We had a poor wind for two days, and I looked long hours in the water, so close to the deck, at the manifestations of organic and vegetable vitality. All life of the ocean, I knew, depended ultimately on minute plants. The great fish and mammals fed on plant forms which were distributed throughout the seas. These grew in the waters themselves or were cast into them along their shores or by the thousands of rivers which eventually feed the ocean. The flora of all the earth, seeds, nuts, beans, leaves, kernels, swam or sank in the majority element, and aided in the nourishment of the creatures there. They had, also, taken root on shores foreign to their birth, and had, from immigrants, become esteemed natives of many lands. They had increased man’s knowledge, too, as the sea-beans found on the shores of Scotland led to the discovery of that puzzle of all currents, the Gulf Stream. After all was said, the land was insignificant compared to the water—little more than a fourth of the surface of the globe, and in mass as puny. The average elevation of the land was less than a fifth of a mile, while the average depth of the sea was two miles, or thirty times the mass of the land. If the solid earth were smoothed down to a level, it would be entirely covered a mile deep by the water. I felt very close to the sea, and fearful of its might. I envied the natives their assurance, or, at least, stolidity.
The days were intensely hot. When the sails were furled or flapped idly, and the Marara lay almost still, listening for even a whisper of wind, I suffered keenly. The second noon our common exasperation broke out in the inflammable Moet.
The captain shouted to Huahine, a sailor, to cover his head with a hat. The man was a giant, weighing more than two hundred and fifty pounds, but Moet addressed him as he would a child.
“Sapristi!” he yelled, “Taupoo! Maamaa! Your hat, you fool!”
“Diablo! amigo,” he said, testily. “Zose nateev air babee. I have ze men paralyze by ze sun in ze Marqueses. In ze viento, when ze win’ blow, no dan-gair, but when no blow—sacré! ze sun melts ze brain off-off.”
Captain Moet was dramatic. Whatever he said he acted with face, hands and arms, feet, and even his whole body. He made a gesture that caused me to touch my own hat, to consider its resistance to the sun, to feel an anticipation of harm. Suddenly he took the arm of the sailor at the wheel, Piha a Teina, a Tahitian, and, releasing the spokes from his hands, himself began to steer.
“Go there in the lee of the mainsail,” he said in Tahitian, “and tell the American about your terrible adventure when you almost died of thirst!”
“Look at him!” said Moet to me. “He is old before his time. The sun did that.”
Photo from L. Gauthier
The atoll of Niau