation through mosquito bites. A
+third theory charges it to predisposition plus the process of
+acclimatization. On the other hand, no one that stands in finicky dread
+of it and similar diseases can afford to travel in the South Seas.
+There will be occasions when such a one must drink water. There may be
+also occasions when the mosquitoes let up biting. But every precaution
+of the finicky one will be useless. If he runs barefoot across the
+beach to have a swim, he will tread where an elephantiasis case trod a
+few minutes before. If he closets himself in his own house, yet every
+bit of fresh food on his table will have been subjected to the
+contamination, be it flesh, fish, fowl, or vegetable. In the public
+market at Papeete two known lepers run stalls, and heaven alone knows
+through what channels arrive at that market the daily supplies of fish,
+fruit, meat, and vegetables. The only happy way to go through the South
+Seas is with a careless poise, without apprehension, and with a
+Christian Science-like faith in the resplendent fortune of your own
+particular star. When you see a woman, afflicted with elephantiasis
+wringing out cream from cocoanut meat with her naked hands, drink and
+reflect how good is the cream, forgetting the hands that pressed it
+out. Also, remember that diseases such as elephantiasis and leprosy do
+not seem to be caught by contact.
+
+We watched a Raratongan woman, with swollen, distorted limbs, prepare
+our cocoanut cream, and then went out to the cook-shed where Tehei and
+Bihaura were cooking dinner. And then it was served to us on a
+dry-goods box in the house. Our hosts waited until we were done and
+then spread their table on the floor. But our table! We were certainly
+in the high seat of abundance. First, there was glorious raw fish,
+caught several hours before from the sea and steeped the intervening
+time in lime-juice diluted with water. Then came roast chicken. Two
+cocoanuts, sharply sweet, served for drink. There were bananas that
+tasted like strawberries and that melted in the mouth, and there was
+banana-poi that made one regret that his Yankee forebears ever
+attempted puddings. Then there was boiled yam, boiled taro, and roasted
+_feis_, which last are nothing more or less than large mealy, juicy,
+red-coloured cooking bananas. We marvelled at the abundance, and, even
+as we marvelled, a pig was brought on, a whole pig, a sucking pig,
+swathed in green leaves and roasted upon the hot stones of a native
+oven, the most honourable and triumphant dish in the Polynesian
+cuisine. And after that came coffee, black coffee, delicious coffee,
+native coffee grown on the hillsides of Tahaa.
+
+Tehei’s fishing-tackle fascinated me, and after we arranged to go
+fishing, Charmian and I decided to remain all night. Again Tehei
+broached Samoa, and again my _petit bateau_ brought the disappointment
+and the smile of acquiescence to his face. Bora Bora was my next port.
+It was not so far away but that cutters made the passage back and forth
+between it and Raiatea. So I invited Tehei to go that far with us on
+the _Snark_. Then I learned that his wife had been born on Bora Bora
+and still owned a house there. She likewise was invited, and
+immediately came the counter invitation to stay with them in their
+house in Born Bora. It was Monday. Tuesday we would go fishing and
+return to Raiatea. Wednesday we would sail by Tahaa and off a certain
+point, a mile away, pick up Tehei and Bihaura and go on to Bora Bora.
+All this we arranged in detail, and talked over scores of other things
+as well, and yet Tehei knew three phrases in English, Charmian and I
+knew possibly a dozen Tahitian words, and among the four of us there
+were a dozen or so French words that all understood. Of course, such
+polyglot conversation was slow, but, eked out with a pad, a lead
+pencil, the face of a clock Charmian drew on the back of a pad, and
+with ten thousand and one gestures, we managed to get on very nicely.
+
+At the first moment we evidenced an inclination for bed the visiting
+natives, with soft _Iaoranas_, faded away, and Tehei and Bihaura
+likewise faded away. The house consisted of one large room, and it was
+given over to us, our hosts going elsewhere to sleep. In truth, their
+castle was ours. And right here, I want to say that of all the
+entertainment I have received in this world at the hands of all sorts
+of races in all sorts of places, I have never received entertainment
+that equalled this at the hands of this brown-skinned couple of Tahaa.
+I do not refer to the presents, the free-handed generousness, the high
+abundance, but to the fineness of courtesy and consideration and tact,
+and to the sympathy that was real sympathy in that it was
+understanding. They did nothing they thought ought to be done for us,
+according to their standards, but they did what they divined we wanted
+to be done for us, while their divination was most successful. It would
+be impossible to enumerate the hundreds of little acts of consideration
+they performed during the few days of our intercourse. Let it suffice
+for me to say that of all hospitality and entertainment I have known,
+in no case was theirs not only not excelled, but in no case was it
+quite equalled. Perhaps the most delightful feature of it was that it
+was due to no training, to no complex social ideals, but that it was
+the untutored and spontaneous outpouring from their hearts.
+
+The next morning we went fishing, that is, Tehei, Charmian, and I did,
+in the coffin-shaped canoe; but this time the enormous sail was left
+behind. There was no room for sailing and fishing at the same time in
+that tiny craft. Several miles away, inside the reef, in a channel
+twenty fathoms deep, Tehei dropped his baited hooks and rock-sinkers.
+The bait was chunks of octopus flesh, which he bit out of a live
+octopus that writhed in the bottom of the canoe. Nine of these lines he
+set, each line attached to one end of a short length of bamboo floating
+on the surface. When a fish was hooked, the end of the bamboo was drawn
+under the water. Naturally, the other end rose up in the air, bobbing
+and waving frantically for us to make haste. And make haste we did,
+with whoops and yells and driving paddles, from one signalling bamboo
+to another, hauling up from the depths great glistening beauties from
+two to three feet in length.
+
+Steadily, to the eastward, an ominous squall had been rising and
+blotting out the bright trade-wind sky. And we were three miles to
+leeward of home. We started as the first wind-gusts whitened the water.
+Then came the rain, such rain as only the tropics afford, where every
+tap and main in the sky is open wide, and when, to top it all, the very
+reservoir itself spills over in blinding deluge. Well, Charmian was in
+a swimming suit, I was in pyjamas, and Tehei wore only a loin-cloth.
+Bihaura was on the beach waiting for us, and she led Charmian into the
+house in much the same fashion that the mother leads in the naughty
+little girl who has been playing in mud-puddles.
+
+It was a change of clothes and a dry and quiet smoke while _kai-kai_
+was preparing. _Kai-kai_, by the way, is the Polynesian for “food” or
+“to eat,” or, rather, it is one form of the original root, whatever it
+may have been, that has been distributed far and wide over the vast
+area of the Pacific. It is _kai_ in the Marquesas, Raratonga, Manahiki,
+Niuë, Fakaafo, Tonga, New Zealand, and Vaté. In Tahiti “to eat” changes
+to _amu_, in Hawaii and Samoa to _ai_, in Ban to _kana_, in Nina to
+_kana_, in Nongone to _kaka_, and in New Caledonia to _ki_. But by
+whatsoever sound or symbol, it was welcome to our ears after that long
+paddle in the rain. Once more we sat in the high seat of abundance
+until we regretted that we had been made unlike the image of the
+giraffe and the camel.
+
+Again, when we were preparing to return to the _Snark_, the sky to
+windward turned black and another squall swooped down. But this time it
+was little rain and all wind. It blew hour after hour, moaning and
+screeching through the palms, tearing and wrenching and shaking the
+frail bamboo dwelling, while the outer reef set up a mighty thundering
+as it broke the force of the swinging seas. Inside the reef, the
+lagoon, sheltered though it was, was white with fury, and not even
+Tehei’s seamanship could have enabled his slender canoe to live in such
+a welter.
+
+By sunset, the back of the squall had broken though it was still too
+rough for the canoe. So I had Tehei find a native who was willing to
+venture his cutter across to Raiatea for the outrageous sum of two
+dollars, Chili, which is equivalent in our money to ninety cents. Half
+the village was told off to carry presents, with which Tehei and
+Bihaura speeded their parting guests—captive chickens, fishes dressed
+and swathed in wrappings of green leaves, great golden bunches of
+bananas, leafy baskets spilling over with oranges and limes, alligator
+pears (the butter-fruit, also called the _avoca_), huge baskets of
+yams, bunches of taro and cocoanuts, and last of all, large branches
+and trunks of trees—firewood for the _Snark_.
+
+While on the way to the cutter we met the only white man on Tahaa, and
+of all men, George Lufkin, a native of New England! Eighty-six years of
+age he was, sixty-odd of which, he said, he had spent in the Society
+Islands, with occasional absences, such as the gold rush to Eldorado in
+’forty-nine and a short period of ranching in California near Tulare.
+Given no more than three months by the doctors to live, he had returned
+to his South Seas and lived to eighty-six and to chuckle over the
+doctors aforesaid, who were all in their graves. _Fee-fee_ he had,
+which is the native for elephantiasis and which is pronounced fay-fay.
+A quarter of a century before, the disease had fastened upon him, and
+it would remain with him until he died. We asked him about kith and
+kin. Beside him sat a sprightly damsel of sixty, his daughter. “She is
+all I have,” he murmured plaintively, “and she has no children living.”
+
+The cutter was a small, sloop-rigged affair, but large it seemed
+alongside Tehei’s canoe. On the other hand, when we got out on the
+lagoon and were struck by another heavy wind-squall, the cutter became
+liliputian, while the _Snark_, in our imagination, seemed to promise
+all the stability and permanence of a continent. They were good
+boatmen. Tehei and Bihaura had come along to see us home, and the
+latter proved a good boatwoman herself. The cutter was well ballasted,
+and we met the squall under full sail. It was getting dark, the lagoon
+was full of coral patches, and we were carrying on. In the height of
+the squall we had to go about, in order to make a short leg to windward
+to pass around a patch of coral no more than a foot under the surface.
+As the cutter filled on the other tack, and while she was in that
+“dead” condition that precedes gathering way, she was knocked flat.
+Jib-sheet and main-sheet were let go, and she righted into the wind.
+Three times she was knocked down, and three times the sheets were flung
+loose, before she could get away on that tack.
+
+By the time we went about again, darkness had fallen. We were now to
+windward of the _Snark_, and the squall was howling. In came the jib,
+and down came the mainsail, all but a patch of it the size of a
+pillow-slip. By an accident we missed the _Snark_, which was riding it
+out to two anchors, and drove aground upon the inshore coral. Running
+the longest line on the _Snark_ by means of the launch, and after an
+hour’s hard work, we heaved the cutter off and had her lying safely
+astern.
+
+The day we sailed for Bora Bora the wind was light, and we crossed the
+lagoon under power to the point where Tehei and Bihaura were to meet
+us. As we made in to the land between the coral banks, we vainly
+scanned the shore for our friends. There was no sign of them.
+
+“We can’t wait,” I said. “This breeze won’t fetch us to Bora Bora by
+dark, and I don’t want to use any more gasolene than I have to.”
+
+You see, gasolene in the South Seas is a problem. One never knows when
+he will be able to replenish his supply.
+
+But just then Tehei appeared through the trees as he came down to the
+water. He had peeled off his shirt and was wildly waving it. Bihaura
+apparently was not ready. Once aboard, Tehei informed us by signs that
+we must proceed along the land till we got opposite to his house. He
+took the wheel and conned the _Snark_ through the coral, around point
+after point till we cleared the last point of all. Cries of welcome
+went up from the beach, and Bihaura, assisted by several of the
+villagers, brought off two canoe-loads of abundance. There were yams,
+taro, _feis_, breadfruit, cocoanuts, oranges, limes, pineapples,
+watermelons, alligator pears, pomegranates, fish, chickens galore
+crowing and cackling and laying eggs on our decks, and a live pig that
+squealed infernally and all the time in apprehension of imminent
+slaughter.
+
+Under the rising moon we came in through the perilous passage of the
+reef of Bora Bora and dropped anchor off Vaitapé village. Bihaura, with
+housewifely anxiety, could not get ashore too quickly to her house to
+prepare more abundance for us. While the launch was taking her and
+Tehei to the little jetty, the sound of music and of singing drifted
+across the quiet lagoon. Throughout the Society Islands we had been
+continually informed that we would find the Bora Borans very jolly.
+Charmian and I went ashore to see, and on the village green, by
+forgotten graves on the beach, found the youths and maidens dancing,
+flower-garlanded and flower-bedecked, with strange phosphorescent
+flowers in their hair that pulsed and dimmed and glowed in the
+moonlight. Farther along the beach we came upon a huge grass house,
+oval-shaped seventy feet in length, where the elders of the village
+were singing _himines_. They, too, were flower-garlanded and jolly, and
+they welcomed us into the fold as little lost sheep straying along from
+outer darkness.
+
+Early next morning Tehei was on board, with a string of fresh-caught
+fish and an invitation to dinner for that evening. On the way to
+dinner, we dropped in at the _himine_ house. The same elders were
+singing, with here or there a youth or maiden that we had not seen the
+previous night. From all the signs, a feast was in preparation.
+Towering up from the floor was a mountain of fruits and vegetables,
+flanked on either side by numerous chickens tethered by cocoanut
+strips. After several _himines_ had been sung, one of the men arose and
+made oration. The oration was made to us, and though it was Greek to
+us, we knew that in some way it connected us with that mountain of
+provender.
+
+“Can it be that they are presenting us with all that?” Charmian
+whispered.
+
+“Impossible,” I muttered back. “Why should they be giving it to us?
+Besides, there is no room on the _Snark_ for it. We could not eat a
+tithe of it. The rest would spoil. Maybe they are inviting us to the
+feast. At any rate, that they should give all that to us is
+impossible.”
+
+Nevertheless we found ourselves once more in the high seat of
+abundance. The orator, by gestures unmistakable, in detail presented
+every item in the mountain to us, and next he presented it to us _in
+toto_. It was an embarrassing moment. What would you do if you lived in
+a hall bedroom and a friend gave you a white elephant? Our _Snark_ was
+no more than a hall bedroom, and already she was loaded down with the
+abundance of Tahaa. This new supply was too much. We blushed, and
+stammered, and _mauruuru’d_. We _mauruuru’d_ with repeated _nui’s_
+which conveyed the largeness and overwhelmingness of our thanks. At the
+same time, by signs, we committed the awful breach of etiquette of not
+accepting the present. The _himine_ singers’ disappointment was plainly
+betrayed, and that evening, aided by Tehei, we compromised by accepting
+one chicken, one bunch of bananas, one bunch of taro, and so on down
+the list.
+
+But there was no escaping the abundance. I bought a dozen chickens from
+a native out in the country, and the following day he delivered
+thirteen chickens along with a canoe-load of fruit. The French
+storekeeper presented us with pomegranates and lent us his finest
+horse. The gendarme did likewise, lending us a horse that was the very
+apple of his eye. And everybody sent us flowers. The _Snark_ was a
+fruit-stand and a greengrocer’s shop masquerading under the guise of a
+conservatory. We went around flower-garlanded all the time. When the
+_himine_ singers came on board to sing, the maidens kissed us welcome,
+and the crew, from captain to cabin-boy, lost its heart to the maidens
+of Bora Bora. Tehei got up a big fishing expedition in our honour, to
+which we went in a double canoe, paddled by a dozen strapping Amazons.
+We were relieved that no fish were caught, else the _Snark_ would have
+sunk at her moorings.
+
+The days passed, but the abundance did not diminish. On the day of
+departure, canoe after canoe put off to us. Tehei brought cucumbers and
+a young _papaia_ tree burdened with splendid fruit. Also, for me he
+brought a tiny, double canoe with fishing apparatus complete. Further,
+he brought fruits and vegetables with the same lavishness as at Tahaa.
+Bihaura brought various special presents for Charmian, such as
+silk-cotton pillows, fans, and fancy mats. The whole population brought
+fruits, flowers, and chickens. And Bihaura added a live sucking pig.
+Natives whom I did not remember ever having seen before strayed over
+the rail and presented me with such things as fish-poles, fish-lines,
+and fish-hooks carved from pearl-shell.
+
+As the _Snark_ sailed out through the reef, she had a cutter in tow.
+This was the craft that was to take Bihaura back to Tahaa—but not
+Tehei. I had yielded at last, and he was one of the crew of the
+_Snark_. When the cutter cast off and headed east, and the _Snark’s_
+bow turned toward the west, Tehei knelt down by the cockpit and
+breathed a silent prayer, the tears flowing down his cheeks. A week
+later, when Martin got around to developing and printing, he showed
+Tehei some of the photographs. And that brown-skinned son of Polynesia,
+gazing on the pictured lineaments of his beloved Bihaura broke down in
+tears.
+
+But the abundance! There was so much of it. We could not work the
+_Snark_ for the fruit that was in the way. She was festooned with
+fruit. The life-boat and launch were packed with it. The awning-guys
+groaned under their burdens. But once we struck the full trade-wind
+sea, the disburdening began. At every roll the _Snark_ shook overboard
+a bunch or so of bananas and cocoanuts, or a basket of limes. A golden
+flood of limes washed about in the lee-scuppers. The big baskets of
+yams burst, and pineapples and pomegranates rolled back and forth. The
+chickens had got loose and were everywhere, roosting on the awnings,
+fluttering and squawking out on the jib-boom, and essaying the perilous
+feat of balancing on the spinnaker-boom. They were wild chickens,
+accustomed to flight. When attempts were made to catch them, they flew
+out over the ocean, circled about, and came back. Sometimes they did
+not come back. And in the confusion, unobserved, the little sucking pig
+got loose and slipped overboard.
+
+“On the arrival of strangers, every man endeavoured to obtain one as a
+friend and carry him off to his own habitation, where he is treated
+with the greatest kindness by the inhabitants of the district: they
+place him on a high seat and feed him with abundance of the finest
+foods.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+THE STONE-FISHING OF BORA BORA
+
+
+At five in the morning the conches began to blow. From all along the
+beach the eerie sounds arose, like the ancient voice of War, calling to
+the fishermen to arise and prepare to go forth. We on the _Snark_
+likewise arose, for there could be no sleep in that mad din of conches.
+Also, we were going stone-fishing, though our preparations were few.
+
+_Tautai-taora_ is the name for stone-fishing, _tautai_ meaning a
+“fishing instrument.” And _taora_ meaning “thrown.” But _tautai-taora_,
+in combination, means “stone-fishing,” for a stone is the instrument
+that is thrown. Stone-fishing is in reality a fish-drive, similar in
+principle to a rabbit-drive or a cattle-drive, though in the latter
+affairs drivers and driven operate in the same medium, while in the
+fish-drive the men must be in the air to breathe and the fish are
+driven through the water. It does not matter if the water is a hundred
+feet deep, the men, working on the surface, drive the fish just the
+same.
+
+This is the way it is done. The canoes form in line, one hundred to two
+hundred feet apart. In the bow of each canoe a man wields a stone,
+several pounds in weight, which is attached to a short rope. He merely
+smites the water with the stone, pulls up the stone, and smites again.
+He goes on smiting. In the stern of each canoe another man paddles,
+driving the canoe ahead and at the same time keeping it in the
+formation. The line of canoes advances to meet a second line a mile or
+two away, the ends of the lines hurrying together to form a circle, the
+far edge of which is the shore. The circle begins to contract upon the
+shore, where the women, standing in a long row out into the sea, form a
+fence of legs, which serves to break any rushes of the frantic fish. At
+the right moment when the circle is sufficiently small, a canoe dashes
+out from shore, dropping overboard a long screen of cocoanut leaves and
+encircling the circle, thus reinforcing the palisade of legs. Of
+course, the fishing is always done inside the reef in the lagoon.
+
+“_Très jolie_,” the gendarme said, after explaining by signs and
+gestures that thousands of fish would be caught of all sizes from
+minnows to sharks, and that the captured fish would boil up and upon
+the very sand of the beach.
+
+It is a most successful method of fishing, while its nature is more
+that of an outing festival, rather than of a prosaic, food-getting
+task. Such fishing parties take place about once a month at Bora Bora,
+and it is a custom that has descended from old time. The man who
+originated it is not remembered. They always did this thing. But one
+cannot help wondering about that forgotten savage of the long ago, into
+whose mind first flashed this scheme of easy fishing, of catching huge
+quantities of fish without hook, or net, or spear. One thing about him
+we can know: he was a radical. And we can be sure that he was
+considered feather-brained and anarchistic by his conservative
+tribesmen. His difficulty was much greater than that of the modern
+inventor, who has to convince in advance only one or two capitalists.
+That early inventor had to convince his whole tribe in advance, for
+without the co-operation of the whole tribe the device could not be
+tested. One can well imagine the nightly pow-wow-ings in that primitive
+island world, when he called his comrades antiquated moss-backs, and
+they called him a fool, a freak, and a crank, and charged him with
+having come from Kansas. Heaven alone knows at what cost of grey hairs
+and expletives he must finally have succeeded in winning over a
+sufficient number to give his idea a trial. At any rate, the experiment
+succeeded. It stood the test of truth—it worked! And thereafter, we can
+be confident, there was no man to be found who did not know all along
+that it was going to work.
+
+Our good friends, Tehei and Bihaura, who were giving the fishing in our
+honour, had promised to come for us. We were down below when the call
+came from on deck that they were coming. We dashed up the companionway,
+to be overwhelmed by the sight of the Polynesian barge in which we were
+to ride. It was a long double canoe, the canoes lashed together by
+timbers with an interval of water between, and the whole decorated with
+flowers and golden grasses. A dozen flower-crowned Amazons were at the
+paddles, while at the stern of each canoe was a strapping steersman.
+All were garlanded with gold and crimson and orange flowers, while each
+wore about the hips a scarlet _pareu_. There were flowers everywhere,
+flowers, flowers, flowers, without end. The whole thing was an orgy of
+colour. On the platform forward resting on the bows of the canoes,
+Tehei and Bihaura were dancing. All voices were raised in a wild song
+or greeting.
+
+Three times they circled the _Snark_ before coming alongside to take
+Charmian and me on board. Then it was away for the fishing-grounds, a
+five-mile paddle dead to windward. “Everybody is jolly in Bora Bora,”
+is the saying throughout the Society Islands, and we certainly found
+everybody jolly. Canoe songs, shark songs, and fishing songs were sung
+to the dipping of the paddles, all joining in on the swinging choruses.
+Once in a while the cry _Mao_! was raised, whereupon all strained like
+mad at the paddles. Mao is shark, and when the deep-sea tigers appear,
+the natives paddle for dear life for the shore, knowing full well the
+danger they run of having their frail canoes overturned and of being
+devoured. Of course, in our case there were no sharks, but the cry of
+_mao_ was used to incite them to paddle with as much energy as if a
+shark were really after them. “Hoé! Hoé!” was another cry that made us
+foam through the water.
+
+On the platform Tehei and Bihaura danced, accompanied by songs and
+choruses or by rhythmic hand-clappings. At other times a musical
+knocking of the paddles against the sides of the canoes marked the
+accent. A young girl dropped her paddle, leaped to the platform, and
+danced a hula, in the midst of which, still dancing, she swayed and
+bent, and imprinted on our cheeks the kiss of welcome. Some of the
+songs, or _himines_, were religious, and they were especially
+beautiful, the deep basses of the men mingling with the altos and thin
+sopranos of the women and forming a combination of sound that
+irresistibly reminded one of an organ. In fact, “kanaka organ” is the
+scoffer’s description of the _himine_. On the other hand, some of the
+chants or ballads were very barbaric, having come down from
+pre-Christian times.
+
+And so, singing, dancing, paddling, these joyous Polynesians took us to
+the fishing. The gendarme, who is the French ruler of Bora Bora,
+accompanied us with his family in a double canoe of his own, paddled by
+his prisoners; for not only is he gendarme and ruler, but he is jailer
+as well, and in this jolly land when anybody goes fishing, all go
+fishing. A score of single canoes, with outriggers, paddled along with
+us. Around a point a big sailing-canoe appeared, running beautifully
+before the wind as it bore down to greet us. Balancing precariously on
+the outrigger, three young men saluted us with a wild rolling of drums.
+
+The next point, half a mile farther on, brought us to the place of
+meeting. Here the launch, which had been brought along by Warren and
+Martin, attracted much attention. The Bora Borans could not see what
+made it go. The canoes were drawn upon the sand, and all hands went
+ashore to drink cocoanuts and sing and dance. Here our numbers were
+added to by many who arrived on foot from near-by dwellings, and a
+pretty sight it was to see the flower-crowned maidens, hand in hand and
+two by two, arriving along the sands.
+
+“They usually make a big catch,” Allicot, a half-caste trader, told us.
+“At the finish the water is fairly alive with fish. It is lots of fun.
+Of course you know all the fish will be yours.”
+
+“All?” I groaned, for already the _Snark_ was loaded down with lavish
+presents, by the canoe-load, of fruits, vegetables, pigs, and chickens.
+
+“Yes, every last fish,” Allicot answered. “You see, when the surround
+is completed, you, being the guest of honour, must take a harpoon and
+impale the first one. It is the custom. Then everybody goes in with
+their hands and throws the catch out on the sand. There will be a
+mountain of them. Then one of the chiefs will make a speech in which he
+presents you with the whole kit and boodle. But you don’t have to take
+them all. You get up and make a speech, selecting what fish you want
+for yourself and presenting all the rest back again. Then everybody
+says you are very generous.”
+
+“But what would be the result if I kept the whole present?” I asked.
+
+“It has never happened,” was the answer. “It is the custom to give and
+give back again.”
+
+The native minister started with a prayer for success in the fishing,
+and all heads were bared. Next, the chief fishermen told off the canoes
+and allotted them their places. Then it was into the canoes and away.
+No women, however, came along, with the exception of Bihaura and
+Charmian. In the old days even they would have been tabooed. The women
+remained behind to wade out into the water and form the palisade of
+legs.
+
+The big double canoe was left on the beach, and we went in the launch.
+Half the canoes paddled off to leeward, while we, with the other half,
+headed to windward a mile and a half, until the end of our line was in
+touch with the reef. The leader of the drive occupied a canoe midway in
+our line. He stood erect, a fine figure of an old man, holding a flag
+in his hand. He directed the taking of positions and the forming of the
+two lines by blowing on a conch. When all was ready, he waved his flag
+to the right. With a single splash the throwers in every canoe on that
+side struck the water with their stones. While they were hauling them
+back—a matter of a moment, for the stones scarcely sank beneath the
+surface—the flag waved to the left, and with admirable precision every
+stone on that side struck the water. So it went, back and forth, right
+and left; with every wave of the flag a long line of concussion smote
+the lagoon. At the same time the paddles drove the canoes forward and
+what was being done in our line was being done in the opposing line of
+canoes a mile and more away.
+
+On the bow of the launch, Tehei, with eyes fixed on the leader, worked
+his stone in unison with the others. Once, the stone slipped from the
+rope, and the same instant Tehei went overboard after it. I do not know
+whether or not that stone reached the bottom, but I do know that the
+next instant Tehei broke surface alongside with the stone in his hand.
+I noticed this same accident occur several times among the near-by
+canoes, but in each instance the thrower followed the stone and brought
+it back.
+
+The reef ends of our lines accelerated, the shore ends lagged, all
+under the watchful supervision of the leader, until at the reef the two
+lines joined, forming the circle. Then the contraction of the circle
+began, the poor frightened fish harried shoreward by the streaks of
+concussion that smote the water. In the same fashion elephants are
+driven through the jungle by motes of men who crouch in the long
+grasses or behind trees and make strange noises. Already the palisade
+of legs had been built. We could see the heads of the women, in a long
+line, dotting the placid surface of the lagoon. The tallest women went
+farthest out, thus, with the exception of those close inshore, nearly
+all were up to their necks in the water.
+
+Still the circle narrowed, till canoes were almost touching. There was
+a pause. A long canoe shot out from shore, following the line of the
+circle. It went as fast as paddles could drive. In the stern a man
+threw overboard the long, continuous screen of cocoanut leaves. The
+canoes were no longer needed, and overboard went the men to reinforce
+the palisade with their legs. For the screen was only a screen, and not
+a net, and the fish could dash through it if they tried. Hence the need
+for legs that ever agitated the screen, and for hands that splashed and
+throats that yelled. Pandemonium reigned as the trap tightened.
+
+But no fish broke surface or collided against the hidden legs. At last
+the chief fisherman entered the trap. He waded around everywhere,
+carefully. But there were no fish boiling up and out upon the sand.
+There was not a sardine, not a minnow, not a polly-wog. Something must
+have been wrong with that prayer; or else, and more likely, as one
+grizzled fellow put it, the wind was not in its usual quarter and the
+fish were elsewhere in the lagoon. In fact, there had been no fish to
+drive.
+
+“About once in five these drives are failures,” Allicot consoled us.
+
+Well, it was the stone-fishing that had brought us to Bora Bora, and it
+was our luck to draw the one chance in five. Had it been a raffle, it
+would have been the other way about. This is not pessimism. Nor is it
+an indictment of the plan of the universe. It is merely that feeling
+which is familiar to most fishermen at the empty end of a hard day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+THE AMATEUR NAVIGATOR
+
+
+There are captains and captains, and some mighty fine captains, I know;
+but the run of the captains on the _Snark_ has been remarkably
+otherwise. My experience with them has been that it is harder to take
+care of one captain on a small boat than of two small babies. Of
+course, this is no more than is to be expected. The good men have
+positions, and are not likely to forsake their
+one-thousand-to-fifteen-thousand-ton billets for the _Snark_ with her
+ten tons net. The _Snark_ has had to cull her navigators from the
+beach, and the navigator on the beach is usually a congenital
+inefficient—the sort of man who beats about for a fortnight trying
+vainly to find an ocean isle and who returns with his schooner to
+report the island sunk with all on board, the sort of man whose temper
+or thirst for strong waters works him out of billets faster than he can
+work into them.
+
+The _Snark_ has had three captains, and by the grace of God she shall
+have no more. The first captain was so senile as to be unable to give a
+measurement for a boom-jaw to a carpenter. So utterly agedly helpless
+was he, that he was unable to order a sailor to throw a few buckets of
+salt water on the _Snark’s_ deck. For twelve days, at anchor, under an
+overhead tropic sun, the deck lay dry. It was a new deck. It cost me
+one hundred and thirty-five dollars to recaulk it. The second captain
+was angry. He was born angry. “Papa is always angry,” was the
+description given him by his half-breed son. The third captain was so
+crooked that he couldn’t hide behind a corkscrew. The truth was not in
+him, common honesty was not in him, and he was as far away from fair
+play and square-dealing as he was from his proper course when he nearly
+wrecked the _Snark_ on the Ring-gold Isles.
+
+It was at Suva, in the Fijis, that I discharged my third and last
+captain and took up gain the rôle of amateur navigator. I had essayed
+it once before, under my first captain, who, out of San Francisco,
+jumped the _Snark_ so amazingly over the chart that I really had to
+find out what was doing. It was fairly easy to find out, for we had a
+run of twenty-one hundred miles before us. I knew nothing of
+navigation; but, after several hours of reading up and half an hour’s
+practice with the sextant, I was able to find the _Snark’s_ latitude by
+meridian observation and her longitude by the simple method known as
+“equal altitudes.” This is not a correct method. It is not even a safe
+method, but my captain was attempting to navigate by it, and he was the
+only one on board who should have been able to tell me that it was a
+method to be eschewed. I brought the _Snark_ to Hawaii, but the
+conditions favoured me. The sun was in northern declination and nearly
+overhead. The legitimate “chronometer-sight” method of ascertaining the
+longitude I had not heard of—yes, I had heard of it. My first captain
+mentioned it vaguely, but after one or two attempts at practice of it
+he mentioned it no more.
+
+I had time in the Fijis to compare my chronometer with two other
+chronometers. Two weeks previous, at Pago Pago, in Samoa, I had asked
+my captain to compare our chronometer with the chronometers on the
+American cruiser, the _Annapolis_. This he told me he had done—of
+course he had done nothing of the sort; and he told me that the
+difference he had ascertained was only a small fraction of a second. He
+told it to me with finely simulated joy and with words of praise for my
+splendid time-keeper. I repeat it now, with words of praise for his
+splendid and unblushing unveracity. For behold, fourteen days later, in
+Suva, I compared the chronometer with the one on the Atua, an
+Australian steamer, and found that mine was thirty-one seconds fast.
+Now thirty-one seconds of time, converted into arc, equals seven and
+one-quarter miles. That is to say, if I were sailing west, in the
+night-time, and my position, according to my dead reckoning from my
+afternoon chronometer sight, was shown to be seven miles off the land,
+why, at that very moment I would be crashing on the reef. Next I
+compared my chronometer with Captain Wooley’s. Captain Wooley, the
+harbourmaster, gives the time to Suva, firing a gun signal at twelve,
+noon, three times a week. According to his chronometer mine was
+fifty-nine seconds fast, which is to say, that, sailing west, I should
+be crashing on the reef when I thought I was fifteen miles off from it.
+
+I compromised by subtracting thirty-one seconds from the total of my
+chronometer’s losing error, and sailed away for Tanna, in the New
+Hebrides, resolved, when nosing around the land on dark nights, to bear
+in mind the other seven miles I might be out according to Captain
+Wooley’s instrument. Tanna lay some six hundred miles west-southwest
+from the Fijis, and it was my belief that while covering that distance
+I could quite easily knock into my head sufficient navigation to get me
+there. Well, I got there, but listen first to my troubles. Navigation
+_is_ easy, I shall always contend that; but when a man is taking three
+gasolene engines and a wife around the world and is writing hard every
+day to keep the engines supplied with gasolene and the wife with pearls
+and volcanoes, he hasn’t much time left in which to study navigation.
+Also, it is bound to be easier to study said science ashore, where
+latitude and longitude are unchanging, in a house whose position never
+alters, than it is to study navigation on a boat that is rushing along
+day and night toward land that one is trying to find and which he is
+liable to find disastrously at a moment when he least expects it.
+
+To begin with, there are the compasses and the setting of the courses.
+We sailed from Suva on Saturday afternoon, June 6, 1908, and it took us
+till after dark to run the narrow, reef-ridden passage between the
+islands of Viti Levu and Mbengha. The open ocean lay before me. There
+was nothing in the way with the exception of Vatu Leile, a miserable
+little island that persisted in poking up through the sea some twenty
+miles to the west-southwest—just where I wanted to go. Of course, it
+seemed quite simple to avoid it by steering a course that would pass it
+eight or ten miles to the north. It was a black night, and we were
+running before the wind. The man at the wheel must be told what
+direction to steer in order to miss Vatu Leile. But what direction? I
+turned me to the navigation books. “True Course” I lighted upon. The
+very thing! What I wanted was the true course. I read eagerly on:
+
+“The True Course is the angle made with the meridian by a straight line
+on the chart drawn to connect the ship’s position with the place bound
+to.”
+
+Just what I wanted. The _Snark’s_ position was at the western entrance
+of the passage between Viti Levu and Mbengha. The immediate place she
+was bound to was a place on the chart ten miles north of Vatu Leile. I
+pricked that place off on the chart with my dividers, and with my
+parallel rulers found that west-by-south was the true course. I had but
+to give it to the man at the wheel and the _Snark_ would win her way to
+the safety of the open sea.
+
+But alas and alack and lucky for me, I read on. I discovered that the
+compass, that trusty, everlasting friend of the mariner, was not given
+to pointing north. It varied. Sometimes it pointed east of north,
+sometimes west of north, and on occasion it even turned tail on north
+and pointed south. The variation at the particular spot on the globe
+occupied by the _Snark_ was 9° 40′ easterly. Well, that had to be taken
+into account before I gave the steering course to the man at the wheel.
+I read:
+
+“The Correct Magnetic Course is derived from the True Course by
+applying to it the variation.”
+
+Therefore, I reasoned, if the compass points 9° 40′ eastward of north,
+and I wanted to sail due north, I should have to steer 9° 40′ westward
+of the north indicated by the compass and which was not north at all.
+So I added 9° 40′ to the left of my west-by-south course, thus getting
+my correct Magnetic Course, and was ready once more to run to open sea.
+
+Again alas and alack! The Correct Magnetic Course was not the Compass
+Course. There was another sly little devil lying in wait to trip me up
+and land me smashing on the reefs of Vatu Leile. This little devil went
+by the name of Deviation. I read:
+
+“The Compass Course is the course to steer, and is derived from the
+Correct Magnetic Course by applying to it the Deviation.”
+
+Now Deviation is the variation in the needle caused by the distribution
+of iron on board of ship. This purely local variation I derived from
+the deviation card of my standard compass and then applied to the
+Correct Magnetic Course. The result was the Compass Course. And yet,
+not yet. My standard compass was amidships on the companionway. My
+steering compass was aft, in the cockpit, near the wheel. When the
+steering compass pointed west-by-south three-quarters-south (the
+steering course), the standard compass pointed west-one-half-north,
+which was certainly not the steering course. I kept the _Snark_ up till
+she was heading west-by-south-three-quarters-south on the standard
+compass, which gave, on the steering compass, south-west-by-west.
+
+The foregoing operations constitute the simple little matter of setting
+a course. And the worst of it is that one must perform every step
+correctly or else he will hear “Breakers ahead!” some pleasant night, a
+nice sea-bath, and be given the delightful diversion of fighting his
+way to the shore through a horde of man-eating sharks.
+
+Just as the compass is tricky and strives to fool the mariner by
+pointing in all directions except north, so does that guide post of the
+sky, the sun, persist in not being where it ought to be at a given
+time. This carelessness of the sun is the cause of more trouble—at
+least it caused trouble for me. To find out where one is on the earth’s
+surface, he must know, at precisely the same time, where the sun is in
+the heavens. That is to say, the sun, which is the timekeeper for men,
+doesn’t run on time. When I discovered this, I fell into deep gloom and
+all the Cosmos was filled with doubt. Immutable laws, such as
+gravitation and the conservation of energy, became wobbly, and I was
+prepared to witness their violation at any moment and to remain
+unastonished. For see, if the compass lied and the sun did not keep its
+engagements, why should not objects lose their mutual attraction and
+why should not a few bushel baskets of force be annihilated? Even
+perpetual motion became possible, and I was in a frame of mind prone to
+purchase Keeley-Motor stock from the first enterprising agent that
+landed on the _Snark’s_ deck. And when I discovered that the earth
+really rotated on its axis 366 times a year, while there were only 365
+sunrises and sunsets, I was ready to doubt my own identity.
+
+This is the way of the sun. It is so irregular that it is impossible
+for man to devise a clock that will keep the sun’s time. The sun
+accelerates and retards as no clock could be made to accelerate and
+retard. The sun is sometimes ahead of its schedule; at other times it
+is lagging behind; and at still other times it is breaking the speed
+limit in order to overtake itself, or, rather, to catch up with where
+it ought to be in the sky. In this last case it does not slow down
+quick enough, and, as a result, goes dashing ahead of where it ought to
+be. In fact, only four days in a year do the sun and the place where
+the sun ought to be happen to coincide. The remaining 361 days the sun
+is pothering around all over the shop. Man, being more perfect than the
+sun, makes a clock that keeps regular time. Also, he calculates how far
+the sun is ahead of its schedule or behind. The difference between the
+sun’s position and the position where the sun ought to be if it were a
+decent, self-respecting sun, man calls the Equation of Time. Thus, the
+navigator endeavouring to find his ship’s position on the sea, looks in
+his chronometer to see where precisely the sun ought to be according to
+the Greenwich custodian of the sun. Then to that location he applies
+the Equation of Time and finds out where the sun ought to be and isn’t.
+This latter location, along with several other locations, enables him
+to find out what the man from Kansas demanded to know some years ago.
+
+The _Snark_ sailed from Fiji on Saturday, June 6, and the next day,
+Sunday, on the wide ocean, out of sight of land, I proceeded to
+endeavour to find out my position by a chronometer sight for longitude
+and by a meridian observation for latitude. The chronometer sight was
+taken in the morning when the sun was some 21° above the horizon. I
+looked in the Nautical Almanac and found that on that very day, June 7,
+the sun was behind time 1 minute and 26 seconds, and that it was
+catching up at a rate of 14.67 seconds per hour. The chronometer said
+that at the precise moment of taking the sun’s altitude it was
+twenty-five minutes after eight o’clock at Greenwich. From this date it
+would seem a schoolboy’s task to correct the Equation of Time.
+Unfortunately, I was not a schoolboy. Obviously, at the middle of the
+day, at Greenwich, the sun was 1 minute and 26 seconds behind time.
+Equally obviously, if it were eleven o’clock in the morning, the sun
+would be 1 minute and 26 seconds behind time plus 14.67 seconds. If it
+were ten o’clock in the morning, twice 14.67 seconds would have to be
+added. And if it were 8: 25 in the morning, then 3½ times 14.67 seconds
+would have to be added. Quite clearly, then, if, instead of being 8:25
+A.M., it were 8:25 P.M., then 8½ times 14.67 seconds would have to be,
+not added, but _subtracted_; for, if, at noon, the sun were 1 minute
+and 26 seconds behind time, and if it were catching up with where it
+ought to be at the rate of 14.67 seconds per hour, then at 8.25 P.M. it
+would be much nearer where it ought to be than it had been at noon.
+
+So far, so good. But was that 8:25 of the chronometer A.M., or P.M.? I
+looked at the _Snark’s_ clock. It marked 8:9, and it was certainly A.M.
+for I had just finished breakfast. Therefore, if it was eight in the
+morning on board the _Snark_, the eight o’clock of the chronometer
+(which was the time of the day at Greenwich) must be a different eight
+o’clock from the _Snark’s_ eight o’clock. But what eight o’clock was
+it? It can’t be the eight o’clock of this morning, I reasoned;
+therefore, it must be either eight o’clock this evening or eight
+o’clock last night.
+
+It was at this juncture that I fell into the bottomless pit of
+intellectual chaos. We are in east longitude, I reasoned, therefore we
+are ahead of Greenwich. If we are behind Greenwich, then to-day is
+yesterday; if we are ahead of Greenwich, then yesterday is to-day, but
+if yesterday is to-day, what under the sun is to-day!—to-morrow?
+Absurd! Yet it must be correct. When I took the sun this morning at
+8:25, the sun’s custodians at Greenwich were just arising from dinner
+last night.
+
+“Then correct the Equation of Time for yesterday,” says my logical
+mind.
+
+“But to-day is to-day,” my literal mind insists. “I must correct the
+sun for to-day and not for yesterday.”
+
+“Yet to-day is yesterday,” urges my logical mind.
+
+“That’s all very well,” my literal mind continues, “If I were in
+Greenwich I might be in yesterday. Strange things happen in Greenwich.
+But I know as sure as I am living that I am here, now, in to-day, June
+7, and that I took the sun here, now, to-day, June 7. Therefore, I must
+correct the sun here, now, to-day, June 7.”
+
+“Bosh!” snaps my logical mind. “Lecky says—”
+
+“Never mind what Lecky says,” interrupts my literal mind. “Let me tell
+you what the Nautical Almanac says. The Nautical Almanac says that
+to-day, June 7, the sun was 1 minute and 26 seconds behind time and
+catching up at the rate of 14.67 seconds per hour. It says that
+yesterday, June 6, the sun was 1 minute and 36 seconds behind time and
+catching up at the rate of 15.66 seconds per hour. You see, it is
+preposterous to think of correcting to-day’s sun by yesterday’s
+time-table.”
+
+“Fool!”
+
+“Idiot!”
+
+Back and forth they wrangle until my head is whirling around and I am
+ready to believe that I am in the day after the last week before next.
+
+I remembered a parting caution of the Suva harbour-master: “_In east
+longitude take from the Nautical Almanac the elements for the preceding
+day_.”
+
+Then a new thought came to me. I corrected the Equation of Time for
+Sunday and for Saturday, making two separate operations of it, and lo,
+when the results were compared, there was a difference only of
+four-tenths of a second. I was a changed man. I had found my way out of
+the crypt. The _Snark_ was scarcely big enough to hold me and my
+experience. Four-tenths of a second would make a difference of only
+one-tenth of a mile—a cable-length!
+
+All went merrily for ten minutes, when I chanced upon the following
+rhyme for navigators:
+“Greenwich time least
+Longitude east;
+Greenwich best,
+Longitude west.”
+
+Heavens! The _Snark’s_ time was not as good as Greenwich time. When it
+was 8:25 at Greenwich, on board the _Snark_ it was only 8:9. “Greenwich
+time best, longitude west.” There I was. In west longitude beyond a
+doubt.
+
+“Silly!” cries my literal mind. “You are 8:9 A.M. and Greenwich is 8:25
+P.M.”
+
+“Very well,” answers my logical mind. “To be correct, 8.25 P.M. is
+really twenty hours and twenty-five minutes, and that is certainly
+better than eight hours and nine minutes. No, there is no discussion;
+you are in west longitude.”
+
+Then my literal mind triumphs.
+
+“We sailed from Suva, in the Fijis, didn’t we?” it demands, and logical
+mind agrees. “And Suva is in east longitude?” Again logical mind
+agrees. “And we sailed west (which would take us deeper into east
+longitude), didn’t we? Therefore, and you can’t escape it, we are in
+east longitude.”
+
+“Greenwich time best, longitude west,” chants my logical mind; “and you
+must grant that twenty hours and twenty-five minutes is better than
+eight hours and nine minutes.”
+
+“All right,” I break in upon the squabble; “we’ll work up the sight and
+then we’ll see.”
+
+And work it up I did, only to find that my longitude was 184° west.
+
+“I told you so,” snorts my logical mind.
+
+I am dumbfounded. So is my literal mind, for several minutes. Then it
+enounces:
+
+“But there is no 184° west longitude, nor east longitude, nor any other
+longitude. The largest meridian is 180° as you ought to know very
+well.”
+
+Having got this far, literal mind collapses from the brain strain,
+logical mind is dumb flabbergasted; and as for me, I get a bleak and
+wintry look in my eyes and go around wondering whether I am sailing
+toward the China coast or the Gulf of Darien.
+
+Then a thin small voice, which I do not recognize, coming from nowhere
+in particular in my consciousness, says:
+
+“The total number of degrees is 360. Subtract the 184° west longitude
+from 360°, and you will get 176° east longitude.”
+
+“That is sheer speculation,” objects literal mind; and logical mind
+remonstrates. “There is no rule for it.”
+
+“Darn the rules!” I exclaim. “Ain’t I here?”
+
+“The thing is self-evident,” I continue. “184° west longitude means a
+lapping over in east longitude of four degrees. Besides I have been in
+east longitude all the time. I sailed from Fiji, and Fiji is in east
+longitude. Now I shall chart my position and prove it by dead
+reckoning.”
+
+But other troubles and doubts awaited me. Here is a sample of one. In
+south latitude, when the sun is in northern declination, chronometer
+sights may be taken early in the morning. I took mine at eight o’clock.
+Now, one of the necessary elements in working up such a sight is
+latitude. But one gets latitude at twelve o’clock, noon, by a meridian
+observation. It is clear that in order to work up my eight o’clock
+chronometer sight I must have my eight o’clock latitude. Of course, if
+the _Snark_ were sailing due west at six knots per hour, for the
+intervening four hours her latitude would not change. But if she were
+sailing due south, her latitude would change to the tune of twenty-four
+miles. In which case a simple addition or subtraction would convert the
+twelve o’clock latitude into eight o’clock latitude. But suppose the
+_Snark_ were sailing southwest. Then the traverse tables must be
+consulted.
+
+This is the illustration. At eight A.M. I took my chronometer sight. At
+the same moment the distance recorded on the log was noted. At twelve
+M., when the sight for latitude was taken, I again noted the log, which
+showed me that since eight o’clock the _Snark_ had run 24 miles. Her
+true course had been west ¾ south. I entered Table I, in the distance
+column, on the page for ¾ point courses, and stopped at 24, the number
+of miles run. Opposite, in the next two columns, I found that the
+_Snark_ had made 3.5 miles of southing or latitude, and that she had
+made 23.7 miles of westing. To find my eight o’clock’ latitude was
+easy. I had but to subtract 3.5 miles from my noon latitude. All the
+elements being present, I worked up my longitude.
+
+But this was my eight o’clock longitude. Since then, and up till noon,
+I had made 23.7 miles of westing. What was my noon longitude? I
+followed the rule, turning to Traverse Table No. II. Entering the
+table, according to rule, and going through every detail, according to
+rule, I found the difference of longitude for the four hours to be 25
+miles. I was aghast. I entered the table again, according to rule; I
+entered the table half a dozen times, according to rule, and every time
+found that my difference of longitude was 25 miles. I leave it to you,
+gentle reader. Suppose you had sailed 24 miles and that you had covered
+3.5 miles of latitude, then how could you have covered 25 miles of
+longitude? Even if you had sailed due west 24 miles, and not changed
+your latitude, how could you have changed your longitude 25 miles? In
+the name of human reason, how could you cover one mile more of
+longitude than the total number of miles you had sailed?
+
+It was a reputable traverse table, being none other than Bowditch’s.
+The rule was simple (as navigators’ rules go); I had made no error. I
+spent an hour over it, and at the end still faced the glaring
+impossibility of having sailed 24 miles, in the course of which I
+changed my latitude 3.5 miles and my longitude 25 miles. The worst of
+it was that there was nobody to help me out. Neither Charmian nor
+Martin knew as much as I knew about navigation. And all the time the
+_Snark_ was rushing madly along toward Tanna, in the New Hebrides.
+Something had to be done.
+
+How it came to me I know not—call it an inspiration if you will; but
+the thought arose in me: if southing is latitude, why isn’t westing
+longitude? Why should I have to change westing into longitude? And then
+the whole beautiful situation dawned upon me. The meridians of
+longitude are 60 miles (nautical) apart at the equator. At the poles
+they run together. Thus, if I should travel up the 180° meridian of
+longitude until I reached the North Pole, and if the astronomer at
+Greenwich travelled up the 0 meridian of longitude to the North Pole,
+then, at the North Pole, we could shake hands with each other, though
+before we started for the North Pole we had been some thousands of
+miles apart. Again: if a degree of longitude was 60 miles wide at the
+equator, and if the same degree, at the point of the Pole, had no
+width, then somewhere between the Pole and the equator that degree
+would be half a mile wide, and at other places a mile wide, two miles
+wide, ten miles wide, thirty miles wide, ay, and sixty miles wide.
+
+All was plain again. The _Snark_ was in 19° south latitude. The world
+wasn’t as big around there as at the equator. Therefore, every mile of
+westing at 19° south was more than a minute of longitude; for sixty
+miles were sixty miles, but sixty minutes are sixty miles only at the
+equator. George Francis Train broke Jules Verne’s record of around the
+world. But any man that wants can break George Francis Train’s record.
+Such a man would need only to go, in a fast steamer, to the latitude of
+Cape Horn, and sail due east all the way around. The world is very
+small in that latitude, and there is no land in the way to turn him out
+of his course. If his steamer maintained sixteen knots, he would
+circumnavigate the globe in just about forty days.
+
+But there are compensations. On Wednesday evening, June 10, I brought
+up my noon position by dead reckoning to eight P.M. Then I projected
+the _Snark’s_ course and saw that she would strike Futuna, one of the
+easternmost of the New Hebrides, a volcanic cone two thousand feet high
+that rose out of the deep ocean. I altered the course so that the
+_Snark_ would pass ten miles to the northward. Then I spoke to Wada,
+the cook, who had the wheel every morning from four to six.
+
+“Wada San, to-morrow morning, your watch, you look sharp on weather-bow
+you see land.”
+
+And then I went to bed. The die was cast. I had staked my reputation as
+a navigator. Suppose, just suppose, that at daybreak there was no land.
+Then, where would my navigation be? And where would we be? And how
+would we ever find ourselves? or find any land? I caught ghastly
+visions of the _Snark_ sailing for months through ocean solitudes and
+seeking vainly for land while we consumed our provisions and sat down
+with haggard faces to stare cannibalism in the face.
+
+I confess my sleep was not
+“ . . . like a summer sky
+That held the music of a lark.”
+
+Rather did “I waken to the voiceless dark,” and listen to the creaking
+of the bulkheads and the rippling of the sea alongside as the _Snark_
+logged steadily her six knots an hour. I went over my calculations
+again and again, striving to find some mistake, until my brain was in
+such fever that it discovered dozens of mistakes. Suppose, instead of
+being sixty miles off Futuna, that my navigation was all wrong and that
+I was only six miles off? In which case my course would be wrong, too,
+and for all I knew the _Snark_ might be running straight at Futuna. For
+all I knew the _Snark_ might strike Futuna the next moment. I almost
+sprang from the bunk at that thought; and, though I restrained myself,
+I know that I lay for a moment, nervous and tense, waiting for the
+shock.
+
+My sleep was broken by miserable nightmares. Earthquake seemed the
+favourite affliction, though there was one man, with a bill, who
+persisted in dunning me throughout the night. Also, he wanted to fight;
+and Charmian continually persuaded me to let him alone. Finally,
+however, the man with the everlasting dun ventured into a dream from
+which Charmian was absent. It was my opportunity, and we went at it,
+gloriously, all over the sidewalk and street, until he cried enough.
+Then I said, “Now how about that bill?” Having conquered, I was willing
+to pay. But the man looked at me and groaned. “It was all a mistake,”
+he said; “the bill is for the house next door.”
+
+That settled him, for he worried my dreams no more; and it settled me,
+too, for I woke up chuckling at the episode. It was three in the
+morning. I went up on deck. Henry, the Rapa islander, was steering. I
+looked at the log. It recorded forty-two miles. The _Snark_ had not
+abated her six-knot gait, and she had not struck Futuna yet. At
+half-past five I was again on deck. Wada, at the wheel, had seen no
+land. I sat on the cockpit rail, a prey to morbid doubt for a quarter
+of an hour. Then I saw land, a small, high piece of land, just where it
+ought to be, rising from the water on the weather-bow. At six o’clock I
+could clearly make it out to be the beautiful volcanic cone of Futuna.
+At eight o’clock, when it was abreast, I took its distance by the
+sextant and found it to be 9.3 miles away. And I had elected to pass it
+10 miles away!
+
+Then, to the south, Aneiteum rose out of the sea, to the north, Aniwa,
+and, dead ahead, Tanna. There was no mistaking Tanna, for the smoke of
+its volcano was towering high in the sky. It was forty miles away, and
+by afternoon, as we drew close, never ceasing to log our six knots, we
+saw that it was a mountainous, hazy land, with no apparent openings in
+its coast-line. I was looking for Port Resolution, though I was quite
+prepared to find that as an anchorage, it had been destroyed. Volcanic
+earthquakes had lifted its bottom during the last forty years, so that
+where once the largest ships rode at anchor there was now, by last
+reports, scarcely space and depth sufficient for the _Snark_. And why
+should not another convulsion, since the last report, have closed the
+harbour completely?
+
+I ran in close to the unbroken coast, fringed with rocks awash upon
+which the crashing trade-wind sea burst white and high. I searched with
+my glasses for miles, but could see no entrance. I took a compass
+bearing of Futuna, another of Aniwa, and laid them off on the chart.
+Where the two bearings crossed was bound to be the position of the
+_Snark_. Then, with my parallel rulers, I laid down a course from the
+_Snark’s_ position to Port Resolution. Having corrected this course for
+variation and deviation, I went on deck, and lo, the course directed me
+towards that unbroken coast-line of bursting seas. To my Rapa
+islander’s great concern, I held on till the rocks awash were an eighth
+of a mile away.
+
+“No harbour this place,” he announced, shaking his head ominously.
+
+But I altered the course and ran along parallel with the coast.
+Charmian was at the wheel. Martin was at the engine, ready to throw on
+the propeller. A narrow slit of an opening showed up suddenly. Through
+the glasses I could see the seas breaking clear across. Henry, the Rapa
+man, looked with troubled eyes; so did Tehei, the Tahaa man.
+
+“No passage, there,” said Henry. “We go there, we finish quick, sure.”
+
+I confess I thought so, too; but I ran on abreast, watching to see if
+the line of breakers from one side the entrance did not overlap the
+line from the other side. Sure enough, it did. A narrow place where the
+sea ran smooth appeared. Charmian put down the wheel and steadied for
+the entrance. Martin threw on the engine, while all hands and the cook
+sprang to take in sail.
+
+A trader’s house showed up in the bight of the bay. A geyser, on the
+shore, a hundred yards away; spouted a column of steam. To port, as we
+rounded a tiny point, the mission station appeared.
+
+“Three fathoms,” cried Wada at the lead-line. “Three fathoms,” “two
+fathoms,” came in quick succession.
+
+Charmian put the wheel down, Martin stopped the engine, and the _Snark_
+rounded to and the anchor rumbled down in three fathoms. Before we
+could catch our breaths a swarm of black Tannese was alongside and
+aboard—grinning, apelike creatures, with kinky hair and troubled eyes,
+wearing safety-pins and clay-pipes in their slitted ears: and as for
+the rest, wearing nothing behind and less than that before. And I don’t
+mind telling that that night, when everybody was asleep, I sneaked up
+on deck, looked out over the quiet scene, and gloated—yes, gloated—over
+my navigation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+CRUISING IN THE SOLOMONS
+
+
+“Why not come along now?” said Captain Jansen to us, at Penduffryn, on
+the island of Guadalcanar.
+
+Charmian and I looked at each other and debated silently for half a
+minute. Then we nodded our heads simultaneously. It is a way we have of
+making up our minds to do things; and a very good way it is when one
+has no temperamental tears to shed over the last tin-of condensed milk
+when it has capsized. (We are living on tinned goods these days, and
+since mind is rumoured to be an emanation of matter, our similes are
+naturally of the packing-house variety.)
+
+“You’d better bring your revolvers along, and a couple of rifles,” said
+Captain Jansen. “I’ve got five rifles aboard, though the one Mauser is
+without ammunition. Have you a few rounds to spare?”
+
+We brought our rifles on board, several handfuls of Mauser cartridges,
+and Wada and Nakata, the _Snark’s_ cook and cabin-boy respectively.
+Wada and Nakata were in a bit of a funk. To say the least, they were
+not enthusiastic, though never did Nakata show the white feather in the
+face of danger. The Solomon Islands had not dealt kindly with them. In
+the first place, both had suffered from Solomon sores. So had the rest
+of us (at the time, I was nursing two fresh ones on a diet of corrosive
+sublimate); but the two Japanese had had more than their share. And the
+sores are not nice. They may be described as excessively active ulcers.
+A mosquito bite, a cut, or the slightest abrasion, serves for lodgment
+of the poison with which the air seems to be filled. Immediately the
+ulcer commences to eat. It eats in every direction, consuming skin and
+muscle with astounding rapidity. The pin-point ulcer of the first day
+is the size of a dime by the second day, and by the end of the week a
+silver dollar will not cover it.
+
+Worse than the sores, the two Japanese had been afflicted with Solomon
+Island fever. Each had been down repeatedly with it, and in their weak,
+convalescent moments they were wont to huddle together on the portion
+of the _Snark_ that happened to be nearest to faraway Japan, and to
+gaze yearningly in that direction.
+
+But worst of all, they were now brought on board the _Minota_ for a
+recruiting cruise along the savage coast of Malaita. Wada, who had the
+worse funk, was sure that he would never see Japan again, and with
+bleak, lack-lustre eyes he watched our rifles and ammunition going on
+board the _Minota_. He knew about the _Minota_ and her Malaita cruises.
+He knew that she had been captured six months before on the Malaita
+coast, that her captain had been chopped to pieces with tomahawks, and
+that, according to the barbarian sense of equity on that sweet isle,
+she owed two more heads. Also, a labourer on Penduffryn Plantation, a
+Malaita boy, had just died of dysentery, and Wada knew that Penduffryn
+had been put in the debt of Malaita by one more head. Furthermore, in
+stowing our luggage away in the skipper’s tiny cabin, he saw the axe
+gashes on the door where the triumphant bushmen had cut their way in.
+And, finally, the galley stove was without a pipe—said pipe having been
+part of the loot.
+
+The _Minota_ was a teak-built, Australian yacht, ketch-rigged, long and
+lean, with a deep fin-keel, and designed for harbour racing rather than
+for recruiting blacks. When Charmian and I came on board, we found her
+crowded. Her double boat’s crew, including substitutes, was fifteen,
+and she had a score and more of “return” boys, whose time on the
+plantations was served and who were bound back to their bush villages.
+To look at, they were certainly true head-hunting cannibals. Their
+perforated nostrils were thrust through with bone and wooden bodkins
+the size of lead-pencils. Numbers of them had punctured the extreme
+meaty point of the nose, from which protruded, straight out, spikes of
+turtle-shell or of beads strung on stiff wire. A few had further
+punctured their noses with rows of holes following the curves of the
+nostrils from lip to point. Each ear of every man had from two to a
+dozen holes in it—holes large enough to carry wooden plugs three inches
+in diameter down to tiny holes in which were carried clay-pipes and
+similar trifles. In fact, so many holes did they possess that they
+lacked ornaments to fill them; and when, the following day, as we
+neared Malaita, we tried out our rifles to see that they were in
+working order, there was a general scramble for the empty cartridges,
+which were thrust forthwith into the many aching voids in our
+passengers’ ears.
+
+At the time we tried out our rifles we put up our barbed wire railings.
+The _Minota_, crown-decked, without any house, and with a rail six
+inches high, was too accessible to boarders. So brass stanchions were
+screwed into the rail and a double row of barbed wire stretched around
+her from stem to stern and back again. Which was all very well as a
+protection from savages, but it was mighty uncomfortable to those on
+board when the _Minota_ took to jumping and plunging in a sea-way. When
+one dislikes sliding down upon the lee-rail barbed wire, and when he
+dares not catch hold of the weather-rail barbed wire to save himself
+from sliding, and when, with these various disinclinations, he finds
+himself on a smooth flush-deck that is heeled over at an angle of
+forty-five degrees, some of the delights of Solomon Islands cruising
+may be comprehended. Also, it must be remembered, the penalty of a fall
+into the barbed wire is more than the mere scratches, for each scratch
+is practically certain to become a venomous ulcer. That caution will
+not save one from the wire was evidenced one fine morning when we were
+running along the Malaita coast with the breeze on our quarter. The
+wind was fresh, and a tidy sea was making. A black boy was at the
+wheel. Captain Jansen, Mr. Jacobsen (the mate), Charmian, and I had
+just sat down on deck to breakfast. Three unusually large seas caught
+us. The boy at the wheel lost his head. Three times the _Minota_ was
+swept. The breakfast was rushed over the lee-rail. The knives and forks
+went through the scuppers; a boy aft went clean overboard and was
+dragged back; and our doughty skipper lay half inboard and half out,
+jammed in the barbed wire. After that, for the rest of the cruise, our
+joint use of the several remaining eating utensils was a splendid
+example of primitive communism. On the _Eugenie_, however, it was even
+worse, for we had but one teaspoon among four of us—but the _Eugenie_
+is another story.
+
+Our first port was Su’u on the west coast of Malaita. The Solomon
+Islands are on the fringe of things. It is difficult enough sailing on
+dark nights through reef-spiked channels and across erratic currents
+where there are no lights to guide (from northwest to southeast the
+Solomons extend across a thousand miles of sea, and on all the
+thousands of miles of coasts there is not one lighthouse); but the
+difficulty is seriously enhanced by the fact that the land itself is
+not correctly charted. Su’u is an example. On the Admiralty chart of
+Malaita the coast at this point runs a straight, unbroken line. Yet
+across this straight, unbroken line the _Minota_ sailed in twenty
+fathoms of water. Where the land was alleged to be, was a deep
+indentation. Into this we sailed, the mangroves closing about us, till
+we dropped anchor in a mirrored pond. Captain Jansen did not like the
+anchorage. It was the first time he had been there, and Su’u had a bad
+reputation. There was no wind with which to get away in case of attack,
+while the crew could be bushwhacked to a man if they attempted to tow
+out in the whale-boat. It was a pretty trap, if trouble blew up.
+
+“Suppose the _Minota_ went ashore—what would you do?” I asked.
+
+“She’s not going ashore,” was Captain Jansen’s answer.
+
+“But just in case she did?” I insisted. He considered for a moment and
+shifted his glance from the mate buckling on a revolver to the boat’s
+crew climbing into the whale-boat each man with a rifle.
+
+“We’d get into the whale-boat, and get out of here as fast as God’d let
+us,” came the skipper’s delayed reply.
+
+He explained at length that no white man was sure of his _Malaita_ crew
+in a tight place; that the bushmen looked upon all wrecks as their
+personal property; that the bushmen possessed plenty of Snider rifles;
+and that he had on board a dozen “return” boys for Su’u who were
+certain to join in with their friends and relatives ashore when it came
+to looting the _Minota_.
+
+The first work of the whale-boat was to take the “return” boys and
+their trade-boxes ashore. Thus one danger was removed. While this was
+being done, a canoe came alongside manned by three naked savages. And
+when I say naked, I mean naked. Not one vestige of clothing did they
+have on, unless nose-rings, ear-plugs, and shell armlets be accounted
+clothing. The head man in the canoe was an old chief, one-eyed, reputed
+to be friendly, and so dirty that a boat-scraper would have lost its
+edge on him. His mission was to warn the skipper against allowing any
+of his people to go ashore. The old fellow repeated the warning again
+that night.
+
+In vain did the whale-boat ply about the shores of the bay in quest of
+recruits. The bush was full of armed natives; all willing enough to
+talk with the recruiter, but not one would engage to sign on for three
+years’ plantation labour at six pounds per year. Yet they were anxious
+enough to get our people ashore. On the second day they raised a smoke
+on the beach at the head of the bay. This being the customary signal of
+men desiring to recruit, the boat was sent. But nothing resulted. No
+one recruited, nor were any of our men lured ashore. A little later we
+caught glimpses of a number of armed natives moving about on the beach.
+
+Outside of these rare glimpses, there was no telling how many might be
+lurking in the bush. There was no penetrating that primeval jungle with
+the eye. In the afternoon, Captain Jansen, Charmian, and I went
+dynamiting fish. Each one of the boat’s crew carried a Lee-Enfield.
+“Johnny,” the native recruiter, had a Winchester beside him at the
+steering sweep. We rowed in close to a portion of the shore that looked
+deserted. Here the boat was turned around and backed in; in case of
+attack, the boat would be ready to dash away. In all the time I was on
+Malaita I never saw a boat land bow on. In fact, the recruiting vessels
+use two boats—one to go in on the beach, armed, of course, and the
+other to lie off several hundred feet and “cover” the first boat. The
+_Minota_, however, being a small vessel, did not carry a covering boat.
+
+We were close in to the shore and working in closer, stern-first, when
+a school of fish was sighted. The fuse was ignited and the stick of
+dynamite thrown. With the explosion, the surface of the water was
+broken by the flash of leaping fish. At the same instant the woods
+broke into life. A score of naked savages, armed with bows and arrows,
+spears, and Sniders, burst out upon the shore. At the same moment our
+boat’s crew lifted their rifles. And thus the opposing parties faced
+each other, while our extra boys dived over after the stunned fish.
+
+Three fruitless days were spent at Su’u. The _Minota_ got no recruits
+from the bush, and the bushmen got no heads from the _Minota_. In fact,
+the only one who got anything was Wada, and his was a nice dose of
+fever. We towed out with the whale-boat, and ran along the coast to
+Langa Langa, a large village of salt-water people, built with
+prodigious labour on a lagoon sand-bank—literally _built_ up, an
+artificial island reared as a refuge from the blood-thirsty bushmen.
+Here, also, on the shore side of the lagoon, was Binu, the place where
+the _Minota_ was captured half a year previously and her captain killed
+by the bushmen. As we sailed in through the narrow entrance, a canoe
+came alongside with the news that the man-of-war had just left that
+morning after having burned three villages, killed some thirty pigs,
+and drowned a baby. This was the Cambrian, Captain Lewes commanding. He
+and I had first met in Korea during the Japanese-Russian War, and we
+had been crossing each other’s trail ever since without ever a meeting.
+The day the _Snark_ sailed into Suva, in the Fijis, we made out the
+_Cambrian_ going out. At Vila, in the New Hebrides, we missed each
+other by one day. We passed each other in the night-time off the island
+of Santo. And the day the _Cambrian_ arrived at Tulagi, we sailed from
+Penduffryn, a dozen miles away. And here at Langa Langa we had missed
+by several hours.
+
+The _Cambrian_ had come to punish the murderers of the _Minota’s_
+captain, but what she had succeeded in doing we did not learn until
+later in the day, when a Mr. Abbot, a missionary, came alongside in his
+whale-boat. The villages had been burned and the pigs killed. But the
+natives had escaped personal harm. The murderers had not been captured,
+though the _Minota’s_ flag and other of her gear had been recovered.
+The drowning of the baby had come about through a misunderstanding.
+Chief Johnny, of Binu, had declined to guide the landing party into the
+bush, nor could any of his men be induced to perform that office.
+Whereupon Captain Lewes, righteously indignant, had told Chief Johnny
+that he deserved to have his village burned. Johnny’s _bêche de mer_
+English did not include the word “deserve.” So his understanding of it
+was that his village was to be burned anyway. The immediate stampede of
+the inhabitants was so hurried that the baby was dropped into the
+water. In the meantime Chief Johnny hastened to Mr. Abbot. Into his
+hand he put fourteen sovereigns and requested him to go on board the
+_Cambrian_ and buy Captain Lewes off. Johnny’s village was not burned.
+Nor did Captain Lewes get the fourteen sovereigns, for I saw them later
+in Johnny’s possession when he boarded the _Minota_. The excuse Johnny
+gave me for not guiding the landing party was a big boil which he
+proudly revealed. His real reason, however, and a perfectly valid one,
+though he did not state it, was fear of revenge on the part of the
+bushmen. Had he, or any of his men, guided the marines, he could have
+looked for bloody reprisals as soon as the _Cambrian_ weighed anchor.
+
+As an illustration of conditions in the Solomons, Johnny’s business on
+board was to turn over, for a tobacco consideration, the sprit,
+mainsail, and jib of a whale-boat. Later in the day, a Chief Billy came
+on board and turned over, for a tobacco consideration, the mast and
+boom. This gear belonged to a whale-boat which Captain Jansen had
+recovered the previous trip of the _Minota_. The whale-boat belonged to
+Meringe Plantation on the island of Ysabel. Eleven contract labourers,
+Malaita men and bushmen at that, had decided to run away. Being
+bushmen, they knew nothing of salt water nor of the way of a boat in
+the sea. So they persuaded two natives of San Cristoval, salt-water
+men, to run away with them. It served the San Cristoval men right. They
+should have known better. When they had safely navigated the stolen
+boat to Malaita, they had their heads hacked off for their pains. It
+was this boat and gear that Captain Jansen had recovered.
+
+Not for nothing have I journeyed all the way to the Solomons. At last I
+have seen Charmian’s proud spirit humbled and her imperious queendom of
+femininity dragged in the dust. It happened at Langa Langa, ashore, on
+the manufactured island which one cannot see for the houses. Here,
+surrounded by hundreds of unblushing naked men, women, and children, we
+wandered about and saw the sights. We had our revolvers strapped on,
+and the boat’s crew, fully armed, lay at the oars, stern in; but the
+lesson of the man-of-war was too recent for us to apprehend trouble. We
+walked about everywhere and saw everything until at last we approached
+a large tree trunk that served as a bridge across a shallow estuary.
+The blacks formed a wall in front of us and refused to let us pass. We
+wanted to know why we were stopped. The blacks said we could go on. We
+misunderstood, and started. Explanations became more definite. Captain
+Jansen and I, being men, could go on. But no Mary was allowed to wade
+around that bridge, much less cross it. “Mary” is bêche de mer for
+woman. Charmian was a Mary. To her the bridge was tambo, which is the
+native for taboo. Ah, how my chest expanded! At last my manhood was
+vindicated. In truth I belonged to the lordly sex. Charmian could
+trapse along at our heels, but we were MEN, and we could go right over
+that bridge while she would have to go around by whale-boat.
+
+Now I should not care to be misunderstood by what follows; but it is a
+matter of common knowledge in the Solomons that attacks of fever are
+often brought on by shock. Inside half an hour after Charmian had been
+refused the right of way, she was being rushed aboard the _Minota_,
+packed in blankets, and dosed with quinine. I don’t know what kind of
+shock had happened to Wada and Nakata, but at any rate they were down
+with fever as well. The Solomons might be healthfuller.
+
+Also, during the attack of fever, Charmian developed a Solomon sore. It
+was the last straw. Every one on the _Snark_ had been afflicted except
+her. I had thought that I was going to lose my foot at the ankle by one
+exceptionally malignant boring ulcer. Henry and Tehei, the Tahitian
+sailors, had had numbers of them. Wada had been able to count his by
+the score. Nakata had had single ones three inches in length. Martin
+had been quite certain that necrosis of his shinbone had set in from
+the roots of the amazing colony he elected to cultivate in that
+locality. But Charmian had escaped. Out of her long immunity had been
+bred contempt for the rest of us. Her ego was flattered to such an
+extent that one day she shyly informed me that it was all a matter of
+pureness of blood. Since all the rest of us cultivated the sores, and
+since she did not—well, anyway, hers was the size of a silver dollar,
+and the pureness of her blood enabled her to cure it after several
+weeks of strenuous nursing. She pins her faith to corrosive sublimate.
+Martin swears by iodoform. Henry uses lime-juice undiluted. And I
+believe that when corrosive sublimate is slow in taking hold, alternate
+dressings of peroxide of hydrogen are just the thing. There are white
+men in the Solomons who stake all upon boracic acid, and others who are
+prejudiced in favour of lysol. I also have the weakness of a panacea.
+It is California. I defy any man to get a Solomon Island sore in
+California.
+
+We ran down the lagoon from Langa Langa, between mangrove swamps,
+through passages scarcely wider than the _Minota_, and past the reef
+villages of Kaloka and Auki. Like the founders of Venice, these
+salt-water men were originally refugees from the mainland. Too weak to
+hold their own in the bush, survivors of village massacres, they fled
+to the sand-banks of the lagoon. These sand-banks they built up into
+islands. They were compelled to seek their provender from the sea, and
+in time they became salt-water men. They learned the ways of the fish
+and the shellfish, and they invented hooks and lines, nets and
+fish-traps. They developed canoe-bodies. Unable to walk about, spending
+all their time in the canoes, they became thick-armed and
+broad-shouldered, with narrow waists and frail spindly legs.
+Controlling the sea-coast, they became wealthy, trade with the interior
+passing largely through their hands. But perpetual enmity exists
+between them and the bushmen. Practically their only truces are on
+market-days, which occur at stated intervals, usually twice a week. The
+bushwomen and the salt-water women do the bartering. Back in the bush,
+a hundred yards away, fully armed, lurk the bushmen, while to seaward,
+in the canoes, are the salt-water men. There are very rare instances of
+the market-day truces being broken. The bushmen like their fish too
+well, while the salt-water men have an organic craving for the
+vegetables they cannot grow on their crowded islets.
+
+Thirty miles from Langa Langa brought us to the passage between
+Bassakanna Island and the mainland. Here, at nightfall, the wind left
+us, and all night, with the whale-boat towing ahead and the crew on
+board sweating at the sweeps, we strove to win through. But the tide
+was against us. At midnight, midway in the passage, we came up with the
+_Eugenie_, a big recruiting schooner, towing with two whale-boats. Her
+skipper, Captain Keller, a sturdy young German of twenty-two, came on
+board for a “gam,” and the latest news of Malaita was swapped back and
+forth. He had been in luck, having gathered in twenty recruits at the
+village of Fiu. While lying there, one of the customary courageous
+killings had taken place. The murdered boy was what is called a
+salt-water bushman—that is, a salt-water man who is half bushman and
+who lives by the sea but does not live on an islet. Three bushmen came
+down to this man where he was working in his garden. They behaved in
+friendly fashion, and after a time suggested _kai-kai_. _Kai-kai_ means
+food. He built a fire and started to boil some taro. While bending over
+the pot, one of the bushmen shot him through the head. He fell into the
+flames, whereupon they thrust a spear through his stomach, turned it
+around, and broke it off.
+
+“My word,” said Captain Keller, “I don’t want ever to be shot with a
+Snider. Spread! You could drive a horse and carriage through that hole
+in his head.”
+
+Another recent courageous killing I heard of on Malaita was that of an
+old man. A bush chief had died a natural death. Now the bushmen don’t
+believe in natural deaths. No one was ever known to die a natural
+death. The only way to die is by bullet, tomahawk, or spear thrust.
+When a man dies in any other way, it is a clear case of having been
+charmed to death. When the bush chief died naturally, his tribe placed
+the guilt on a certain family. Since it did not matter which one of the
+family was killed, they selected this old man who lived by himself.
+This would make it easy. Furthermore, he possessed no Snider. Also, he
+was blind. The old fellow got an inkling of what was coming and laid in
+a large supply of arrows. Three brave warriors, each with a Snider,
+came down upon him in the night time. All night they fought valiantly
+with him. Whenever they moved in the bush and made a noise or a rustle,
+he discharged an arrow in that direction. In the morning, when his last
+arrow was gone, the three heroes crept up to him and blew his brains
+out.
+
+Morning found us still vainly toiling through the passage. At last, in
+despair, we turned tail, ran out to sea, and sailed clear round
+Bassakanna to our objective, Malu. The anchorage at Malu was very good,
+but it lay between the shore and an ugly reef, and while easy to enter,
+it was difficult to leave. The direction of the southeast trade
+necessitated a beat to windward; the point of the reef was widespread
+and shallow; while a current bore down at all times upon the point.
+
+Mr. Caulfeild, the missionary at Malu, arrived in his whale-boat from a
+trip down the coast. A slender, delicate man he was, enthusiastic in
+his work, level-headed and practical, a true twentieth-century soldier
+of the Lord. When he came down to this station on Malaita, as he said,
+he agreed to come for six months. He further agreed that if he were
+alive at the end of that time, he would continue on. Six years had
+passed and he was still continuing on. Nevertheless he was justified in
+his doubt as to living longer than six months. Three missionaries had
+preceded him on Malaita, and in less than that time two had died of
+fever and the third had gone home a wreck.
+
+“What murder are you talking about?” he asked suddenly, in the midst of
+a confused conversation with Captain Jansen.
+
+Captain Jansen explained.
+
+“Oh, that’s not the one I have reference to,” quoth Mr. Caulfeild.
+“That’s old already. It happened two weeks ago.”
+
+It was here at Malu that I atoned for all the exulting and gloating I
+had been guilty of over the Solomon sore Charmian had collected at
+Langa Langa. Mr. Caulfeild was indirectly responsible for my atonement.
+He presented us with a chicken, which I pursued into the bush with a
+rifle. My intention was to clip off its head. I succeeded, but in doing
+so fell over a log and barked my shin. Result: three Solomon sores.
+This made five all together that were adorning my person. Also, Captain
+Jansen and Nakata had caught _gari-gari_. Literally translated,
+_gari-gari_ is scratch-scratch. But translation was not necessary for
+the rest of us. The skipper’s and Nakata’s gymnastics served as a
+translation without words.
+
+(No, the Solomon Islands are not as healthy as they might be. I am
+writing this article on the island of Ysabel, where we have taken the
+_Snark_ to careen and clean her cooper. I got over my last attack of
+fever this morning, and I have had only one free day between attacks.
+Charmian’s are two weeks apart. Wada is a wreck from fever. Last night
+he showed all the symptoms of coming down with pneumonia. Henry, a
+strapping giant of a Tahitian, just up from his last dose of fever, is
+dragging around the deck like a last year’s crab-apple. Both he and
+Tehei have accumulated a praiseworthy display of Solomon sores. Also,
+they have caught a new form of gari-gari, a sort of vegetable poisoning
+like poison oak or poison ivy. But they are not unique in this. A
+number of days ago Charmian, Martin, and I went pigeon-shooting on a
+small island, and we have had a foretaste of eternal torment ever
+since. Also, on that small island, Martin cut the soles of his feet to
+ribbons on the coral whilst chasing a shark—at least, so he says, but
+from the glimpse I caught of him I thought it was the other way about.
+The coral-cuts have all become Solomon sores. Before my last fever I
+knocked the skin off my knuckles while heaving on a line, and I now
+have three fresh sores. And poor Nakata! For three weeks he has been
+unable to sit down. He sat down yesterday for the first time, and
+managed to stay down for fifteen minutes. He says cheerfully that he
+expects to be cured of his gari-gari in another month. Furthermore, his
+gari-gari, from too enthusiastic scratch-scratching, has furnished
+footholds for countless Solomon sores. Still furthermore, he has just
+come down with his seventh attack of fever. If I were king, the worst
+punishment I could inflict on my enemies would be to banish them to the
+Solomons. On second thought, king or no king, I don’t think I’d have
+the heart to do it.)
+
+Recruiting plantation labourers on a small, narrow yacht, built for
+harbour sailing, is not any too nice. The decks swarm with recruits and
+their families. The main cabin is packed with them. At night they sleep
+there. The only entrance to our tiny cabin is through the main cabin,
+and we jam our way through them or walk over them. Nor is this nice.
+One and all, they are afflicted with every form of malignant skin
+disease. Some have ringworm, others have _bukua_. This latter is caused
+by a vegetable parasite that invades the skin and eats it away. The
+itching is intolerable. The afflicted ones scratch until the air is
+filled with fine dry flakes. Then there are yaws and many other skin
+ulcerations. Men come aboard with Solomon sores in their feet so large
+that they can walk only on their toes, or with holes in their legs so
+terrible that a fist could be thrust in to the bone. Blood-poisoning is
+very frequent, and Captain Jansen, with sheath-knife and sail needle,
+operates lavishly on one and all. No matter how desperate the
+situation, after opening and cleansing, he claps on a poultice of
+sea-biscuit soaked in water. Whenever we see a particularly horrible
+case, we retire to a corner and deluge our own sores with corrosive
+sublimate. And so we live and eat and sleep on the _Minota_, taking our
+chance and “pretending it is good.”
+
+At Suava, another artificial island, I had a second crow over Charmian.
+A big fella marster belong Suava (which means the high chief of Suava)
+came on board. But first he sent an emissary to Captain Jansen for a
+fathom of calico with which to cover his royal nakedness. Meanwhile he
+lingered in the canoe alongside. The regal dirt on his chest I swear
+was half an inch thick, while it was a good wager that the underneath
+layers were anywhere from ten to twenty years of age. He sent his
+emissary on board again, who explained that the big fella marster
+belong Suava was condescendingly willing enough to shake hands with
+Captain Jansen and me and cadge a stick or so of trade tobacco, but
+that nevertheless his high-born soul was still at so lofty an altitude
+that it could not sink itself to such a depth of degradation as to
+shake hands with a mere female woman. Poor Charmian! Since her Malaita
+experiences she has become a changed woman. Her meekness and humbleness
+are appallingly becoming, and I should not be surprised, when we return
+to civilization and stroll along a sidewalk, to see her take her
+station, with bowed head, a yard in the rear.
+
+Nothing much happened at Suava. Bichu, the native cook, deserted. The
+_Minota_ dragged anchor. It blew heavy squalls of wind and rain. The
+mate, Mr. Jacobsen, and Wada were prostrated with fever. Our Solomon
+sores increased and multiplied. And the cockroaches on board held a
+combined Fourth of July and Coronation Parade. They selected midnight
+for the time, and our tiny cabin for the place. They were from two to
+three inches long; there were hundreds of them, and they walked all
+over us. When we attempted to pursue them, they left solid footing,
+rose up in the air, and fluttered about like humming-birds. They were
+much larger than ours on the _Snark_. But ours are young yet, and
+haven’t had a chance to grow. Also, the _Snark_ has centipedes, big
+ones, six inches long. We kill them occasionally, usually in Charmian’s
+bunk. I’ve been bitten twice by them, both times foully, while I was
+asleep. But poor Martin had worse luck. After being sick in bed for
+three weeks, the first day he sat up he sat down on one. Sometimes I
+think they are the wisest who never go to Carcassonne.
+
+Later on we returned to Malu, picked up seven recruits, hove up anchor,
+and started to beat out the treacherous entrance. The wind was chopping
+about, the current upon the ugly point of reef setting strong. Just as
+we were on the verge of clearing it and gaining open sea, the wind
+broke off four points. The _Minota_ attempted to go about, but missed
+stays. Two of her anchors had been lost at Tulagi. Her one remaining
+anchor was let go. Chain was let out to give it a hold on the coral.
+Her fin keel struck bottom, and her main topmast lurched and shivered
+as if about to come down upon our heads. She fetched up on the slack of
+the anchors at the moment a big comber smashed her shoreward. The chain
+parted. It was our only anchor. The _Minota_ swung around on her heel
+and drove headlong into the breakers.
+
+Bedlam reigned. All the recruits below, bushmen and afraid of the sea,
+dashed panic-stricken on deck and got in everybody’s way. At the same
+time the boat’s crew made a rush for the rifles. They knew what going
+ashore on Malaita meant—one hand for the ship and the other hand to
+fight off the natives. What they held on with I don’t know, and they
+needed to hold on as the _Minota_ lifted, rolled, and pounded on the
+coral. The bushmen clung in the rigging, too witless to watch out for
+the topmast. The whale-boat was run out with a tow-line endeavouring in
+a puny way to prevent the _Minota_ from being flung farther in toward
+the reef, while Captain Jansen and the mate, the latter pallid and weak
+with fever, were resurrecting a scrap-anchor from out the ballast and
+rigging up a stock for it. Mr. Caulfeild, with his mission boys,
+arrived in his whale-boat to help.
+
+When the _Minota_ first struck, there was not a canoe in sight; but
+like vultures circling down out of the blue, canoes began to arrive
+from every quarter. The boat’s crew, with rifles at the ready, kept
+them lined up a hundred feet away with a promise of death if they
+ventured nearer. And there they clung, a hundred feet away, black and
+ominous, crowded with men, holding their canoes with their paddles on
+the perilous edge of the breaking surf. In the meantime the bushmen
+were flocking down from the hills armed with spears, Sniders, arrows,
+and clubs, until the beach was massed with them. To complicate matters,
+at least ten of our recruits had been enlisted from the very bushmen
+ashore who were waiting hungrily for the loot of the tobacco and trade
+goods and all that we had on board.
+
+The _Minota_ was honestly built, which is the first essential for any
+boat that is pounding on a reef. Some idea of what she endured may be
+gained from the fact that in the first twenty-four hours she parted two
+anchor-chains and eight hawsers. Our boat’s crew was kept busy diving
+for the anchors and bending new lines. There were times when she parted
+the chains reinforced with hawsers. And yet she held together. Tree
+trunks were brought from ashore and worked under her to save her keel
+and bilges, but the trunks were gnawed and splintered and the ropes
+that held them frayed to fragments, and still she pounded and held
+together. But we were luckier than the _Ivanhoe_, a big recruiting
+schooner, which had gone ashore on Malaita several months previously
+and been promptly rushed by the natives. The captain and crew succeeded
+in getting away in the whale-boats, and the bushmen and salt-water men
+looted her clean of everything portable.
+
+Squall after squall, driving wind and blinding rain, smote the
+_Minota_, while a heavier sea was making. The _Eugenie_ lay at anchor
+five miles to windward, but she was behind a point of land and could
+not know of our mishap. At Captain Jansen’s suggestion, I wrote a note
+to Captain Keller, asking him to bring extra anchors and gear to our
+aid. But not a canoe could be persuaded to carry the letter. I offered
+half a case of tobacco, but the blacks grinned and held their canoes
+bow-on to the breaking seas. A half a case of tobacco was worth three
+pounds. In two hours, even against the strong wind and sea, a man could
+have carried the letter and received in payment what he would have
+laboured half a year for on a plantation. I managed to get into a canoe
+and paddle out to where Mr. Caulfeild was running an anchor with his
+whale-boat. My idea was that he would have more influence over the
+natives. He called the canoes up to him, and a score of them clustered
+around and heard the offer of half a case of tobacco. No one spoke.
+
+“I know what you think,” the missionary called out to them. “You think
+plenty tobacco on the schooner and you’re going to get it. I tell you
+plenty rifles on schooner. You no get tobacco, you get bullets.”
+
+At last, one man, alone in a small canoe, took the letter and started.
+Waiting for relief, work went on steadily on the _Minota_. Her
+water-tanks were emptied, and spars, sails, and ballast started
+shoreward. There were lively times on board when the _Minota_ rolled
+one bilge down and then the other, a score of men leaping for life and
+legs as the trade-boxes, booms, and eighty-pound pigs of iron ballast
+rushed across from rail to rail and back again. The poor pretty harbour
+yacht! Her decks and running rigging were a raffle. Down below
+everything was disrupted. The cabin floor had been torn up to get at
+the ballast, and rusty bilge-water swashed and splashed. A bushel of
+limes, in a mess of flour and water, charged about like so many sticky
+dumplings escaped from a half-cooked stew. In the inner cabin, Nakata
+kept guard over our rifles and ammunition.
+
+Three hours from the time our messenger started, a whale-boat, pressing
+along under a huge spread of canvas, broke through the thick of a
+shrieking squall to windward. It was Captain Keller, wet with rain and
+spray, a revolver in belt, his boat’s crew fully armed, anchors and
+hawsers heaped high amidships, coming as fast as wind could drive—the
+white man, the inevitable white man, coming to a white man’s rescue.
+
+The vulture line of canoes that had waited so long broke and
+disappeared as quickly as it had formed. The corpse was not dead after
+all. We now had three whale-boats, two plying steadily between the
+vessel and shore, the other kept busy running out anchors, rebending
+parted hawsers, and recovering the lost anchors. Later in the
+afternoon, after a consultation, in which we took into consideration
+that a number of our boat’s crew, as well as ten of the recruits,
+belonged to this place, we disarmed the boat’s crew. This, incidently,
+gave them both hands free to work for the vessel. The rifles were put
+in the charge of five of Mr. Caulfeild’s mission boys. And down below
+in the wreck of the cabin the missionary and his converts prayed to God
+to save the _Minota_. It was an impressive scene! the unarmed man of
+God praying with cloudless faith, his savage followers leaning on their
+rifles and mumbling amens. The cabin walls reeled about them. The
+vessel lifted and smashed upon the coral with every sea. From on deck
+came the shouts of men heaving and toiling, praying, in another
+fashion, with purposeful will and strength of arm.
+
+That night Mr. Caulfeild brought off a warning. One of our recruits had
+a price on his head of fifty fathoms of shell-money and forty pigs.
+Baffled in their desire to capture the vessel, the bushmen decided to
+get the head of the man. When killing begins, there is no telling where
+it will end, so Captain Jansen armed a whale-boat and rowed in to the
+edge of the beach. Ugi, one of his boat’s crew, stood up and orated for
+him. Ugi was excited. Captain Jansen’s warning that any canoe sighted
+that night would be pumped full of lead, Ugi turned into a bellicose
+declaration of war, which wound up with a peroration somewhat to the
+following effect: “You kill my captain, I drink his blood and die with
+him!”
+
+The bushmen contented themselves with burning an unoccupied mission
+house, and sneaked back to the bush. The next day the _Eugenie_ sailed
+in and dropped anchor. Three days and two nights the _Minota_ pounded
+on the reef; but she held together, and the shell of her was pulled off
+at last and anchored in smooth water. There we said good-bye to her and
+all on board, and sailed away on the _Eugenie_, bound for Florida
+Island. [268]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+BÊCHE DE MER ENGLISH
+
+
+Given a number of white traders, a wide area of land, and scores of
+savage languages and dialects, the result will be that the traders will
+manufacture a totally new, unscientific, but perfectly adequate,
+language. This the traders did when they invented the Chinook lingo for
+use over British Columbia, Alaska, and the Northwest Territory. So with
+the lingo of the Kroo-boys of Africa, the pigeon English of the Far
+East, and the bêche de mer of the westerly portion of the South Seas.
+This latter is often called pigeon English, but pigeon English it
+certainly is not. To show how totally different it is, mention need be
+made only of the fact that the classic piecee of China has no place in
+it.
+
+There was once a sea captain who needed a dusky potentate down in his
+cabin. The potentate was on deck. The captain’s command to the Chinese
+steward was “Hey, boy, you go top-side catchee one piecee king.” Had
+the steward been a New Hebridean or a Solomon islander, the command
+would have been: “Hey, you fella boy, go look ’m eye belong you along
+deck, bring ’m me fella one big fella marster belong black man.”
+
+It was the first white men who ventured through Melanesia after the
+early explorers, who developed bêche de mer English—men such as the
+bêche de mer fishermen, the sandalwood traders, the pearl hunters, and
+the labour recruiters. In the Solomons, for instance, scores of
+languages and dialects are spoken. Unhappy the trader who tried to
+learn them all; for in the next group to which he might wander he would
+find scores of additional tongues. A common language was necessary—a
+language so simple that a child could learn it, with a vocabulary as
+limited as the intelligence of the savages upon whom it was to be used.
+The traders did not reason this out. Bêche de mer English was the
+product of conditions and circumstances. Function precedes organ; and
+the need for a universal Melanesian lingo preceded bêche de mer
+English. Bêche de mer was purely fortuitous, but it was fortuitous in
+the deterministic way. Also, from the fact that out of the need the
+lingo arose, bêche de mer English is a splendid argument for the
+Esperanto enthusiasts.
+
+A limited vocabulary means that each word shall be overworked. Thus,
+_fella_, in bêche de mer, means all that _piecee_ does and quite a bit
+more, and is used continually in every possible connection. Another
+overworked word is _belong_. Nothing stands alone. Everything is
+related. The thing desired is indicated by its relationship with other
+things. A primitive vocabulary means primitive expression, thus, the
+continuance of rain is expressed as _rain he stop_. _Sun he come up_
+cannot possibly be misunderstood, while the phrase-structure itself can
+be used without mental exertion in ten thousand different ways, as, for
+instance, a native who desires to tell you that there are fish in the
+water and who says _fish he stop_. It was while trading on Ysabel
+island that I learned the excellence of this usage. I wanted two or
+three pairs of the large clam-shells (measuring three feet across), but
+I did not want the meat inside. Also, I wanted the meat of some of the
+smaller clams to make a chowder. My instruction to the natives finally
+ripened into the following “You fella bring me fella big fella
+clam—kai-kai he no stop, he walk about. You fella bring me fella small
+fella clam—kai-kai he stop.”
+
+Kai-kai is the Polynesian for food, meat, eating, and to eat: but it
+would be hard to say whether it was introduced into Melanesia by the
+sandalwood traders or by the Polynesian westward drift. Walk about is a
+quaint phrase. Thus, if one orders a Solomon sailor to put a tackle on
+a boom, he will suggest, “That fella boom he walk about too much.” And
+if the said sailor asks for shore liberty, he will state that it is his
+desire to walk about. Or if said sailor be seasick, he will explain his
+condition by stating, “Belly belong me walk about too much.”
+
+Too much, by the way, does not indicate anything excessive. It is
+merely the simple superlative. Thus, if a native is asked the distance
+to a certain village, his answer will be one of these four: “Close-up”;
+“long way little bit”; “long way big bit”; or “long way too much.” Long
+way too much does not mean that one cannot walk to the village; it
+means that he will have to walk farther than if the village were a long
+way big bit.
+
+_Gammon_ is to lie, to exaggerate, to joke. _Mary_ is a woman. Any
+woman is a Mary. All women are Marys. Doubtlessly the first dim white
+adventurer whimsically called a native woman Mary, and of similar birth
+must have been many other words in bêche de mer. The white men were all
+seamen, and so capsize and sing out were introduced into the lingo. One
+would not tell a Melanesian cook to empty the dish-water, but he would
+tell him to capsize it. To sing out is to cry loudly, to call out, or
+merely to speak. Sing-sing is a song. The native Christian does not
+think of God calling for Adam in the Garden of Eden; in the native’s
+mind, God sings out for Adam.
+
+Savvee or catchee are practically the only words which have been
+introduced straight from pigeon English. Of course, pickaninny has
+happened along, but some of its uses are delicious. Having bought a
+fowl from a native in a canoe, the native asked me if I wanted
+“Pickaninny stop along him fella.” It was not until he showed me a
+handful of hen’s eggs that I understood his meaning. My word, as an
+exclamation with a thousand significances, could have arrived from
+nowhere else than Old England. A paddle, a sweep, or an oar, is called
+washee, and washee is also the verb.
+
+Here is a letter, dictated by one Peter, a native trader at Santa Anna,
+and addressed to his employer. Harry, the schooner captain, started to
+write the letter, but was stopped by Peter at the end of the second
+sentence. Thereafter the letter runs in Peter’s own words, for Peter
+was afraid that Harry gammoned too much, and he wanted the straight
+story of his needs to go to headquarters.
+“Santa Anna
+
+“Trader Peter has worked 12 months for your firm and has not received
+any pay yet. He hereby wants £12.” (At this point Peter began
+dictation). “Harry he gammon along him all the time too much. I like
+him 6 tin biscuit, 4 bag rice, 24 tin bullamacow. Me like him 2 rifle,
+me savvee look out along boat, some place me go man he no good, he
+_kai-kai_ along me.
+“Peter.”
+
+_Bullamacow_ means tinned beef. This word was corrupted from the
+English language by the Samoans, and from them learned by the traders,
+who carried it along with them into Melanesia. Captain Cook and the
+other early navigators made a practice of introducing seeds, plants,
+and domestic animals amongst the natives. It was at Samoa that one such
+navigator landed a bull and a cow. “This is a bull and cow,” said he to
+the Samoans. They thought he was giving the name of the breed, and from
+that day to this, beef on the hoof and beef in the tin is called
+_bullamacow_.
+
+A Solomon islander cannot say _fence_, so, in bêche de mer, it becomes
+_fennis_; store is _sittore_, and box is _bokkis_. Just now the fashion
+in chests, which are known as boxes, is to have a bell-arrangement on
+the lock so that the box cannot be opened without sounding an alarm. A
+box so equipped is not spoken of as a mere box, but as the _bokkis
+belong bell_.
+
+_Fright_ is the bêche de mer for fear. If a native appears timid and
+one asks him the cause, he is liable to hear in reply: “Me fright along
+you too much.” Or the native may be _fright_ along storm, or wild bush,
+or haunted places. _Cross_ covers every form of anger. A man may be
+cross at one when he is feeling only petulant; or he may be cross when
+he is seeking to chop off your head and make a stew out of you. A
+recruit, after having toiled three years on a plantation, was returned
+to his own village on Malaita. He was clad in all kinds of gay and
+sportive garments. On his head was a top-hat. He possessed a trade-box
+full of calico, beads, porpoise-teeth, and tobacco. Hardly was the
+anchor down, when the villagers were on board. The recruit looked
+anxiously for his own relatives, but none was to be seen. One of the
+natives took the pipe out of his mouth. Another confiscated the strings
+of beads from around his neck. A third relieved him of his gaudy
+loin-cloth, and a fourth tried on the top-hat and omitted to return it.
+Finally, one of them took his trade-box, which represented three years’
+toil, and dropped it into a canoe alongside. “That fella belong you?”
+the captain asked the recruit, referring to the thief. “No belong me,”
+was the answer. “Then why in Jericho do you let him take the box?” the
+captain demanded indignantly. Quoth the recruit, “Me speak along him,
+say bokkis he stop, that fella he cross along me”—which was the
+recruit’s way of saying that the other man would murder him. God’s
+wrath, when He sent the Flood, was merely a case of being cross along
+mankind.
+
+What name? is the great interrogation of bêche de mer. It all depends
+on how it is uttered. It may mean: What is your business? What do you
+mean by this outrageous conduct? What do you want? What is the thing
+you are after? You had best watch out; I demand an explanation; and a
+few hundred other things. Call a native out of his house in the middle
+of the night, and he is likely to demand, “What name you sing out along
+me?”
+
+Imagine the predicament of the Germans on the plantations of
+Bougainville Island, who are compelled to learn bêche de mer English in
+order to handle the native labourers. It is to them an unscientific
+polyglot, and there are no text-books by which to study it. It is a
+source of unholy delight to the other white planters and traders to
+hear the German wrestling stolidly with the circumlocutions and
+short-cuts of a language that has no grammar and no dictionary.
+
+Some years ago large numbers of Solomon islanders were recruited to
+labour on the sugar plantations of Queensland. A missionary urged one
+of the labourers, who was a convert, to get up and preach a sermon to a
+shipload of Solomon islanders who had just arrived. He chose for his
+subject the Fall of Man, and the address he gave became a classic in
+all Australasia. It proceeded somewhat in the following manner:
+
+“Altogether you boy belong Solomons you no savvee white man. Me fella
+me savvee him. Me fella me savvee talk along white man.
+
+“Before long time altogether no place he stop. God big fella marster
+belong white man, him fella He make ’m altogether. God big fella
+marster belong white man, He make ’m big fella garden. He good fella
+too much. Along garden plenty yam he stop, plenty cocoanut, plenty
+taro, plenty _kumara_ (sweet potatoes), altogether good fella kai-kai
+too much.
+
+“Bimeby God big fella marster belong white man He make ’m one fella man
+and put ’m along garden belong Him. He call ’m this fella man Adam. He
+name belong him. He put him this fella man Adam along garden, and He
+speak, ‘This fella garden he belong you.’ And He look ’m this fella
+Adam he walk about too much. Him fella Adam all the same sick; he no
+savvee kai-kai; he walk about all the time. And God He no savvee. God
+big fella marster belong white man, He scratch ’m head belong Him. God
+say: ‘What name? Me no savvee what name this fella Adam he want.’
+
+“Bimeby God He scratch ’m head belong Him too much, and speak: ‘Me
+fella me savvee, him fella Adam him want ’m Mary.’ So He make Adam he
+go asleep, He take one fella bone belong him, and He make ’m one fella
+Mary along bone. He call him this fella Mary, Eve. He give ’m this
+fella Eve along Adam, and He speak along him fella Adam: ‘Close up
+altogether along this fella garden belong you two fella. One fella tree
+he tambo (taboo) along you altogether. This fella tree belong apple.’
+
+“So Adam Eve two fella stop along garden, and they two fella have ’m
+good time too much. Bimeby, one day, Eve she come along Adam, and she
+speak, ‘More good you me two fella we eat ’m this fella apple.’ Adam he
+speak, ‘No,’ and Eve she speak, ‘What name you no like ’m me?’ And Adam
+he speak, ‘Me like ’m you too much, but me fright along God.’ And Eve
+she speak, ‘Gammon! What name? God He no savvee look along us two fella
+all ’m time. God big fella marster, He gammon along you.’ But Adam he
+speak, ‘No.’ But Eve she talk, talk, talk, allee time—allee same Mary
+she talk along boy along Queensland and make ’m trouble along boy. And
+bimeby Adam he tired too much, and he speak, ‘All right.’ So these two
+fella they go eat ’m. When they finish eat ’m, my word, they fright
+like hell, and they go hide along scrub.
+
+“And God He come walk about along garden, and He sing out, ‘Adam!’ Adam
+he no speak. He too much fright. My word! And God He sing out, ‘Adam!’
+And Adam he speak, ‘You call ’m me?’ God He speak, ‘Me call ’m you too
+much.’ Adam he speak, ‘Me sleep strong fella too much.’ And God He
+speak, ‘You been eat ’m this fella apple.’ Adam he speak, ‘No, me no
+been eat ’m.’ God He speak. ‘What name you gammon along me? You been
+eat ’m.’ And Adam he speak, ‘Yes, me been eat ’m.’
+
+“And God big fella marster He cross along Adam Eve two fella too much,
+and He speak, ‘You two fella finish along me altogether. You go catch
+’m bokkis (box) belong you, and get to hell along scrub.’
+
+“So Adam Eve these two fella go along scrub. And God He make ’m one big
+fennis (fence) all around garden and He put ’m one fella marster belong
+God along fennis. And He give this fella marster belong God one big
+fella musket, and He speak, ‘S’pose you look ’m these two fella Adam
+Eve, you shoot ’m plenty too much.’”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+THE AMATEUR M.D.
+
+
+When we sailed from San Francisco on the _Snark_ I knew as much about
+sickness as the Admiral of the Swiss Navy knows about salt water. And
+here, at the start, let me advise any one who meditates going to
+out-of-the-way tropic places. Go to a first-class druggist—the sort
+that have specialists on their salary list who know everything. Talk
+the matter over with such an one. Note carefully all that he says. Have
+a list made of all that he recommends. Write out a cheque for the total
+cost, and tear it up.
+
+I wish I had done the same. I should have been far wiser, I know now,
+if I had bought one of those ready-made, self-acting, fool-proof
+medicine chests such as are favoured by fourth-rate ship-masters. In
+such a chest each bottle has a number. On the inside of the lid is
+placed a simple table of directions: No. 1, toothache; No. 2, smallpox;
+No. 3, stomachache; No. 4, cholera; No. 5, rheumatism; and so on,
+through the list of human ills. And I might have used it as did a
+certain venerable skipper, who, when No. 3 was empty, mixed a dose from
+No. 1 and No. 2, or, when No. 7 was all gone, dosed his crew with 4 and
+3 till 3 gave out, when he used 5 and 2.
+
+So far, with the exception of corrosive sublimate (which was
+recommended as an antiseptic in surgical operations, and which I have
+not yet used for that purpose), my medicine-chest has been useless. It
+has been worse than useless, for it has occupied much space which I
+could have used to advantage.
+
+With my surgical instruments it is different. While I have not yet had
+serious use for them, I do not regret the space they occupy. The
+thought of them makes me feel good. They are so much life insurance,
+only, fairer than that last grim game, one is not supposed to die in
+order to win. Of course, I don’t know how to use them, and what I don’t
+know about surgery would set up a dozen quacks in prosperous practice.
+But needs must when the devil drives, and we of the _Snark_ have no
+warning when the devil may take it into his head to drive, ay, even a
+thousand miles from land and twenty days from the nearest port.
+
+I did not know anything about dentistry, but a friend fitted me out
+with forceps and similar weapons, and in Honolulu I picked up a book
+upon teeth. Also, in that sub-tropical city I managed to get hold of a
+skull, from which I extracted the teeth swiftly and painlessly. Thus
+equipped, I was ready, though not exactly eager, to tackle any tooth
+that get in my way. It was in Nuku-hiva, in the Marquesas, that my
+first case presented itself in the shape of a little, old Chinese. The
+first thing I did was to got the buck fever, and I leave it to any
+fair-minded person if buck fever, with its attendant heart-palpitations
+and arm-tremblings, is the right condition for a man to be in who is
+endeavouring to pose as an old hand at the business. I did not fool the
+aged Chinaman. He was as frightened as I and a bit more shaky. I almost
+forgot to be frightened in the fear that he would bolt. I swear, if he
+had tried to, that I would have tripped him up and sat on him until
+calmness and reason returned.
+
+I wanted that tooth. Also, Martin wanted a snap-shot of me getting it.
+Likewise Charmian got her camera. Then the procession started. We were
+stopping at what had been the club-house when Stevenson was in the
+Marquesas on the Casco. On the veranda, where he had passed so many
+pleasant hours, the light was not good—for snapshots, I mean. I led on
+into the garden, a chair in one hand, the other hand filled with
+forceps of various sorts, my knees knocking together disgracefully. The
+poor old Chinaman came second, and he was shaking, too. Charmian and
+Martin brought up the rear, armed with kodaks. We dived under the
+avocado trees, threaded our way through the cocoanut palms, and came on
+a spot that satisfied Martin’s photographic eye.
+
+I looked at the tooth, and then discovered that I could not remember
+anything about the teeth I had pulled from the skull five months
+previously. Did it have one prong? two prongs? or three prongs? What
+was left of the part that showed appeared very crumbly, and I knew that
+I should have taken hold of the tooth deep down in the gum. It was very
+necessary that I should know how many prongs that tooth had. Back to
+the house I went for the book on teeth. The poor old victim looked like
+photographs I had seen of fellow-countrymen of his, criminals, on their
+knees, waiting the stroke of the beheading sword.
+
+“Don’t let him get away,” I cautioned to Martin. “I want that tooth.”
+
+“I sure won’t,” he replied with enthusiasm, from behind his camera. “I
+want that photograph.”
+
+For the first time I felt sorry for the Chinaman. Though the book did
+not tell me anything about pulling teeth, it was all right, for on one
+page I found drawings of all the teeth, including their prongs and how
+they were set in the jaw. Then came the pursuit of the forceps. I had
+seven pairs, but was in doubt as to which pair I should use. I did not
+want any mistake. As I turned the hardware over with rattle and clang,
+the poor victim began to lose his grip and to turn a greenish yellow
+around the gills. He complained about the sun, but that was necessary
+for the photograph, and he had to stand it. I fitted the forceps around
+the tooth, and the patient shivered and began to wilt.
+
+“Ready?” I called to Martin.
+
+“All ready,” he answered.
+
+I gave a pull. Ye gods! The tooth was loose! Out it came on the
+instant. I was jubilant as I held it aloft in the forceps.
+
+“Put it back, please, oh, put it back,” Martin pleaded. “You were too
+quick for me.”
+
+And the poor old Chinaman sat there while I put the tooth back and
+pulled over. Martin snapped the camera. The deed was done. Elation?
+Pride? No hunter was ever prouder of his first pronged buck than I was
+of that three-pronged tooth. I did it! I did it! With my own hands and
+a pair of forceps I did it, to say nothing of the forgotten memories of
+the dead man’s skull.
+
+My next case was a Tahitian sailor. He was a small man, in a state of
+collapse from long days and nights of jumping toothache. I lanced the
+gums first. I didn’t know how to lance them, but I lanced them just the
+same. It was a long pull and a strong pull. The man was a hero. He
+groaned and moaned, and I thought he was going to faint. But he kept
+his mouth open and let me pull. And then it came.
+
+After that I was ready to meet all comers—just the proper state of mind
+for a Waterloo. And it came. Its name was Tomi. He was a strapping
+giant of a heathen with a bad reputation. He was addicted to deeds of
+violence. Among other things he had beaten two of his wives to death
+with his fists. His father and mother had been naked cannibals. When he
+sat down and I put the forceps into his mouth, he was nearly as tall as
+I was standing up. Big men, prone to violence, very often have a streak
+of fat in their make-up, so I was doubtful of him. Charmian grabbed one
+arm and Warren grabbed the other. Then the tug of war began. The
+instant the forceps closed down on the tooth, his jaws closed down on
+the forceps. Also, both his hands flew up and gripped my pulling hand.
+I held on, and he held on. Charmian and Warren held on. We wrestled all
+about the shop.
+
+It was three against one, and my hold on an aching tooth was certainly
+a foul one; but in spite of the handicap he got away with us. The
+forceps slipped off, banging and grinding along against his upper teeth
+with a nerve-scraping sound. Out of his month flew the forceps, and he
+rose up in the air with a blood-curdling yell. The three of us fell
+back. We expected to be massacred. But that howling savage of
+sanguinary reputation sank back in the chair. He held his head in both
+his hands, and groaned and groaned and groaned. Nor would he listen to
+reason. I was a quack. My painless tooth-extraction was a delusion and
+a snare and a low advertising dodge. I was so anxious to get that tooth
+that I was almost ready to bribe him. But that went against my
+professional pride and I let him depart with the tooth still intact,
+the only case on record up to date of failure on my part when once I
+had got a grip. Since then I have never let a tooth go by me. Only the
+other day I volunteered to beat up three days to windward to pull a
+woman missionary’s tooth. I expect, before the voyage of the _Snark_ is
+finished, to be doing bridge work and putting on gold crowns.
+
+I don’t know whether they are yaws or not—a physician in Fiji told me
+they were, and a missionary in the Solomons told me they were not; but
+at any rate I can vouch for the fact that they are most uncomfortable.
+It was my luck to ship in Tahiti a French-sailor, who, when we got to
+sea, proved to be afflicted with a vile skin disease. The _Snark_ was
+too small and too much of a family party to permit retaining him on
+board; but perforce, until we could reach land and discharge him, it
+was up to me to doctor him. I read up the books and proceeded to treat
+him, taking care afterwards always to use a thorough antiseptic wash.
+When we reached Tutuila, far from getting rid of him, the port doctor
+declared a quarantine against him and refused to allow him ashore. But
+at Apia, Samoa, I managed to ship him off on a steamer to New Zealand.
+Here at Apia my ankles were badly bitten by mosquitoes, and I confess
+to having scratched the bites—as I had a thousand times before. By the
+time I reached the island of Savaii, a small sore had developed on the
+hollow of my instep. I thought it was due to chafe and to acid fumes
+from the hot lava over which I tramped. An application of salve would
+cure it—so I thought. The salve did heal it over, whereupon an
+astonishing inflammation set in, the new skin came off, and a larger
+sore was exposed. This was repeated many times. Each time new skin
+formed, an inflammation followed, and the circumference of the sore
+increased. I was puzzled and frightened. All my life my skin had been
+famous for its healing powers, yet here was something that would not
+heal. Instead, it was daily eating up more skin, while it had eaten
+down clear through the skin and was eating up the muscle itself.
+
+By this time the _Snark_ was at sea on her way to Fiji. I remembered
+the French sailor, and for the first time became seriously alarmed.
+Four other similar sores had appeared—or ulcers, rather, and the pain
+of them kept me awake at night. All my plans were made to lay up the
+_Snark_ in Fiji and get away on the first steamer to Australia and
+professional M.D.’s. In the meantime, in my amateur M.D. way, I did my
+best. I read through all the medical works on board. Not a line nor a
+word could I find descriptive of my affliction. I brought common
+horse-sense to bear on the problem. Here were malignant and excessively
+active ulcers that were eating me up. There was an organic and
+corroding poison at work. Two things I concluded must be done. First,
+some agent must be found to destroy the poison. Secondly, the ulcers
+could not possibly heal from the outside in; they must heal from the
+inside out. I decided to fight the poison with corrosive sublimate. The
+very name of it struck me as vicious. Talk of fighting fire with fire!
+I was being consumed by a corrosive poison, and it appealed to my fancy
+to fight it with another corrosive poison. After several days I
+alternated dressings of corrosive sublimate with dressings of peroxide
+of hydrogen. And behold, by the time we reached Fiji four of the five
+ulcers were healed, while the remaining one was no bigger than a pea.
+
+I now felt fully qualified to treat yaws. Likewise I had a wholesome
+respect for them. Not so the rest of the crew of the _Snark_. In their
+case, seeing was not believing. One and all, they had seen my dreadful
+predicament; and all of them, I am convinced, had a subconscious
+certitude that their own superb constitutions and glorious
+personalities would never allow lodgment of so vile a poison in their
+carcasses as my anæmic constitution and mediocre personality had
+allowed to lodge in mine. At Port Resolution, in the New Hebrides,
+Martin elected to walk barefooted in the bush and returned on board
+with many cuts and abrasions, especially on his shins.
+
+“You’d better be careful,” I warned him. “I’ll mix up some corrosive
+sublimate for you to wash those cuts with. An ounce of prevention, you
+know.”
+
+But Martin smiled a superior smile. Though he did not say so, I
+nevertheless was given to understand that he was not as other men (I
+was the only man he could possibly have had reference to), and that in
+a couple of days his cuts would be healed. He also read me a
+dissertation upon the peculiar purity of his blood and his remarkable
+healing powers. I felt quite humble when he was done with me. Evidently
+I was different from other men in so far as purity of blood was
+concerned.
+
+Nakata, the cabin-boy, while ironing one day, mistook the calf of his
+leg for the ironing-block and accumulated a burn three inches in length
+and half an inch wide. He, too, smiled the superior smile when I
+offered him corrosive sublimate and reminded him of my own cruel
+experience. I was given to understand, with all due suavity and
+courtesy, that no matter what was the matter with my blood, his
+number-one, Japanese, Port-Arthur blood was all right and scornful of
+the festive microbe.
+
+Wada, the cook, took part in a disastrous landing of the launch, when
+he had to leap overboard and fend the launch off the beach in a
+smashing surf. By means of shells and coral he cut his legs and feet up
+beautifully. I offered him the corrosive sublimate bottle. Once again I
+suffered the superior smile and was given to understand that his blood
+was the same blood that had licked Russia and was going to lick the
+United States some day, and that if his blood wasn’t able to cure a few
+trifling cuts, he’d commit hari-kari in sheer disgrace.
+
+From all of which I concluded that an amateur M.D. is without honour on
+his own vessel, even if he has cured himself. The rest of the crew had
+begun to look upon me as a sort of mild mono-maniac on the question of
+sores and sublimate. Just because my blood was impure was no reason
+that I should think everybody else’s was. I made no more overtures.
+Time and microbes were with me, and all I had to do was wait.
+
+“I think there’s some dirt in these cuts,” Martin said tentatively,
+after several days. “I’ll wash them out and then they’ll be all right,”
+he added, after I had refused to rise to the bait.
+
+Two more days passed, but the cuts did not pass, and I caught Martin
+soaking his feet and legs in a pail of hot water.
+
+“Nothing like hot water,” he proclaimed enthusiastically. “It beats all
+the dope the doctors ever put up. These sores will be all right in the
+morning.”
+
+But in the morning he wore a troubled look, and I knew that the hour of
+my triumph approached.
+
+“I think I _will_ try some of that medicine,” he announced later on in
+the day. “Not that I think it’ll do much good,” he qualified, “but I’ll
+just give it a try anyway.”
+
+Next came the proud blood of Japan to beg medicine for its illustrious
+sores, while I heaped coals of fire on all their houses by explaining
+in minute and sympathetic detail the treatment that should be given.
+Nakata followed instructions implicitly, and day by day his sores grew
+smaller. Wada was apathetic, and cured less readily. But Martin still
+doubted, and because he did not cure immediately, he developed the
+theory that while doctor’s dope was all right, it did not follow that
+the same kind of dope was efficacious with everybody. As for himself,
+corrosive sublimate had no effect. Besides, how did I know that it was
+the right stuff? I had had no experience. Just because I happened to
+get well while using it was not proof that it had played any part in
+the cure. There were such things as coincidences. Without doubt there
+was a dope that would cure the sores, and when he ran across a real
+doctor he would find what that dope was and get some of it.
+
+About this time we arrived in the Solomon Islands. No physician would
+ever recommend the group for invalids or sanitoriums. I spent but
+little time there ere I really and for the first time in my life
+comprehended how frail and unstable is human tissue. Our first
+anchorage was Port Mary, on the island of Santa Anna. The one lone
+white man, a trader, came alongside. Tom Butler was his name, and he
+was a beautiful example of what the Solomons can do to a strong man. He
+lay in his whale-boat with the helplessness of a dying man. No smile
+and little intelligence illumined his face. He was a sombre
+death’s-head, too far gone to grin. He, too, had yaws, big ones. We
+were compelled to drag him over the rail of the _Snark_. He said that
+his health was good, that he had not had the fever for some time, and
+that with the exception of his arm he was all right and trim. His arm
+appeared to be paralysed. Paralysis he rejected with scorn. He had had
+it before, and recovered. It was a common native disease on Santa Anna,
+he said, as he was helped down the companion ladder, his dead arm
+dropping, bump-bump, from step to step. He was certainly the ghastliest
+guest we ever entertained, and we’ve had not a few lepers and
+elephantiasis victims on board.
+
+Martin inquired about yaws, for here was a man who ought to know. He
+certainly did know, if we could judge by his scarred arms and legs and
+by the live ulcers that corroded in the midst of the scars. Oh, one got
+used to yaws, quoth Tom Butler. They were never really serious until
+they had eaten deep into the flesh. Then they attacked the walls of the
+arteries, the arteries burst, and there was a funeral. Several of the
+natives had recently died that way ashore. But what did it matter? If
+it wasn’t yaws, it was something else in the Solomons.
+
+I noticed that from this moment Martin displayed a swiftly increasing
+interest in his own yaws. Dosings with corrosive sublimate were more
+frequent, while, in conversation, he began to revert with growing
+enthusiasm to the clean climate of Kansas and all other things Kansan.
+Charmian and I thought that California was a little bit of all right.
+Henry swore by Rapa, and Tehei staked all on Bora Bora for his own
+blood’s sake; while Wada and Nakata sang the sanitary pæan of Japan.
+
+One evening, as the _Snark_ worked around the southern end of the
+island of Ugi, looking for a reputed anchorage, a Church of England
+missionary, a Mr. Drew, bound in his whaleboat for the coast of San
+Cristoval, came alongside and stopped for dinner. Martin, his legs
+swathed in Red Cross bandages till they looked like a mummy’s, turned
+the conversation upon yaws. Yes, said Mr. Drew, they were quite common
+in the Solomons. All white men caught them.
+
+“And have you had them?” Martin demanded, in the soul of him quite
+shocked that a Church of England missionary could possess so vulgar an
+affliction.
+
+Mr. Drew nodded his head and added that not only had he had them, but
+at that moment he was doctoring several.
+
+“What do you use on them?” Martin asked like a flash.
+
+My heart almost stood still waiting the answer. By that answer my
+professional medical prestige stood or fell. Martin, I could see, was
+quite sure it was going to fall. And then the answer—O blessed answer!
+
+“Corrosive sublimate,” said Mr. Drew.
+
+Martin gave in handsomely, I’ll admit, and I am confident that at that
+moment, if I had asked permission to pull one of his teeth, he would
+not have denied me.
+
+All white men in the Solomons catch yaws, and every cut or abrasion
+practically means another yaw. Every man I met had had them, and nine
+out of ten had active ones. There was but one exception, a young fellow
+who had been in the islands five months, who had come down with fever
+ten days after he arrived, and who had since then been down so often
+with fever that he had had neither time nor opportunity for yaws.
+
+Every one on the _Snark_ except Charmian came down with yaws. Hers was
+the same egotism that Japan and Kansas had displayed. She ascribed her
+immunity to the pureness of her blood, and as the days went by she
+ascribed it more often and more loudly to the pureness of her blood.
+Privately I ascribed her immunity to the fact that, being a woman, she
+escaped most of the cuts and abrasions to which we hard-working men
+were subject in the course of working the _Snark_ around the world. I
+did not tell her so. You see, I did not wish to bruise her ego with
+brutal facts. Being an M.D., if only an amateur one, I knew more about
+the disease than she, and I knew that time was my ally. But alas, I
+abused my ally when it dealt a charming little yaw on the shin. So
+quickly did I apply antiseptic treatment, that the yaw was cured before
+she was convinced that she had one. Again, as an M.D., I was without
+honour on my own vessel; and, worse than that, I was charged with
+having tried to mislead her into the belief that she had had a yaw. The
+pureness of her blood was more rampant than ever, and I poked my nose
+into my navigation books and kept quiet. And then came the day. We were
+cruising along the coast of Malaita at the time.
+
+“What’s that abaft your ankle-bone?” said I.
+
+“Nothing,” said she.
+
+“All right,” said I; “but put some corrosive sublimate on it just the
+same. And some two or three weeks from now, when it is well and you
+have a scar that you will carry to your grave, just forget about the
+purity of your blood and your ancestral history and tell me what you
+think about yaws anyway.”
+
+It was as large as a silver dollar, that yaw, and it took all of three
+weeks to heal. There were times when Charmian could not walk because of
+the hurt of it; and there were times upon times when she explained that
+abaft the ankle-bone was the most painful place to have a yaw. I
+explained, in turn, that, never having experienced a yaw in that
+locality, I was driven to conclude the hollow of the instep was the
+most painful place for yaw-culture. We left it to Martin, who disagreed
+with both of us and proclaimed passionately that the only truly painful
+place was the shin. No wonder horse-racing is so popular.
+
+But yaws lose their novelty after a time. At the present moment of
+writing I have five yaws on my hands and three more on my shin.
+Charmian has one on each side of her right instep. Tehei is frantic
+with his. Martin’s latest shin-cultures have eclipsed his earlier ones.
+And Nakata has several score casually eating away at his tissue. But
+the history of the _Snark_ in the Solomons has been the history of
+every ship since the early discoverers. From the “Sailing Directions” I
+quote the following:
+
+“The crews of vessels remaining any considerable time in the Solomons
+find wounds and sores liable to change into malignant ulcers.”
+
+Nor on the question of fever were the “Sailing Directions” any more
+encouraging, for in them I read:
+
+“New arrivals are almost certain sooner or later to suffer from fever.
+The natives are also subject to it. The number of deaths among the
+whites in the year 1897 amounted to 9 among a population of 50.”
+
+Some of these deaths, however, were accidental.
+
+Nakata was the first to come down with fever. This occurred at
+Penduffryn. Wada and Henry followed him. Charmian surrendered next. I
+managed to escape for a couple of months; but when I was bowled over,
+Martin sympathetically joined me several days later. Out of the seven
+of us all told Tehei is the only one who has escaped; but his
+sufferings from nostalgia are worse than fever. Nakata, as usual,
+followed instructions faithfully, so that by the end of his third
+attack he could take a two hours’ sweat, consume thirty or forty grains
+of quinine, and be weak but all right at the end of twenty-four hours.
+
+Wada and Henry, however, were tougher patients with which to deal. In
+the first place, Wada got in a bad funk. He was of the firm conviction
+that his star had set and that the Solomons would receive his bones. He
+saw that life about him was cheap. At Penduffryn he saw the ravages of
+dysentery, and, unfortunately for him, he saw one victim carried out on
+a strip of galvanized sheet-iron and dumped without coffin or funeral
+into a hole in the ground. Everybody had fever, everybody had
+dysentery, everybody had everything. Death was common. Here to-day and
+gone to-morrow—and Wada forgot all about to-day and made up his mind
+that to-morrow had come.
+
+He was careless of his ulcers, neglected to sublimate them, and by
+uncontrolled scratching spread them all over his body. Nor would he
+follow instructions with fever, and, as a result, would be down five
+days at a time, when a day would have been sufficient. Henry, who is a
+strapping giant of a man, was just as bad. He refused point blank to
+take quinine, on the ground that years before he had had fever and that
+the pills the doctor gave him were of different size and colour from
+the quinine tablets I offered him. So Henry joined Wada.
+
+But I fooled the pair of them, and dosed them with their own medicine,
+which was faith-cure. They had faith in their funk that they were going
+to die. I slammed a lot of quinine down their throats and took their
+temperature. It was the first time I had used my medicine-chest
+thermometer, and I quickly discovered that it was worthless, that it
+had been produced for profit and not for service. If I had let on to my
+two patients that the thermometer did not work, there would have been
+two funerals in short order. Their temperature I swear was 105°. I
+solemnly made one and then the other smoke the thermometer, allowed an
+expression of satisfaction to irradiate my countenance, and joyfully
+told them that their temperature was 94°. Then I slammed more quinine
+down their throats, told them that any sickness or weakness they might
+experience would be due to the quinine, and left them to get well. And
+they did get well, Wada in spite of himself. If a man can die through a
+misapprehension, is there any immorality in making him live through a
+misapprehension?
+
+Commend me the white race when it comes to grit and surviving. One of
+our two Japanese and both our Tahitians funked and had to be slapped on
+the back and cheered up and dragged along by main strength toward life.
+Charmian and Martin took their afflictions cheerfully, made the least
+of them, and moved with calm certitude along the way of life. When Wada
+and Henry were convinced that they were going to die, the funeral
+atmosphere was too much for Tehei, who prayed dolorously and cried for
+hours at a time. Martin, on the other hand, cursed and got well, and
+Charmian groaned and made plans for what she was going to do when she
+got well again.
+
+Charmian had been raised a vegetarian and a sanitarian. Her Aunt Netta,
+who brought her up and who lived in a healthful climate, did not
+believe in drugs. Neither did Charmian. Besides, drugs disagreed with
+her. Their effects were worse than the ills they were supposed to
+alleviate. But she listened to the argument in favour of quinine,
+accepted it as the lesser evil, and in consequence had shorter, less
+painful, and less frequent attacks of fever. We encountered a Mr.
+Caulfeild, a missionary, whose two predecessors had died after less
+than six months’ residence in the Solomons. Like them he had been a
+firm believer in homeopathy, until after his first fever, whereupon,
+unlike them, he made a grand slide back to allopathy and quinine,
+catching fever and carrying on his Gospel work.
+
+But poor Wada! The straw that broke the cook’s back was when Charmian
+and I took him along on a cruise to the cannibal island of Malaita, in
+a small yacht, on the deck of which the captain had been murdered half
+a year before. _Kai-kai_ means to eat, and Wada was sure he was going
+to be _kai-kai’d_. We went about heavily armed, our vigilance was
+unremitting, and when we went for a bath in the mouth of a fresh-water
+stream, black boys, armed with rifles, did sentry duty about us. We
+encountered English war vessels burning and shelling villages in
+punishment for murders. Natives with prices on their heads sought
+shelter on board of us. Murder stalked abroad in the land. In
+out-of-the-way places we received warnings from friendly savages of
+impending attacks. Our vessel owed two heads to Malaita, which were
+liable to be collected any time. Then to cap it all, we were wrecked on
+a reef, and with rifles in one hand warned the canoes of wreckers off
+while with the other hand we toiled to save the ship. All of which was
+too much for Wada, who went daffy, and who finally quitted the _Snark_
+on the island of Ysabel, going ashore for good in a driving rain-storm,
+between two attacks of fever, while threatened with pneumonia. If he
+escapes being _kai-kai’d_, and if he can survive sores and fever which
+are riotous ashore, he can expect, if he is reasonably lucky, to get
+away from that place to the adjacent island in anywhere from six to
+eight weeks. He never did think much of my medicine, despite the fact
+that I successfully and at the first trial pulled two aching teeth for
+him.
+
+The _Snark_ has been a hospital for months, and I confess that we are
+getting used to it. At Meringe Lagoon, where we careened and cleaned
+the _Snark’s_ copper, there were times when only one man of us was able
+to go into the water, while the three white men on the plantation
+ashore were all down with fever. At the moment of writing this we are
+lost at sea somewhere northeast of Ysabel and trying vainly to find
+Lord Howe Island, which is an atoll that cannot be sighted unless one
+is on top of it. The chronometer has gone wrong. The sun does not shine
+anyway, nor can I get a star observation at night, and we have had
+nothing but squalls and rain for days and days. The cook is gone.
+Nakata, who has been trying to be both cook and cabin boy, is down on
+his back with fever. Martin is just up from fever, and going down
+again. Charmian, whose fever has become periodical, is looking up in
+her date book to find when the next attack will be. Henry has begun to
+eat quinine in an expectant mood. And, since my attacks hit me with the
+suddenness of bludgeon-blows I do not know from moment to moment when I
+shall be brought down. By a mistake we gave our last flour away to some
+white men who did not have any flour. We don’t know when we’ll make
+land. Our Solomon sores are worse than ever, and more numerous. The
+corrosive sublimate was accidentally left ashore at Penduffryn; the
+peroxide of hydrogen is exhausted; and I am experimenting with boracic
+acid, lysol, and antiphlogystine. At any rate, if I fail in becoming a
+reputable M.D., it won’t be from lack of practice.
+
+P.S. It is now two weeks since the foregoing was written, and Tehei,
+the only immune on board has been down ten days with far severer fever
+than any of us and is still down. His temperature has been repeatedly
+as high as 104, and his pulse 115.
+
+P.S. At sea, between Tasman atoll and Manning Straits. Tehei’s attack
+developed into black water fever—the severest form of malarial fever,
+which, the doctor-book assures me, is due to some outside infection as
+well. Having pulled him through his fever, I am now at my wit’s end,
+for he has lost his wits altogether. I am rather recent in practice to
+take up the cure of insanity. This makes the second lunacy case on this
+short voyage.
+
+P.S. Some day I shall write a book (for the profession), and entitle
+it, “Around the World on the Hospital Ship _Snark_.” Even our pets have
+not escaped. We sailed from Meringe Lagoon with two, an Irish terrier
+and a white cockatoo. The terrier fell down the cabin companionway and
+lamed its nigh hind leg, then repeated the manœuvre and lamed its off
+fore leg. At the present moment it has but two legs to walk on.
+Fortunately, they are on opposite sides and ends, so that she can still
+dot and carry two. The cockatoo was crushed under the cabin skylight
+and had to be killed. This was our first funeral—though for that
+matter, the several chickens we had, and which would have made welcome
+broth for the convalescents, flew overboard and were drowned. Only the
+cockroaches flourish. Neither illness nor accident ever befalls them,
+and they grow larger and more carnivorous day by day, gnawing our
+finger-nails and toe-nails while we sleep.
+
+P.S. Charmian is having another bout with fever. Martin, in despair,
+has taken to horse-doctoring his yaws with bluestone and to blessing
+the Solomons. As for me, in addition to navigating, doctoring, and
+writing short stories, I am far from well. With the exception of the
+insanity cases, I’m the worst off on board. I shall catch the next
+steamer to Australia and go on the operating table. Among my minor
+afflictions, I may mention a new and mysterious one. For the past week
+my hands have been swelling as with dropsy. It is only by a painful
+effort that I can close them. A pull on a rope is excruciating. The
+sensations are like those that accompany severe chilblains. Also, the
+skin is peeling off both hands at an alarming rate, besides which the
+new skin underneath is growing hard and thick. The doctor-book fails to
+mention this disease. Nobody knows what it is.
+
+P.S. Well, anyway, I’ve cured the chronometer. After knocking about the
+sea for eight squally, rainy days, most of the time hove to, I
+succeeded in catching a partial observation of the sun at midday. From
+this I worked up my latitude, then headed by log to the latitude of
+Lord Howe, and ran both that latitude and the island down together.
+Here I tested the chronometer by longitude sights and found it
+something like three minutes out. Since each minute is equivalent to
+fifteen miles, the total error can be appreciated. By repeated
+observations at Lord Howe I rated the chronometer, finding it to have a
+daily losing error of seven-tenths of a second. Now it happens that a
+year ago, when we sailed from Hawaii, that selfsame chronometer had
+that selfsame losing error of seven-tenths of a second. Since that
+error was faithfully added every day, and since that error, as proved
+by my observations at Lord Howe, has not changed, then what under the
+sun made that chronometer all of a sudden accelerate and catch up with
+itself three minutes? Can such things be? Expert watchmakers say no;
+but I say that they have never done any expert watch-making and
+watch-rating in the Solomons. That it is the climate is my only
+diagnosis. At any rate, I have successfully doctored the chronometer,
+even if I have failed with the lunacy cases and with Martin’s yaws.
+
+P.S. Martin has just tried burnt alum, and is blessing the Solomons
+more fervently than ever.
+
+P.S. Between Manning Straits and Pavuvu Islands.
+
+Henry has developed rheumatism in his back, ten skins have peeled off
+my hands and the eleventh is now peeling, while Tehei is more lunatic
+than ever and day and night prays God not to kill him. Also, Nakata and
+I are slashing away at fever again. And finally up to date, Nakata last
+evening had an attack of ptomaine poisoning, and we spent half the
+night pulling him through.
+
+
+
+
+BACKWORD
+
+
+The _Snark_ was forty-three feet on the water-line and fifty-five over
+all, with fifteen feet beam (tumble-home sides) and seven feet eight
+inches draught. She was ketch-rigged, carrying flying-jib, jib,
+fore-staysail, main-sail, mizzen, and spinnaker. There were six feet of
+head-room below, and she was crown-decked and flush-decked. There were
+four alleged _water-tight_ compartments. A seventy-horse power
+auxiliary gas-engine sporadically furnished locomotion at an
+approximate cost of twenty dollars per mile. A five-horse power engine
+ran the pumps when it was in order, and on two occasions proved capable
+of furnishing juice for the search-light. The storage batteries worked
+four or five times in the course of two years. The fourteen-foot launch
+was rumoured to work at times, but it invariably broke down whenever I
+stepped on board.
+
+But the _Snark_ sailed. It was the only way she could get anywhere. She
+sailed for two years, and never touched rock, reef, nor shoal. She had
+no inside ballast, her iron keel weighed five tons, but her deep
+draught and high freeboard made her very stiff. Caught under full sail
+in tropic squalls, she buried her rail and deck many times, but
+stubbornly refused to turn turtle. She steered easily, and she could
+run day and night, without steering, close-by, full-and-by, and with
+the wind abeam. With the wind on her quarter and the sails properly
+trimmed, she steered herself within two points, and with the wind
+almost astern she required scarcely three points for self-steering.
+
+The _Snark_ was partly built in San Francisco. The morning her iron
+keel was to be cast was the morning of the great earthquake. Then came
+anarchy. Six months overdue in the building, I sailed the shell of her
+to Hawaii to be finished, the engine lashed to the bottom, building
+materials lashed on deck. Had I remained in San Francisco for
+completion, I’d still be there. As it was, partly built, she cost four
+times what she ought to have cost.
+
+The _Snark_ was born unfortunately. She was libelled in San Francisco,
+had her cheques protested as fraudulent in Hawaii, and was fined for
+breach of quarantine in the Solomons. To save themselves, the
+newspapers could not tell the truth about her. When I discharged an
+incompetent captain, they said I had beaten him to a pulp. When one
+young man returned home to continue at college, it was reported that I
+was a regular Wolf Larsen, and that my whole crew had deserted because
+I had beaten it to a pulp. In fact the only blow struck on the _Snark_
+was when the cook was manhandled by a captain who had shipped with me
+under false pretences, and whom I discharged in Fiji. Also, Charmian
+and I boxed for exercise; but neither of us was seriously maimed.
+
+The voyage was our idea of a good time. I built the _Snark_ and paid
+for it, and for all expenses. I contracted to write thirty-five
+thousand words descriptive of the trip for a magazine which was to pay
+me the same rate I received for stories written at home. Promptly the
+magazine advertised that it was sending me especially around the world
+for itself. It was a wealthy magazine. And every man who had business
+dealings with the _Snark_ charged three prices because forsooth the
+magazine could afford it. Down in the uttermost South Sea isle this
+myth obtained, and I paid accordingly. To this day everybody believes
+that the magazine paid for everything and that I made a fortune out of
+the voyage. It is hard, after such advertising, to hammer it into the
+human understanding that the whole voyage was done for the fun of it.
+
+I went to Australia to go into hospital, where I spent five weeks. I
+spent five months miserably sick in hotels. The mysterious malady that
+afflicted my hands was too much for the Australian specialists. It was
+unknown in the literature of medicine. No case like it had ever been
+reported. It extended from my hands to my feet so that at times I was
+as helpless as a child. On occasion my hands were twice their natural
+size, with seven dead and dying skins peeling off at the same time.
+There were times when my toe-nails, in twenty-four hours, grew as thick
+as they were long. After filing them off, inside another twenty-four
+hours they were as thick as before.
+
+The Australian specialists agreed that the malady was non-parasitic,
+and that, therefore, it must be nervous. It did not mend, and it was
+impossible for me to continue the voyage. The only way I could have
+continued it would have been by being lashed in my bunk, for in my
+helpless condition, unable to clutch with my hands, I could not have
+moved about on a small rolling boat. Also, I said to myself that while
+there were many boats and many voyages, I had but one pair of hands and
+one set of toe-nails. Still further, I reasoned that in my own climate
+of California I had always maintained a stable nervous equilibrium. So
+back I came.
+
+Since my return I have completely recovered. And I have found out what
+was the matter with me. I encountered a book by Lieutenant-Colonel
+Charles E. Woodruff of the United States Army entitled “Effects of
+Tropical Light on White Men.” Then I knew. Later, I met Colonel
+Woodruff, and learned that he had been similarly afflicted. Himself an
+Army surgeon, seventeen Army surgeons sat on his case in the
+Philippines, and, like the Australian specialists, confessed themselves
+beaten. In brief, I had a strong predisposition toward the
+tissue-destructiveness of tropical light. I was being torn to pieces by
+the ultra-violet rays just as many experimenters with the X-ray have
+been torn to pieces.
+
+In passing, I may mention that among the other afflictions that jointly
+compelled the abandonment of the voyage, was one that is variously
+called the healthy man’s disease, European Leprosy, and Biblical
+Leprosy. Unlike True Leprosy, nothing is known of this mysterious
+malady. No doctor has ever claimed a cure for a case of it, though
+spontaneous cures are recorded. It comes, they know not how. It is,
+they know not what. It goes, they know not why. Without the use of
+drugs, merely by living in the wholesome California climate, my silvery
+skin vanished. The only hope the doctors had held out to me was a
+spontaneous cure, and such a cure was mine.
+
+A last word: the test of the voyage. It is easy enough for me or any
+man to say that it was enjoyable. But there is a better witness, the
+one woman who made it from beginning to end. In hospital when I broke
+the news to Charmian that I must go back to California, the tears
+welled into her eyes. For two days she was wrecked and broken by the
+knowledge that the happy, happy voyage was abandoned.
+
+Glen Ellen, California,
+     _April_ 7, 1911.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+[268] To point out that we of the _Snark_ are not a crowd of weaklings,
+which might be concluded from our divers afflictions, I quote the
+following, which I gleaned verbatim from the _Eugenie’s_ log and which
+may be considered as a sample of Solomon Islands cruising:
+Ulava, Thursday, March 12, 1908.
+
+Boat went ashore in the morning. Got two loads ivory nut, 4000 copra.
+Skipper down with fever.
+Ulava, Friday, March 13, 1908.
+
+Buying nuts from bushmen, 1½ ton. Mate and skipper down with fever.
+Ulava, Saturday, March 14, 1908.
+
+At noon hove up and proceeded with a very light E.N.E. wind for
+Ngora-Ngora. Anchored in 5 fathoms—shell and coral. Mate down with
+fever.
+Ngora-Ngora, Sunday, March 15, 1908.
+
+At daybreak found that the boy Bagua had died during the night, on
+dysentery. He was about 14 days sick. At sunset, big N.W. squall.
+(Second anchor ready) Lasting one hour and 30 minutes.
+At sea, Monday, March 16, 1908.
+
+Set course for Sikiana at 4 P.M. Wind broke off. Heavy squalls during
+the night. Skipper down on dysentery, also one man.
+At sea, Tuesday, March 17, 1908.
+
+Skipper and 2 crew down on dysentery. Mate fever.
+At sea, Wednesday, March 18, 1908.
+
+Big sea. Lee-rail under water all the time. Ship under reefed mainsail,
+staysail, and inner jib. Skipper and 3 men dysentery. Mate fever.
+At sea, Thursday, March 19, 1908.
+
+Too thick to see anything. Blowing a gale all the time. Pump plugged up
+and bailing with buckets. Skipper and five boys down on dysentery.
+At sea, Friday, March 20, 1908.
+
+During night squalls with hurricane force. Skipper and six men down on
+dysentery.
+At sea, Saturday, March 21, 1908.
+
+Turned back from Sikiana. Squalls all day with heavy rain and sea.
+Skipper and best part of crew on dysentery. Mate fever.
+
+
+And so, day by day, with the majority of all on board prostrated, the
+_Eugenie’s_ log goes on. The only variety occurred on March 31, when
+the mate came down with dysentery and the skipper was floored by fever.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRUISE OF THE SNARK ***
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