Abruptly the land itself, in a riot of olive-greens of a thousand hues, reached out its arms and folded the Snark in.There was no perilous passage through the reef, no emerald surf and azure sea--nothing but a warm soft land, a motionless lagoon, and tiny beaches on which swam dark-skinned tropic children.The sea had disappeared.The Snark's anchor rumbled the chain through the hawse-pipe, and we lay without movement on a "lineless, level floor." It was all so beautiful and strange that we could not accept it as real.On the chart this place was called Pearl Harbour, but we called it Dream Harbour.
A launch came off to us; in it were members of the Hawaiian Yacht Club, come to greet us and make us welcome, with true Hawaiian hospitality, to all they had.They were ordinary men, flesh and blood and all the rest; but they did not tend to break our dreaming.
Our last memories of men were of United States marshals and of panicky little merchants with rusty dollars for souls, who, in a reeking atmosphere of soot and coal-dust, laid grimy hands upon the Snark and held her back from her world adventure.But these men who came to meet us were clean men.A healthy tan was on their cheeks, and their eyes were not dazzled and bespectacled from gazing overmuch at glittering dollar-heaps.No, they merely verified the dream.They clinched it with their unsmirched souls.
So we went ashore with them across a level flashing sea to the wonderful green land.We landed on a tiny wharf, and the dream became more insistent; for know that for twenty-seven days we had been rocking across the ocean on the tiny Snark.Not once in all those twenty-seven days had we known a moment's rest, a moment's cessation from movement.This ceaseless movement had become ingrained.Body and brain we had rocked and rolled so long that when we climbed out on the tiny wharf kept on rocking and rolling.
This, naturally, we attributed to the wharf.It was projected psychology.I spraddled along the wharf and nearly fell into the water.I glanced at Charmian, and the way she walked made me sad.
The wharf had all the seeming of a ship's deck.It lifted, tilted, heaved and sank; and since there were no handrails on it, it kept Charmian and me busy avoiding falling in.I never saw such a preposterous little wharf.Whenever I watched it closely, it refused to roll; but as soon as I took my attention off from it, away it went, just like the Snark.Once, I caught it in the act, just as it upended, and I looked down the length of it for two hundred feet, and for all the world it was like the deck of a ship ducking into a huge head-sea.
At last, however, supported by our hosts, we negotiated the wharf and gained the land.But the land was no better.The very first thing it did was to tilt up on one side, and far as the eye could see I watched it tilt, clear to its jagged, volcanic backbone, and Isaw the clouds above tilt, too.This was no stable, firm-founded land, else it would not cut such capers.It was like all the rest of our landfall, unreal.It was a dream.At any moment, like shifting vapour, it might dissolve away.The thought entered my head that perhaps it was my fault, that my head was swimming or that something I had eaten had disagreed with me.But I glanced at Charmian and her sad walk, and even as I glanced I saw her stagger and bump into the yachtsman by whose side she walked.I spoke to her, and she complained about the antic behaviour of the land.
We walked across a spacious, wonderful lawn and down an avenue of royal palms, and across more wonderful lawn in the gracious shade of stately trees.The air was filled with the songs of birds and was heavy with rich warm fragrances--wafture from great lilies, and blazing blossoms of hibiscus, and other strange gorgeous tropic flowers.The dream was becoming almost impossibly beautiful to us who for so long had seen naught but the restless, salty sea.
