"It will not be so monotonous at sea," I promised my fellow-voyagers on the Snark."The sea is filled with life.It is so populous that every day something new is happening.Almost as soon as we pass through the Golden Gate and head south we'll pick up with the flying fish.We'll be having them fried for breakfast.We'll be catching bonita and dolphin, and spearing porpoises from the bowsprit.And then there are the sharks--sharks without end."We passed through the Golden Gate and headed south.We dropped the mountains of California beneath the horizon, and daily the surf grew warmer.But there were no flying fish, no bonita and dolphin.The ocean was bereft of life.Never had I sailed on so forsaken a sea.
Always, before, in the same latitudes, had I encountered flying fish.
"Never mind," I said."Wait till we get off the coast of Southern California.Then we'll pick up the flying fish."We came abreast of Southern California, abreast of the Peninsula of Lower California, abreast of the coast of Mexico; and there were no flying fish.Nor was there anything else.No life moved.As the days went by the absence of life became almost uncanny.
"Never mind," I said."When we do pick up with the flying fish we'll pick up with everything else.The flying fish is the staff of life for all the other breeds.Everything will come in a bunch when we find the flying fish."When I should have headed the Snark south-west for Hawaii, I still held her south.I was going to find those flying fish.Finally the time came when, if I wanted to go to Honolulu, I should have headed the Snark due west, instead of which I kept her south.Not until latitude 19 degrees did we encounter the first flying fish.He was very much alone.I saw him.Five other pairs of eager eyes scanned the sea all day, but never saw another.So sparse were the flying fish that nearly a week more elapsed before the last one on board saw his first flying fish.As for the dolphin, bonita, porpoise, and all the other hordes of life--there weren't any.
Not even a shark broke surface with his ominous dorsal fin.Bert took a dip daily under the bowsprit, hanging on to the stays and dragging his body through the water.And daily he canvassed the project of letting go and having a decent swim.I did my best to dissuade him.But with him I had lost all standing as an authority on sea life.
"If there are sharks," he demanded, "why don't they show up?"I assured him that if he really did let go and have a swim the sharks would promptly appear.This was a bluff on my part.Ididn't believe it.It lasted as a deterrent for two days.The third day the wind fell calm, and it was pretty hot.The Snark was moving a knot an hour.Bert dropped down under the bowsprit and let go.And now behold the perversity of things.We had sailed across two thousand miles and more of ocean and had met with no sharks.
Within five minutes after Bert finished his swim, the fin of a shark was cutting the surface in circles around the Snark.
There was something wrong about that shark.It bothered me.It had no right to be there in that deserted ocean.The more I thought about it, the more incomprehensible it became.But two hours later we sighted land and the mystery was cleared up.He had come to us from the land, and not from the uninhabited deep.He had presaged the landfall.He was the messenger of the land.
Twenty-seven days out from San Francisco we arrived at the island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii.In the early morning we drifted around Diamond Head into full view of Honolulu; and then the ocean burst suddenly into life.Flying fish cleaved the air in glittering squadrons.In five minutes we saw more of them than during the whole voyage.Other fish, large ones, of various sorts, leaped into the air.There was life everywhere, on sea and shore.We could see the masts and funnels of the shipping in the harbour, the hotels and bathers along the beach at Waikiki, the smoke rising from the dwelling-houses high up on the volcanic slopes of the Punch Bowl and Tantalus.The custom-house tug was racing toward us and a big school of porpoises got under our bow and began cutting the most ridiculous capers.The port doctor's launch came charging out at us, and a big sea turtle broke the surface with his back and took a look at us.Never was there such a burgeoning of life.Strange faces were on our decks, strange voices were speaking, and copies of that very morning's newspaper, with cable reports from all the world, were thrust before our eyes.Incidentally, we read that the Snark and all hands had been lost at sea, and that she had been a very unseaworthy craft anyway.And while we read this information a wireless message was being received by the congressional party on the summit of Haleakala announcing the safe arrival of the Snark.
It was the Snark's first landfall--and such a landfall! For twenty-seven days we had been on the deserted deep, and it was pretty hard to realize that there was so much life in the world.We were made dizzy by it.We could not take it all in at once.We were like awakened Rip Van Winkles, and it seemed to us that we were dreaming.
On one side the azure sea lapped across the horizon into the azure sky; on the other side the sea lifted itself into great breakers of emerald that fell in a snowy smother upon a white coral beach.
Beyond the beach, green plantations of sugar-cane undulated gently upward to steeper slopes, which, in turn, became jagged volcanic crests, drenched with tropic showers and capped by stupendous masses of trade-wind clouds.At any rate, it was a most beautiful dream.
The Snark turned and headed directly in toward the emerald surf, till it lifted and thundered on either hand; and on either hand, scarce a biscuit-toss away, the reef showed its long teeth, pale green and menacing.
