But I Did Not Mind.
I Was Chiefly Conscious Of Ecstatic Bliss At Having Caught The Wave.
At The End, Of The Half-Minute, However, I Began To See Things, And
To Breathe.
I saw that three feet of the nose of my board was clear
out of water and riding on the air.
I shifted my weight forward,
and made the nose come down. Then I lay, quite at rest in the midst
of the wild movement, and watched the shore and the bathers on the
beach grow distinct. I didn't cover quite a quarter of a mile on
that wave, because, to prevent the board from diving, I shifted my
weight back, but shifted it too far and fell down the rear slope of
the wave.
It was my second day at surf-riding, and I was quite proud of
myself. I stayed out there four hours, and when it was over, I was
resolved that on the morrow I'd come in standing up. But that
resolution paved a distant place. On the morrow I was in bed. I
was not sick, but I was very unhappy, and I was in bed. When
describing the wonderful water of Hawaii I forgot to describe the
wonderful sun of Hawaii. It is a tropic sun, and, furthermore, in
the first part of June, it is an overhead sun. It is also an
insidious, deceitful sun. For the first time in my life I was
sunburned unawares. My arms, shoulders, and back had been burned
many times in the past and were tough; but not so my legs.
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