The first responsibility, not to be neglected for a single hour, was the hunting of a habitation that we might call our own for the time being. Beth had reported the total failure of her exhaustive search. Honolulu was chock-a-block with tourists. “Beginning to realize what they’ve got,” Jack observed with satisfaction, though a trifle put out that his prophesied appreciation of the Islands by the mainlanders should interfere with his own getting of a roof-shelter.
We learned from one of the large Trust Companies that a cottage on Beach Walk, a newly opened residence street not far from the Seaside Hotel, was to be let a couple of months hence. We found it eminently suitable for our little household of four, for Beth was to be one of us, and Nakata, as usual, was our shadow. Next we devoted all our powers to persuade the somewhat flustered owners that they needed an earlier visit to the Pan-American Exposition than they had planned; and proceeded to move in before they could change their minds, while Jack wirelessed to the Coast for Sano, our cook.
Not a day passed, before, in swimming suits, we walked down Kalia Road to the old Seaside Hotel, and once more felt underfoot the sands of Waikiki. But such changes had been wrought by sea and mankind that we could hardly believe our eyes, and needed a guide to set us right.
The sands, shifting as they do at irregular periods, had washed away from before the hotel, leaving an uninviting coral-hummock bottom not to be negotiated comfortably except at high tide, and generally shunned. A forbidding sea-wall buttressed up the lawn of the hotel while the only good beach was the restricted stretch between where the row of cottages once had begun, and the Moana Hotel.
And what had we here? In place of those little weather-beaten houses and the brown tent, the Outrigger Canoe Club had established its bathhouses, separate club lanais for women and men, and, nearest the water, a large, raised dancing-lanai, underneath which reposed a fleet of great canoes, their barbaric yellow prows ranged seaward. At the rear, in a goodly line of tall lockers, stood the surf-boards, fashioned longer and thicker than of yore, of the members of the Canoe Club.
A steel cable, whiskered with seaweed, anchored on the beach, extended several hundred yards into deeper water where a steel diving-stage had been erected. Upon it dozens of swimmers, from merest children with their swimming teachers, to old men, were making curving flights inside the breakers. Several patronesses of the Club give their time on certain days of the week, from the women’s lanai inconspicuously chaperoning the Beach.
The only landmark recognizable was the date-palm still flourishing where had once been a corner of our tent-house, now become a sheltering growth with yard-long clusters of fruit, and we were told it was known as the “Jack London Palm.” For it might be said that in its shadow Jack wove his first tales of Hawaii.
All this progress meant Ford! Ford! Ford! Everywhere evidence of his unrelaxing brain and energy met the eye. But he, in turn, credits Jack with having done incalculably much toward bringing the splendid Club into existence, by his article on surf-board riding, “A Royal Sport.” Largely on the strength of the interest it aroused, Mr. Ford had been enabled to keep his word to Jack that he would make surf-boarding one of the most popular pastimes in Hawaii. Upon his representations the Queen Emma estate, at a lease of a few dollars a year to be contributed to the Queen’s Hospital, which her Majesty had established, had set aside for the Club’s use this acre of ground, which, with the revival of surf-boarding, was now become almost priceless.
Queen Emma was the wife of Kamehameha IV, mother of the beautiful “Prince of Hawaii,” who died in childhood, herself granddaughter of John Young, and adopted daughter of an English physician, Dr. Rooke, who had married her aunt, Kamaikui. The Queen owned this part of the Beach, from which her own royal canoes were launched in the good old days, and where she also used the surf-board.
“Her estate holds this land,” Ford had said in 1907, “and I’m going to secure it for a Canoe Club. I don’t know how; but I’m just going to.”