We passed through the Golden Gate and headed south. We dropped the mountains of California beneath the horizon, and daily the surf grew warmer. But there were no flying fish, no bonita and dolphin. The ocean was bereft6 of life. Never had I sailed on so forsaken7 a sea. Always, before, in the same latitudes9, had I encountered flying fish.
“Never mind,” I said. “Wait till we get off the coast of Southern California. Then we’ll pick up the flying fish.”
We came abreast10 of Southern California, abreast of the Peninsula of Lower California, abreast of the coast of Mexico; and there were no flying fish. Nor was there anything else. No life moved. As the days went by the absence of life became almost uncanny.
“Never mind,” I said. “When we do pick up with the flying fish we’ll pick up with everything else. The flying fish is the staff of life for all the other breeds. Everything will come in a bunch when we find the flying fish.”
When I should have headed the Snark south-west for Hawaii, I still held her south. I was going to find those flying fish. Finally the time came when, if I wanted to go to Honolulu, I should have headed the Snark due west, instead of which I kept her south. Not until latitude8 19° did we encounter the first flying fish. He was very much alone. I saw him. Five other pairs of eager eyes scanned the sea all day, but never saw another. So sparse12 were the flying fish that nearly a week more elapsed before the last one on board saw his first flying fish. As for the dolphin, bonita, porpoise5, and all the other hordes13 of life—there weren’t any.
Not even a shark broke surface with his ominous14 dorsal15 fin11. Bert took a dip daily under the bowsprit, hanging on to the stays and dragging his body through the water. And daily he canvassed16 the project of letting go and having a decent swim. I did my best to dissuade17 him. But with him I had lost all standing18 as an authority on sea life.
“If there are sharks,” he demanded, “why don’t they show up?”
I assured him that if he really did let go and have a swim the sharks would promptly19 appear. This was a bluff20 on my part. I didn’t believe it. It lasted as a deterrent21 for two days. The third day the wind fell calm, and it was pretty hot. The Snark was moving a knot an hour. Bert dropped down under the bowsprit and let go. And now behold22 the perversity23 of things. We had sailed across two thousand miles and more of ocean and had met with no sharks. Within five minutes after Bert finished his swim, the fin of a shark was cutting the surface in circles around the Snark.
There was something wrong about that shark. It bothered me. It had no right to be there in that deserted24 ocean. The more I thought about it, the more incomprehensible it became. But two hours later we sighted land and the mystery was cleared up. He had come to us from the land, and not from the uninhabited deep. He had presaged25 the landfall. He was the messenger of the land.
Twenty-seven days out from San Francisco we arrived at the island of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. In the early morning we drifted around Diamond Head into full view of Honolulu; and then the ocean burst suddenly into life. Flying fish cleaved26 the air in glittering squadrons. In five minutes we saw more of them than during the whole voyage. Other fish, large ones, of various sorts, leaped into the air. There was life everywhere, on sea and shore. We could see the masts and funnels27 of the shipping28 in the harbour, the hotels and bathers along the beach at Waikiki, the smoke rising from the dwelling-houses high up on the volcanic29 slopes of the Punch Bowl and Tantalus. The custom-house tug30 was racing31 toward us and a big school of porpoises got under our bow and began cutting the most ridiculous capers32. The port doctor’s launch came charging out at us, and a big sea turtle broke the surface with his back and took a look at us. Never was there such a burgeoning33 of life. Strange faces were on our decks, strange voices were speaking, and copies of that very morning’s newspaper, with cable reports from all the world, were thrust before our eyes. Incidentally, we read that the Snark and all hands had been lost at sea, and that she had been a very unseaworthy craft anyway. And while we read this information a wireless34 message was being received by the congressional party on the summit of Haleakala announcing the safe arrival of the Snark.
It was the Snark’s first landfall—and such a landfall! For twenty-seven days we had been on the deserted deep, and it was pretty hard to realize that there was so much life in the world. We were made dizzy by it. We could not take it all in at once. We were like awakened35 Rip Van Winkles, and it seemed to us that we were dreaming. On one side the azure36 sea lapped across the horizon into the azure sky; on the other side the sea lifted itself into great breakers of emerald that fell in a snowy smother37 upon a white coral beach. Beyond the beach, green plantations38 of sugar-cane undulated gently upward to steeper slopes, which, in turn, became jagged volcanic crests39, drenched40 with tropic showers and capped by stupendous masses of trade-wind clouds. At any rate, it was a most beautiful dream. The Snark turned and headed directly in toward the emerald surf, till it lifted and thundered on either hand; and on either hand, scarce a biscuit-toss away, the reef showed its long teeth, pale green and menacing.
Abruptly41 the land itself, in a riot of olive-greens of a thousand hues42, reached out its arms and folded the Snark in. There was no perilous43 passage through the reef, no emerald surf and azure sea—nothing but a warm soft land, a motionless lagoon44, and tiny beaches on which swam dark-skinned tropic children. The sea had disappeared. The Snark’s anchor rumbled45 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 rusty46 dollars for souls, who, in a reeking47 atmosphere of soot48 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 clinched49 it with their unsmirched souls.
So we went ashore50 with them across a level flashing sea to the wonderful green land. We landed on a tiny wharf51, and the dream became more insistent52; 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 psychology53. 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, tilted55, 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 preposterous56 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 tilt54 up on one side, and far as the eye could see I watched it tilt, clear to its jagged, volcanic backbone57, and I saw 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 spoke58 to her, and she complained about the antic behaviour of the land.
We walked across a spacious59, 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 fragrances60—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 naught61 but the restless, salty sea. Charmian reached out her hand and clung to me—for support against the ineffable62 beauty of it, thought I. But no. As I supported her I braced63 my legs, while the flowers and lawns reeled and swung around me. It was like an earthquake, only it quickly passed without doing any harm. It was fairly difficult to catch the land playing these tricks. As long as I kept my mind on it, nothing happened. But as soon as my attention was distracted, away it went, the whole panorama64, swinging and heaving and tilting65 at all sorts of angles. Once, however, I turned my head suddenly and caught that stately line of royal palms swinging in a great arc across the sky. But it stopped, just as soon as I caught it, and became a placid66 dream again.
Next we came to a house of coolness, with great sweeping67 veranda68, where lotus-eaters might dwell. Windows and doors were wide open to the breeze, and the songs and fragrances blew lazily in and out. The walls were hung with tapa-cloths. Couches with grass-woven covers invited everywhere, and there was a grand piano, that played, I was sure, nothing more exciting than lullabies. Servants—Japanese maids in native costume—drifted around and about, noiselessly, like butterflies. Everything was preternaturally cool. Here was no blazing down of a tropic sun upon an unshrinking sea. It was too good to be true. But it was not real. It was a dream-dwelling. I knew, for I turned suddenly and caught the grand piano cavorting69 in a spacious corner of the room. I did not say anything, for just then we were being received by a gracious woman, a beautiful Madonna, clad in flowing white and shod with sandals, who greeted us as though she had known us always.
We sat at table on the lotus-eating veranda, served by the butterfly maids, and ate strange foods and partook of a nectar called poi. But the dream threatened to dissolve. It shimmered70 and trembled like an iridescent71 bubble about to break. I was just glancing out at the green grass and stately trees and blossoms of hibiscus, when suddenly I felt the table move. The table, and the Madonna across from me, and the veranda of the lotus-eaters, the scarlet72 hibiscus, the greensward and the trees—all lifted and tilted before my eyes, and heaved and sank down into the trough of a monstrous73 sea. I gripped my chair convulsively and held on. I had a feeling that I was holding on to the dream as well as the chair. I should not have been surprised had the sea rushed in and drowned all that fairyland and had I found myself at the wheel of the Snark just looking up casually74 from the study of logarithms. But the dream persisted. I looked covertly75 at the Madonna and her husband. They evidenced no perturbation. The dishes had not moved upon the table. The hibiscus and trees and grass were still there. Nothing had changed. I partook of more nectar, and the dream was more real than ever.
“Will you have some iced tea?” asked the Madonna; and then her side of the table sank down gently and I said yes to her at an angle of forty-five degrees.
“Speaking of sharks,” said her husband, “up at Niihau there was a man—” And at that moment the table lifted and heaved, and I gazed upward at him at an angle of forty-five degrees.
So the luncheon76 went on, and I was glad that I did not have to bear the affliction of watching Charmian walk. Suddenly, however, a mysterious word of fear broke from the lips of the lotus-eaters. “Ah, ah,” thought I, “now the dream goes glimmering77.” I clutched the chair desperately78, resolved to drag back to the reality of the Snark some tangible79 vestige80 of this lotus land. I felt the whole dream lurching and pulling to be gone. Just then the mysterious word of fear was repeated. It sounded like Reporters. I looked and saw three of them coming across the lawn. Oh, blessed reporters! Then the dream was indisputably real after all. I glanced out across the shining water and saw the Snark at anchor, and I remembered that I had sailed in her from San Francisco to Hawaii, and that this was Pearl Harbour, and that even then I was acknowledging introductions and saying, in reply to the first question, “Yes, we had delightful81 weather all the way down.”
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1
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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populous
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| adj.人口稠密的，人口众多的 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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porpoises
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| n.鼠海豚( porpoise的名词复数 ) | |
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porpoise
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| n.鼠海豚 | |
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bereft
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| adj.被剥夺的 | |
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Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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latitude
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| n.纬度，行动或言论的自由(范围)，(pl.)地区 | |
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latitudes
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| 纬度 | |
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abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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fin
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| n.鳍；(飞机的)安定翼 | |
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sparse
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| adj.稀疏的，稀稀落落的，薄的 | |
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hordes
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| n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 )；部落 | |
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ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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dorsal
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| adj.背部的，背脊的 | |
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canvassed
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| v.（在政治方面）游说( canvass的过去式和过去分词 )；调查（如选举前选民的）意见；为讨论而提出（意见等）；详细检查 | |
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dissuade
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| v.劝阻，阻止 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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deterrent
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| n.阻碍物，制止物；adj.威慑的，遏制的 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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perversity
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| n.任性；刚愎自用 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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presaged
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| v.预示，预兆( presage的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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cleaved
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| v.劈开，剁开，割开( cleave的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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funnels
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| 漏斗( funnel的名词复数 )； （轮船，火车等的）烟囱 | |
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shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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volcanic
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| adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的 | |
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tug
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| v.用力拖(或拉)；苦干；n.拖；苦干；拖船 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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capers
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| n.开玩笑( caper的名词复数 )；刺山柑v.跳跃，雀跃( caper的第三人称单数 ) | |
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burgeoning
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| adj.迅速成长的，迅速发展的v.发芽，抽枝( burgeon的现在分词 )；迅速发展；发（芽），抽（枝） | |
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wireless
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| adj.无线的；n.无线电 | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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azure
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| adj.天蓝色的，蔚蓝色的 | |
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smother
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| vt./vi.使窒息；抑制；闷死；n.浓烟；窒息 | |
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plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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crests
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| v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的第三人称单数 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点 | |
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drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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hues
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| 色彩( hue的名词复数 )； 色调； 信仰； 观点 | |
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perilous
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| adj.危险的，冒险的 | |
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lagoon
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| n.泻湖，咸水湖 | |
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rumbled
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| 发出隆隆声，发出辘辘声( rumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 轰鸣着缓慢行进； 发现…的真相； 看穿（阴谋） | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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47
reeking
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的现在分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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48
soot
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| n.煤烟，烟尘；vt.熏以煤烟 | |
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49
clinched
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| v.（尤指两人）互相紧紧抱[扭]住( clinch的过去式和过去分词 )；解决（争端、交易），达成（协议） | |
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50
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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wharf
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| n.码头，停泊处 | |
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52
insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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54
tilt
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| v.(使)倾侧；(使)倾斜；n.倾侧；倾斜 | |
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55
tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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57
backbone
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| n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气 | |
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58
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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fragrances
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| n.芳香，香味( fragrance的名词复数 )；香水 | |
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naught
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| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
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62
ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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63
braced
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| adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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64
panorama
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| n.全景，全景画，全景摄影，全景照片[装置] | |
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tilting
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| 倾斜，倾卸 | |
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placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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veranda
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| n.走廊；阳台 | |
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69
cavorting
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| v.跳跃( cavort的现在分词 ) | |
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70
shimmered
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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71
iridescent
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| adj.彩虹色的，闪色的 | |
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72
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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73
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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75
covertly
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| adv.偷偷摸摸地 | |
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76
luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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77
glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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78
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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79
tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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80
vestige
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| n.痕迹，遗迹，残余 | |
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81
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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