I May Not
Fly To Other Stars, But Of This Star I Myself Am Master."
As I write these lines I lift my eyes and look seaward.
I am on the
beach of Waikiki on the island of Oahu. Far, in the azure sky, the
trade-wind clouds drift low over the blue-green turquoise of the
deep sea. Nearer, the sea is emerald and light olive-green. Then
comes the reef, where the water is all slaty purple flecked with
red. Still nearer are brighter greens and tans, lying in alternate
stripes and showing where sandbeds lie between the living coral
banks. Through and over and out of these wonderful colours tumbles
and thunders a magnificent surf. As I say, I lift my eyes to all
this, and through the white crest of a breaker suddenly appears a
dark figure, erect, a man-fish or a sea-god, on the very forward
face of the crest where the top falls over and down, driving in
toward shore, buried to his loins in smoking spray, caught up by the
sea and flung landward, bodily, a quarter of a mile. It is a Kanaka
on a surf-board. And I know that when I have finished these lines I
shall be out in that riot of colour and pounding surf, trying to bit
those breakers even as he, and failing as he never failed, but
living life as the best of us may live it. And the picture of that
coloured sea and that flying sea-god Kanaka becomes another reason
for the young man to go west, and farther west, beyond the Baths of
Sunset, and still west till he arrives home again.
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