In life there are those who keep just ahead of the breaking wave, and
others who halt and it engulfs them. Marshall P. Wilder describes in
the extract below the skill of the Hawaiian natives with their canoes:
We donned bathing-suits and took a surf ride. This is the
national sport and, being at all times sufficiently thrilling,
must be taken in a high surf, a tremendous experience. The boats
are long, deep and very narrow canoes, with an outrigger at one
side to keep them from tipping.
Two natives, and they must be skilled, usually operate these
canoes. Three or four passengers at a time are taken out, the
natives rowing with broad paddles a quarter or half mile from
the shore, where they wait for a large wave. With the nicest
precision they keep ahead of it, just as it breaks, and are
carried smoothly in, poised on its crest. I sat facing the
stern, and the experience was something to remember, the swift
bird-like swoop of the canoe, with the white, seething wall of
water behind it, apparently just about to engulf us. After we
were safely on shore again they told us stories of how the wave,
if the rowers miscalculate, will break over the canoe, driving
it to the bottom.--“Smiling ’Round the World.”
(56)
=Aim=--See SPIRITUAL GUNNERY.