One old-time sojourner on this coral strand fitly wrote: “When all days are alike, there is no reason for doing a thing to-day rather than to-morrow.” Whether or not he lived up to his wise conclusion I do not know; but the average hustling white-skin, filled with unreasonable ambition to visit other shores, does not live up, or down, to any such maxim. Maybe it is a mistake; maybe we should pay more heed to the lure of dolce far niente. Even so, for us it is not expedient and we may as well put it by. Jack does not regard it seriously, anyway. His deep-chested vitality and personal optimism, together with his gift of the gods, sleep under any and all conditions, if he but will to sleep, quite naturally make him intolerant of coddling himself in any climate under the sun, no matter how inimical to his supersensitive white skin. And I decline to worry. It is so easy to acquire the habit of worrying about one’s nearest and dearest, to the ruin of all balance of true values. Nothing annoys and antagonizes Jack so much as inquiries about his feelings when he himself has not given them a thought. Time enough when the thing happens, is his practice, if not his theory; but in justice I must say that he applies this unpreparedness only to himself, and has ever a shrewd and scientific eye for the welfare of those dependent upon him, though never will he permit himself to “nag.” “I’m telling you, my dear,” once, twice, possibly thrice—and there’s an end on’t.
Everything is freshening in the cool trade wind that is commencing to wave the live-palm-leaf fans, and on the slate-blue horizon masses of low trade wind clouds pile and puff and promise refreshment—“wool-packs,” sailors call them. The past few days of variable weather have roasted us one minute, and steamed us the next when the un-cooling rains descended. But it is all in the tropic pattern, and it is nice never to require anything heavier than summer garments.
“Hello, Twin Brother!” Jack greeted me yesterday, when, booted and trousered, I was bridling Lehua. “I wish you didn’t have to put on the skirt, you look so eminently trim and appropriate!”
“Be patient,” I told him. “We’ll all be riding this way in a few years, see if we aren’t. You wait.”
But the cheery prophecy of public good sense could not stifle a sigh as I blotted out the natty boyish togs with the long, hot black skirt. What a silliness to put the “weaker sex” to such disadvantages—as if we did not manifest our bonny brawn by surviving to fight them!
To the village we cantered to have Koali and Lehua shod at the blacksmith’s, and odd enough it was to see a Japanese working on their hoofs. But for a succession of violent downpours, we should have taken a long ride. There is inexpressible glory in this broken weather; one minute you move in a blue gloom under a low-hanging sky and the next all brilliance of heaven shines through, gilding and be jeweling the vivid-green world.
This date marks a vital readjustment in ship matters. Two of the Snark’s complement are to return to the mainland, and Jack has cabled a man to come down by first steamer and take hold of the engines. Not to mention many other details of incomprehensible neglect aboard by the undisciplinary sailing master, the costly sails have been left to mildew in their tight canvas covers on the booms in all this damp weather, with deck awnings stretched under the booms instead of protectingly above. And no bucket of water has been sluiced over the deck since our arrival eight days ago, necessitating the not inconsiderable expense of recalking thus early in the voyage. The appearance of the deck can be guessed; and otherwise no effort has been put forth to bring the yacht into presentable order, nor any interest nor head-work displayed in forwarding repairs. If a salaried master will let his valuable charge lapse, there is no cure but to get one who will not.
Last Sunday we lunched with the Waterhouses and their rollicking week-end crowd from town, who showed what they thought of conventional restrictions in tropic cities, by spending the day in light raiment and bare feet, resting or romping over house and grounds. Mrs. Gretchen’s father, who is superintendent of the Honolulu Iron Works, was also there, and came back with us to take a personal look-see at our wrecked engine. To-day he made a special trip from the city, bringing an engineer, and the upshot was a more encouraging report than he had deemed possible from his first inspection. “Anyway,” he cheered our dubiousness, “you’re a whole lot better off than the little yacht that piled ashore on the reef outside yonder this morning.”
So Jack’s face, that had been fairly downcast for two or three days, cleared like an Oahu sky after a thunder-shower; and later he said to me, with a familiar little apologetic smile:
“Mate Woman, you mustn’t mind my getting a little blue sometimes. I can’t help it. When a fellow does his damndest to be square with everybody, buys everything of the best in the market and makes no kick about paying for it, and then gets thrown down the way I’ve been thrown down with the whole building and running of this boat, from start to finish—why, it’s enough to make him bite his veins and howl. A man picks out a clean wholesome way of making and spending his money, and every goldarned soul jumps him. If I went in for race horses and chorus girls and big red automobiles, there’d be no end of indulgent comment. But here I take my own wife and start out on good clean adventure.... Oh, Lord! Lord! What’s a fellow to think!... Only, don’t you mind if I get the blues once in a while. I don’t very often.—And don’t think I’m not appreciating your own cheerfulness. I don’t miss a bit of it.—And you and I are what count; and we’ll live our life in spite of them!”