The hawsers were cast off, the band melted into Aloha Oe, the streams of serpentine began to part and blossoms to fly, as the Matsonia got under way. Something made me glance down at the stringer-piece of the pier. A handsome Hawaiian youth stood looking aloft at me in mute distress, holding up fathoms of pink cables made from stripped carnations. He had failed to get aboard with them in time. It was Kalakaua Kawananakoa. Princess David had sent him in her stead, for I had made her promise that she would not brave the exhaustion of the merry mob.
Then I lost track of the young prince. A few moments later, one of the music boys came to me bearing the royal ropes of flowers, five inches in diameter, which Kalakaua had somehow contrived to land on the lower deck across the widening gap. Still unable to detect his among the myriad faces, I swung the wondrous lariat, letting out its yards about my flower-crowned head, that he might know the gift was safely mine.
With a sob in the throat, I recalled Jack’s words, that last time I had stood in the same place at the Matsonia’s hurricane rail:
“Of all lands of joy and beauty under the sun...”
But always the sob must turn to song, in contemplation of that beauty and joy.
Not alone because it was Jack London’s Loveland do I adore Hawaii and her people. To me, native and kamaaina alike, have they given their heart of sorrow, and their Welcome Home, in ways numerous and touching. To them, therefore, this book, Our Hawaii. To them, friends all, greeting and farewell.
“Love without end.”
“Aloha pau ole.”
Jack London Ranch,
In the Valley of the Moon,