 CHAPTER VI. A ROYAL SPORT. That is what it is, a royal sport for the natural kings of earth. The grass grows right down to the water at Waikiki Beach, and within fifty feet of the everlasting sea. The trees also grow down to the salty edge of things, and one sits in their shade and looks seaward, at a majestic surf thundering in on the beach to one's very feet. Half a mile out, whereas the reef, the white-headed comers thrust suddenly skyward out of the placid turquoise blue, and come rolling into shore. One after another they come, a mile long, with smoking crests, the white battalions of the infinite army of the sea, and one sits and listens to the perpetual roar and watches the unending procession, and feels tiny and fragile before this tremendous force expressing itself in fury and foam and sound. Indeed, one feels microscopically small, and the thought that one may wrestle with this sea raises in one's imagination a thrill of apprehension almost of fear. Why, they are a mile long those bull-mouthed monsters, and they weigh a thousand tons, and they charge into shore faster than a man can run. What chance! No chance at all is the verdict of the shrinking ego, and one sits and looks and listens, and thinks the grass and the shade are pretty good place in which to be. And suddenly, out there where a big smoker lifts skyward, rising like a sea-god from out of the welter of spume and churning white, on the giddy, toppling, overhanging and downfalling, precarious crest appears the dark head of a man. Swiftly he rises through the rushing white, his black shoulders, his chest, his loins, his limbs, all as abruptly projected on one's vision. Where but the moment before was only the wide desolation and invincible roar is now a man, erect, full-statured, not struggling frantically in that wild movement, not buried and crushed and buffeted by those mighty monsters, but standing above them all, calm and superb, poised on the giddy summit, his feet buried in the churning foam, the salt smoke rising to his knees, and all the rest of him in the free air and flashing sunlight, and he is flying through the air, flying forward, flying fast as the surge on which he stands. He is Mercury, a brown Mercury. His heels are winged and in them is the swiftness of the sea. In truth, from out of the sea, he has leaped upon the back of the sea, and he is riding the sea that roars and bellows and cannot shake him from its back, but no frantic outreaching and balancing is his. He is impassive, motionless as a statue carved suddenly by some miracle out of the sea's depth from which he rose, and straight on toward shore he flies on his winged heels and the white crest of the breaker. There is a wild burst of foam along tumultuous rushing sound as the breaker falls futile and spent on the beach at your feet, and there at your feet steps calmly ashore a canaca burnt golden and brown by the tropical sun. Several minutes ago he was a speck a quarter of a mile away. He has bitted the bull-mouthed breaker and ridden it in, and the pride in the feet shows in the carriage of his magnificent body as he glances for a moment carelessly at you who sit in the shade of the shore. He is a canaca and more he is a man, a member of the kingly species that has mastered matter and the brutes and lorded it over creation. And one sits and thinks of Tristram's last wrestle with the sea on that fatal morning, and one thinks further to the fact that that canaca has done what Tristram never did, and that he knows a joy of the sea that Tristram never knew. And still further one thinks it is all very well sitting here in cool shade of the beach, but you are a man, one of the kingly species, and what that canaca can do, you can do yourself. Go to strip off your clothes that are a nuisance in this mellow climb, get in and wrestle with the sea, wing your heels with the skill and power that reside in you, bit the sea's breakers, master them, and ride upon their backs as a king should. And that is how it came about that I tackled surf-riding. And now that I have tackled it, more than ever do I hold it to be a royal sport. But first let me explain the physics of it. A wave is a communicated agitation. The water that composes the body of a wave does not move. If it did, when a stone is thrown into a pond and the ripples spread away in an ever-widening circle, there would appear at the center an ever-increasing hole. No, the water that composes the body of a wave is stationary. Thus you may watch a particular portion of the ocean's surface, and you will see the same water rise and fall a thousand times to the agitation communicated by a thousand successive waves. Now imagine this communicated agitation moving showward. As the bottom shoals, the lower portion of the wave strikes land first and is stopped. But water is fluid, and the upper portion has not struck anything, wherefore it keeps on communicating its agitation, keeps on going. And when the top of the wave keeps on going, while the bottom of it lags behind, something is bound to happen. The bottom of the wave drops out from under, and the top of the wave falls over, forward and down, curling and cresting and roaring as it does so. It is the bottom of a wave striking against the top of the land that is the cause of all surfs. But the transformation from a smooth undulation to a breaker is not abrupt where the bottom shoals abruptly. Say the bottom shoals gradually, for from a quarter of a mile to a mile, then an equal distance will be occupied by the transformation. Such a bottom is that off the beach of Waikiki, and it produces a splendid surf-riding surf. One leaps upon the back of a breaker just as it begins to break and stays on it as it continues to break all the way into shore. And now to the particular physics of surf-riding. Lie down on a flat board six feet long, two feet wide, and roughly oval in shape. Lie down upon it like a small boy on a coaster and paddle with your hands out to deep water, where the waves begin to crest. Lie out there quietly on the board. Sea after sea breaks before, behind, and under and over you, and rushes into shore, leaving you behind. When a wave crests, it gets steeper. Imagine yourself on your board on the face of that steep slope. If you stood still, you would slide down just as a boy slides down a hill on his coaster. But you object. The wave doesn't stand still. Very true, but the water composing the wave stands still, and there you have the secret. If ever you start sliding down the face of that wave, you'll keep on sliding, and you'll never reach the bottom. Please don't laugh. The face of that wave may be only six feet, yet you can slide down in a quarter of a mile, or half a mile, and not reach the bottom. Four C, since the wave is only a communicated agitation or impetus, and since the water that composes a wave is changing every instant, new water is rising into the wave as fast as the wave travels. You slide down this new water and yet remain in your old position on the wave, sliding down the still newer water that is rising and forming the wave. You slide precisely as fast as the wave travels. If it travels fifteen miles an hour, you slide fifteen miles an hour. Between you and shore stretches a quarter mile of water. As the wave travels, this water obligingly heaps itself into the wave. Gravity does the rest, and down you go, sliding the whole length of it. If you still cherish the notion, while sliding, that the water is moving with you, thrust your arms into it and attempt to paddle. You will find that you have to be remarkably quick to get a stroke. For that water is dropping a stern just as fast as you are rushing ahead. And now for another phase of the physics of surf riding. All rules have their exceptions. It is true that the water in a wave does not travel forward, but there is what may be called the send of the sea. The water in the over toppling crest does move forward as you will speedily realize if you are slapped in the face by it, or if you are caught under it, and are pounded by one mighty blow down under the surface, panting and gasping for a half minute. The water in the top of a wave rests upon the water in the bottom of the wave. But when the bottom of the wave strikes the land, it stops while the top goes on. It no longer has the bottom of the wave to hold it up. Wherewith solid water beneath it is now air, and for the first time it feels the grip of gravity, and down it falls at the same time, being torn asunder from the lagging bottom of the wave and flung forward. And it is because of this that riding a surfboard is something more than a mere placid sliding down a hill. In truth one is caught up and hurled shoreward as by some titan's hand. I deserted the cool shade, putting on a swimming suit, and got hold of a surfboard. It was too small a board, but I didn't know, and nobody told me. I joined some little Kanaka boys in shallow water, where the breakers were well spent and small, a regular kindergarten school. I watched the little Kanaka boys. When a likely looking breaker came along, they flopped upon their stomachs on their boards, kicked like mad with their feet, and rode the breaker into the beach. I tried to emulate them. I watched them, tried to do everything that they did, and failed utterly. The breaker swept past, and I was not on it. I tried again and again. I kicked twice as madly as they did, and failed. Half a dozen would be around. We would all leap on our boards in front of a good breaker, a way our feet would churn like the stern wheels of riverboats, and a way the little rascals would scoot while I remained in disgrace behind. I tried for a solid hour, and not one wave could I persuade to boost me sureward. And then arrived a friend, Alexander Hume Ford, a globetrotter by profession, bent ever on the pursuit of sensation, and he had found it at Waikiki. Heading for Australia, he had stopped off for a week to find out if there were any thrills in surf-riding, and he had become wedded to it. He had been at it every day for a month and could not yet see any symptoms of the fascination lessening on him. He spoke with authority. Get off that board, he said. Check it away at once. Look at the way you're trying to ride it. If ever the nose of that board hits bottom, you'll be disemboweled. Here, take my board. It's a man's size. I am always humble when confronted by knowledge. Ford knew. He showed me how properly to mount his board. Then he waited for a good breaker, gave me a shove at the right moment, and started me again. Ah, a delicious moment when I felt that breaker grip and fling me. On I dashed a hundred and fifty feet and subsided with the breaker on the sand. From that moment I was lost. I waited back to Ford with his board. It was a large one, several inches thick, and weighed all of seventy-five pounds. He gave me advice, much of it. He had had no one to teach him, and all that he had laboriously learned in several weeks he communicated to me in half an hour. I really learned by proxy. And inside of half an hour I was able to start myself and ride in. I did it time after time, and Ford applauded and advised. For instance, he told me to get just so far forward on the board, and no farther. But I must have got some farther, for as I came charging into land, that miserable board poked its nose down to bottom, stopped abruptly, and turned a somersault at the same time violently severing our relations. I was tossed through the air like a chip and buried ignominiously under the downfalling breaker. And I realized that if it hadn't been for Ford I'd have been disemboweled. That particular risk is part of the sport, Ford says. Maybe he'll have it happen to him before he leaves Waikiki, and then I feel confident his yearning for sensation will be satisfied for a time. When all is said and done it is my steadfast belief that homicide is worse than suicide, especially if, in the former case, it is a woman. Ford saved me from being a homicide. Imagine your legs are a rudder, he said. Hold them close together and steer with them. A few minutes later I came charging in on a Comer. As I neared the beach there, in the water, up to her waist, dead in front of me, appeared a woman. How was I to stop that Comer on whose back I was? It looked like a dead woman. The board weighed 75 pounds, I weighed 165. The added weight had a velocity of 15 miles per hour. The board and I constituted a projectile. I leave it to the physicist to figure out the force of the impact upon that poor, tender woman. And then I remembered my guardian angel, Ford. Steer with your legs rang through my brain. I steered with my legs. I steered sharply, abruptly, with all my legs and with all my might. The board sheered around broadside on the crest. Many things happened simultaneously. The wave gave me a passing buffet. A light tap as the taps of waves go, but a tap sufficient to knock me off the board and smash me down through the rushing water to bottom, with which I came in violent collision and upon which I was rolled over and over. I got my head out for a breath of air and then gained my feet. There stood the woman before me. I felt like a hero. I had saved her life, and she laughed at me. It was not hysteria. She'd never dreamed of her danger. Anyway, I solaced myself. It was not I but Ford that saved her, and I didn't have to feel like a hero. And besides, that leg-steering was great. In a few minutes more of practice I was able to thread my way in and out past several bathers and to remain on top of my breaker instead of going under it. Tomorrow, Ford said, I'm going to take you out into the blue water. I looked seaward where he pointed and saw the great smoking comers that made the breakers I had been riding look like ripples. I don't know what I might have said had I not recollected just then that I was one of a kingly species, so all that I did say was, all right, I'll tackle them tomorrow. The water that rolls in on Waikiki Beach is just the same as the water that laves the shores of all the Hawaiian islands. And in ways, especially from the swimmer's standpoint, it is wonderful water. It is cool enough to be comfortable, while it is warm enough to permit a swimmer to stay in all day without experiencing a chill. Under the sun or the stars, at high noon or at midnight, in midwinter or in midsummer, it does not matter when, it is always the same temperature. Not too warm, not too cold, just right. It is wonderful water, salt as old ocean itself, pure and crystal clear. When the nature of the water is considered, it is not so remarkable after all that the Kanakas are one of the most expert of swimming races. So it was next morning when Ford came along that I plunged into the wonderful water for a swim of intermediate length. Astride our surfboards, or rather, flat down upon them on our stomachs, we paddled out through the kindergarten, where the little Kanaka boys were at play. Soon we were out in deep water, where the big smokers came roaring in. The mere struggle with them, facing them, and paddling seaward over them, and through them, was sport enough in itself. One had to have his wits about him, for it was a battle in which mighty blows were struck on one side, and in which cunning was used on the other side, a struggle between insensate force and intelligence. I soon learned a bit. When a breaker curled over my head for a swift instant I could see the light of day through its emerald body. Then down would go my head, and I would clutch the board with all my strength. Then would come the blow, and to the onlooker on shore I would be blotted out. In reality the board and I have passed through the crest and emerged in the respite of the other side. I should not recommend those smashing blows to an invalid or delicate person. There is weight behind them, and the impact of the driven water is like a sand blast. Sometimes one passes through half a dozen comers in quick succession, and it is just about that time that he is liable to discover new merits in the stable land and new reasons for being on shore. Out there in the midst of such a succession of big smoky ones a third man was added to our party, one freeth. Shaking the water from my eyes as I emerged from one wave and peered ahead to see what the next one looked like, I saw him tearing in on the back of it, standing upright on his board, carelessly poised, a young god bronzed with sunburn. We went through the wave on the back of which he rode. Ford called to him, he turned an air spring from his wave, rescued his board from its maw, paddled over to us, and joined Ford in showing me things. One thing in particular I learned from freeth, namely how to encounter the occasional breaker of exceptional size that rolled in. Such breakers were really ferocious, and it was unsafe to meet them on top of the board. But freeth showed me so that whenever I saw one of that caliber rolling down on me I slid off the rear end of the board and dropped down beneath the surface, my arms over my head, and holding the board. Thus if the wave ripped the board out of my hands and tried to strike me with it, a common trick of such waves, there would be a cushion of water a foot or more in depth between my head and the blow. When the wave passed I climbed upon the board and paddled on. Many men have been terribly injured, I learned, by being struck by their boards. The whole method of surf riding and surf fighting learned is one of non-resistance. Dodge the blow that is struck at you. Dive through the wave that is trying to slap you in the face. Sink down, feet first, deep under the surface, and let the big smoker that is trying to smash you go by far overhead. Never be rigid. Relax. Yield yourself to the waters that are ripping and tearing at you. When the undertow catches you and drags you seaward along the bottom don't struggle against it. If you do you are liable to be drowned for it is stronger than you. Yield yourself to that undertow. Swim with it, not against it, and you will find the pressure removed. And swimming with it, fooling it so that it does not hold you, swim upward at the same time. It will be no trouble at all to reach the surface. The man who wants to learn surf riding must be a strong swimmer and he must be used to going under the water. After that, fair strength and common sense are all that is required. The force of the big Comer is rather unexpected. There are mixups in which board and rider are torn apart and separated by several hundred feet. The surf rider must take care of himself. No matter how many riders swim out with him, he cannot depend upon any of them for aid. The fancied security I had in the presence of Ford and Freeth made me forget that it was my first swim out in deep water among the big ones. I recollected, however, and rather suddenly, for a big wave came in, and a way went the two men on its back all the way to shore. I could have been drowned a dozen different ways before they got back to me. One slides down the face of a breaker on his surfboard, but he has to get started to sliding. Board and rider must be moved shoreward at a good rate before the wave overtakes them. When you see the wave coming that you want to ride in, you turn tail to it and paddle shoreward with all your strength using what is called the windmill stroke. This is a sort of spurt performed immediately in front of the wave. If the board is going fast enough, the wave accelerates it, and the board begins its quarter of a mile slide. I shall never forget the first big wave I caught out there in the deep water. I saw it coming, turned my back on it, and paddled for dear life. Faster and faster my board went till it seemed my arms would drop off. What was happening behind me I could not tell. One cannot look behind and paddle the windmill stroke. I heard the crest of the wave hissing and churning, and then my board was lifted and flung forward. I scarcely knew what happened the first half minute. Though I kept my eyes open I could not see anything, for I was buried in the rushing white of the crest. But I did not mind. I was chiefly conscious of ecstatic bliss at having caught the wave. At the end of the half minute, however, I began to see things and to breathe. I saw that three feet of the nose of my board was clear out of the water and riding on the air. I shifted my weight forward and made the nose come down. Then I lay quite at rest in the midst of the wild movement, and watched the shore and the bathers on the beach grow distinct. I didn't cover quite a quarter of a mile on that wave because to prevent the board from diving I shifted my weight back but shifted it too far and fell down the rear slope of the wave. It was my second day at surf riding and I was quite proud of myself. I stayed out there four hours and when it was over I was resolved that on the morrow I'd come in standing up. But that resolution paved a distant place. On the morrow I was in bed. I was not sick, but I was very unhappy and I was in bed. When describing the wonderful water of Hawaii I forgot to describe the wonderful sun of Hawaii. It is a tropic sun, and furthermore in the first part of June it is an overhead sun. It is also an insidious deceitful sun. For the first time in my life I was sunburned unawares. My arms, shoulders, and back had been burned many times in the past and were tough, but not so my legs, and for four hours I had exposed the tender backs of my legs at right angles to that perpendicular Hawaiian sun. It was not until after I got ashore that I discovered the sun had touched me. Sunburn at first is merely warm. After that it grows intense and the blisters come out. Also the joints where the skin wrinkles refuse to bend. That is why I spent the next day in bed. I couldn't walk. And that is why today I am riding this in bed. It is easier too than not to. But tomorrow, ah, tomorrow I shall be out in that wonderful water and I shall come in standing up, even as ford and freeth. And if I fail tomorrow I shall do it the next day or the next. Upon one thing I am resolved. The snark shall not sail from Honolulu until I too wing my heels with the swiftness of the sea and become a sunburned skin-peeling mercury. End of Chapter 6, recorded by Brian Ness Chapter 7 of The Cruise of the Snark This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Brian Ness The Cruise of the Snark by Jack London Chapter 7 The Leppers of Molokai When the snark sailed along the windward coast of Molokai on her way to Honolulu, I looked at the chart, then pointed to a low-lying peninsula backed by a tremendous cliff, varying from two to four thousand feet in height, and said, The Pit of Hell, the most cursed place on earth. I should have been shocked if at that moment I could have caught a vision of myself a month later, a shore in the most cursed place on earth, and having a disgracefully good time along with eight hundred of the lepers who were likewise having a good time. Their good time was not disgraceful, but mine was, for in the midst of so much misery it was not meat for me to have a good time. That is the way I felt about it, and my only excuse is that I couldn't help having a good time. For instance, in the afternoon of the fourth of July, all the lepers gathered at the racetrack for the sports. I had wandered away from the superintendent and the physicians in order to get a snapshot of the finish of one of the races. It was an interesting race, and partisanship ran high. Three horses were entered, one ridden by a Chinese, one by a Hawaiian, and one by a Portuguese boy. All three riders were lepers, so were the judges and the crowd. The race was twice around the track. The Chinese and Hawaiian got away together and rode neck and neck, the Portuguese boy toiling along two hundred feet behind. Around they went in the same positions. Halfway around on the second and final lap the Chinese pulled away and got one length ahead of the Hawaiian. At the same time the Portuguese boy was beginning to crawl up. But it looked hopeless. The crowd went wild. All the lepers were passionate lovers of horse flesh. The Portuguese boy crawled nearer and nearer. I went wild too. They were on the home stretch. The Portuguese boy passed the Hawaiian. There was a thunder of hoofs, a rush of three horses bunched together, the jockeys plying their whips, and every last onlooker bursting his throat, or hers, with shouts and yells. Nearer, nearer, inch by inch the Portuguese boy crept up and passed, yes, passed, winning by a head from the Chinese. I came to myself in a group of lepers. They were yelling, tossing their hats, and dancing around like fiends. So was I. When I came too I was waving my hat and murmuring ecstatically, Pai golly, the boy wins, the boy wins. I tried to check myself. I assured myself that I was witnessing one of the horrors of Molokai, and that it was shameful for me under such circumstances to be so lighthearted and lightheaded. But it was no use. The next event was a donkey race, and it was just starting. So was the fun. The last donkey in was to win the race, and what complicated the affair was that no rider rode his own donkey. They rode one another's donkeys, the result of which was that each man strove to make the donkey he rode beat his own donkey ridden by someone else. Naturally, only men possessing very slow or extremely obstreperous donkeys had entered them for the race. One donkey had been trained to tuck in its legs and lie down whenever its rider touched its sides with his heels. Some donkeys strove to turn around and come back. Others developed a penchant for the side of the track, where they stuck their heads over the railing and stopped, while all of them dawdled. Halfway around the track one donkey got into an argument with its rider. When all the rest of the donkeys had crossed the wire that particular donkey was still arguing. He won the race, though his rider lost it and came in on foot, and all the while nearly a thousand lepers were laughing uproariously at the fun. Anybody in my place would have joined with them in having a good time. All the foregoing is by way of preamble to the statement that the horrors of Molokai, as they have been painted in the past, do not exist. The settlement has been written up repeatedly by sensationalists and usually by sensationalists who have never laid eyes on it. Of course, leprosy is leprosy, and it is a terrible thing, but so much that as Lurid has been written about Molokai that neither the lepers, nor those who devote their lives to them, have received a fair deal. Here is a case in point. A newspaper writer, who, of course, had never been near the settlement, vividly described Superintendent McVeigh, crouching in a grass hut and being besieged nightly by starving lepers on their knees whaling for food. This hair-raising account was copied by the press all over the United States and was the cause of many indignant and protesting editorials. Well, I lived and slept for five days in Mr. McVeigh's grass hut, which was a comfortable wooden cottage, by the way, and there isn't a grass house in the whole settlement, and I heard the lepers whaling for food. Only the whaling was peculiarly harmonious and rhythmic, and it was accompanied by the music of stringed instruments, violins, guitars, ukuleles, and banjos. Also the whaling was of various sorts. The leper brass band whaled, and two singing societies whaled, and lastly a quintet of excellent voices whaled, so much for a lie that should never have been printed. The whaling was the serenade which the glee clubs always give Mr. McVeigh when he returns from a trip to Honolulu. Leprosy is not so contagious as is imagined. I went for a week's visit to the settlement, and I took my wife along, all of which would not have happened had we had any apprehension of contracting the disease, nor did we wear long gauntleted gloves and keep apart from the lepers. On the contrary, we mingled freely with them, and before we left, new scores of them by sight and name. The precautions of simple cleanliness seem to be all that is necessary. On returning to their own houses after having been among and handling lepers, the non-lepers such as the physicians and the superintendent merely wash their faces and hands with mildly antiseptic soap and change their coats. That a leper is unclean, however, should be insisted upon, and the segregation of lepers from what little is known of the disease should be rigidly maintained. On the other hand, the awful horror with which the leper has been regarded in the past, and the frightful treatment he has received, have been unnecessary and cruel. In order to dispel some of the popular misapprehensions of lepersy, I want to tell something of the relations between the lepers and non-lepers as I observe them at Molokai. On the morning after our arrival, Charmin and I attended a shoot of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, and caught our first glimpse of the democracy of affliction and alleviation that obtains. The club was just beginning a prize shoot for a cup put up by Mr. McVeigh, who is also a member of the club, as also our Dr. Goodhew and Dr. Holman, the resident physicians who, by the way, live in the settlement with their wives. All about us in the shooting booth were the lepers. Lepers and non-lepers were using the same guns, and all were rubbing shoulders in the confined space. The majority of the lepers were Hawaiians. Sitting beside me on a bench was a Norwegian. Directly in front of me, in the stand, was an American, a veteran of the Civil War, who had fought on the Confederate side. He was sixty-five years of age, but that did not prevent him from running up a good score. Strapping Hawaiian policemen, lepers, khaki clad, were also shooting, as were Portuguese, Chinese, and Cocuas. The latter are native helpers in the settlement, who are non-lepers. And on the afternoon that Charmy and I climbed the two thousand foot poly and looked our last upon the settlement, the superintendent, the doctors, and the mixture of nationalities of disease and non-disease were all engaged in an exciting baseball game. Not so was the leper and his greatly misunderstood and feared disease treated during the Middle Ages in Europe. At that time the leper was considered legally and politically dead. He was placed in a funeral procession and led to the church, where the burial service was read over him by the officiating clergyman. Then a spadeful of earth was dropped upon his chest, and he was dead living dead. While this rigorous treatment was largely unnecessary, nevertheless one thing was learned by it. Leprosy was unknown in Europe until it was introduced by the returning crusaders, whereupon it spread slowly until it had seized upon large numbers of the people. Obviously it was a disease that could be contracted by contact. It was a contagion, and it was equally obvious that it could be eradicated by segregation. Terrible and monstrous, as was the treatment of the leper in those days, the great lesson of segregation was learned. By its means, leprosy was stamped out. And by the same means leprosy is even now decreasing in the Hawaiian islands. But the segregation of the lepers on Molokai is not the horrible nightmare that has been so often exploited by yellow riders. In the first place the leper is not torn ruthlessly from his family. When a suspect is discovered he is invited by the Board of Health to come to the Kalihi receiving station at Honolulu. His fare and all expenses are paid for him. He is first passed upon by a microscopical examination by the bacteriologist of the Board of Health. If the bacillus lepre is found, the patient is examined by the Board of Examining Physicians, five in number. If found by them to be a leper, he is so declared, which finding is later officially confirmed by the Board of Health, and the leper is ordered straight to Molokai. Furthermore, during the thorough trial that is given his case, the patient has the right to be represented by a physician whom he can select and employ for himself. Nor, after having been declared a leper, is the patient immediately rushed off to Molokai. He is given ample time, weeks, and even months sometimes, during which he stays at Kalihi and winds up or arranges all his business affairs. At Molokai, in turn, he may be visited by his relatives, business agents, etc., though they are not permitted to eat and sleep in his house. Visitors' houses, kept clean, are maintained for this purpose. I saw an illustration of the thorough trial given the suspect when I visited Kalihi with Mr. Pinkham, President of the Board of Health. The suspect was in Hawaiian, seventy years of age, who for thirty-four years had worked in Honolulu as a pressman in a printing office. The bacteriologist had decided that he was a leper. The examining board had been unable to make up its mind, and that day all had come out to Kalihi to make another examination. When at Molokai the declared leper has the privilege of re-examination and patients are continually coming back to Honolulu for that purpose. The steamer that took me to Molokai had on board two returning lepers, both young women, one of whom had come to Honolulu to settle up some property she owned, and the other had come to Honolulu to see her sick mother. Both had remained at Kalihi for a month. The settlement of Molokai enjoys a far more delightful climate than even Honolulu, being situated on the windward side of the island in the path of the fresh northeast trades. The scenery is magnificent. On one side is the blue sea. On the other the wonderful wall of the poly, receding here and there into beautiful mountain valleys. Everywhere are grassy pastures over which roam the hundreds of horses which are owned by the lepers. Some of them have their own carts, rigs, and traps. In the little harbor of Kalaupapa lie fishing boats and a steam launch, all of which are privately owned and operated by lepers. Their bounds upon the sea are, of course, determined, otherwise no restriction is put upon their seafaring. Their fish they sell to the Board of Health and the money they receive is their own. While I was there, one night's catch was four thousand pounds. And as these men fish, others farm. All trades are followed. One leper, a pure Hawaiian, is the boss painter. He employs eight men and takes contracts for painting buildings from the Board of Health. He is a member of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, where I met him and I must confess that he was far better dressed than I. Another man, similarly situated, is the boss carpenter. Then, in addition to the Board of Health store, there are little privately owned stores where those with shopkeepers' souls may exercise their peculiar instincts. The assistant superintendent, Mr. Waimau, a finely educated and able man, is a pure Hawaiian and a leper. Mr. Bartlett, who is the present storekeeper, is an American who was in business in Honolulu before he was struck down by the disease. All that these men earn is that much more in their own pockets. If they do not work, they are taken care of anyway by the territory, given food, shelter, clothes, and medical attendance. The Board of Health carries on agriculture, stock-raising, and dairying for local use, and employment at fair wages is furnished to all that wish to work. They are not compelled to work, however, for they are the wards of the territory. For the young, and the very old, and the helpless, there are homes and hospitals. Major Lee, an American and long marine engineer for the Interisland Steamship Company, I met actively at work in the new steam laundry where he was busy installing the machinery. I met him often, afterwards, and one day he said to me, Give us a good breeze about how we live here, for heaven's sake, write us up straight. Put your foot down on this chamber of horror's rot and all the rest of it. We don't like being misrepresented. We've got some feelings. Just tell the world how we really are in here. Man after man that I met in the settlement, and woman after woman in one way or another expressed the same sentiment. It was patent that they resented bitterly the sensational and untruthful way in which they have been exploited in the past. In spite of the fact that they are afflicted by disease, the lepers form a happy colony, divided into two villages and numerous country and seaside homes of nearly a thousand souls. They have six churches, a young men's Christian Association building, several assembly halls, a bandstand, a racetrack, baseball grounds, shooting ranges, an athletic club, numerous glee clubs, and two brass bands. They're so contented down there, Mr. Pinkham told me, that you can't drive them away with a shotgun. This I later verified for myself. In January of this year, eleven of the lepers on whom the disease after having committed certain ravages showed no further signs of activity were brought back to Honolulu for re-examination. They were loathed to come, and on being asked whether or not they wanted to go free, if found clean of leprosy one and all answered back to Molokai. In the old days, before the discovery of the leprosy bacillus, a small number of men and women suffering from various and wholly different diseases, rejudged lepers and sent to Molokai. Years afterward they suffered great consternation when the bacteriologists declared that they were not afflicted with leprosy and never had been. They fought against being sent away from Molokai, and in one way or another as helpers and nurses they got jobs from the Board of Health and remained. The present jailer, as one of these men, declared to be a non-leper he accepted on salary the charge of the jail in order to escape being sent away. At the present moment in Honolulu there is a boot-black. He is an American Negro. Mr. McVeigh told me about him. Long ago, before the bacteriological test, he was sent to Molokai as a leper. As a ward of the state he developed a superlative degree of independence and fomented much petty mischief. And then one day after having been for years a perennial source of minor annoyances the bacteriological test was applied and he was declared a non-leper. Aha! cordled Mr. McVeigh. Now I've got you. Out you go on the next steamer and good riddance. But the Negro didn't want to go. Immediately he married an old woman in the last stages of leprosy and began petitioning the Board of Health for permission to remain and nurse his sick wife. There was no one, he said, pathetically, who could take care of his poor wife as well as he could, but they saw through his game and he was deported on the steamer and given the freedom of the world. But he preferred Molokai. Landing on the leeward side of Molokai he sneaked down the poly one night and took up his abode in the settlement. He was apprehended, tried, and convicted of trespass, sentenced to pay a small fine, and again deported on the steamer with the warning that if he trespassed again he would be fined $100 and be sent to prison in Honolulu. And now when Mr. McVeigh comes up to Honolulu the boot-black shines his shoes for him and says, Say, boss, I lost a good home down there. Yes, sir, I lost a good home. Then his voice syncs to a confidential whisper as he says, Say, boss, can't I go back? Can't you fix it for me so I can go back? He had lived nine years on Molokai and he had had a better time there than he has ever had, before and after, on the outside. As regards the fear of leprosy itself, nowhere in the settlement among lepers or non-lepers did I see any sign of it. The chief horror of leprosy obtains in the minds of those who have never seen a leper and who do not know anything about the disease. At the hotel at Waikiki a lady expressed shuttering amazement at my having the hardy-hood to pay a visit to the settlement. On talking with her I learned that she had been born in Honolulu, had lived there all her life, and had never laid eyes on a leper. That was more than I could say of myself in the United States, where the segregation of lepers is loosely enforced, and where I have repeatedly seen lepers on the streets of large cities. Leprosy is terrible, there is no getting away from that, but what little I know of the disease and its degree of contagiousness I would by far prefer to spend the rest of my days in Molokai than in any tuberculosis sanitarium. In every city and county hospital for poor people in the United States or in similar institutions in other countries, sites as terrible as those in Molokai can be witnessed, and the sum total of these sites is vastly more terrible. For that matter if it were given me to choose between being compelled to live in Molokai for the rest of my life, or in the east end of London, the east side of New York, or the stockyards of Chicago, I would select Molokai without debate. I would prefer one year of life in Molokai to five years of life in the above mentioned cesspools of human degradation and misery. In Molokai the people are happy. I shall never forget the celebration of the Fourth of July I witnessed there. At six o'clock in the morning the horribles were out, dressed fantastically, astride horses, mules, and donkeys, their own property, and cutting capers all over the settlement. Two brass bands were out as well. Then there were the pa'u riders, thirty or forty of them, Hawaiian women, all superb horsewomen, dressed gorgeously in the old Native riding costume, and dashing about in twos and threes and groups. In the afternoon Charmian and I stood in the judge's stand and awarded the prizes for horsemanship and costume to the pa'u riders. All about were the hundreds of lepers, with wreaths of flowers on heads and necks and shoulders, looking on and making merry. And always over the brows of hills and across the grassy level stretches appearing and disappearing were the groups of men and women, gaily dressed on galloping horses, horses and riders, flower bedect and flower garlanded, singing and laughing and riding like the wind. And as I stood in the judge's stand and looked at all this there came to my recollection the Lazar House of Havana, where I had once beheld some two hundred lepers, prisoners inside four restricted walls until they died. No, there are a few thousand places I wot of in this world over which I would select Molokai as a place of permanent residence. In the evening we went to one of the leper assembly halls where, before a crowded audience, the singing society is contested for prizes, and where the night wound up with a dance. I have seen the Hawaiians living in the slums of Honolulu, and having seen them, I can readily understand why the lepers, brought up from the settlement for reexamination, shouted one and all back to Molokai. One thing is certain, the leper in the settlement is far better off than the leper who lies in hiding outside. Such a leper is a lonely outcast living in constant fear of discovery and slowly and surely rotting away. The action of leprosy is not steady. It lays hold of its victim, commits a ravage, and then lies dormant for an indeterminate period. It may not commit another ravage for five years, or ten years, or forty years, and the patient may enjoy uninterrupted good health. Rarely, however, do these first ravages cease of themselves. The skilled surgeon is required, and the skilled surgeon cannot be called in for the leper who is in hiding. For instance, the first ravage may take the form of a perforating ulcer in the sole of the foot. When the bone is reached, necrosis sets in. If the leper is in hiding, he cannot be operated upon. The necrosis will continue to eat its way up the bone of the leg, and in a brief and horrible time that leper will die of gangrene or some other terrible complication. On the other hand, if that same leper is in Molokai, the surgeon will operate upon the foot, remove the ulcer, cleanse the bone, and put a complete stop to that particular ravage of the disease. A month after the operation, the leper will be out riding horseback, running foot races, swimming in the breakers, or climbing the giddy sides of the valleys for mountain apples. And as has been stated before, the disease, lying dormant, may not again attack him for five, ten, or forty years. The old horrors of leprosy go back to the conditions that obtained before the days of antiseptic surgery, and before the time when physicians like Dr. Goodhew and Dr. Holman went to live at the settlement. Dr. Goodhew is the pioneer surgeon there, and too much praise cannot be given him for the noble work he has done. I spent one morning in the operating room with him, and of the three operations he performed, two were on men, newcomers, who had arrived on the same steamer with me. In each case the disease had attacked in one spot only. One had a perforating ulcer in the ankle, well advanced, and the other man was suffering from a similar affliction, well advanced, under his arm. Both cases were well advanced because the man had been on the outside and had not been treated. In each case Dr. Goodhew put an immediate and complete stop to the ravage, and in four weeks those two men will be as well and able bodied as they ever were in their lives. The only difference between them and you or me is that the disease is lying dormant in their bodies, and it may at any future time commit another ravage. Leprosy is as old as history. References to it are found in the earliest written records, and yet today practically nothing more is known about it than was known then. This much was known then, namely that it was contagious and that those afflicted by it should be segregated. The difference between then and now is that today the leper is more rigidly segregated and more humanely treated. But leprosy itself still remains the same awful and profound mystery. A reading of the reports of the physicians and specialists of all countries reveals the baffling nature of the disease. These leprosy specialists are unanimous on no one phase of the disease. They do not know. In the past they rationally and dogmatically generalized. They generalize no longer. The one possible generalization that can be drawn from all the investigation that has been made is that leprosy is feebly contagious. But in what manner it is feebly contagious is not known. They have isolated the bacillus of leprosy. They can determine by bacteriological examination whether or not a person is a leper. But they are as far away as ever from knowing how that bacillus finds its entrance into the body of a non-leper. They do not know the length of time of incubation. They have tried to inoculate all sorts of animals with leprosy and have failed. They are baffled in the discovery of a serum wherewith to fight the disease. And in all their work as yet they have found no clue, no cure. Sometimes there have been blazes of hope, theories of causation, and much heralded cures, but every time the darkness of failure quenched the flame. A doctor insists that the causes of leprosy is a long-continued fish-diet, and he proves his theory voluminously. Till a physician from the Highlands of India demands why the natives of that district should therefore be afflicted by leprosy when they have never eaten fish, nor all the generations of their fathers before them. A man treats a leper with a certain kind of oil or drug, announces a cure, and five, ten, or forty years afterwards the disease breaks out again. It is this trick of leprosy lying dormant in the body for indeterminate periods that is responsible for many alleged cures, but this much is certain. As yet, there has been no authentic case of a cure. Leprosy is feebly contagious, but how is it contagious? An Austrian physician has inoculated himself and his assistance with leprosy and failed to catch it, but this is not conclusive, for there is the famous case of the Hawaiian murderer who had his sentence of death commuted to life imprisonment on his agreeing to be inoculated with the basilis leprae. Sometime after inoculation leprosy made its appearance, and the man died a leper on Molokai. Nor was this conclusive, for it was discovered that at the time he was inoculated several members of his family were already suffering from the disease on Molokai. He may have contracted the disease from them, and it may have been well along in its mysterious period of incubation at the time he was officially inoculated. Then there is the case of that hero of the church, Father Damien, who went to Molokai a clean man and died a leper. There have been many theories as to how he contracted leprosy, but nobody knows. He never knew himself. But every chance that he ran has certainly been run by a woman at present living in the settlement, who has lived there many years, who has had five leper husbands and had children by them, and who is today, as she always has been, free of the disease. As yet no light has been shed upon the mystery of leprosy. When more is learned about the disease, a cure for it may be expected. Once an efficacious serum is discovered, and leprosy, because it is so feebly contagious, will pass away swiftly from the earth. The battle waged with it will be short and sharp. In the meantime, how to discover that serum or some other unguessed weapon? In the present it is a serious matter. It is estimated that there are half a million lepers not segregated in India alone. Carnegie Libraries, Rockefeller, Universities, and many similar benefactions are all very well, but one cannot help thinking how far a few thousands of dollars would go, say, in the leper settlement of Molokai. The residents there are accidents of fate, scapegoats to some mysterious natural law of which man knows nothing, isolated for the welfare of their fellows who else might catch the dread disease, even as they have caught it, nobody knows how. Not for their sakes merely, but for the sake of future generations, a few thousands of dollars would go far in a legitimate and scientific search after a cure for leprosy, for a serum or for some undreamed discovery that will enable the medical world to exterminate the bacillus leprosy. There's the place for your money, you philanthropists. End of Chapter 7. Recorded by Brian Ness. Chapter 8. OF THE CRUES OF THE SNARK. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Brian Ness. THE CRUES OF THE SNARK by Jack London. Chapter 8. THE HOUSE OF THE SUN. There are hosts of people who journey like restless spirits round and about this earth in search of seascapes and landscapes and the wonders and beauties of nature. They overrun Europe in armies, they can be met in droves and herds in Florida and the West Indies, at the pyramids and on the slopes and summits of the Canadian and American Rockies, but in the house of the sun they are as rare as live and wriggling dinosaurs. Haleakala is the Hawaiian name for the house of the sun. It is a noble dwelling situated on the island of Maui, but so few tourists have ever peeped into it, much less entered it, that their number may be practically reckoned as zero. Yet I venture to state that for natural beauty and wonder the nature lover may see dissimilar things as great as Haleakala, but no greater, while he will never see elsewhere anything more beautiful or wonderful. Honolulu is six days steaming from San Francisco. Maui is a night's run on the steamer from Honolulu, and six hours more, if he is in a hurry, can bring the traveller to Kolekoli, which is 10,032 feet above the sea and which stands hard by the entrance portal to the house of the sun. Yet the tourist comes not, and Haleakala sleeps on in lonely and unseen grandeur. Not being tourists, we of the snark went to Haleakala. On the slopes of that monster mountain there is a cattle ranch of some 50,000 acres where we spent the night at an altitude of 2,000 feet. The next morning it was boot and saddles, and with cowboys and pack horses we climbed to Yucaleli, a mountain ranch house, the altitude of which 5,500 feet, gives a severely temperate climate, compelling blankets at night and a roaring fireplace in the living room. Yucaleli, by the way, is the Hawaiian for a jumping flea as it is also the Hawaiian for a certain musical instrument that may be likened to a young guitar. It is my opinion that the mountain ranch house was named after the young guitar. We were not in a hurry and we spent the day at Yucaleli, learnedly discussing altitudes and barometers and shaking our particular barometer whenever anyone's argument stood in need of demonstration. Our barometer was the most graciously acquiescent instrument I have ever seen. Also we gathered mountain raspberries, large as hen's eggs, and larger, gazed up the pasture-covered lava slopes to the summit of Haleakala, 4,500 feet above us, and looked down upon a mighty battle of the clouds that was being fought beneath us, ourselves in the bright sunshine. Every day and every day this unending battle goes on. Ukiyukiu is the name of the trade wind that comes raging down out of the northeast and hurls itself upon Haleakala. Now Haleakala is so bulky and tall that it turns the northeast trade wind aside on either hand so that in the lee of Haleakala no trade wind blows at all. On the contrary the wind blows in the counter-direction in the teeth of the northeast trade. This wind is called Naulu, and day and night and always Ukiyukiu and Naulu strive with each other, advancing, retreating, flanking, curving, curling, and turning and twisting the conflict made visible by the cloud masses plucked from the heavens and hurled back and forth in squadrons, battalions, armies, and great mountain ranges. Once in a while Ukiyukiu in mighty gusts flings immense cloud masses clear over the summit of Haleakala, whereupon Naulu craftily captures them, lines them up in new battle formation, and with them smites back at his ancient and eternal antagonist. Then Ukiyukiu sends a great cloud army around the eastern side of the mountain. It is a flanking movement well executed, but Naulu from his lair on the leeward side gathers the flanking army in, pulling and twisting and dragging it, hammering it into shape, and sends it charging back against Ukiyukiu around the western side of the mountain. And all the while, above and below the main battlefield, high up the slopes toward the sea, Ukiyukiu and Naulu are continually sending out little wisps of cloud in ragged skirmish line that creep and crawl over the ground, among the trees and through the canyons, and that spring upon and capture one another in sudden ambiscodes and sorties. And sometimes Ukiyukiu or Naulu abruptly sending out a heavy charging column, captures the ragged little skirmishers or drives them skyward, turning over and over in vertical worlds thousands of feet in the air. But it is on the western slopes of Haleakala that the main battle goes on. Here Naulu masses his heaviest formations and wins his greatest victories. Ukiyukiu grows weak toward late afternoon, which is the way of all trade wins, and is driven backward by Naulu. Naulu's general ship is excellent. All day he has been gathering and packing away immense reserves. As the afternoon draws on, he welds them into a solid column, sharp pointed, miles in length, a mile in width, and hundreds of feet thick. This column he slowly thrusts forward into the broad battlefront of Ukiyukiu, and slowly and surely Ukiyukiu weakening fast is split as thunder. But it is not all bloodless. At times Ukiyukiu struggles wildly and with fresh accession of strength from the limitless northeast, smashes away half a mile at a time of Naulu's column, and sweeps it off and away toward West Maui. Sometimes when the two charging armies meet and on, a tremendous perpendicular whirl results. The cloud masses lock together, mounting thousands of feet into the air, and turning over and over. A favorite device of Ukiyukiu is to send a low squat formation densely packed forward along the ground and under Naulu. When Ukiyukiu is under, he proceeds to buck. Naulu's mighty middle gives to the blow and bends upward, but usually he turns the attacking column back upon itself and sets it milling. And all the while the ragged little skirmishers, stray and detached, sneak through the trees and canyons, crawl along and through the grass, and surprise one another with unexpected leaps and rushes. While above, far above, serene and lonely in the rays of the setting sun, Haleakala looks down upon the conflict, and so the night. But in the morning after the fashion of trade wins, Ukiyukiu gathers strength and sends the hosts of Naulu rolling back in confusion and rout, and one day is like another day in the battle of the clouds where Ukiyukiu and Naulu strive eternally on the slopes of Haleakala. Again in the morning, it was boots and saddles, cowboys and pack horses, and the climb to the top began. One pack horse carried twenty gallons of water, slung in five-gallon bags on either side, for water is precious and rare in the crater itself, in spite of the fact that several miles to the north and east of the crater rim, more rain comes down than in any other place in the world. The way led upward across countless lava flows without regard for trails and never have I seen horses with such perfect footing as that of the thirteen that composed our outfit. They climbed or dropped down perpendicular places with the sureness and coolness of mountain goats, and never a horse fell or balked. There is a familiar and strange illusion experienced by all who climb isolated mountains. The higher one climbs, the more of the earth's surface becomes visible, and the effect of this is that the horizon seems uphill from the observer. This illusion is especially notable on Haleakala for the old volcano rises directly from the sea without buttresses or connecting ranges. In consequence, as fast as we climbed up the grim slope of Haleakala, still faster did Haleakala, ourselves and all about us, sink down into the center of what appeared a profound abyss. Everywhere, far above us, towered the horizon. The ocean sloped down from the horizon to us. The higher we climbed, the deeper did we seem to sink down. The farther above us, shown the horizon, and the steeper pitched the grade up to that horizontal line where sky and ocean met. It was weird and unreal and vagrant thoughts of sim's hole and of the volcano through which Jules Verne journeyed to the center of the earth, flitted through one's mind. And then, when at last we reached the summit of that monster mountain which summit was like the bottom of an inverted cone situated in the center of an awful cosmic pit, we found that we were at neither top nor bottom. Far above us was the heaven-towering horizon, and far beneath us, where the top of the mountain should have been, was a deeper deep, the great crater, the house of the sun. Twenty-three miles around stretched the dizzy wells of the crater. We stood on the edge of the nearly vertical western wall, and the floor of the crater lay nearly half a mile beneath. This floor, broken by lava flows and cinder cones, was as red and fresh and uneroded as if it were but yesterday that the fires went out. The cinder cones, the smallest over four hundred feet in height, and the largest over nine hundred, seemed no more than puny little sand hills, so mighty was the magnitude of the setting. Two gaps, thousands of feet deep, broke the rim of the crater, and through these, Uki-Uki-U, vainly strove to drive his fleecy herds of trade wind clouds. As fast as they advanced through the gaps, the heat of the crater dissipated them into thin air, and though they advanced always they got nowhere. It was a scene of vast bleakness and desolation, stern, forbidding, fascinating. We gazed down upon a place of fire and earthquake. The tie-ribs of the earth lay bare before us. It was a workshop of nature still cluttered with the raw beginnings of world-making. Here and there great dykes of primordial rock had thrust themselves up from the bowels of the earth, straight through the molten surface ferment that had evidently cooled only the other day. It was all unreal and unbelievable. Looking upward, far above us, in reality beneath us, floated the cloud battle of Uki-Uki-U and Na'ulu, and higher up the slope of the seeming abyss, above the cloud battle in the air and sky, hung the islands of Lanai and Molokai. Across the crater to the southeast, still apparently looking upward, we saw ascending first the turquoise sea, then the white surfline of the shore of Hawaii. Above that the belt of trade clouds, and next eighty miles away, rearing their stupendous hulks out of the azure sky, tipped with snow, wreathed with cloud, trembling like a mirage, the peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa hung poised on the wall of heaven. It is told that long ago one Maui, the son of Hina, lived on what is now known as West Maui. His mother, Hina, employed her time in the making of kapas. She must have made them at night for her days were occupied in trying to dry the kapas. Each morning and all morning she toiled at spreading them out in the sun, but no sooner were they out than she began taking them in in order to have them all under shelter for the night, for know that the days were shorter than the now. Maui watched his mother's futile toil and felt sorry for her. He decided to do something. Oh no, not to help her hang out and take in her kapas. He was too clever for that. His idea was to make the sun go slower. Perhaps he was the first Hawaiian astronomer. At any rate, he took a series of observations of the sun from various parts of the island. His conclusion was that the sun's path was directly across Haleakala. Unlike Joshua, he stood in no need of divine assistance. He gathered a huge quantity of coconuts from the fiber of which he braided a stout cord, and in one end of which he made a noose, even as the cowboys of Haleakala due to this day. Next he climbed into the house of the sun and laid in wait. When the sun came tearing along the path, bent on completing its journey in the shortest time possible, the valiant youth threw his lariat around one of the sun's largest and strongest beams. He made the sun slow down some, also he broke the beam short off, and he kept on roping and breaking off beams till the sun said it was willing to listen to reason. Maui set forth his terms of peace, which the sun accepted, agreeing to go more slowly thereafter. Wherefore, he and I had ample time in which to dry her coppas, and the days are longer than they used to be, which last is quite in accord with the teachings of modern astronomy. We had a lunch of jerked beef and hard poi in a stone corral used of old time for the night impounding of cattle being driven across the island. Then we skirted the rim for half a mile and began the descent into the crater. Twenty-five hundred feet beneath lay the floor, and down a steep slope of loose volcanic cinders we dropped, the sure-footed horses slipping and sliding, but always keeping their feet. The black surface of the cinders, when broken by the horse's hoofs, turned to a yellow ochre dust, virulent in appearance, an acid of taste that arose in clouds. There was a gallop across a level stretch to the mouth of a convenient blowhole, and then the descent continued in clouds of volcanic dust winding in and out among cinder cones, brick red, old rose, and purple black of color. Above us, higher and higher, towered the crater walls, while we journeyed on across innumerable lava flows, turning and twisting a devious way among the adamantine billows of a petrified sea. Saw-toothed waves of lava vexed the surface of this weird ocean, while on either hand arose jagged crests and spiracles of fantastic shape. Our way led on past a bottomless pit and along and over the main stream of the latest lava flow for seven miles. At the lower end of the crater was our camping spot, and a small grove of olapa and colea trees tucked away in a corner of the crater at the base of walls that rose perpendicularly fifteen hundred feet. Here was pasturage for the horses, but no water, and first we turned aside and picked our way across a mile of lava to a known waterhole in a crevice in the crater wall. The waterhole was empty, but on climbing fifty feet up the crevice a pool was found containing half a dozen barrels of water. A pail was carried up, and soon a steady stream of the precious liquid was running down the rock and filling the lower pool, while the cowboys below were busy fighting the horse's back, for there was room for one only to drink at a time. Then it was on to camp at the foot of the wall, up which herds of wild goats scrambled and bladded, while the tent arose to the sound of rifle firing. Jerked beef, hard poi, and broiled kid were on the menu. Over the crest of the crater, just above our heads, rolled a sea of clouds driven by ukyukyu. Though this sea rolled over the crest unceasingly, it never blotted out nor dimmed the moon. For the heat of the crater dissolved the clouds as fast as they rolled in. Through the moonlight, attracted by the campfire, came the crater cattle to peer and challenge. They were rolling fat, though they rarely drank water, the morning dew on the grass taking its place. It was because of this dew that the tent made a welcome bed chamber, and we fell asleep to the chanting of hoolas by the unwirried Hawaiian cowboys, in whose veins, no doubt, ran the blood of Maui, their valiant forebear. The camera cannot do justice to the house of the sun. The sublimated chemistry of photography may not lie, but it certainly does not tell all the truth. The Kulau gap may be faithfully reproduced, just as it impinged on the retina of the camera, yet in the resulting picture the gigantic scale of things would be missing. Those walls that seemed several hundred feet in height are almost as many thousand. That entering wedge of cloud is a mile and a half wide in the gap itself, while beyond the gap it is a veritable ocean, and that foreground of cindercone and volcanic ash, mushy and colorless in appearance, is in truth gorgeous-hued in brick red, terracotta rose, yellow ochre, and purplish black. Also words are a vain thing and drive to despair. To say that a crater wall is two thousand feet high is to say just precisely that it is two thousand feet high, but there is a vast deal more to that crater wall than a mere statistic. The sun is ninety-three millions of miles distant, but to mortal conception the adjoining country is farther away. This frailty of the human brain is hard on the sun. It is likewise hard on the house of the sun. Haleakala has a message of beauty and wonder for the human soul that cannot be delivered by proxy. Kulikuli is six hours from Kahului. Kahului is a night's run from Honolulu. Honolulu is six days from San Francisco, and there you are. We climbed the crater walls, put the horses over impossible places, rolled stones, and shot wild goats. I did not get any goats. I was too busy rolling stones. One spot in particular, I remember, where we started a stone the size of a horse. It began the descent easy enough, rolling over, wobbling, and threatening to stop, but in a few minutes it was soaring through the air two hundred feet at a jump. It grew rapidly smaller until it struck a slight slope of volcanic sand over which it darted like a startled jackrabbit, kicking up behind it a tiny trail of yellow dust. Stone and dust diminished in size until some of the party said the stone had stopped. That was because they could not see it any longer. It had vanished into the distance beyond our kin. Others saw it rolling farther on. I know I did, and it is my firm conviction that that stone is still rolling. Our last day in the crater, Ukiyuki gave us a taste of his strength. He smashed Naulubak all along the line, filled the house of the sun to overflowing with clouds, and drowned us out. Our rain gauge was a pint cup under a tiny hole in the tent. That last night of storm and rain filled the cup, and there was no way of measuring the water that spilled over onto the blankets. With the rain gauge out of business there was no longer any reason for remaining, so we broke camp in the wet gray of dawn, and plunged eastward across the lava to the Kaupo Gap. East Maui is nothing more or less than the vast lava stream that flowed long ago through the Kaupo Gap, and down this stream we picked our way from an altitude of 6,500 feet to the sea. This was the day's work in itself for the horses, but never were there such horses. Safe in the bad places, never rushing, never losing their heads as soon as they found a trail, wide and smooth enough to run on, they ran. There was no stopping them until the trail became bad again, and then they stopped of themselves. Continuously for days they had performed the hardest kind of work and fed most of the time on grass foraged by themselves at night while we slept, and yet that day they covered 28 leg-breaking miles and galloped into Hana like a bunch of colts. Also there were several of them reared in the dry region on the leeward side of Haleakala that had never worn shoes in all their lives. Day after day and all day long unshawed they had traveled over the sharp lava, with the extra weight of a man on their backs and their hoofs were in better condition than those of the shod horses. The scenery between Vieris is where the Kaupo Gap empties into the sea, and Lana, which we covered in half a day, is well worth a week or month, but wildly beautiful as it is. It becomes pale and small in comparison with the wonderland that lies beyond the rubber plantations between Hana and the Honamanu Gulch. Two days were required to cover this marvelous stretch, which lies on the windward side of Haleakala. The people who dwell there call it the ditch country, an unprepossessing name, but it has no other. Nobody else ever comes there. Nobody else knows anything about it. With the exception of a handful of men whom business has brought there, nobody has heard of the ditch country of Maui. Now a ditch is a ditch, assumably muddy, and usually traversing uninteresting and monotonous landscapes. But the Nahiku Ditch is not an ordinary ditch. The windward side of Haleakala is serried by a thousand precipitous gorges down which rush as many torrents, each torrent of which achieves a score of cascades and waterfalls before it reaches the sea. More rain comes down here than in any other region in the world. In 1904, the year's downpour was 420 inches. Water means sugar, and sugar is the backbone of the territory of Hawaii, wherefor the Nahiku Ditch, which is not a ditch, but a chain of tunnels. The water travels underground, appearing only at intervals to leap a gorge, traveling high in the air on a giddy flume and plunging into and through the opposing mountain. This magnificent waterway is called a ditch, and with equal appropriateness can Cleopatra's barge be called a boxcar. There are no carriage roads through the ditch country, and before the ditch was built or bored, rather, there was no horse trail. Hundreds of inches of rain annually on fertile soil under a tropic sun means a steaming jungle of vegetation. A man on foot, cutting his way through, might advance a mile a day. But at the end of a week he would be a wreck, and he would have to crawl hastily back if he wanted to get out before the vegetation overran the passageway he had cut. O'Shaughnessy was the daring engineer who conquered the jungle and the gorges, ran the ditch, and made the horse trail. He built enduringly in concrete and masonry, and made one of the most remarkable water farms in the world. Every little runlet and dribble is harvested and conveyed by subterranean channels to the main ditch. But so heavily does it rain at times that countless spillways let the surplus escape to the sea. The horse trail is not very wide. Like the engineer who built it, it dares anything. Where the ditch plunges through the mountain it climbs over, and where the ditch leaps a gorge on a flume, the horse trail takes advantage of the ditch and crosses on top of the flume. That careless trail thinks nothing of traveling up or down the faces of precipices. It gouges its narrow way out of the wall, dodging around waterfalls or passing under them where they thunder down in white fury. While straight overhead the wall rises hundreds of feet, and straight beneath it sinks a thousand. And those marvelous mountain horses are as unconcerned as the trail. They fox trot along it as a matter of course, though the footing is slippery with rain and they will gallop with their hind feet slipping over the edge if you let them. I advise only those with steady nerves and cool heads to tackle the Nahiku Ditch trail. One of our cowboys was noted as the strongest and bravest on the big ranch. He had ridden mountain horses all his life on the rugged western slopes of Haleakala. He was first in the horse-breaking, and when the others hung back as a matter of course, he would go in to meet a wild bull in the cattle-pen. He had a reputation, but he had never ridden over the Nahiku Ditch. It was there he lost his reputation. When he faced the first flume spanning a hair-raising gorge, narrow without railings, with a bellowing waterfall above, another below, and directly beneath a wild cascade, the air filled with driving spray and rocking to the clamor and rush of sound and motion, well that cowboy dismounted from his horse, explained briefly that he had a wife and two children, and crossed over on foot, leading the horse behind him. The only relief from the flumes was the precipices, and the only relief from the precipices was the flumes, except where the ditch was far underground, in which case we crossed one horse and rider at a time on primitive log-bridges that swayed and teetered and threatened to carry away. I confess that at first I rode such places with my feet loose in the stirrups, and that on the sheer walls I saw to it, by a definite conscious act of will, that the foot in the outside stirrup, overhang the thousand feet of fall, was exceedingly loose. I say at first, for as in the crater itself we quickly lost our conception of magnitude, so on the Nahiku ditch, we quickly lost our apprehension of depth. The ceaseless iteration of height and depth produced a state of consciousness in which height and depth were accepted as the ordinary conditions of existence, and from the horse's back to look sheared down four hundred or five hundred feet became quite commonplace, and non-productive of thrills, and as carelessly as the trail and the horses we swung along the dizzy heights and ducked around or through the waterfalls. And such a ride, falling water, was everywhere. We rode above the clouds, under the clouds, and through the clouds, and every now and then a shaft of sunshine penetrated like a search light to the depths, yawning beneath us, or flashed upon some pinnacle of the crater rim thousands of feet above. At every turn of the trail a waterfall, or a dozen waterfalls, leaping hundreds of feet through the air burst upon our vision. At our first night's camp, in the Kea Na'a Gulch, we counted thirty-two waterfalls from a single viewpoint. The vegetation ran riot over that wild land. There were forests of koa and kalea trees, and candle-nut trees, and then there were the trees called Ohiya Aii, which bore red mountain apples, mellow and juicy, and most excellent to eat, while bananas grew everywhere, clinging to the sides of the gorges, and overborn by their great bunches of ripe fruit falling across the trail and blocking the way. And over the forest surged a sea of green life, the climbers of a thousand varieties, some that floated airily in lace-like filaments from the tallest branches, others that coiled and wound about the trees like huge serpents, and one, the Aii that was for all the world like a climbing palm, swinging on a thick stem from branch to branch, and tree to tree, and throttling the supports whereby it climbed. Through the sea of green lofty tree ferns thrust their great delicate fronds, and the lahua flaunted its scarlet blossoms. Underneath the climbers, and no less profusion, grew the warm-colored, strangely marked plants that in the United States one is accustomed to seeing, preciously conserved in hothouses. In fact, the ditch country of Maui is nothing more nor less than a huge conservatory. Every familiar variety of fern flourishes, and more varieties that are unfamiliar from the tiniest maiden-hair to the gross and voracious staghorn, the latter, the terror of the woodsmen, interlacing with itself entangled masses five or six feet deep in covering acres. Never was there such a ride. For two days it lasted, when we emerged into a rolling country, and along an actual wagon-road came home to the ranch at a gallop. I know it was cruel to gallop the horses after such a long, hard journey, but we blistered our hands in vain effort to hold them in. That's the sort of horses they grow on Haleakala. At the ranch there was great festival of cattle-driving, branding, and horse-breaking. Overhead, Ukiukiu and Naulu battled valiantly, and far above in the sunshine towered the mighty summit of Haleakala. CHAPTER IX THE CRUISE OF THE SNARK by Jack London CHAPTER IX A PASSIFIC TRAVERSE Sandwich Islands to Tahiti There is great difficulty in making this passage across the trades. The whalers and all others speak with great doubt of fetching Tahiti from the Sandwich Islands. Captain Bruce says that a vessel should keep to the northward until she gets a start of wind before bearing for her destination. In his passage between them, in November 1837, he had no variables near the line incoming south, and never could make easting on either tack, though he endeavored by every means to do so. So say the sailing directions for the South Pacific Ocean, and that is all they say. There's not a word more to help the weary voyager in making this long traverse, nor is there any word at all concerning the passage from Hawaii to the Marquesas, which lies some 800 miles to the southeast of Tahiti, and which are the more difficult to reach by just that much. The reason for the lack of directions is, I imagine, that no voyager is supposed to make himself weary by attempting so impossible its reverse. But the impossible did not deter the snark, principally because of the fact that we did not read that particular little paragraph in the sailing directions until after we had started. We sailed from Hilo Hawaii on October 7, and arrived at Nuka Hiva in the Marquesas on December 6. The distance was 2,000 miles as the crow flies while we actually traveled at least 4,000 miles to accomplish it, thus proving for once and forever that the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line. Had we headed directly for the Marquesas, we might have traveled 5,000 or 6,000 miles. Upon one thing we were resolved, we would not cross the line west of 130 degrees west longitude, for here was the problem. To cross the line to the west of that point, if the southeast trade winds were well around to the southeast, would throw us so far to leeward of the Marquesas that a headbeat would be maddeningly impossible. Also, we had to remember the equatorial current, which moves west at a rate of anywhere from 12 to 75 miles a day. A pretty pickle indeed to be to leeward of our destination with such a current in our teeth. No, not a minute nor a second west of 130 degrees west longitude would we cross the line. But since the southeast trade winds were to be expected five or six degrees north of the line, which if they were well around to the southeast or south southeast would necessitate our sliding off towards south southwest, we should have to hold to the east word north of the line and north of the southeast trades until we gained at least 128 degrees west longitude. I have forgotten to mention that the 70 horsepower gasoline engine as usual was not working and that we could depend upon wind alone. Neither was the launch engine working, and while I am about it, I may as well confess that the five horsepower which ran the lights, fans, and pumps was also on the sick list. A striking title for a book haunts me, waking and sleeping. I should like to write the book some day and call it Around the World with three gasoline engines and a wife. But I am afraid I shall not write it for fear of hurting the feelings of some of the young gentlemen of San Francisco, Honolulu, and Hilo who learned their trades at the expense of the Snarks engines. It looked easy on paper. Here was Hilo and there was our objective, 128 degrees west longitude. With the northeast trade blowing, we could travel a straight line between the two points and even slack our sheets off a goodly bit. But one of the chief troubles with the trades is that one never knows just where he will pick them up and just in what direction they will be blowing. We picked up the northeast trade right outside of Hilo Harbor. But the miserable breeze was a way around into the east. Then there was the north equatorial current setting westward like a mighty river. Furthermore a small boat by the wind and bucking into a big head sea does not work to advantage. She jogs up and down and gets nowhere. Her sails are full and straining every little while she presses her lee rail under. She flounders and bumps and splashes and that is all. Whenever she begins to gather way, she runs kerchug into a big mountain of water and is brought to a standstill. So with the snark the resultant of her smallness of the trade around into the east and of the strong equatorial current was a long sag south. Oh, she did not go quite south. But the easting she made was distressing. On October 11 she made 40 miles easting. October 12 15 miles. October 13 no easting. October 14 30 miles. October 15 23 miles. October 16 11 miles. And on October 17 she actually went to the westward four miles. Thus in a week she made 115 miles easting which was equivalent to 16 miles a day. But between the longitude of Helo and 128 degrees west longitude is a difference of 27 degrees or roughly 1600 miles. At 16 miles a day 100 days would be required to accomplish this distance. And even then our objective 128 degrees west longitude was 5 degrees north of the line while Nukaheva in the Marquesis lay 9 degrees south of the line and 12 degrees to the west. There remained only one thing to do. To work south out of the trade and into the variables. It is true that Captain Bruce found no variables on his traverse and that he never could make easting on either tack. It was the variables or nothing with us and we prayed for better luck than he had had. The variables constitute the belt of ocean lying between the trades and the doldrums and are conjectured to be the draughts of heated air which rise in the doldrums flow high in the air counter to the trades and gradually sink down till they fan the surface of the ocean where they are found. And they are found where they are found for they are wedged between the trades and the doldrums which same shift their territory from day to day and month to month. We found the variables in 11 degrees north latitude and 11 degrees north latitude we hugged jealously. To the south lay the doldrums. To the north lay the northeast trade that refused to blow from the northeast. The days came and went and always they found the snark somewhere near the 11th parallel. The variables were truly variable. A light headwind would die away and leave us rolling in a calm for 48 hours. Then a light headwind would spring up, blow for 3 hours and leave us rolling in another calm for 48 hours. Then hurrah the wind would come out of the west fresh, beautifully fresh, and send the snark along wing and wing her wake bubbling the log line straight astern. At the end of a half an hour while we were preparing to set the spinnaker with a few sickly gasps the wind would die away. And so it went. We wagered optimistically on every favorable fan of air that lasted over 5 minutes but it never did any good. The fans faded out just the same. But there were exceptions. In the variables if you wait long enough something is bound to happen and we were so plentifully stocked with food and water that we could afford to wait. On October 26 we actually made 103 miles of easting and we talked about it for days afterwards. Once we caught a moderate gale from the south which blew itself out in 8 hours but it helped us to 71 miles of easting in that particular 24 hours. And then just as it was expiring the wind came straight out from the north, the directly opposite quarter, and fanned us along over another degree of easting. In years and years no sailing vessel has attempted this traverse and we found ourselves in the midst of one of the loneliest of the pacific solitudes. In the 60 days we were crossing it we sighted no sail, lifted no steam or smoke above the horizon. A disabled vessel could drift in this deserted expanse for a dozen generations and there would be no rescue. The only chance of rescue would be from a vessel like the snark and the snark happened to be there principally because of the fact that the traverse had been begun before the particular paragraph in the sailing directions had been read. Standing upright on deck a straight line drawn from the eye to the horizon would measure three miles and a half. Thus seven miles was the diameter of the circle of the sea in which we had our center. Since we remained always in the center and since we constantly were moving in some direction we looked upon many circles. But all circles looked alike. No tufted islets, gray headlands, nor glistening patches of white canvas ever marred the symmetry of that unbroken curve. Clouds came and went, rising up over the rim of the circle, flowing across the space of it, and spilling away and down across the opposite rim. The world faded as the procession of the weeks marched by. The world faded until at last there ceased to be any world except the little world of the snark, freighted with her seven souls and floating on the expanse of the waters. Our memories of the world, the great world, became like dreams of former lives we had lived somewhere before we came to be born on the snark. After we had been out of fresh vegetables for some time, we mentioned such things in much the same way I have heard my father mention the vanished apples of his boyhood. Man is a creature of habit, and we on the snark had got the habit of the snark. Everything about her and aboard her was as a matter of course, and anything different would have been an irritation and an offense. There was no way by which the great world could intrude. Our bell rang the hours, but no caller ever rang it. There were no guests to dinner, no telegrams, no insistent telephone jangles invading our privacy. We had no engagements to keep, no trains to catch, and there were no morning newspapers over which to waste time in learning what was happening to our fifteen hundred million other fellow creatures. But it was not dull. The affairs of our little world had to be regulated, and unlike the great world, our world had to be steered in its journey through space. Also there were cosmic disturbances to be encountered and baffled, such as do not afflict the big earth in its frictionless orbit through the windless void, and we never knew from moment to moment what was going to happen next. There were spice and variety enough and despair. Thus at four in the morning I relieve Herman at the wheel. East northeast, he gives me the course. She's eight points off, but she ain't steering. Small wonder, the vessel does not exist that can be steered in so absolute a calm. I had a breeze a little while ago. Maybe it will come back again, Herman says hopefully, ere he starts forward to the cabin and his bunk. The mizzen is in, and fast furrowed. In the night, what of the roll and the absence of wind it had made life too hideous to be permitted to go on rasping at the mast, smashing at the tackles and buffeting the empty air into hollow outbursts of sound. But the big mainsail is still on, and the staysail, jib, and flying jib are snapping and slashing at their sheets with every roll. Every star is out. Just for luck I put the wheel hard over in the opposite direction to which it had been left by Herman, and I lean back and gaze up at the stars. There's nothing else for me to do. There is nothing to be done with the sailing-vessel rolling in a stark calm. Then I feel a fan on my cheek, faint, so faint that I can just sense it ere it is gone. But another comes, and another, until a real and just perceptible breeze is blowing. How the snark's sails manage to feel it is beyond me, but feel it they do, as she does as well, for the compass-card begins slowly to revolve in the binocle. In reality it is not revolving at all. It is held by terrestrial magnetism in one place, and it is the snark that is revolving, pivoted upon that delicate cardboard device that floats in a closed vessel of alcohol. So the snark comes back on her course, the breath increases to a tiny puff, the snark feels the weight of it, and actually heals over a trifle. There is flying scud overhead, and I notice the star is being blotted out. Walls of darkness close in upon me, so that when the last star is gone, the darkness is so near that it seems I can reach out and touch it on every side. When I lean toward it, I can feel it loom against my face. Puff follows puff, and I am glad the mizzen is furled. Phew, that was a stiff one. The snark goes over and down until her lee rail is buried, and the whole Pacific Ocean is pouring in. Four or five of these gusts make me wish that the jib and flying jib were in. The sea is picking up, the gusts are growing stronger and more frequent, and there is a splatter of wet in the air. There is no use in attempting to gaze to windward. The wall of blackness is within arm's length, yet I cannot help attempting to see and gauge the blows that are being struck at the snark. There is something ominous and menacing up there to windward, and I have a feeling that if I look long enough and strong enough I shall divine it. Feudal feeling. Between two gusts I leave the wheel and run forward to the cabin companion way where I light matches and consult the barometer. 2990 it reads. That sensitive instrument refuses to take notice of the disturbance which is humming with a deep throaty voice in the rigging. I get back to the wheel just in time to meet another gust, the strongest yet. Well, anyway, the wind is a beam and the snark is on her course, eating up easting. That at least as well. The jib and the flying jib bother me, and I wish they were in. She would make easier weather of it and less risky weather likewise. The wind snorts and stray raindrops pelt like bird-shot. I shall certainly have to call all hands, I conclude, then conclude the next instant to hang on a little longer. Maybe this is the end of it, and I shall have called them for nothing. It is better to let them sleep. I hold the snark down to her task, and from out of the darkness at right angles comes a deluge of rain accompanied by shrieking wind. Then everything eases except the blackness, and I rejoice in that I have not called the men. No sooner does the wind ease than the sea picks up. The comers are breaking now, and the boat is tossing like a cork. Then out of the blackness the gusts come harder and faster than before. If only I knew what was up there to windward in the blackness. The snark is making heavy weather of it, and her lee-rail is buried offner than not. More shrieks and snorts of wind. Now, if ever is the time to call the men, I will call them, I resolve. Then there is a burst of rain, a slackening of the wind, and I do not call. But it is rather lonely there at the wheel, steering a little world through howling blackness. It is quite a responsibility to be all alone on the surface of a little world, in time of stress, doing the thinking for its sleeping inhabitants. I recoil from the responsibility, as more gusts begin to strike, and as a sea licks along the weather-rail and splashes over into the cockpit. The salt water seems strangely warm to my body, and is shot through with ghostly nodules of phosphorescent light. I shall surely call all hands to shorten sail. Why should they sleep? I am a fool to have any compunctions in the matter. My intellect is arrayed against my heart. It was my heart that said, Let them sleep. Yes, but it was my intellect that backed up my heart in that judgment. Let my intellect then reverse the judgment, and while I am speculating as to what particular entity issued that command to my intellect, the gusts die away. Solicitude for mere bodily comfort has no place in practical seamanship, I conclude sagely, but study the feel of the next series of gusts, and do not call them in. After all, it is my intellect behind everything, procrastinating, measuring its knowledge of what the snark can endure against the blows being struck at her, and waiting the call of all hands against the striking of still-severer blows. Daylight, gray and violent, steals through the cloud-pall, and shows a foaming sea that flattens under the weight of recurrent and increasing squalls. Then comes the rain, filling windy valleys of the sea with milky smoke, and further flattening the waves, which but wait for the easement of wind and rain to leap more wildly than before. Come the men on deck, their sleep out, and among them Herman, his face on the broad grin in appreciation of the breeze of wind I have picked up. I turn the wheel over to Warren, and start to go below, pausing on the way to rescue the galley-stove pipe which has gone adrift. I am barefooted, and my toes have had an excellent education in the art of clinging, but as the rail buries itself in a green sea I suddenly sit down on the streaming deck. Herman, good-naturedly, elects to question my selection of such a spot. Then comes the next roll, and he sits down, suddenly, and without premeditation. The snark heals over and down, the rail takes it green, and Herman and I, clutching the precious stove-piper, swept down into the lee scuppers. After that I finish my journey below, and while changing my clothes, grin with satisfaction. The snark is making easting. No, it is not all monotony. When we had worried along our easting to 126 degrees west longitude, we left the variables, and headed south through the doldrums, where was much calm weather, and where, taking advantage of every fan of air, we were often glad to make a score of miles in as many hours. And yet, on such a day, we might pass through a dozen squalls, and be surrounded by a dozens more, and every squall was to be regarded as a bludgeon capable of crushing the snark. We were struck sometimes by the centers, and sometimes by the sides of these squalls, and we never knew just where or how we were to be hit. The squall that rose up, covering half the heavens, and swept down upon us, as likely as not split into two squalls, which passed us harmlessly on either side, while the tiny, innocent-looking squall that appeared to carry no more than a hog's head of water, and a pound of wind, would abruptly assume cyclopean proportions, deluging us with rain, and overwhelming us with wind. Then there were treacherous squalls that went boldly astern, and sneaked back upon us from a mile to leeward. Again, two squalls would tear along, one on each side of us, and we would get a fillip from each of them. Now a gale certainly grows tiresome after a few hours, but squalls never. The thousandth squall, in one's experience, is as interesting as the first one, and perhaps a bit more so. It is the Tyro who has no apprehension of them. The man of a thousand squalls respects a squall. He knows what they are. It was in the daldrums that our most exciting event occurred. On November 20 we discovered that through an accident we had lost over one-half of the supply of fresh water that remained to us. Since we were at that time forty-three days out from Helo, our supply of fresh water was not large. To lose over half of it was a catastrophe. On close allowance the remnant of water we possessed would last twenty days, but we were in the daldrums. There was no telling where the southeast trades were, nor where we would pick them up. The handcuffs were promptly put upon the pump, and once a day the water was portioned out. Each of us received a quart for personal use, and eight quarts were given to the cook. Inter's now the psychology of the situation. No sooner had the discovery of the water shortage been made than I, for one, was afflicted with a burning thirst. It seemed to me that I had never been so thirsty in my life. My little quart of water I could easily have drunk in one draught, and to refrain from doing so required a severe exertion of will. Nor was I alone in this. All of us talked water, thought water, and dreamed water when we slept. We examined the charts for possible islands to which to run in extremity, but there were no such islands. The Marquesas were the nearest, and they were the other side of the line, and of the daldrums, too, which made it even worse. We were in three degrees north latitude, while the Marquesas were nine degrees south latitude, a difference of over a thousand miles. Furthermore the Marquesas lay some fourteen degrees to the west of our longitude, a pretty pickle for a handful of creatures sweltering on the ocean and the heat of tropic calms. We rigged lines on either side between the main and mizzen riggings to these we laced the big deck awning, hoisting it up aft with a sailing pennant, so that any rain it might collect would run forward where it could be caught. Here and there squalls passed across the circle of the sea. All day we watched them, now to port or starboard, and again a head or a stern, but never one came near enough to wet us. In the afternoon a big one bore down upon us. It spread out across the ocean as it approached, and we could see it empty in countless thousands of gallons into the salt sea. Extra attention was paid to the awning, and then we waited. Warren, Martin, and Herman made a vivid picture, grouped together holding on to the rigging, swaying to the roll they were gazing intently at the squall. Strain, anxiety, and yearnings were in every posture of their bodies. Beside them was the dry and empty awning, but they seemed to grow limp and to droop as the squall broke in half, one part passing on ahead, the other drawing a stern and going to leeward. But that night came rain. Martin, whose psychological thirst had compelled him to drink his quart of water early, got his mouth down to the lip of the awning and drank the deepest draught I have ever seen drunk. The precious water came down in bucketfuls and tubfuls, and in two hours we caught and stored away in the tank's one hundred and twenty ounce. Strange to say, in all the rest of our voyage to the Marquesas, not another drop of rain fell on board. If that squall had missed us, the handcuffs would have remained on the pump, and we would have busied ourselves with utilizing our surplus gasoline for distillation purposes. Then there was the fishing. One did not have to go in search of it, for it was there at the rail. A three-inch steel hook on the end of a stout line with a piece of white rag for bait was all that was necessary to catch bonitas, weighing from ten to twenty-five pounds. Bonitas feed on flying fish, wherefore they are unaccustomed to nibbling at the hook. They strike as gamely as the gamest fish in the sea, and their first run is something that no man who has ever caught them will forget. Also, bonitas are the various cannibals. The instant one is hooked he is attacked by his fellows. Often and often we haul them on board with fresh, clean-bitten holes in them the size of teacups. One school of bonitas, numbering many thousands, stayed with us day and night for more than three weeks. Aided by the snark it was great hunting, for they cut a swath of destruction through the ocean half a mile wide and fifteen hundred miles in length. They ranged along a breast of the snark on either side, pouncing upon the flying fish her forefoot scared up. Since they were continually pursuing a stern, the flying fish that survived for several flights, they were always overtaking the snark, and at any time one could glance a stern and on the front of a breaking wave see scores of their silvery forms coasting down just under the surface. When they had eaten their fill it was their delight to get in the shadow of the boat, or of her sails, and a hundred or so were always to be seen lazily sliding along and keeping cool. But the poor flying fish pursued and eaten alive by the bonitas and dolphins they sought flight in the air, where the swooping seabirds drove them back into the water. Under heaven there was no refuge for them. Flying fish do not play when they essay the air. It is a life and death affair with them. A thousand times a day we could lift our eyes and see the tragedy played out. The swift, broken circling of a gunny might attract one's attention. A glance beneath shows the back of a dolphin breaking the surface in a wild rush. Just in front of its nose a shimmering palpitant streak of silver shoots from the water into the air. A delicate, organic mechanism of flight endowed with sensation, power of direction, and love of life. The gunny sweeps for it, and misses, and the flying fish, gaining its altitude by rising kite-like against the wind, turns in a half-circle and skims off to leeward, gliding on the bosom of the wind. Beneath it the wake of the dolphin shows in churning foam. So he follows, gazing upward with large eyes at the flashing breakfast that navigates an element other than his own. He cannot rise to so lofty occasion, but he is a thoroughgoing empiricist, and he knows sooner or later, if not gobbled up by the gunny, the flying fish must return to the water. And then breakfast. We used to pity the poor winged fish. It was sad to see such sordid and bloody slaughter. And then in the night watches, when a forlornable flying fish struck the mainsail and fell gasping and splattering on the deck, we would rush for it just as eagerly, just as greedily, just as voraciously as the dolphins and bonitas. For know that flying fish are the most toothsome for breakfast. It is always a wonder to me that such dainty meat does not build dainty tissue in the bodies of the devourers. Perhaps the dolphins and bonitas are coarser-fibered because of the high speed at which they drive their bodies in order to catch their prey. But then again the flying fish drive their bodies at high speed too. Sharks we caught occasionally on large hooks with chain swivel bent on a length of small rope and sharks meant pilot fish and remoras and various sorts of parasitic creatures. Regular man-eaters, some of the sharks proved, tiger-eyed and with 12 rows of teeth razor sharp. By the way, we of the snark are agreed that we have eaten many fish that will not compare with baked sharks smothered in tomato dressing. In the calms we occasionally caught a fish called hake by the Japanese cook and once on a spoon hook trolling a hundred yards of stern we caught a snake-like fish over three feet in length and not more than three inches in diameter with four fangs in his jaw. He proved the most delicious fish, delicious in meat and flavor, that we have ever eaten on board. The most welcome addition to our larder was a green sea turtle weighing a full hundred pounds and appearing on the table most appetizingly in steaks, soups, and stews and finally in a wonderful curry that tempted all hands into eating more rice than was good for them. The turtle was sighted to windward, calmly sleeping on the surface in the midst of a huge school of curious dolphins. It was a deep sea turtle of assurity for the nearest land was a thousand miles away. We put the snark about and went back for him, Herman driving the grains into his head and neck. When hauled aboard, numerous remora were clinging to his shell and out of the hollows at the roots of his flippers crawled several large crabs. It did not take the crew of the snark longer than the next meal to reach the unanimous conclusion that it would willingly put the snark about any time for a turtle. But it is the dolphin that is the king of deep sea fishes. Never is his color twice quite the same. Swimming in the sea, an ethereal creature of palest azure, he displays in that one guy as a miracle of color, but it is nothing compared with the displays of which he is capable. At one time he will appear green, pale green, deep green, phosphorescent green. At another time blue, deep blue, electric blue, all the spectrum of blue, catch him on a hook and he turns to gold, yellow gold, all gold, haul him on deck and he excels the spectrum passing through inconceivable shades of blues, greens, and yellows, and then suddenly turning a ghostly white in the midst of which are bright blue spots and you suddenly discover that he is speckled like a trout. Then back from white he goes through all the range of colors finally turning to a mother of pearl. For those who are devoted to fishing I can recommend no finer sport than catching dolphin. Of course it must be done on a thin line with reel and pole. A number seven O'Shaughnessy tarpon hook is just the thing baited with an entire flying fish. Like the bonita the dolphin's fair consists of flying fish and he strikes like a lightning at the bait. The first warning is when the reel screeches and you see the line smoking out at right angles to the boat. Before you have time to entertain anxiety concerning the length of your line the fish rises into the air in a succession of leaps since he is quite certain to be four feet long or over the sport of landing so gamey of fish can be realized. When hooked he invariably turns golden. The idea of the series of leaps is to rid himself of the hook and the man who has made the strike must be of iron or decadent if his heart does not beat with an extra flutter when he beholds such gorgeous fish glittering in golden mail and shaking itself like a stallion in each mid-air leap. Wear a slack if you don't. On one of those leaps the hook will be flung out and twenty feet away. No slack and away he will go on another run culminating in another series of leaps. About this time one begins to worry over the line and to wish that he had had nine hundred feet on the reel originally instead of six hundred. With careful playing the line can be saved and after an hour of keen excitement the fish can be brought to gaff. One such dolphin I landed on the snark measured four feet and seven inches. Herman caught dolphins more prosaically. A hand line and a chunk of shark meat were all he needed. His hand line was very thick but on more than one occasion it parted and lost the fish. One day a dolphin got away with a lure of Herman's manufacture to which were last four O'Shaughnessy hooks. Within an hour the same dolphin was landed with the rod and on dissecting him the four hooks were recovered. The dolphins which remained with us over a month deserted us north of the line and not one was seen during the remainder of the traverse. So the days passed. There was so much to be done that time never dragged. Had there been little to do time could not have dragged with such wonderful seascapes and cloudscapes. Dawns that were like burning imperial cities under rainbows that arched nearly to the zenith. Sunsets that bathed the purple sea and rivers of rose colored light flowing from a sun whose diverging, heaven-climbing rays were of the purest blue. Overside in the heat of the day the sea was an azure satiny fabric in the depths of which the sunshine focused in funnels of light. A stern, deep down, when there was a breeze, bubbled a procession of milky turquoise ghosts. The foam flung down by the hull of the snark each time she floundered against the sea. At night the wake was phosphorescent fire where the Medusa slime resented our passing bulk while far down could be observed the unceasing flight of comets with long undulating nebulous tails caused by the passage of the bonitas through the resentful Medusa slime. And now and again from out of the darkness on either hand just under the surface larger phosphorescent organisms flashed up like electric lights marking collisions with the careless bonitas scurrying ahead to the good hunting just beyond our bowsprit. We made our easting worked down through the daldrums and caught a fresh breeze out of south by west hauled up by the wind on such a slant we would fetch past the Marquesas far away to the westward. But the next day on Tuesday, November 26, in the thick of a heavy squall the wind shifted suddenly to the southeast. It was the trade at last. There were no more squalls not but fine weather, a fair wind, and a whirling log with sheets slacked off and with spinnaker and mainsail swaying, bellying on either side. The trade backed more and more until it blew out of the northeast while we steered a steady course to the southwest. Ten days of this and on the morning of December 6 at five o'clock we sighted land, just where it ought to have been, dead ahead. We passed to Leeward of Oahuca, skirted the southern edge of Nukahiva, and that night in driving squalls and inky darkness fought our way into an anchorage in the narrow bay of Taiohae. The anchor rumbled down to the bladding of wild goats on the cliffs and the air we breathed was heavy with the perfume of flowers. The traverse was accomplished, sixty days from land to land across a lonely sea above whose horizons never rise the straining sails of ships. End of Chapter 9 Recorded by Brian Ness This recording is in the public domain.