“For the wind and waterways have stamped me with their seal.”
We picked up a good slant of wind to make Honolulu yesterday morning—an immeasurable relief after the worrisome calm of the night before, during which we had taken our turns at the idle wheel and scanned the contrary compass with all emotions of anxiety; while the helpless yacht swung on every arc of the circle, with no slightest fan of air to fill her limp sails that flapped ponderously in the glassy offshore heave. Never shall I forget my own tense double-watch of four hours, straining eye and ear toward the all-too-nigh coral reefs off Koko Head, with Makapuu Point light blinking to the northeast. But when a dart of sun through a decklight woke me from brief sleep, we were spanking along smartly in a cobalt sea threshed white on every rushing wave, with the green and gold island of Oahu shifting its scenery like a sliding screen as we swept past tawny Diamond Head and palm-dotted Waikiki toward Honolulu Harbor. After an oddly fishless voyage of four weeks from San Francisco (called by the natives Kapalakiko—pronounced Kah-pah-lah-ke-ko), we were joyously excited over a school of big porpoises, “puffing-pigs,” intent as any flock of barnyard fowl to cross our fleeing forefoot. Undignified haste was their only resemblance to domestic poultry, for in general movement they were more like sportive colts hurdling in pasture with snort and puff—sleek sides glistening blue black in the brilliant sunlight.
To our land-eager eyes, the beautiful old city was the surpassing picture of her pictures, when, still outside, we came abreast of her wharves—the water front with ships and steamers moored beside the long sheds, and behind, the Pompeian-red Punch Bowl, so often described by early voyagers; the suburban heights of Tantalus; the purple-deep rifts of valleys and gorges; and the green-and-violet needled peaks upthrusting through dense dark cloud rack.
Barely had we finished Martin’s eggless breakfast, when a government launch frothed alongside, and the engineer’s cheery “Want a line, Jack—eh?” sounded classic assurance of Hawaii’s far-famed grace of hospitality. Despite my sanguine temperament, I had been conscious of a premonition that something unfortunate would happen upon our arrival, probably due to the impression left by the hasty ship chandler of San Francisco, who unjustly libeled the Snark in Oak land and delayed our sailing; so this gracious “Want a line, Jack?” was music to my ears. You see, Jack London is not infrequently arrested, or nearly arrested, for one reason or another, whenever he sets his merry foot upon foreign soil (I have disquieting memories of Cuba, Japan, and Korea); and Hawaii seems like foreign soil, albeit annexed by the Stars and Stripes.
The morning paper, the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, preceded Immigration Inspector and Customs Inspector over the rail, and they laughingly pointed to a conspicuously leaded item that the Snark was supposed to be lost with all on board—bright tidings already cabled to California and read by our horrified families and friends! We cannot help wishing we were early enough here to be handed the very first English newspaper published at Honolulu, in 1836—the Sandwich Islands Gazette. And two years before that, the Hawaiian sheets, Kumu Hawaii and Lama Hawaii, were the initial newspapers in the Pacific Ocean.
Speed is not the object of our junketing in the Seven Seas; but if we of the Snark had known any hurt vanity about the length of our passage, it would have been amply offset by a report the inspectors made of the big bark Edward May, arriving six days before, which beat our tardy record but forty-eight hours, after an equally uneventful voyage.
Meanwhile the pilot had come aboard, a line was passed for’ard to the launch, and we now ripped and zipped over a billowy swell to meet the port physician, whose snowy launch could be seen putting out from a wharf. That dignitary, once on deck, scanned our clean bill of health, asked a few routine questions—one of which was whether we carried any rats or snakes; and all three officials pronounced us free to enter the port of Honolulu. Whereupon Jack stated that we were bound for Pearl Lochs, to take possession of a cottage lent us by a friend. We were then told that the wharves of Honolulu were lined with her citizens, waiting to garland us in welcome; but too impelling behind our eyes was the fancied picture of the promised retreat by the still waters of Pearl Lochs, so we thanked our kind visitors, secured a launch, and towed resolutely past the hospitable city.
“It does seem a darned shame,” Jack mused regretfully. “But what can we do with all our plans made for Pearl Harbor?” “And anyway,” he added, “I don’t want the general public to see a boat of mine sail, looking as if she’s been half-built and then half-wrecked, the way this one does.... I’ve got some pride.”
Then all attention was claimed by the beauty of our westward way to the harbor entrance, as we skirted a broad shoreward reef where green breakers burst into fountains of tourmaline and turquoise, shot through with javelins of sun gold, and the air was filled with rainbow mist. Our boat slipped along in a world compounded of the very ravishment of suffused colors—land and sea, it was all of a piece; while off to the southeastern horizon ocean and sky merged in silvery azure, softly gloomed by shadowy shapes of other Promised Islands.
Turning almost due north into the narrow reef entrance to the Lochs, we could easily have sailed unassisted, even with the light breeze then remaining, so well marked is the channel which has been dredged, full thirty feet deep, to admit passage of the largest vessels into this land-locked harbor, invaluable acquisition to the American government—the finest naval station in the Pacific, if not in the world. Its low banks show both lava and coral formation, and vast cane plantations and gently terraced rice fields slope their green leagues back to the foothills of the Waianae Mountains. Scattered over the rice areas are picturesquely tattered Mongolians, who utter long resonant calls to frighten the marauding ricebirds, which, swarming up in black, disturbed clouds, are brought down with shotguns.