Not far off, in a wind-ruffled, reef-sheltered place, swam a dozen men and women. They wore loincloths and white or red muumuus, and threshed the water, brilliant blue even close inshore, with overhand breast-strokes from brown arms smooth-shining against the lava background of rougher bronze surface. The unrestrained laughter and exclamations were too much for me, and I went out upon the piled lava shore for a nearer view of their gambols. While I sat, feet trailing in the brine-washed sand, a sumptuous wahine strolled by with the correct, straight-front poise of the heaviest Hawaiians. With the slightest recognition of my presence, a diffident reticence often mistaken for hauteur, she rested at a distance, filled and smoked a small pipe at her ease, the while carelessly studying a salt pool near by. Pipe empty, it and her sack of Bull Durham were tucked jauntily into the band of a tattered straw of native weave that tilted at a killing angle over her pretty eyes and saucy nose. The up-ended back of the brim gave view of a generous toss of curls that made me envious of her very probable ignorance of its beauty. With a hand-net and bag she commenced hunting for seafood in the sandy places, planting her feet on lava hummocks as squarely and ponderously, with her mighty ankles, as might a quickened idol of stone. When she ventured in above the knees, her floating red holoku revealed limbs like trunks, laughably fat, yet pleasantly proportioned.
A bevy of young women came wading in from their swim, shaking out yards of splendid hair to dry in the sun along with their dripping muumuus—hair abundant, not coarse, breaking into wonderful red-bronze waves, ringleting at the long ends and about face and neck as if in sheer celebration of vital life. Some of these wahines and their men converged where a swift current poured through a wee channel from one rocky pool to another, and began netting colored fish. Joining them with my friends, half in and half out in the drifting sand and milk-warm water, I watched the pretty sport.
“Do you know that they’re after the right fish for your lunch?” Margaret whispered to me. Repeating to the fishers in their tongue what she had said to me in mine, they all laughed, lowered their eyelids with the movement that caresses the cheek with the lashes, and bobbed their heads in delighted confusion.
I swam and frolicked in the racing brine, and once, floating face-down, spied a long shadow that sent me half-laughing, half-panicky, to win to safety ahead of an imaginary shark. But the natives knew that no sea-tiger comes into these lava-rimmed baylets, and I joined in the rippling explosion of mirth that went up at my discomfiture.
When I had returned to my shady coconut grove and palm-frond, ready to have lunch, a handsome elderly Hawaiian, with leonine gray mane above beautiful wide eyes of brown, approached with the grand air of a queen’s minister. In his shapely hand was a large leaf. Upon this natural platter lay freshly-snared game of the right varieties, white-fleshed and size of my palm, cleansed and sliced raw. Not a smile marred the high respectfulness of his manner; only the most formal ceremoniousness, without affectation, of service from one race to another. Without a word, he went as he had come, in unhurried and graceful stateliness. After I had eaten, curiously yet courteously observed by the passing dignified pilgrims to the ancient shrine, I joined my fish-host at the water’s edge, where he sat with the large wahine, who proved to be his wife. We waxed as chummy as our lingual disadvantage would permit. I was glad to learn that in these unprolific times the fine couple had at least one child; but he did not appear strong.
And thus, in all leisureliness, I linked with a chain of hours that seemed like days, in which there was enough of unspoiled human nature and habit to link one in turn with Hawaii’s yesterday. These child-people of the beach were pleased, too, in their way, that an outsider should love to be at one, as a matter of course, with their customs.
Ten days of reuniting with friends in Honolulu, and there came my sailing date. The four months’ vacation I had allotted myself was done. I must get home to the finishing of Jack London’s biography.
On the big wharf was scarcely standing room for those come to God-speed the ship. The faces of the passengers were regretful, no matter what their pleasure of home-going. Bedecked with wreaths, they struggled through the flowery crush to reinforce the crowded steamer rails that appeared like tiered garden walls.
The embracing was over, the eyes-to-eyes of farewells that tried to remain composed. Jack Atkinson, who at the last took charge of breasting a way for me to the gangplank, handed me through the gate. I was banked to the eyes with the rarest leis of roses, violets, plumeria, proud ilima and all. It being a warm March day, and the weight of flowers very palpable, one felt much as if in a perfumed Turkish bath!
Leaning over the topmost rail, trying to locate faces in the dense gathering, I realized again all the sweetness of my welcome and parting. Diffidently, desolately, I had approached Our Hawaii. As I had been welcomed for two, so I departed for two; and my speeding was two-fold. And now in my heart was gratitude and happiness for the renewed love and trust that made it My Hawaii.