The Hawaiian Archipelago | Page 6

sole
object is to hurry us from the table in order that they may sit down to a
protracted meal; they are insulting and disobliging, and since illness
has been on board, have shown a want of common humanity which
places them below the rest of their species. The unconcealed hostility
with which they regard us is a marvellous contrast to the natural or
purchasable civility or servility which prevails on British steamers. It
has its comic side too, and we are content to laugh at it, and at all the
other oddities of this vaunted "Mail Line."
Our most serious grievance was the length of time that we were kept in
the damp inter-island region of the Tropic of Capricorn. Early
breakfasts, cold plunge baths, and the perfect ventilation of our cabins,
only just kept us alive. We read, wrote, and talked like automatons, and
our voices sounded thin and far away. We decided that heat was less
felt in exercise, made up an afternoon quoit party, and played
unsheltered from the nearly vertical sun, on decks so hot that we
required thick boots for the protection of our feet, but for three days
were limp and faint, and hardly able to crawl about or eat. The nights
were insupportable. We used to lounge on the bow, and retire late at
night to our cabins, to fight the heat, and scare rats and kill cockroaches

with slippers, until driven by the solar heat to rise again unrefreshed to
wrestle through another relentless day. We read the "Idylls of the King"
and talked of misty meres and reedy fens, of the cool north, with its
purple hills, leaping streams, and life-giving breezes, of long northern
winters, and ice and snow, but the realities of sultriness and damp
scared away our coolest imaginations. In this dismal region, when
about forty miles east of Tutuila, a beast popularly known as the
"Flying fox" {14} alighted on our rigging, and was eventually captured
as a prize for the zoological collection at San Francisco. He is a most
interesting animal, something like an exaggerated bat. His wings are
formed of a jet black membrane, and have a highly polished claw at the
extremity of each, and his feet consist of five beautifully polished long
black claws, with which he hangs on head downwards. His body is
about twice the size of that of a very large rat, black and furry
underneath, and with red foxy fur on his head and back. His face is
pointed, with a very black nose and prominent black eyes, with a
savage, remorseless expression. His wings, when extended, measure
forty-eight inches across, and his flying powers are prodigious. He
snapped like a dog at first, but is now quite tame, and devours
quantities of dried figs, the only diet he will eat.
We crossed the Equator in Long. 159 degrees 44', but in consequence
of the misty weather it was not till we reached Lat. 10 degrees 6' N. that
the Pole star, cold and pure, glistened far above the horizon, and two
hours later we saw the coruscating Pleiades, and the starry belt of Orion,
the blessed familiar constellations of "auld lang syne," and a "breath of
the cool north," the first I have felt for five months, fanned the tropic
night and the calm silvery Pacific. From that time we have been
indifferent to our crawling pace, except for the sick man's sake. The
days dawn in rose colour and die in gold, and through their long hours
a sea of delicious blue shimmers beneath the sun, so soft, so blue, so
dreamlike, an ocean worthy of its name, the enchanted region of
perpetual calm, and an endless summer. Far off, for many an azure
league, rims of rock, fringed with the graceful coco palm, girdle still
lagoons, and are themselves encircled by coral reefs on which the
ocean breaks all the year in broad drifts of foam. Myriads of flying fish
and a few dolphins and Portuguese men-of-war flash or float through
the scarcely undulating water. But we look in vain for the "sails of silk

and ropes of sendal," which are alone appropriate to this dream-world.
The Pacific in this region is an indolent blue expanse, pure and lonely,
an almost untraversed sea. We revel in these tropic days of
transcendent glory, in the balmy breath which just stirs the dreamy blue,
in the brief, fierce crimson sunsets, in the soft splendour of the nights,
when the moon and stars hang like lamps out of a lofty and distant
vault, and in the pearly crystalline dawns, when the sun rising through a
veil of rose and gold "rejoices as a giant to run his course," and
brightens by no "pale gradations" into the "perfect day."
P.S.--To-morrow morning