Summer Cruising in the South Seas

by Charles Warren Stoddard

It has baked hard in the sun and is as red as clay, though a tinge of green in all its chinks suggests those antique bronzes of uncertain origin. Above it roll the snow-white trade-wind clouds, those commercial travellers that rush over us as though they had special business elsewhere. Beyond all is the eternally blue sky of the tropics, which generally seems so awfully high and hollow, that it makes a fellow lonesome to look at it.

I like better to picture the narrow street in the neighbourhood, wherein man and beast travel amicably, and a disconsolate old kanaka, done up in a shirt or a sheet, settles wherever it pleases him, to take about three whiffs of tobacco from a stubby, black, brass-bound pipe before continuing his journey.

Over the way there is a small shed, with one of its beams hung full of dead-ripe bananas; on a little counter, right under these yellow pouches of creamy pulp, lie heaps of native water-melons, looking very delicious. A pretty native girl, with an uncombed head, but pretty for all that, will sell you her poorest stores with a grace that is worth twice the money.

Just beyond my window wave mango boughs heavily fruited. There are strange flowers palpitating in the sunshine, covered with dust-pollen; flowers whose ancestors have lived and died in Ceylon, Java, Japan, Madagascar, and all of those far-away lands, that make a boy's mouth water in study hours as he pores over his enchanted atlas.

Sindbad had some rough experiences while he was travelling correspondent of the Daily Arabian Nights; but I warrant you there are plenty of us nowadays who would risk life and reputation for a tithe of his wonderful adventure.

I hear the tramp of hoofs upon the hard-baked street; horsemen and horsewomen dash by, the men sitting limp in their saddles like our native Californians, and seeming almost a part of the animal, but the women erect and bold, astride their horses man-fashion, with an ample spread of the knees, that at first strikes the foreigner as being novel and a little vulgar,—but of course it isn't, for having once become accustomed to it, it seems the only natural and graceful way of sitting a horse.

What the down is to the peach so is the last hour of sunshine to the tropical day; it is the finishing touch that makes perfect the whole. The bell has just struck again, and its reverberating note seems of a colour with the picture in my mind—a bell for sunset, the angelus that calls me back to the little village that lies half asleep over the water. Just fancy a long beach, with the sea rushing upon it, and turning a regular summersault, all spray and spangles, just before it gets there; a unique lighthouse at the top of the one solitary wharf, where the small boats land; the white spires of two churches at the two ends of the town, and a sprinkling of roofs and verandah s but half-discovered in the confusion of green boughs,—that is Lahaina from the anchorage, to me the prettiest sight in the Hawaiian kingdom.

Let us hasten shoreward. Perhaps we wonder if that ridge of breakers is to be climbed; perhaps we look with a tinge of superstition into the affairs of Lahaina, wondering if it be really the abode of men in the flesh, or but a dream wherein spirits move and have their being.

But we are speedily awakened by the boat-boy. Great is the boat-boy of Lahaina! He is amphibious and agile and impudent, and altogether comical. He has carried all the population of Lahaina, some two or three thousand, in his boat, first and last. He complacently suns himself on that solitary wharf, awaiting a fresh arrival and a renewal of business. He poses himself against the whitewash of the wooden lighthouse in tremendous relief; he recognizes you in spite of your week-old beard and the dilapidated state of your travelling suit; he hails you with the utmost cordiality; it is impossible not to brave the sea with him, whether you will or no, for he is the embodiment of presuming good-nature, and you are as wax under the influence of his beaming and persuasive smile. The finger of Time doubles up the moment it points toward him; he is the same yesterday, to-day, and in the middle of next week. I can lead you to the very boat-boy who collared me ten years ago, for he is still lying in wait for me; and were I there in the flesh as I am there in the spirit, I should expect to fall into his hands within the hour, and would instinctively surrender whatever plans I may have cherished without a struggle and without a murmur.

At six o'clock this evening the bell will ring again, and again I shall be transported; then will shadows, very long cool shadows, stretch through the little tropical village; at dusk the reef is stiller, and its roar sounds faint and far off, and is sometimes lost altogether. The pigeons are once more driven from their home in the belfry, but they soon return to it, and waltzing about on their slender pink legs for a moment, they disappear within the shelter of the tower.