We two, with oneness in love of our watery roaming, were happy and vociferous as a pair of children, entering this our first port. Had we given it a thought, we could have wished for a less civilized landfall, with conscious missing of a native face or two. But I am sure this never entered our busy heads—not mine, at any rate; and my memory of Jack’s alert and beaming face precludes doubt of his contentment with things as they were.
Presently, as we wound along between the western peninsula and a little green islet, he called attention to the snowy bore of a tiny craft racing toward us. In short order a smart white launch was rounding up with dash and style befitting the commodore of the Hawaiian Yacht Club, Mr. Clarence Macfarlane, who, with Mr. Albert Waterhouse, had learned by telephone from Honolulu of our arrival, and hurried out to make us welcome. Both of these “dandy fellows,” as Jack promptly rated them, sent a warm glow through us by the unassuming good will of their greeting eyes and hand-grasp, while the first word on their lips was the beautiful Hawaiian “Aloha!” (ah-lo-hah) that is epitome of hearty welcome, broad hospitality, and unquestioning friendship. No noise nor flurry was theirs, as they set foot on the deck of the much-bruited Snark; only the kindest, quietest, make-yourself-at-home manner, as if we had all been acquainted for years, or else that it was the most usual thing in the world to receive a wild man and woman who had essayed to circumnavigate the globe in an absurd shallop of outlandish rig. But those keen sailor eyes missed jot nor tittle of the vessel’s lines and visible equipment, for to the mind of the world at large this boat, “the strongest of her size ever built,” to quote her owner, with convenient English dogger bank sail plan, is a somewhat questionable experiment. I intercepted Albert Waterhouse’s roving glance on its return from examining the stepping of the stout mizzenmast, which stepping constitutes the main difference between this imported ketch-rig and the more familiar yawl. The comprehending laugh in my own eyes called out a roguish, half-embarrassed twinkle in his. But “She’s some boat!” he appreciated, taking in the sturdy sticks and teak deck fittings.
Then he related how he had been commissioned to turn over the bungalow and do what he could to make us at home. His first neighborly service was to see the Snark properly anchored, the while I strained eyes across the eighth mile of gray green water to glimpse our home amongst the plumy foliage.
Leaving the crew aboard to make everything snug, Jack and I were carried by launch farther up the Loch to a long foot pier that leads over the shallow shore reef to a spacious suburban home.
And here occurreth a teapotful of mischance. Let none question that negotiating several hundred feet of narrow, stationary, unrailed bridge above shifting water, by legs that for over three weeks have known only a pitching surface of forty-five by fifteen, is little short of tragedy for one who would make seemly entry into an hospitable strange land. I know how Jack looked; I can only tell how I felt. And he was distinctly unkind. He made no secret of his amusement at my gyrations, although to my jaundiced eye his own progress was open to criticism.
Repeatedly I had to apologize for the frantic dabs made at our friends to prevent myself from going headlong into the water. That interminable board walk would rise straight up until I felt obliged to lean acutely forward to the ascent, in terror of bumping a sunburnt nose—only to find that it had abruptly slanted downward, whereupon I must angle as giddily backward to preserve balance. From the rear, Jack, in difficulties of his own, tittered something about his wife’s “sad walk,” and I remember retorting with asperity that it was a pity he had never noticed it before. Then we all fell to laughing and, very much better acquainted, somehow gained the coral-graveled pathway that led into a garden of lawns, hedged by scarlet-blooming shrubbery, and shaded by great gnarled trees that would have delighted Doré’s tortured fancy.
In response to her husband’s shout of “Here they are, Gretchen!” Mrs. Waterhouse moved towards us on bare sandaled feet across the broad veranda of the big cool house, a cool and unruffled vision of woman, stately in long unbroken lines of sheer muslin and lace.
“You poor child,” was her greeting to me, with arm-around hovering me into a white bathroom sweet-scented and piled with fluffy towels. “You must be nearly tired to death. Just come right in here and rest your bones in a good hot bath before lunch.”
Rightly she guessed our tired bones; and rightly she prescribed the beneficence of steaming water. But the ache was from violent stresses of accommodating our precious skeletons to a stable environment, rather than from any hardships of sea-buffeting. Fifteen minutes’ relaxation in that shining tub made me all new; and once more in my blue silk bloomer-suit, I joined the happy captain of my boat and heart. Likewise bathed and refreshed, his wet hair futilely brushed to snub the curling ends, sprawling in cool white ducks upon a very wide couch spread deep with fine-woven native mats, he was immersed in a magazine of later date than our sailing from California. No one was about for the moment, and we lay and looked around with wordless content in this, our first household of Hawaii. Everything was restfully shaded by vines, yet nothing dark, what of the light polished floors, light walls and handsome rattan furniture from Orient and Philippines. Roomy window seats, banked with cushions, lovely pictures, and a grand piano, furnished an air of city elegance to the equally refined summer rusticity.
Jack, watching under his long lashes, smiled indulgently.