Summer Cruising in the South Seas

by Charles Warren Stoddard

The wind was rising; white clouds scudded over us; transparent shadows slid under us; the whole earth seemed unstable, and life scarcely worth the living. Along the dead shore leaped the sea, in a careless, dare-devil fashion; hollow rocks spouted great mouthfuls of spray contemptuously into the air; columns of red dust climbed into the sky, reeling to and fro as they passed over the bleak desert toward the sea on the opposite side of the island. These dust-chimneys were continually moving over the land so long as the wind prevailed, which was for the rest of that afternoon, to my certain knowledge. In fact, the gale increased every hour; sheets of spray leaped over the rocky barriers of the shore, and matted the dry grass, that hissed like straw whenever a fresh gust struck it.

One tattered cocoa-palm, steadfast in its mission, though the living emblem of a forlorn hope, wrestled with the tempest that threw all its crisp and rattling leaves over its head like a pompon, and fretted it till its slender neck twisted as though it were being throttled. The thatched house seemed about to go to pieces, and every timber creaked in agony; yet we gathered in its lee, and awaited the slow approach of the schooner. Near shore she put about, and seemed upon the point of scudding off to sea again. For a moment our hearts were in our throats; we were in danger of missing the sensation of the season; new faces, new topics of conversation, and, perhaps, something good to eat, sent thither by Providence, who seldom forgets His children in the waste places, though I wonder that He lets them lose themselves so often.

The schooner rocked on the big rollers for half an hour; a small boat put off from her, with some dark objects seated in it; out on the great rollers the little shallop rocked, sometimes hidden from view by an intervening wave, sometimes thrown partly out of the water as it balanced for a moment on the crest of a breaker, but gradually drawing in toward a bit of beach, where there was a possible chance of landing, in some shape or other. A few rods from shore, three dusky creatures deliberately plunged overboard and swam toward us. We rushed in a body to welcome them,—two women old residents of the place, who came out of the sea wailing for joy at their safe return to a home no more inviting than the one whose prominent features I have sought to reproduce. Down they sat, not three feet from the water, that bubbled and hissed along the coarse sand, and lifted up their voices in pitiful and impressive monotones, as they recounted in a savagely poetic chant their various adventures since they last looked upon the beloved picture of desolation that lay about them.

The third passenger—a youngster—came to land when he had got tired of swimming for the fun of it, and, once more upon his native heath, he seemed at a loss to know what to do next, but suffered himself to be vigorously embraced by nearly everybody in sight, after which he joined his companions with placid satisfaction, and capered about as naturally as though nothing unusual had happened.

Off into the windy sea sped the small schooner, bending to the breeze as though it were a perpetual miracle that brought her right-side-up every once in a while. Back to the deserted prayer-house our straggling community wended its way; everything that had been said before was said again, with some embellishments. It was beginning to grow tiresome. I longed to plunge into the desert that stretched around, seeking some possible oasis where the fainting spirit might reassure itself that earth was beautiful and life a boon.

Kahéle agreed with me that this sort of thing was growing tiresome. He knew of a good place not many miles away; we could go there and sleep. It presented a church and a good priest, and other inducements of an exceedingly proper and unexceptionable character. The prospect, though uninviting, was sufficient to revive me for the moment, and daring that moment we mounted, and were blown away on horseback. The wind howled in our ears; sand-clouds peppered us heavily; small pebbles and grit cut our faces; heavier gusts than usual changed earth, sea, and sky into temporary chaos. The day waned, so did our spirits, so did the life of our poor beasts. In the distance, the church of Kahéle's prophecy stood out like a small rock in a land than which no land I wot of can be wearier. The sun fell toward the sea; the wind subsided, though it was still lusty and disagreeable.

We entered the church, having turned our disheartened beasts into paddock, and found a meagre and late afternoon session, seated upon mats that covered the earthen floor. A priest strove to kindle a flame of religious enthusiasm in our unnatural hearts, but I fear he sought in vain. The truth was, we were tired to death; we needed wholesome soup, savoury meats, and steaming vegetables, to humanize us. I didn't want to be a Christian on an empty stomach. The wind began to sigh, after its passion was somewhat spent; sand sifted over the matting with a low hiss; and the dull red curtains, that stretched across the lower half of the windows, flapped dolefully. Overhead, the wasps had hung their mud-baskets, and the grey atmosphere of everything was depressing in the extreme. Service was soon over; the people departed across the windy moors, with much fluttering of gay garments. A horse stood at pasture, with his head down, his back to the wind, and his tail glued to his side,—a picture of sublime resignation. A high mound, with a sandstone sepulchre built in the face of it, cut off half of the very red sunset, while a cactus-hedge, starred with pale pink blossoms, ran up a low hill, and made silhouette pictures against the sky.

I turned to watch a large butterfly, blown over in the late gale,—stranded, as it were, at the church porch, and too far gone to set sail again; a white sea-bird wheeled over me in big circles, and screamed faintly; something fell in the church with a loud echo,—a prayer-book, probably; and then the priest came out, fastened the door of the deserted sanctuary, and the day's duties were done. We had nothing to do but follow him to his small frame dwelling, where the one little window to the west seemed to be set with four panes of burnished gold, and some homely household shrubs in his garden-plat shivered, and blossomed while they shivered, but looked like so many widows and orphans, the whole of them.

At the hospitable board life began afresh. Another day, and we should again approach the borders of the earthly paradise that glorified the opposite side of the island. Kahéle's eyes sparkled; my heart leaped within me; I felt that there was a charm in living, after all; and the moment was a critical one, for had the lad begged me to return with him to the beguilements of barbarism, I think it possible that I might have consented. But he didn't! He was the pink of propriety, and an honour to his progenitors. He said a brief grace before eating, prayed audibly before retiring, was patient to the pitch of stupidity, and amiable to the verge of idiocy.

At last, I began to see through him. Another four-and-twenty hours, and he would be restored to the arms of his guardians; the sweet lanes of Lahaina would again blossom before him; and all that he thought to be excellent in life would know him as it had known him only a few weeks before. It was time that he had again begun to walk the straight path, and he knew it. He was Kahéle, the two-sided; Kahéle, the chameleon, whose character and disposition partook of the colour of his surroundings; who was pious to the tune of the church-bell, yet agile as any dancer of the lascivious hula at the thump of the tom-tom. He was a representative worthy of some consideration; a typical Hawaiian whose versatility was only excelled by the plausibility with which he developed new phases of his kaleidoscopic character. He was very charming, and as diverting in one rôle as another. He was, moreover, worthy of much praise for his skill in playing each part so perfectly that to this hour I am not sure which of his dispositions he excelled in, nor in which he was most at home.