Read Ebook: Historic Girlhoods Part One by Holland Rupert Sargent

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At four o'clock Point Firmin Light, distant five miles, bore N.W. by W., and at the same hour the barometer, which had risen rapidly since noon, registered 30.40, about the normal for the southern California coast. The gentle southerly breeze cleared the western sky toward evening and a warm hued sunset blazed out in defiance of the threatening signs of the morning. The yacht slipped easily through the light swell of the channel, her regular curtesies serving only to spangle her glossy sides with sparkling drops of brine and to punctuate her wake at even intervals with swelling knots of foam like the marks on a trailed sounding line.

"Fairweather sunset," said the mate; "but--" and he finished by shaking his head dubiously and proceeding to give orders for swinging the boats inboard and adding extra lashings to the spare spars and water-butts on the forward deck.

Early in the first watch, and not long after the thin wisp of a new moon had slipped down behind the jagged peaks of Catalina, the wind hauled suddenly to the southeast. Blowing with steadily increasing force, it drove a heavy pall of sooty clouds before it. This, quickly spreading out across the sky, rendered the night so dark that, beyond the ghostly reflections from the binnacle lamps, nothing was visible save the phosphorescent crests of the rapidly rising seas. With this slant of wind the best that we could do on the starboard tack was dead east, and this direction was held until the imminent loom of Point San Juan, and a not-overly-distant roar of breakers, warned us to put about and head off southwesterly between San Clemente and Catalina.

At midnight the barometer was well below 30, and the wind and sea were still rising. The mainsail and foresail were single reefed when the watch came on deck, and while sail was being shortened a heavy sea came aboard just forward of the beam and crashed through the galley skylight. The water rushed in with the roar of a miniature Niagara, but beyond washing the Japanese cook off the transom on which he had composed himself for sleep and bouncing him against the stove, no serious harm was done.

At two in the morning, with no abatement of force, the wind went back to S.S.W., and with Clemente rising darkly ahead the yacht was again put about. The barometer was down to 29.80, and the half-gale that met us as we came out from under the lee of the island quickly made it evident that further shortening of sail was imperative. The watch was called, and with no little difficulty two more reefs were tied in the mainsail, bringing it down almost to the proportions of a storm trysail. The foreboom was being hauled amidships preparatory to close-reefing the foresail, when a solid wall of green water came combing over the port bow and swept the deck like an avalanche. One of the sailors--Gus, a big Swede--who had been bracing a foot against the lee rail, lost his balance in the sudden lurch and, missing a frantic clutch at a shroud, went over the side. A rush was made for the life-buoys, but, before one could be thrown over, the lost man reappeared, coolly drawing himself in, hand over hand, on the foresheet, a bight of which he had carried with him in his fall.

After subduing and triple-reefing the threshing foresail the watch went below, but only to be called again almost immediately to take the bonnet out of the staysail, a measure made necessary by the fierce southwesterly squalls which kept winding into the now fully developed "sou'easter." Finally, as the storm showed no signs of abating, the forestay-sail was hauled to windward and, head-reaching, the yacht made good weather of the last hours of the night.

Fair weather and light breezes were taken advantage of on the morning of the 7th to install a much-needed safety device in the form of a wire rail run all the way round the yacht at a height of eighteen inches above the main rail, a precaution the imperative necessity of which had been shown when one of the sailors had been thrown overboard during the storm. The yacht's rail, only two feet in height, while of some protection at the bows and stern, was almost useless amidships, where the deckhouse, separated from it by only a narrow passage, rose to an equal height. Three-quarter inch steel stanchions were set at intervals of eight feet along the rail, and through these a quarter-inch wire cable was run. The stanchions were fastened by a bolt on the under side of the rail in such a manner as to be easily removed, thus permitting the whole affair to be expeditiously taken down and stowed while in port. This simple and inexpensive precaution proved of incalculable value in insuring the safety of the decks on stormy nights, a usefulness which was put to the test many times in the course of the months that followed.

Clearing skies and a smoothing sea on the third day out brought the Mater and Claribel--two pathetic bundles of rugs--up on deck, where the sun and fresh air began the slow task of reviving in them an interest in life. All day they drooped in hollow-eyed wretchedness with their white faces turned toward the paradise of a terra firma beyond the eastern horizon which every moment was receding farther away. Through all of the bright noontide and the sparkling afternoon they kept their ceaseless vigil, and even when twilight came, with a freshening wind and heavier seas, they still refused to go below. Day and night were all the same to them now, they said. An hour later a black-visaged squall came boring down out of the night ahead, and the raindrops and the driving spray began to drum a duet to the accompaniment of the rising blasts of the wind.

"You'll be shivering with cold before long if you stay here," admonished the Commodore gently; "best get up and go below now."

"There is no heat or cold any more," one muttered listlessly, and they both drew their rugs closer and curled the tighter into the curve of the transoms.

A high-headed maverick of a comber came crashing over the weather rail and swept the muffled figures into a vortex of spinning foam where a ton of green water washed about the cockpit. We sprang to help them, but they only shuddered resignedly back into the wash of the clearing scuppers and disdained to move.

"You're both soaking wet," protested the Commodore; "please go below now and get into some dry clothes."

"There is no wet nor dry any more," bubbled the starboard bundle; "let us alone."

"A wave like that last one has been known to kill a strong man," ventured the Commodore weakly, at his wit's end for an argument that would have some effect. "Here's another coming now. Please--"

"There is no life nor death any more," broke in a sputter from the port bundle; "and even if there was we wouldn't--"

We picked up the two dripping bundles and bore them gently below just as a second comber, running wildly amuck, banged its head off against the rail and turned the cockpit into another maelstrom.

I have still a vivid mind picture of the Commodore when, after he had laboriously squinted out his first sights and was ready to try to figure the position of the yacht, he disappeared into his cabin behind an armful of tables and books on navigation and slammed and locked the door. The iterated luncheon call elicited only a grunt of impatience from the depths of the sanctum, and likewise the summons to tea and dinner. The Mater's timid knocking at bedtime brought no answer at all, and we were gathered in perplexed colloquy on deck as to what the next move would be, when a booming "Got it!" thundered out from the locked cabin, and a moment later the door was burst open by a pajama-clad figure, waving a slip of paper above its towel-bound head.

"Observation checks Dead-reckoning at last," cried the Commodore. "Give me some dinner."

Between mouthfuls he explained to us that the first time he worked out the sights they showed the yacht to be somewhere in Tibet. All the rest of the morning she kept turning up in various parts of Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe, the only time she was in the water being after a reckoning which gave the latitude and longitude of Victoria Nyanza. Shortly after noon the figuring in of some allowances hitherto neglected jumped the elusive craft into the Western Hemisphere, but as near as might be to a perch on the summit of Aconcagua. Tea time had her in the Klondike, and several other Canadian points were visited before Nebraska was reached at the call for dinner. An hour later she was actually in the Pacific, but floundering helplessly off the coast of Peru, from where she worked north in an encouraging fashion until a sudden jump landed her in the Colorado desert. She was perilously near being stranded on Catalina at the end of the second dog-watch, and it was the reckoning after this one--magnetic variation and a few other essentials being finally included--that checked with the Dead-reckoning and put the poor wanderer where she belonged. Day by day, navigation became simpler work after that titanic struggle, until, the morning we sighted the island of Hawaii, I saw the Commodore take and work out in ten minutes an observation which told him in which direction the harbour of Hilo was located.

Besides navigating and directing the sailing of the yacht, the Commodore always stood one of the night watches and at other times held himself ready to appear on deck at any emergency. It was a stiff undertaking, having suddenly to face the prospect of eight or ten months of day and night work on a small schooner in the treacherous South Pacific; but the Commodore buckled down to it with the enthusiasm of a youngster and carried it through with flying colours, as will be seen.

My own work was confined to the nominal duties of Volunteer Weather Observer for the U. S. Hydrographic Office,--a branch of the Bureau of Equipment of the Navy--occasional tricks at the wheel, and falling into line now and then at the tail of a sheet or halyard when "all hands and the cook" failed to muster sufficient power amongst them. As Weather Observer I became for eight months a small cog in the very comprehensive system by which the Hydrographic Office is gathering data on currents, winds, clouds, waves, storms, temperatures, etc., from all of the sailed-in sea-ways of the world to assist in perfecting its monthly weather charts on which--as the result of the accumulated observations of many years--the probable meteorological conditions likely to prevail at any given point are recorded. Twice a day I took the temperature of the air and water, recorded the direction and force of the wind--the latter on a scale of 1 to 10, from a calm to a full gale--the set and height of the seas, and on a circular chart of the heavens indicated which of the various kinds of clouds--nimbus, cirrus, cumulus, etc.--prevailed at the time in each of the twelve divisions into which it was divided. The difference between the position of the yacht by Dead-reckoning--that is, figured by the log and compass--and the position by Observation gave the direction and speed of the ocean current at that point. These data were set down in a little booklet, containing a page for each day of the month, which, when filled, was mailed to the San Francisco branch of the Hydrographic Office.

We often have been asked if time did not hang very heavily on our hands in the long, unbroken fifteen, twenty and even thirty day intervals between ports. Perhaps this will be as good a place as any to answer that question. For the Commodore and myself I will register an emphatic "No," while a partial list of the activities of the ladies, will, I think, answer for the balance of the passengers.

When I mention that in addition to these things the indefatigable Claribel also set up a "native crafts" shop in the starboard lifeboat, where she produced wooden gods, shark-tooth necklaces, tortoise-shell combs , war clubs and axes, carved coco shells, tappa cloth and similar "tourist" curios of a character to defy detection and at a cost effectively to defy native competition; that she read Goethe and Heine in German, and all of the 200 or more volumes in the yacht's library, including several works on navigation, ship-building and astronomy, as well; that she made herself a dozen or more tropical dresses ; that she mastered the technique of my typewriter and wrote a voluminous journal upon it, manifolding some scores of copies to send to friends at home; that she played the gramophone for us whenever the yacht was steady enough to allow that sensitive instrument to keep an even keel;--when I mention all of these various spheres of activity in which Claribel circulated, and then admit that I have still left the list incomplete for want of space, it will readily be seen that time had little chance to hang heavily on her nimble hands and that she had scant opportunity to learn the meaning of that hackneyed term, "the monotony of the voyage."

On the run from San Pedro to Hawaii our course was at first directed somewhat more southerly than the straight one to Hilo in the hope of the sooner intercepting the Northeast Trades, which, according to the government weather charts, should ordinarily be met with somewhere in the vicinity of the 27th parallel. During the morning watch of the 8th our expectations appeared to be realized. Just as the rising sun broke through a shoal of silver clouds a crackling breeze from the E.N.E. came humming over the taffrail, and, heeling the yacht over until the hissing brine curled off by her forefoot kissed the starboard rail, sent her spinning through the water at a good ten-knot gait.

"Northeast Trades!" chuckled the starboard watch to the port watch as the latter came on deck; "Northeast Trades--cheer up, the Hilo girls have got the tow-line!"

"Northeast Trades--now for a big day's run!" bellowed the mate to the Commodore, as he ordered the kites run up and the backstays set and tautened; and "Northeast Trades!" mused the cook to the bacon; and "Northeast Trades" chirped the ladies to their mirrors; and "Northeast Trades" hummed the sails to the sheets and the halyards to the shrouds. The air was vibrant with the good news, the sea was a-dance because of it, and the sun, when he awoke to a full realization of the import of what was on, broke into a smile so expansive and warm that the hovering mists of the morning took up their tents and hurried away.

This felicitous state of affairs lasted until eight o'clock, when the wind veered around through east and south, finally to settle itself comfortably so near S.S.W. that it kept the headsails flapping and the mainsails a-shiver at the mast to hold the yacht's head up to W.S.W., a good two points north of a course which, normally, we should have sailed "wing-and-wing." And that was the last we saw of the much-vaunted Northeast Trades until, five months afterwards on the run back to Hawaii from Fiji, they met us at the equator and headed us all the way to Honolulu.

For the remainder of the run the breeze, except in occasional squalls, blew steadily and with moderate force from all points between southeast and southwest. Several times, for a few hours at a stretch, it hauled around as far as W.S.W., and even west, on which occasions the booms were jibed to port and a few miles of the much-needed southing run off. A half dozen times we ran free for an hour or two when a favourable slant of wind offered, but oftener it was "full-and-by," or "by-the-wind," with the booms almost amidships in an endeavour to steal the last fraction of a point from the obstinate turncoat of a wind. Most of the time the yacht was too close to the wind to admit of the advantageous use of the main topmast staysail, but either our large or small sail of that class, as well as the club and jib topsails, were used whenever opportunity offered.

Runs of close to 190 miles were made on the 9th, 13th and 14th, and on the 19th the best run of the passage, 198 miles, was logged. On the 16th and 21st frequent squalls and light baffling airs were responsible for the shortest runs, fifty-seven and seventy-seven miles respectively. The average for the other days was in the vicinity of 130 miles. The general direction of the currents encountered was unfavourable, the prevailing one, which had a northeasterly set of about ten miles a day, having apparently hooked up with the contrary winds to cut down our southing and westing. Long before entering the torrid zone, which was done on the night of the 19th, the weather in its fitful uncertainty as well as in its mildness, savoured strongly of the tropics. There was no fog nor even the shortest periods in which the sky was completely overcast. There was only one occasion when the zenith was sufficiently obscured to make a latitude sight impossible at noonday, and no day whose morning was too cloudy for a longitude observation but which made amends with a clear afternoon.

No heavy seas were encountered after the storm of the first two days had been left astern. This was principally due to the fact that the constantly shifting wind never blew up a sea from one direction before it veered off to another and beat it down again. The resulting succession of cross swells was annoying, but never heavy enough really to be troublesome. The temperature of the water increased slowly but with almost absolute regularity as we approached the lower latitudes, while that of the air, though likewise increasing, was more variable, tending to jump up and down incessantly in the intervals of sunshine and squalls.

On the morning of the 15th a striking and unusual arrangement of clouds on the western horizon was responsible for no small excitement. A dull, dark line of stratus, hanging low above the water, was topped by a vivid, clean-lined triangle of frosty-white cirro-cumulus, producing an effect so wonderfully like a snow-capped mountain that the mate, without stopping to reflect that our position at noon of the previous day left us still almost a thousand miles from Hawaii, the nearest charted point where even so much as a rock pushed above the bosom of the Pacific, burst forth with a lusty cry of "Land on the starboard bow!" The look the Commodore gave the mate when, aroused from one of his short spells of sleep, he rushed on deck to discover this nebulous "landfall," was more eloquent than vocal expression. It was my impression that nothing was said, but I find that the "Ladies' Log" records that "Some words passed between the officers, most of them going in one direction." So it is just possible that the Commodore was not able to restrain his pent-up feelings after all.

The next day Claribel set to music a verse of Henry Lawson, the New Zealand poet, which goes something like this:

For the Southeast lands are dread lands To the sailor in the shrouds, When the low clouds loom like headlands, And the headlands blur like clouds;

choosing the time of the mate's watch to come out upon the quarter deck and practise it. Wolfe, blushing furiously, retreated to the lee of the foresail for shelter, not to reappear until the watch was called at noon. He could never see a white cloud near the horizon after that without looking ashamed, which was very awkward in the tropics where it was cloudy all the time; yet our real landfall came in form so similar to the cloud island which had so completely deceived that functionary a week previously that every one--including the Commodore--gazed, silent and mistrustful, and waited for some one else to shout the news. Our Dead-reckoning showed us to be a hundred miles off shore at daybreak, and it seemed impossible that even the mountain tops could show so clearly at so great a distance. But as the morning sun gained strength the opaque sheets of strati along the horizon began to thin, and gradually out of the dissolving mists, clear as cut alabaster against the brilliant turquoise of the tropic sky, the funicular cone of a great snow-capped volcano took unmistakable shape, and we knew it for the mighty Mauna Kea, famous as one of the loftiest island mountain peaks in the world.

"Could we make Hilo by dark?" was now the question. The mate answered in the negative and advised proceeding under half sail and standing off-and-on till daybreak. But the Commodore, noting the strengthening breeze which since midnight had been working back into the east where it belonged, deemed the effort worth making, and accordingly ordered the sheets slacked off and more sail set. Up fluttered the big main topmast staysail, up the jib topsail and the flying jib, and up the main and fore gaff-topsails, every one of them drawing beautifully in the steady breeze that came gushing over the starboard quarter, and each after the other, as it was hoisted and filled, doing its full measure of work in forcing the yacht's lee rail deeper into the yeasty run of foam churned up by her lunging bows and driving her faster toward her goal.

When the great turtle-backed Mauna Loa, lying to the south of and beyond Mauna Kea, was sighted at noon we had been bowling along for three hours at a gait that had brought the black lava belts under the snowline above the horizon, and below these, still dim and indistinct as the figures on ancient tapestry, the perspectives of the gently undulating lower reaches of the windward slope of the largest of the Hawaiian Islands.

All through the afternoon watch the wind freshened until, from an average of ten knots in the morning, we increased to eleven in each of the hours from twelve to two, ran just over twelve knots from two to three, and but slightly under thirteen from three to four. Fortunately such sea as was running was with us, and though there was a constant smoke of spray about the bows, and though the sails, filled hard as sand bags, strained on the masts till the backstays sang like over-strung fiddles, no green water came aboard and nothing carried away.

At four-thirty the masts of ships were sighted a couple of points off the port bow, and taking in the light sails we headed up for what we knew must be Hilo harbour. Ten minutes after the course was altered a black squall which had been chasing the yacht passed astern of her and broke upon the land, its course being as clearly traceable across the velvet verdance of the rippling cane fields as across the heavens. Down the coast it raced us, gradually passing inland and leaving behind it a wake of freshness that glistened like a green satin ribbon in the last rays of the sun that was setting behind a shoulder of the towering Mauna Kea. There are several experiences in life that mark with indelible impression the pages of memory, but none to compare with the sensations that throng upon one at his first close-in sight of a tropical island.

As the yacht stood into the entrance of Hilo harbour, which is little more than an open roadstead partially protected by the submerged Broom Reef, the wind hauled to the south and several short tacks were necessary to make a favourable anchorage that offered a couple of cables' length to the landward of a big 12,000-ton steamer of the American-Hawaiian fleet which was loading sugar. The anchor was let go in seven fathoms of water at a few minutes before six o'clock, the log, which had been taken in at the entrance of the harbour, registering 2,430 miles from San Pedro breakwater.

Early in the afternoon of the 26th two of the sailors, pulling ashore to bring off some visitors, ran into a nasty combination of surf and tide rip at the bar of the Wiluki River and upset. One of the men was caught under the boat, and but for the timely assistance of a Japanese who had been fishing from his sampan nearby, would undoubtedly have been drowned. While the plucky Jap was endeavouring to secure the painter of the overturned boat, his sampan drifted inside the breakers and was on the verge of being itself upset when rescued by a tug sent out from the landing stage.

At four A. M. of March 2nd anchor was tripped and sail made for the run to Honolulu. The wind at first was light and baffling, as a result of which but twenty-one miles up the coast of the island were run off by noon. After passing Alea Point, however, the change of course made it possible to slack off the sheets, and under all plain lower sail the yacht bowled along at a nine-knot gait until well after dark. For the next three or four hours heavy squalls were encountered, but midnight showed a clear sky, with the opaque mass of Maui, looming darkly, abeam to starboard. This big island, the second in size of the Hawaiian group, is famous for its extinct volcano of Haleakala, the crater of which, ten miles in diameter and with rims that rise in places to an altitude of 10,000 feet, is believed to be the largest that has existed in any era of the world's geological history.

Morning of the 3rd showed the gaunt, forbidding cliffs of Molokai on the port beam, and our glasses readily located the spot where, shut in by unscalable rock walls behind and cut off by cordons of breakers in front, the unfortunate inhabitants of the leper settlement of Kalaupapa drag out their sad existences.

The island of Oahu was sighted at nine, and shortly afterward we headed into Molokai Channel, said to be one of the deepest places in the Pacific Ocean, and, in the matter of baffling winds and waves and currents, undoubtedly one of the most treacherous and uncertain, as we were to learn on the return voyage. A strong breeze increased to a half gale by noon, and under double-reefed main and foresails the yacht made not any too good weather of it in the vicious cross tumble of waters that assailed her. About noon the smooth, round summit of Coco Head began to peer above the foam-tipped crests of the in-racing seas, and an hour later the sharp, incisive outline of Diamond Head showed clear against the northeastern skyline. As we brought its tall lighthouse abeam the beach and reef of Waikiki, with rows of white hotels and bungalows, and the odd looking crater of the Punchbowl tilted above Honolulu in the background, began to open up beyond. The Jack at the fore brought the pilot boat, rowed by a crew of stalwart, bare-chested Kanakas, out from the Head through a tortuous passage in the Reef, and, watching his chance, the pilot leapt to a footing on the ladder and clambered aboard without absorbing so much as a drop of the swinging comber which at the same instant swept and half swamped his plunging cutter.

HONOLULU TO TAIO-HAIE

With 2,000 miles of salt water stretching between its windward shores and the western coast of North America, with twice that distance separating it from Asia, and with more or less open water rolling limitlessly away to the Arctic and the Antarctic, it is only natural that Hawaii should harbour a race of sea-loving people. A hundred years ago the Hawaiians, bred true to their Samoan progenitors, fearlessly embarked in their sliver-like, cinnet-sewed canoes on voyages that today would be deemed hazardous for hundred-ton schooners; and a half century or more back they were hailed throughout the Seven Seas as the most daring whalers that ever drove lances or hurled harpoons. So in assuming at the beginning of this century the title of "The Yachting Centre of the Pacific," Hawaii is not attaining to a new distinction, but merely claiming in a modernized form a heritage of ancient days.

Honolulu, judged by the "timber and lines" of the men behind the sport there, is the peer of any yachting centre in the world, and the Royal Hawaiian Yacht Club is composed of as clean-cut, whole-souled a lot of gentlemen and sportsmen as one will meet east or west, north or south, in whatever country or under whatever burgee.

Kaleakaua, last king of the Hawaiians, was the first commodore of the yacht club, and at the time of our visit the late Prince Cupid, the Territory's representative in Washington and once in line of succession to the throne, was an active member. And only in the Yacht Club, of all Hawaiian organizations, have royalist and reactionary met on terms of frank and open friendship. The memories of the stirring days of the revolution are dimmed by the mists of more than a score of years, but still clear and distinct in island society is drawn the line of demarcation between the ever-loyal one-time adherents of Kaleakaua and those who were active in, or in sympathy with, his overthrow. Yet with the yachtsmen, even in the days of the by-no-means bloodless revolution, animosities, political, social and personal, were ever left ashore, and one saw leaders of the rival factions bending their backs and chorusing together as they broke out the same anchor, or, shoulder to shoulder and foot to foot, swayed up the same mainsail.

To read over a membership list of the Royal Hawaiian Yacht Club from its early days is to con a roster of the men who have made Hawaii what it is; and not a man who has held the tiller of the Insular ship of state and guided it through the storms that have threatened to engulf it so often during the last three decades but has owed something of the steadiness of his head and hand to the training of his yachting days.

Honolulu hospitality is of so wide a fame that I will not lay myself open to the charge of trying to "gild refined gold or paint the rainbow" by telling here of the details of our sojourn in what is so happily called the "Pearl of the Pacific"; and yet--there was one incident that is so characteristic of the innate courtesy and gentility of the Hawaiian host that I may be pardoned for setting it down.

The only unpleasant feature about letting go anchor in Honolulu Harbour is having to break it out again. After our week of scheduled stop had stretched out to two weeks, and finally to three, the realization that our reluctance to leave was but growing with every day that the inevitable moment was deferred brought us at length to the arbitrary setting of a sailing hour. Toward this we inflexibly directed the current of our resolutions, with the result that we really did get away in the end.

"Ha-a-heo ka-u-a-ina pa--li--."

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