But with him I had lost all standing 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 promptly appear. This was a bluff on my part. I
didn't believe it. It lasted as a deterrent 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 behold the perversity 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 deserted 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 presaged
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.
