The rest of the night we spent in crabbing across the lumpy channel, to come out in the grey dawn upon a windless patch of swell and current-churned water in the lee of Molokai which, of all the fiend-infested corners of the Seven Seas, is the spot most accursed. Steep, viciously-heaving humps of water, wallowing without rhythm or reason, wrangled angrily to see which could pitch or roll the yacht farthest in its own particular direction. She was like a kitten thrown to a pack of hungry hounds. They pulled her, hauled her, rolled her, dragged her, tossed her on high and trampled her underfoot. Not all the other rough-and-rowdy intervals of the whole cruise crowded into a single day could have compared with it for the sheer discomfort it imposed. All but two of the sailors, and the cook as well, were violently seasick. Only a couple of us of the regular guard of Lurline were holding up our heads, and the guests were a unit of prostrate despair. Not a bed or a bunk on the yacht was tenantable in the fearful rollings; no bed or bunk less than a covered box could have been. Everything not screwed or lashed into place—and even many objects which had been thus secured—sought the lowest level, and a survey of the cabin, looking forward from the foot of the companionway, suggested something between a tableau of the aftermath of Belshazzar's Feast and the Kishneff massacres staged in a secondhand store. Banjos, ukuleles, fog-horn, no longer thrilling to the touch of the revellers, complained intermittently with muffled chords of protest as they rolled drunkenly to port and starboard with the lurches of the yacht. And as for the revellers themselves—but the Hand of Charity throws the Helm of Description hard-a-lee and sends me off before the Wind of Pity on another tack.
We have since estimated that this slap-banging ten hours of "devil and the deep sea" in the lee of Molokai did more damage to the yacht's rigging than all of the four months of cruising south of the Line. Most of this became apparent in subsequent overhaulings; at the time the principal trouble arose through the repeated carrying away of the boom-tackle. This happened four times: once through the splitting of the block, a flying fragment of which narrowly missed decapitating the man at the wheel; once through the tearing loose of the cleat on the boom; twice through the breaking of the wire lashing on the boom. How the yacht escaped being racked to pieces in the crazy tug-of-war between the keel, on the one side, trying to hold her to the normal, and on the other the waves, savagely bent on throwing her on her beam's ends or standing her on bowsprit or rudder, has always remained a mystery to us.
At four in the afternoon a light breeze sprang up from the south. We were still somewhat nearer to Honolulu than Lahina, which, with the fact that the wind was fair to the former port and dead ahead to the latter, quickly decided us as to what our course would be. Under all-plain lower sail we made the thirty-two miles to Diamond Head in three hours and a half, only to fail—probably on account of the hour—in our endeavour to attract a pilot. Finally we were forced to lower a boat, which, with some difficulty, got through the reef at Waikiki and landed a man to telephone for a tug. The Waterwitch came out in due time and towed the yacht to her old anchorage in Rotten Row. Our guests, as fast as they revived, went eagerly ashore. Gladys and La Paloma, as we subsequently learned, after nearly going on the rocks of Rabbit Island the same night that Lurline was threatened with similar disaster on Makapu-u Point, continued the race to Lahina, Gladys, as usual, winning.
On the forenoon of the 13th, after a day spent in effecting such renewals and repairs as were absolutely necessary, we again set sail for the island of Hawaii. We left with the intention of proceeding to Kawahaie, on the leeward side of the island, to pick up our friend, Eben Low, who had a ranch in that district, and carry him on to Hilo. A glance at the chart, however, revealed the fact that the course to this point would expose us to possible calms in the lees of Molokai and Maui, and the idea was promptly given up. So we sailed the windward course, and even by that met weather which dragged out to over three days a run which we had hoped to make in a little more than one. At four o'clock in the afternoon of the 16th we were off Hilo harbour, but unable to enter for lack of wind. An anchorage was finally reached at the end of a tow-line kindly passed us by the freighter, Charles Councelman.
We remained in Hilo five days, renewing old acquaintances and allowing the crew opportunity still further to repair the ravages of that night of accursed memory in the lee of Molokai. The bay, with its mile or more of exposure to the north-east—the quarter of the prevailing wind—was as uncomfortable as ever to lie in, the yacht, without sails to steady her, rolling and pitching much of the time more violently than in the open sea. Fortunately there was no heavy weather of the kind that throws up a line of surf across the river entrance and makes it impossible to land in boats for days at a time. Hilo harbour is badly in need of extensive protective works.
Shortly before noon of the 21st of August, Lurline left anchorage in Hilo homeward bound for San Pedro. Close-hauled on the starboard tack to a light northeast wind, we stood out of the harbour, dipping to several steamers and sailing vessels whose crews lined up to give us good-bye cheers as we passed. Outside the wind was coming in weighty gusts, and a rumpled, squally-looking northeast seemed to give the lie to a barometer that was soaring optimistically around 30.05. The instrument had its way, however, for the squalls worked off inland in a couple of hours, leaving us with a steady E.N.E. wind and a brilliant fair-weather sky full of cottony Trade-clouds. At three o'clock, when we took departure with Alia Point bearing S.W. ¾ W., distant six miles, a course of N.N.E. was set, to be held with scarcely a quarter of a point's deviation for four days.
On the 23rd two steamers were sighted heading S.S. W., probably for Honolulu. These were the first ships seen in the open sea since the sails of a bark, hull down on the horizon, were sighted a few days after leaving San Pedro, seven months previously. These three confused blurs against the skyline, all of them too distant to signal, were the nearest approach to company that Lurline knew during the entire cruise. Probably no other circumstance could so strikingly illustrate the utter loneliness of the mid-Pacific. Anywhere south of Hawaii, off the tracks of the two Australian-American steamship lines, the crew of a disabled ship might float for ten years—or ten times ten years—without smoke or sail breaking the smooth line of the horizon.
Early in the morning of the 25th the watch reported a lunar rainbow, and all hands, fore and aft, tumbled out on deck to view the unusual phenomenon. The full moon was shining brightly from a clear sky to the southwest, having sunk to about thirty degrees from the horizon. Up to the northeast a fluffy bank of dove-grey clouds were heaped half-way to the zenith, and against this, an unbroken arch of mother-of-pearl, the rainbow stood clearly forth. From red to violet, all the colours of the spectrum were there just as in a solar rainbow, yet shining with a light elusive and unearthly where the spectral hands that fashioned it had woven a warp of moonshine into the woof of the blended iridesence. Twice it faded and reappeared before dissolving for the last time in the first flush of a sparkling daisy and daffodil sunrise.
For some days after leaving Hilo the wind held steadily from the northeast, forcing us several points to the north of a direct course to San Pedro. Crowded close on the wind all the time, the yacht made slow headway, averaging but little better than 120 miles a day. On the 26th, however, the wind veered to southeast, and on the three days that it remained in that quarter runs of 143, 188 and 176 miles, respectively, were registered. This was followed by a spell of calm, and that by a succession of days of varying, uncertain weather and head-winds, which held all the way to San Pedro. Most of this latter period the wind was moderate and the sea light, as is evidenced by the fact that both fore and main gafftopsails were carried, day and night, from the afternoon of August 24th to the morning of September 4th, ten and a half days.