Beyond the Snark, across this arm of the sea, over low green volcanic hills lying southeast between Pearl Lochs and Honolulu, one is just able to glimpse the rosy bulk of Diamond Head, trembling in the fervent sunlight. To the north, over vast rice fields and upland plantations, shrug the rugged, riven Koolau Mountains, their heads lost in heavy cloud masses that everlastingly roll and shift above these tropic ranges.
Pearl Harbor embraces some twelve square miles, divided naturally into three lochs, or arms, by two peninsulas, on the eastern of which lies the village dignified by the suggestive name of Pearl City. Trust me for having already gleaned the information that the locality has been these many years filched of its jewels.
On the southeastern extremity of our particular “neck of the woods,” stray a few suburban homes of Honolulans, of which ours is one. Tochigi, Nipponese and poet-browed cabin boy of the Snark, is to live ashore with us and resume his erstwhile household service, while the rest of the yacht’s complement will retain their accommodations aboard. In these protected waters, the boat lies at least as steady as a house on wheels, as she swings to ebb and flow.
Strangely content are we in the unwonted tranquillity of motion and sound, lacking wish to venture afield, even to Honolulu, about twelve miles distant by the railroad. Enough just to rest and rest, and gaze around upon the beautiful, long-desired world of island. Scarcely can we glance athwart the apple-green water but there curves a span of rainbow between our eyes and the far hills, and like as not a double-span, with promise of a triple-bow; while frequent warm showers delicately veil the land’s vivid emerald with all melting tints of opal.
Very florid, all this, you will smile—a bit overdone, perhaps? Gird at my word-storms if you will. Then consider ... and take ship for this “fleet of islands” in the western ocean. It isn’t real; it can’t be—too sweet it is, the round twenty-four hours. Here but the one night and day, already we grope for new forms of expression, as will you an you follow the sinking sun.
The heat is not oppressive, even though the season is close to summer. But one must realize that Hawaii is only subtropical. To be precise, the group of eight inhabited islands occupies a central position in the North Pacific, and lies just within the northern tropic. For the benefit of any sailor who may run and read, Jack says I might as well be still more explicit, and record that the Snark, now anchored about 2000 sea miles southwest of her native shore, lies between 18° 54′ and 22° 15′ north latitude, and between 154° 50′ and 160° 30′ of longitude west of Greenwich. These islands are blessed with a lower temperature than any other country in the same latitude. The reasons are simple enough—the prevailing “orderly trades” that blow over a large extent of the ocean, and the ocean itself that is cooled by the return current from the region of Bering Straits. Pleasantly warm though we found the waters of Pearl Harbor this bright morning, yet are they less warm by ten degrees than the waters of other regions in similar latitudes.
And now, to go back a little and recount how we came to rest in this fair haven—Fair Haven, in passing, was the name bestowed upon Honolulu Harbor by one of her discoverers, Captain Brown, when, in 1794, in his schooner Jackal, accompanied by Captain Gordon in the sloop Prince Lee Boo, he entered the bay, and mixed in local affairs by selling arms and ammunition to King Kalanikupule of Oahu, who was resisting an invasion from the sovereign of the island of Maui, Kaeo. Right near us here, at Kalauao on the way to Honolulu, a red battle was waged, in which Kalanikupule, assisted by Captain Brown and his men, overthrew the powerful enemy. Poor Captain Brown was born unlucky, it would seem. Firing a salute the next day from the Jackal, in honor of the victory, a wad from his guns went wild and killed Captain Kendrick, who was quietly dining aboard his own vessel, the Lady Washington. The blameless skipper’s funeral, being of a different sort from the native ceremony, was looked upon by the Hawaiians as an act of sorcery to induce the death of Captain Brown. Kalanikupule paid the latter four hundred hogs for his assistance in the struggle with the vanquished Kaeo, and Brown, after the sailing of the Lady Washington for China, put his men to salting down the valuable pork at Kaihikapu, an ancient salt pond between Pearl Harbor and Honolulu.
One day while the Jackal’s mate, Mr. Lamport, and the sailors were gathering salt, Kamohomoho, uncle of Oahu’s king, boarded the Prince Lee Boo and the Jackal, and more than made good the “act of sorcery” by dispatching poor Brown as well as Gordon, imprisoning those of the crews not employed ashore. Lamport and his men were captured, but their lives spared. The gratitude of the royal family for favors rendered had been outbalanced by ambition for a modern navy with which to attack Kamehameha the Great on the “Big Island,” Hawaii. On the voyage, however, the white seamen regained possession of the vessels, sent the natives ashore in their own canoes which were being towed, and lost no time following the Lady Washington to the Orient.
I become lost in the history of the men who blazed our trail to these romantic isles, forgetting that this is the chronicle of a more modern adventure, and return to this idyllic resting spot after the tumult of our first traverse on the bit of boat yonder.
And yet, casting back over those twenty-six days of ceaseless tossing, we are aware only of pleasure in the memory of every happening, disagreeable and agreeable alike. In fact the last week aboard was so cozy and homelike that more than often we caught ourselves regretting the imminent termination of the cruise. Even at this moment of writing, despite blissful surroundings, did I not know that the Snark’s dear adventure were but just begun, I should be robbed indeed, so in love am I with sea and Snark: