Among other exasperating discoveries, the cause of a hitherto unaccountable pounding of the engine was found to lie in an awryness of the bronze propeller blades, probably caused at the time the yacht was allowed to fall through the inadequate ways in the shipyard at San Francisco. This corrected, something else would go wrong, until we became soul-sick of sailing dates and hope deferred.
One day, packed and ready for an early departure, Jack, who had answered the telephone ring, called that the captain wanted to talk to me. As I passed Jack whimsically remarked: “I hope it isn’t something so bad he doesn’t want to break it to me!”
It was precisely that, and the captain’s opening words made me swallow hard and brace for the worst.
Some day I may learn that in Snark affairs nothing is too dreadfully absurd nor absurdly dreadful to occur. This time the five-horse-power engine that runs the lights had fractured its bedplate, and the repairs would hold the Snark in port at least a week longer. This engine and the big one are of different makes, built in different parts of the United States; and yet each had been set in a flawed bedplate! Jack was forced to laugh. “I see these things happen, but I don’t believe them!” he repeated an old remark. We named no more sailing dates for a while—until to-day, when almost we believe we shall get away to-morrow at two o’clock. In our cool bathroom lie the farewell leis, of roses, and violets, mailé and ginger, that the Shipman girls, entirely undiscouraged by the remembrance of more than one withered supply, have already woven.
In face of Snark annoyance, our more than kind friends have seemed to redouble their efforts to beguile us from the not unreasonable fear of outstaying our welcome. Always the carriage is at our disposal, and beautiful saddlers.
One day the girls have taken us horseback to see where the latest lava-flow encroached to within five miles of the town, threatening to engulf it. This having been in 1881, the inhabitants probably thought Mother Shipton’s notorious prophecy was coming to pass.
Another fine afternoon, to Rainbow Falls we rode, to which no photograph, nor even painting, can do justice, because the approach is impossible to the use of lens or brush. One rides peacefully along a branch trail from the road, when unexpectedly, into a scene that has hinted no chasm or stream, there bursts a cataract of the Wailuku, eighty feet, into a green shaft lined with nodding ferns, where the fall, on a rainless day, sprays its deep pool with rainbows. Farther up the Wailuku, reached on foot from the main drive through cane fields, there is a succession of pools in the lava river-bed, known as the Boiling Pots from the wild swirling of cascading waters. They form a close rival to the beauty of Rainbow Falls.
One favorite spot to me will always remain the boat landing at Waiakea village, at the mouth of the Waiakea river, on Hilo’s southwestern edge. This little settlement in 1877 was washed away by a wave caused by an earthquake in Peru. It is an essentially oriental picture, except for haoles and Hawaiians arriving or departing in ship’s boats. It is a sequestered nook of Nippon; from the sea approached under a bridge, and partially bounded by rickety, balconied houses, hung with colorful Japanese signs and flags and rags. Down the marshy little river, after turbulent weather, come the most fairy-like floating islets, forested in miniature with lilac-tinted lilies. Past the bannered buildings and the brilliantly painted sampans, under the bridge they move in the unhurrying flood, on and out to sea; to me, following their course, freighted with dreams.
There came a day of “Hilo rain,” when Mrs. Shipman tucked us into the curtained rig and haled us about town to observe an example of what the burdened sky can do in this section. Since Hiloites must endure the violent threshing of crystal plummets from their overburdened sky, they wisely make of it an asset. The annual rainfall is 150 inches against Honolulu’s 35 on the lee side of Oahu. And we must see Rainbow Fall, now an incredibly swollen, sounding young Niagara born of the hour. Chaney wrote: “It rains more easily in Hilo than anywhere else in the known world.... We no longer demurred about the story of the Flood.... Let no man be kept from Hilo by the stories he may hear about its rainfall. Doubtless they are all true; but the natural inference of people accustomed to rain in other places is far from true. There is something exceptional in this rain of Hilo. It is never cold, hardly damp even. They do say that clothes will dry in it. It is liquid sunshine, coming down in drops instead of atmospheric waves.... Laugh if you will, and beg to be excused, and you will miss the sweetest spot on earth if you do not go there.” And that is Hilo.
Aboard the Snark, October 7.