That is what it is, a royal sport for the natural kings of earth.  The grass grows right down to the water at Waikiki Beach, and within fifty feet of the everlasting¹ sea.  The trees also grow down to the salty edge of things, and one sits in their shade and looks seaward at a majestic² surf thundering in on the beach to one’s very feet.  Half a mile out, where is the reef, the white-headed combers thrust suddenly skyward out of the placid³ turquoise-blue and come rolling in to shore.  One after another they come, a mile long, with smoking crests⁵, the white battalions⁶ of the infinite army of the sea.  And one sits and listens to the perpetual roar, and watches the unending procession, and feels tiny and fragile before this tremendous force expressing itself in fury and foam⁷ and sound.  Indeed, one feels microscopically⁸ small, and the thought that one may wrestle⁹ with this sea raises in one’s imagination a thrill of apprehension¹⁰, almost of fear.  Why, they are a mile long, these bull-mouthed monsters, and they weigh a thousand tons, and they charge in to shore faster than a man can run.  What chance?  No chance at all, is the verdict of the shrinking ego¹¹; and one sits, and looks, and listens, and thinks the grass and the shade are a pretty good place in which to be.