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Read Ebook: The Cruise of the Kawa: Wanderings in the South Seas by Chappell George S George Shepard
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Ebook has 440 lines and 22731 words, and 9 pages
We get under way. Polynesia's busiest corner. Our ship's company. A patriotic celebration rudely interrupted. In the grip of the elements. Necessary repairs. A night vigil. Land ho!
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.
Our handsome hosts. En route to the interior. Native flora and fauna. We arrive at the capital. A lecture on Filbertine architecture. A strange taboo. The serenade.
A few of our native companions. Filbertine diet. Physiological observations. We make a tour of the island. A call on the ladies. Baahaabaa gives a feast. The embarrassments of hospitality. An alcoholic escape.
A frank statement. We vote on the question of matrimony. A triple wedding. An epithalmic verse. We remember the Kawa. An interview with William Henry Thomas. Triplett's strategy. Safe within the atoll.
Swank's popularity on the Island. Whinney's jealousy. An artistic duel. Whinney's deplorable condition. An assembly of the Archipelago. Water-sports on the reef. The Judgment.
More premonitions. Triplett's curious behavior. A call from Baahaabaa. We visit William Henry Thomas. His bride. The christening. A hideous discovery. Pros and Cons. Out heart-breaking decision. A stirrup-cup of lava-lava.
Once more the Kawa foots the sea. Triplett's observations and our assistance. The death of the compass-plant. Lost! An orgy of desperation. Oblivion and excess. The Kawa brings us home. Our reception in Papeete. A celebration at the Tiare.
CAPTAIN EZRA TRIPLETT
A BEWILDERED BOTANIST
THE W.E. TRAPROCK EXPEDITION
BABAI AND HER TAA-TAA
WALTER E. TRAPROCK, F.R.S.S.E.U
GATHERING DEW-FISH ON THE OUTER REEF
HERMAN SWANK
LUPOBA-TILAANA, MIST ON THE MOUNTAIN
WATCHFUL WAITING
GOLDEN HARMONIES
WILLIAM HENRY THOMAS
THE LAGOON AT DAWN
THE LAGOON AT DAWN
THE NEST OF A FATU-LIVA
A FLEDGLING FATU-LIVA
BAAHAABAA MOURNING THE DEPARTURE OF HIS FRIENDS
We get under way. Polynesia's busiest corner. Our ship's company. A patriotic celebration rudely interrupted. In the grip of the elements. Necessary repairs. A night vigil. Land ho!
"Is she tight?" asked Captain Ezra Triplett. .
"As tight as a corset," was my reply.
"Good. I'll go."
In this short interview I obtained my captain for what was to prove the most momentous voyage of my life.
The papers were signed forthwith in the parlor of Hop Long's Pearl-of-the-Orient Cafeteria and dawn of the following day saw us beyond the Golden Gate.
I will omit the narration of the eventful but ordinary occurrences which enlivened the first six months of our trip and ask my reader to transport himself with me to a corner with which he is doubtless already familiar, namely, that formed by the intersection of the equator with the 180th meridian.
This particular angle bears the same relation to the Southern Pacific that the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue does to the Atlantic Seaboard. More explorers pass a given point in a given time at this corner than at any other on the globe.
It was precisely noon, daylight-saving time, on July 4th, 1921, when I stood on the corner referred to and, strange to say, found it practically deserted. To be more accurate, I stood on the deck of my auxiliary yawl, the Kawa, and she, the Kawa, wallowed on the corner mentioned. To all intents and purposes our ship's company was alone. We had the comforting knowledge that on our right, as one faced the bow, were the Gilbert and Marshall groups , on our left the Society, Friendly and Loyalty Archipelagoes, back of us the Marquesas and Paumotus and, directly on our course, the Carolines and Solomons, celebrated for their beautiful women. But we were becalmed and the geographic items mentioned were, for the time being, hull-down. Thus we were free to proceed with the business at hand, namely, the celebration of our national holiday.
This we had been doing for several hours, with frequent toasts, speeches, firecrackers and an occasional rocket aimed directly at the eye of the tropical sun. Captain Triplett, being a stickler for marine etiquette, had conditioned that there should be no liquor consumed except when the sun was over the yard-arm. To this end he had fitted a yard-arm to our cross-trees with a universal joint, thus enabling us to keep the spar directly under the sun at any hour of the day or night. Consequently our celebration was proceeding merrily.
But sail! Lord bless you, how Triplett could sail! It was wizardry, sheer wizardry; "devil-work," the natives used to call it. Triplett, blindfolded, could find the inlet to a hermetically sealed atoll. When there wasn't any inlet he would wait for a seventh wave--which is always extra large--and take her over on the crest, disregarding the ragged coral below. The Kawa was a tight little craft, built for rough work. She stood up nobly under the punishment her skipper gave her.
Triplett's assistant was an individual named William Henry Thomas, a retired Connecticut farmer who had chosen to end his days at sea. This, it should be remarked, is the reverse of the usual order. The back-lots of Connecticut are peopled by retired sea-captains who have gone back to the land, which accounts in large measure for the condition of agriculture in these communities. William Henry Thomas had appeared as Triplett's selection. Once aboard ship his land habits stood him in good stead in his various duties as cook, foremost-hand, butler and valet, for it must not be supposed that the Kawa, tight though she might be, was without a jaunty style of her own.
Our first-class cabin passengers were three, Reginald K. Whinney, scientific man, world wanderer, data-demon and a devil when roused; Herman Swank, bohemian, artist, and vagabond, forever in search of new sensations, and myself, Walter E. Traprock, of Derby, Connecticut, editor, war correspondent, and author, jack-of-all-trades, mostly literary and none lucrative.
Our object? What, indeed, but life itself!
I had known my companions for years. We had been class-mates at New Haven when our fathers were working our way through college. How far away it all seemed on that torrid Fourth of July as we sat on the Kawa's deck singing "Oralee", to which we had taught Triplett the bass.
"Like a blackbird in the spring, Chanting Ora-lee...."
"Very un-sanitary," said Whinney, "a blackbird ... in the spring ... very un-sanitary."
We laughed feebly.
Suddenly, as they do in the tropics, an extraordinary thing happened. A simoon, a monsoon and a typhoon met, head on, at the exact corner of the equator and the 180th meridian. We hadn't noticed one of them,--they had given us no warning or signal of any kind. Before we knew it they were upon us!
I have been in any one of the three separately many a time. In '95 off the Blue Canary Islands I was caught in an octoroon, one of those eight-sided storms, that spun our ship around like a top, and killed all the canaries for miles about--the sea was strewn with their bodies. But this!
"Below," bellowed Captain Triplett, and we made a dive for the hatch. William Henry Thomas was the last in, having been in the bow setting off a pinwheel, when the blow hit us. We dragged him in. My last memory is of Triplett driving a nail back of the hatch-cover to keep it from sliding.
Calm. Peace and sun! The beneficence of a warm, golden finger that reached gently through the port-hole and rested on my eye. What had happened? Oh--yes. "Like a blackbird in the spring." Slowly I fought my way back to consciousness. Triplett was sitting in a corner still clutching the hammer. On the floor lay Whinney and William Henry Thomas, their twisted legs horribly suggestive of death.
"Air," I gasped.
Triplett feebly wrenched out the nail and we managed to pull the hatch far enough back to squeeze through. Enlivened by the fresh air the others crawled slowly after, except poor William Henry Thomas who still lay inert.
"He's all right," said Whinney. "The gin bottle broke and dripped into his mouth. He'll come to presently." He added in an undertone, "The wages of gin..." Whinney was always quoting.
Minus our factotum we stood and silently surveyed what once had been the Kawa. The leathern features of Captain Triplett twisted into a grin. "Bald's a badger!" he murmured.
Everything had gone by the board. Mast, jigger, bow-sprit and running gear. Not a trace of block or tackle rested on the surrounding sea. We were clean-shaven. Of the chart, which had hung in a frame near the binnacle, not a line remained. All our navigating instruments, quadrant, sextant, and hydrant, with which we had amused ourselves making foolish observations during that morning of the glorious Fourth, our chronometer and speedometer,--all had absolutely disappeared.
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