went through my mind when the vessel glided slowly past the wharf, and the ropes of living blossoms and network of wild-hued serpentine parted and fell into the water. Flowers filled the air as they were tossed to and from the gay decks of the ship, many falling into the stream, until she moved upon a gorgeous tapestry that clung to her forefoot.
As the huge black transport cleared, suddenly her surface seemed flying to pieces. A perfect fusillade of small dark objects in human form sprang from her sides, rails, rigging, from every height of ringbolt and sill, and disappeared in almost unrippling dives through the swirling blossomy carpet of the harbor.
“Look—look at them!” Jack cried, incoherent with the excitement of his joy in the kanaka imps who entered the water so perfectly and came up shaking petals from their curly heads, white teeth flashing, their child faces eloquent with expectation of a lucrative shower from the passengers. A bountiful hour it was for them, and little their bright eyes and brown hands lost of the copper and silver disks that slowly angled through the bubbling flood. We wished we were down there with them, for it is great fun to pick a coin from the deep as it filters down with a short, tipping motion.
“Do you wish you were aboard, going back?” Jack asked, as we turned for the last time to look at the diminishing bulk of the ship, bannered with scarves and handkerchiefs and serpentine. I did not. I want to go home only from east to west.
Such content is ours here at Waikiki, that it is a shame to press it all into one life, for it could be spread over several incarnations. We sleep like babies, in the salt night airs wafting through mosquito canopies. Before breakfast, it is into the blissful warm tide, diving through bubbling combers, coming up eyes level with tiny sails of fishermen beyond the barrier reef. All hours one hears the steady, gentle boom and splash of the surf—not the disturbing, ominous gnashing and roaring of the Pacific Coast rollers, nor the carnivorous growlings off the rock-jagged line of New England. And under sun or moon, it is all a piece of beauty. Toward Diamond Head, when the south wind drives, swift breakers, like endless charges of white cavalry, leap and surge shoreward, flinging back long silver manes. The thrill of these landward races never palls at Waikiki. One seems to vision Pharaoh’s Horses in mighty contest with backwashing waters, arriving nowhere, dying and melting impotent upon the sand.
Jack, to whom beauty is never marred by knowledge of its why and wherefore, has explained to me the physics of a breaking wave.
“A wave is a communicated agitation,” he says. “The water that composes a wave really does not move. If it moved, when you drop a stone in a pool and the ripples widen in an increasing circle, there should be at the center an increasing hole. So the water in the body of a wave is stationary. If you observe a portion of the ocean’s surface, you will see that the same water rises and falls endlessly to the agitation communicated by endless successive waves. Then picture this communicated agitation moving toward shore. As the land shoals, the bottom of the wave hits first and is stopped. Water is fluid, and the upper part of the wave not having been stopped, it keeps on communicating its agitation, and moves on shoreward. Ergo,” says he, “something is bound to be doing when the top of a wave keeps on after the bottom has stopped, dropped out from under. Of course, the wave-top starts to fall, forward, down, cresting, overcurling, and crashing. So, don’t you see? don’t you see?” he warms to his illustration, “it is actually the bottom of the wave striking against the rising land that causes the surf! And where the land shoals gradually, as inside this barrier reef at Waikiki, the rising of the undulating water is as gradual, and a ride of a quarter of a mile or more can be made shoreward on the cascading face of a wave.”
Alexander Hume Ford, true to promise, appeared to-day with an enormous surf-board, made fun of the small ones that had been lent us, and we went down to the sea to learn something of hee-nalu, sport of Hawaiian kings. The only endeavor of fish, flesh, and fowl, which Mr. Ford seems not to have partially compassed, is that of the feathered tribe—undoubtedly from lack of time, for his energy and ambition seem tireless enough even to grow feathers. Jack, who seldom stops short of what he wants to accomplish, finds this man most stimulating in an unselfish enthusiasm to revive neglected customs of elder islands days, for the benefit of Hawaii and her advertisement to the world. Although we have seen a number of natives riding the breakers, face downward, and even standing upright, almost no white men appear to be expert. Mr. Ford, born genius of pioneering and promoting, swears he is going to make this islands pastime one of the most popular on earth, and judging by his personal valor, he cannot fail.
The thick board, somewhat coffin-shaped, with rounded ends, should be over six feet long. This plank is floated out to the breaking water, which can be done either wading alongside or lying face-downward paddling; and there you wait for the right wave. When you see it coming, stand ready to launch the board on the gathering slope, spring upon it, and—keep on going if you can. Lie flat on your chest, hands grasping the sides of the large end of the heavy timber, and steer with your feet. The expert, having gauged the right speed, rises cautiously to his knees, to full stature, and then, erect with feet in the churning foam, makes straight for the beach, rides up the sparkling incline, and steps easily from his grounded sea-car.
A brisk breeze this afternoon, with a rising surf, brought out the best men, and we saw some splendid natives at close range, who took our breath away with their reckless, beautiful performance. One, George Freeth, who is only one quarter Hawaiian, is accounted the best surf-board rider and swimmer in Honolulu.