When a gloriously bodied Hawaiian, naked but for a loin-cloth carved against his shining bronze, takes form like a miracle in the down-rushing smother of a breaking wave, arms outstretched and heels winged with backward-streaming spray, you watch, stricken of speech. It is not the sheer physical splendor of the thing that so moves one, for, lighting and informing this, is an all dominating spirit of joyful fearlessness and freedom that manifests an almost visible soul, and lends a slow thrilling of awe to one’s contemplation of the beauty and wonder of the human. What was it an old Attic philosopher exclaimed? “Things marvelous there are many, but among all naught moves more truly marvelous than man.”
And our journalist friend, malihini, white-skinned, slim, duplicated the act, and Jack murmured, “Gee! What a sport he is—and what a sport this is for white men too!” His glowing eyes, and a well-known firm expression about the jaw, told me he would be satisfied with nothing less than hours a day in the deep-water smokers. As it was, in the small surf, he came safely in several times. I accomplished one successful landing, slipping up the beach precisely to the feet of some stranger hotel guests, who were not half so surprised as myself. It took some while to learn to mount the board without help, for it is a cumbrous and unruly affair in the heaving water.
The rising tide was populous with Saturday afternoon bathers, but comparatively few women, except close inshore. A fleet of young surf-boarders hovered around Ford and his haole pupils, for he loves children and is a great favorite with these. Often, timing our propelling wave, we would find a brown and smiling cherub of ten or so, all eyes and teeth, timing the same wave, watching with anxiety lest we fail and tangle up with the pitching slice of hardwood. Not a word would he utter—but in every gesture was “See! See! This way! It is easy!”
Several times, on my own vociferous way, I was spilled diagonally down the face of a combing wave, the board whirling as it overturned, and slithering up-ended, while I swam to bottom for very life, in fear of a smash on the cranium. And once I got it, coming up wildly, stars shooting through my brain. And once Jack’s board, on which he had lain too far forward, dived, struck bottom, and flung him head over heels in the most ludicrous somersault. His own head was struck in the ensuing mix-up and we were able to compare size and number of stars. Of course, his stars were the bigger—because my power of speech was not equal to his. It seems to us both that never were we so wet in all our lives, as during those laughing, strenuous, half-drowned hours in the milk warm surf.
Sometimes, just sometimes, when I want to play the game beyond my known vitality, I almost wish I were a boy. I do my best, as to-day; but when it comes to piloting an enormous weighty plank out where the high surf smokes, above a depth of twelve to fifteen feet, I fear that no vigor of spirit can lend my scant five-feet-two, short hundred-and-eleven, the needful endurance. Mr. Ford pooh-poohs: “Yes, you can. It’s easier than you think—but better let your husband try it out first.”
(1) Old Hawaiian. (2) The Sudden Vision. (3) The Mirrored Mountains. (Painting by Hitchcock.)
Waikiki, June 2.
An eventful day, this, especially for Jack, who is in bed thinking it over between groans, eyes puffed shut with a strange malady, and agonizing in a severe case of sunburn. I can sympathize to some extent, for, in addition to a considerable roasting, my whole body is racked with muscular quirkings and lameness from the natatorial gymnastics of the past forty-eight hours. Our program to-day began at ten, with a delirious hour of canoe riding in a pounding sea. While less individual boldness is called upon, this game is even more exciting than surf-boarding, for more can take part in the shoreward rush.
The great canoes are the very embodiment of royal barbaric sea spirit—dubbed out of hard koa logs, long, narrow, over two feet deep, with slightly curved perpendicular sides and rounded bottoms; furnished with steadying outriggers on the left, known as the “i-á-ku”—two curved timbers, of the light tough hardwood, their outer ends fastened to the heavy horizontal spar, or float, of wili-wili, called the “a-ma,” nearly the canoe’s length. The hulls are painted lusterless, dead black, and trimmed by a slightly in-set, royal-yellow inch-rail, broadening upward at each end of the boat, with a sharp tip. There is an elegance of savage warlikeness about these long sable shapes; but the sole warfare in this day and age is with Neptune, when, manned by shining bronze crews, they breast or fight through the oncoming legions of rearing, trampling, neighing sea cavalry.