The Cruise of the Kawa | Page 5

the
horizon, suddenly fell into the sea and night was upon us.
"There's that," said Whinney quietly.
Thus we slid through the velvet night with the Double Cross hanging
low, sou'west by south.
It must have been about an hour before dawn that a shiver of
expectancy thrilled us unanimously.
"Did you hear that, sir?" said Captain Triplett in a low tone.
"No ... what was it?"
"A sea-robin ... we must be near land ... there it is again."
I heard it that time ... the faint, sweet note of the male sea-robin.
Shortly afterward we heard the mewing of a sea-puss, evidently chasing
the robin.
"Sure enough, sir," said Triplett. "It'll be land." Somehow we felt sure
of it.
In calm elation and tired expectancy we strained our eyes through the
slow crescendo of the day's birth. Suddenly, the sun leaped over the
horizon and the long crimson rays flashed forward to where, dead
ahead, we could see a faint swelling on the skyline. "Land-ho!" we
cried in voices of strangled joy.
"Boys," said Captain Triplett, apologetically ... "we ain't got no
yard-arm, but the sun's up and there's land dead ahead, and I reckon..."
He paused. Through the hatchway came William Henry Thomas
bearing a tray with four lily cups.
"Fair as a lily..." said Whinney (I knew he would).

Two minutes later we had fallen into heavy slumber while the Kawa
steered by the faithful Triplett, moved steadily toward our unknown
haven.
CHAPTER II
A real discovery. Polynesia analyzed. The astounding nature of the
Filberts. Their curious sound, and its reason. We make a landing. Our
first glimpse of the natives. The value of vaudeville.
There is nothing better, after a hurricane, than six hours' sleep. It was
high noon when we were awakened by William Henry Thomas and the
odor of coffee, which drew us to the quarter-deck. There, for the first
time, we were able to make an accurate survey of our surroundings and
realize the magnitude and importance of what had befallen us. While
we slept Captain Triplett had warped the denuded Kawa through a
labyrinth of coral and we now lay peacefully at anchor with the island
lying close in-board.
Its appearance, to put it mildly, was astonishing. Let me remind the
reader that for the previous four months we had been prowling through
the Southern Pacific meeting everywhere with disappointment and
disillusionment. We had inspected every island in every group noted on
every map from Mercator to Rand-McNally without finding any
variation in type from, "A," the low lying coral-atoll of the well-known
broken doughnut formation, to, "B," the high-browed, mansard design
popularized by F. O'Brien. [Footnote: This is the type "E". of Melville's
overrated classification--Ed.] In a few of the outlying suburbs of
Melanesia and the lower half of Amnesia, we had found a few designs
which showed sketchy promise of originality: coral reefs in quaint
forms had been begun, outlining a scheme of decoration in contrast
with the austere mountains and valleys. But everywhere these had been
abandoned. Either the appropriation had given out, or the polyps had
gotten to squabbling among themselves and left their work to be slowly
worn away by the erosive action of sea and shipwrecked bottoms.
[Footnote: In Micronesia it was even worse, the islands offering a
dead-level of mediocrity which I have never seen equalled except in the

workingmen's cottages of Ampere, New Jersey, the home of the
General Electric Company.] Add to the geographic sameness the
universal blight of white civilization with its picture post-cards,
professional hula and ooh-la dancers, souvenir and gift shops, automat
restaurants, movie-palaces, tourists, artists and explorers, and you have
some idea of the boredom which had settled down over the Kawa and
her inmates.
Only a few days before Whinney, usually so philosophical, had burst
out petulantly with: "To hell with these islands. Give me a good mirage,
any time." Swank and I had heartily agreed with him, and it was in that
despondent spirit that we had begun our Fourth of July celebration.
As we sat cozily on deck, sipping our coffee, it slowly dawned on us
that we had made the amazing discovery of an absolutely new type of
island!--something so evidently virgin and unvisited that we could only
gaze in awe-struck silence.
"Do you know," whispered Swank, "I think this is the first time I have
ever seen a virgin"--he choked for an instant on a crumb--"island."
We could well believe it.
The islands lay before us in echelon formation. The one in our
immediate foreground was typical of the others. Its ground-floor plan
was that of a circle of beach and palm enclosing an inner sea from the
center of which rose an elaborate mountain to a sheer height of two
thousand, perhaps ten thousand,