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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Cruise of the Snark, by Jack London
+#97 in our series by Jack London
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+The Cruise of the Snark
+
+by Jack London
+
+February, 2001 [Etext #2512]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Cruise of the Snark by Jack London
+******This file should be named crsnk10.txt or crsnk10.zip******
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+
+
+
+THE CRUISE OF THE "SNARK"
+
+
+
+
+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 Rhone to Lyons, there enter the
+Saone, cross from the Saone 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 bathroom 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
+BOAT.
+
+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 bathroom 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 manoeuvre 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 degrees 57 minutes  9 seconds N
+         152 degrees 40 minutes 30 seconds W
+Friday    21 degrees 15 minutes 33 seconds N
+         154 degrees 12 minutes            W
+
+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 degrees 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 sane
+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 leprae 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 leprae.  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 leprae.
+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 pack-horses 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 wells 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 cowboys, 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 degrees 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
+degrees 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 degrees 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 degrees 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 degrees 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, l28 degrees
+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 degrees north latitude, and 11 degrees
+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 degrees 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 degrees north latitude, while the Marquesas
+were 9 degrees 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 "hake" 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."  Mendana, 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 Khayyam could never have written the Rubaiyat 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 waited 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, Niue, Fakaafo, Tonga, New Zealand, and Vate.  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 no 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 Vaitape 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 lack.  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.
+
+"Tres 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 out 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.  "Hoe!  Hoe!" 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 beech, 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 role 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 degrees 40 minutes easterly.
+Well, that had to be taken in to 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 degrees 40 minutes
+eastward of north, and I wanted to sail due north, I should have to
+steer 9 degrees 40 minutes westward of the north indicated by the
+compass and which was not north at all.  So I added 9 degrees 40
+minutes 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
+degrees 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 3.5 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 8.5 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 degrees
+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 degrees west longitude, nor east longitude, nor
+any other longitude.  The largest meridian is 180 degrees 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 degrees west
+longitude from 360 degrees, and you will get 176 degrees 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 degrees 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 0.75 south.
+I entered Table I, in the distance column, on the page for 0.75
+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 degrees 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 degrees south latitude.
+The world wasn't as big around there as at the equator.  Therefore,
+every mile of westing at 19 degrees 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 silt 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 Wade, 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 ether'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 beche 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
+beche 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. {1}
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI--BECHE 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 beche 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 Hibridean 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 beche de mer English--men such as the
+beche 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.  Beche do
+mer English was the product of conditions and circumstances.
+Function precedes organ; and the need for a universal Melanesian
+lingo preceded beche de mer English.  Beche 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, beche de mer
+English is a splendid argument for the Esperanto enthusiasts.
+
+A limited vocabulary means that each word shall be overworked.
+Thus, fella, in beche 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 beche 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 pounds."  (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 beche 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 beche 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 beche 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 beche 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 take 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 tree-pronged tooth.  I did it!  I did it!
+With my of 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 anaemic 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 paean 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 degrees.  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 degrees.  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-they-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 trail 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
+manoeuvre 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.
+
+
+
+BACK WORD
+
+
+
+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:
+
+{1} 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, 1.5 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 Etext of The Cruise of the Snark, by Jack
+London
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