A ROYAL SPORT
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 everlasting sea. The trees also grow down to the salty edge
of things, and one sits in their shade and looks seaward at a majestic
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 placid turquoise-blue and come rolling in to shore. One after
another they come, a mile long, with smoking crests, the white
battalions 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
foam and sound. Indeed, one feels microscopically small, and the
thought that one may wrestle with this sea raises in one’s imagination
a thrill of apprehension, 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 ego; and one sits, and looks, and
listens, and thinks the grass and the shade are a pretty good place in
which to be.
And suddenly, out there where a big smoker lifts skyward, rising like a
sea-god from out of the welter of spume and churning white, on the
giddy, toppling, overhanging and downfalling, precarious crest appears
the dark head of a man. Swiftly he rises through the rushing white. His
black shoulders, his chest, his loins, his limbs—all is abruptly
projected on one’s vision. Where but the moment before was only the
wide desolation and invincible roar, is now a man, erect,
full-statured, not struggling frantically in that wild movement, not
buried and crushed and buffeted by those mighty monsters, but standing
above them all, calm and superb, poised on the giddy summit, his feet
buried in the churning foam, the salt smoke rising to his knees, and
all the rest of him in the free air and flashing sunlight, and he is
flying through the air, flying forward, flying fast as the surge on
which he stands. He is a Mercury—a brown Mercury. His heels are winged,
and in them is the swiftness of the sea. In truth, from out of the sea
he has leaped upon the back of the sea, and he is riding the sea that
roars and bellows and cannot shake him from its back. But no frantic
outreaching and balancing is his. He is impassive, motionless as a
statue carved suddenly by some miracle out of the sea’s depth from
which he rose. And straight on toward shore he flies on his winged
heels and the white crest of the breaker. There is a wild burst of
foam, a long tumultuous rushing sound as the breaker falls futile and
spent on the beach at your feet; and there, at your feet steps calmly
ashore a Kanaka, burnt, golden and brown by the tropic sun. Several
minutes ago he was a speck a quarter of a mile away. He has “bitted the
bull-mouthed breaker” and ridden it in, and the pride in the feat shows
in the carriage of his magnificent body as he glances for a moment
carelessly at you who sit in the shade of the shore. He is a Kanaka—and
more, he is a man, a member of the kingly species that has mastered
matter and the brutes and lorded it over creation.
And one sits and thinks of Tristram’s last wrestle with the sea on that
fatal morning; and one thinks further, to the fact that that Kanaka has
done what Tristram never did, and that he knows a joy of the sea that
Tristram never knew. And still further one thinks. It is all very well,
sitting here in cool shade of the beach, but you are a man, one of the
kingly species, and what that Kanaka can do, you can do yourself. Go
to. Strip off your clothes that are a nuisance in this mellow clime.
Get in and wrestle with the sea; wing your heels with the skill and
power that reside in you; bit the sea’s breakers, master them, and ride
upon their backs as a king should.
And that is how it came about that I tackled surf-riding. And now that
I have tackled it, more than ever do I hold it to be a royal sport. But
first let me explain the physics of it. A wave is a communicated
agitation. The water that composes the body of a wave does not move. If
it did, when a stone is thrown into a pond and the ripples spread away
in an ever widening circle, there would appear at the centre an ever
increasing hole. No, the water that composes the body of a wave is
stationary. Thus, you may watch a particular portion of the ocean’s
surface and you will see the same water rise and fall a thousand times
to the agitation communicated by a thousand successive waves. Now
imagine this communicated agitation moving shoreward. As the bottom
shoals, the lower portion of the wave strikes land first and is
stopped. But water is fluid, and the upper portion has not struck
anything, wherefore it keeps on communicating its agitation, keeps on
going. And when the top of the wave keeps on going, while the bottom of
it lags behind, something is bound to happen. The bottom of the wave
drops out from under and the top of the wave falls over, forward, and
down, curling and cresting and roaring as it does so. It is the bottom
of a wave striking against the top of the land that is the cause of all
surfs.
But the transformation from a smooth undulation to a breaker is not
abrupt except where the bottom shoals abruptly. Say the bottom shoals
gradually for from quarter of a mile to a mile, then an equal distance
will be occupied by the transformation. Such a bottom is that off the
beach of Waikiki, and it produces a splendid surf-riding surf. One
leaps upon the back of a breaker just as it begins to break, and stays
on it as it continues to break all the way in to shore.
And now to the particular physics of surf-riding. Get out on a flat
board, six feet long, two feet wide, and roughly oval in shape. Lie
down upon it like a small boy on a coaster and paddle with your hands
out to deep water, where the waves begin to crest. Lie out there
quietly on the board. Sea after sea breaks before, behind, and under
and over you, and rushes in to shore, leaving you behind. When a wave
crests, it gets steeper. Imagine yourself, on your hoard, on the face
of that steep slope. If it stood still, you would slide down just as a
boy slides down a hill on his coaster. “But,” you object, “the wave
doesn’t stand still.” Very true, but the water composing the wave
stands still, and there you have the secret. If ever you start sliding
down the face of that wave, you’ll keep on sliding and you’ll never
reach the bottom. Please don’t laugh. The face of that wave may be only
six feet, yet you can slide down it a quarter of a mile, or half a
mile, and not reach the bottom. For, see, since a wave is only a
communicated agitation or impetus, and since the water that composes a
wave is changing every instant, new water is rising into the wave as
fast as the wave travels. You slide down this new water, and yet remain
in your old position on the wave, sliding down the still newer water
that is rising and forming the wave. You slide precisely as fast as the
wave travels. If it travels fifteen miles an hour, you slide fifteen
miles an hour. Between you and shore stretches a quarter of mile of
water. As the wave travels, this water obligingly heaps itself into the
wave, gravity does the rest, and down you go, sliding the whole length
of it. If you still cherish the notion, while sliding, that the water
is moving with you, thrust your arms into it and attempt to paddle; you
will find that you have to be remarkably quick to get a stroke, for
that water is dropping astern just as fast as you are rushing ahead.
And now for another phase of the physics of surf-riding. All rules have
their exceptions. It is true that the water in a wave does not travel
forward. But there is what may be called the send of the sea. The water
in the overtoppling crest does move forward, as you will speedily
realize if you are slapped in the face by it, or if you are caught
under it and are pounded by one mighty blow down under the surface
panting and gasping for half a minute. The water in the top of a wave
rests upon the water in the bottom of the wave. But when the bottom of
the wave strikes the land, it stops, while the top goes on. It no
longer has the bottom of the wave to hold it up. Where was solid water
beneath it, is now air, and for the first time it feels the grip of
gravity, and down it falls, at the same time being torn asunder from
the lagging bottom of the wave and flung forward. And it is because of
this that riding a surf-board is something more than a mere placid
sliding down a hill. In truth, one is caught up and hurled shoreward as
by some Titan’s hand.
I deserted the cool shade, put on a swimming suit, and got hold of a
surf-board. It was too small a board. But I didn’t know, and nobody
told me. I joined some little Kanaka boys in shallow water, where the
breakers were well spent and small—a regular kindergarten school. I
watched the little Kanaka boys. When a likely-looking breaker came
along, they flopped upon their stomachs on their boards, kicked like
mad with their feet, and rode the breaker in to the beach. I tried to
emulate them. I watched them, tried to do everything that they did, and
failed utterly. The breaker swept past, and I was not on it. I tried
again and again. I kicked twice as madly as they did, and failed. Half
a dozen would be around. We would all leap on our boards in front of a
good breaker. Away our feet would churn like the stern-wheels of river
steamboats, and away the little rascals would scoot while I remained in
disgrace behind.
I tried for a solid hour, and not one wave could I persuade to boost me
shoreward. And then arrived a friend, Alexander Hume Ford, a globe
trotter by profession, bent ever on the pursuit of sensation. And he
had found it at Waikiki. Heading for Australia, he had stopped off for
a week to find out if there were any thrills in surf-riding, and he had
become wedded to it. He had been at it every day for a month and could
not yet see any symptoms of the fascination lessening on him. He spoke
with authority.
“Get off that board,” he said. “Chuck it away at once. Look at the way
you’re trying to ride it. If ever the nose of that board hits bottom,
you’ll be disembowelled. Here, take my board. It’s a man’s size.”
I am always humble when confronted by knowledge. Ford knew. He showed
me how properly to mount his board. Then he waited for a good breaker,
gave me a shove at the right moment, and started me in. Ah, delicious
moment when I felt that breaker grip and fling me.
On I dashed, a hundred and fifty feet, and subsided with the breaker on
the sand. From that moment I was lost. I waded back to Ford with his
board. It was a large one, several inches thick, and weighed all of
seventy-five pounds. He gave me advice, much of it. He had had no one
to teach him, and all that he had laboriously learned in several weeks
he communicated to me in half an hour. I really learned by proxy. And
inside of half an hour I was able to start myself and ride in. I did it
time after time, and Ford applauded and advised. For instance, he told
me to get just so far forward on the board and no farther. But I must
have got some farther, for as I came charging in to land, that
miserable board poked its nose down to bottom, stopped abruptly, and
turned a somersault, at the same time violently severing our relations.
I was tossed through the air like a chip and buried ignominiously under
the downfalling breaker. And I realized that if it hadn’t been for
Ford, I’d have been disembowelled. That particular risk is part of the
sport, Ford says. Maybe he’ll have it happen to him before he leaves
Waikiki, and then, I feel confident, his yearning for sensation will be
satisfied for a time.
When all is said and done, it is my steadfast belief that homicide is
worse than suicide, especially if, in the former case, it is a woman.
Ford saved me from being a homicide. “Imagine your legs are a rudder,”
he said. “Hold them close together, and steer with them.” A few minutes
later I came charging in on a comber. As I neared the beach, there, in
the water, up to her waist, dead in front of me, appeared a woman. How
was I to stop that comber on whose back I was? It looked like a dead
woman. The board weighed seventy-five pounds, I weighed a hundred and
sixty-five. The added weight had a velocity of fifteen miles per hour.
The board and I constituted a projectile. I leave it to the physicists
to figure out the force of the impact upon that poor, tender woman. And
then I remembered my guardian angel, Ford. “Steer with your legs!” rang
through my brain. I steered with my legs, I steered sharply, abruptly,
with all my legs and with all my might. The board sheered around
broadside on the crest. Many things happened simultaneously. The wave
gave me a passing buffet, a light tap as the taps of waves go, but a
tap sufficient to knock me off the board and smash me down through the
rushing water to bottom, with which I came in violent collision and
upon which I was rolled over and over. I got my head out for a breath
of air and then gained my feet. There stood the woman before me. I felt
like a hero. I had saved her life. And she laughed at me. It was not
hysteria. She had never dreamed of her danger. Anyway, I solaced
myself, it was not I but Ford that saved her, and I didn’t have to feel
like a hero. And besides, that leg-steering was great. In a few minutes
more of practice I was able to thread my way in and out past several
bathers and to remain on top my breaker instead of going under it.
“To-morrow,” Ford said, “I am going to take you out into the blue
water.”
I looked seaward where he pointed, and saw the great smoking combers
that made the breakers I had been riding look like ripples. I don’t
know what I might have said had I not recollected just then that I was
one of a kingly species. So all that I did say was, “All right, I’ll
tackle them to-morrow.”
The water that rolls in on Waikiki Beach is just the same as the water
that laves the shores of all the Hawaiian Islands; and in ways,
especially from the swimmer’s standpoint, it is wonderful water. It is
cool enough to be comfortable, while it is warm enough to permit a
swimmer to stay in all day without experiencing a chill. Under the sun
or the stars, at high noon or at midnight, in midwinter or in
midsummer, it does not matter when, it is always the same
temperature—not too warm, not too cold, just right. It is wonderful
water, salt as old ocean itself, pure and crystal-clear. When the
nature of the water is considered, it is not so remarkable after all
that the Kanakas are one of the most expert of swimming races.
So it was, next morning, when Ford came along, that I plunged into the
wonderful water for a swim of indeterminate length. Astride of our
surf-boards, or, rather, flat down upon them on our stomachs, we
paddled out through the kindergarten where the little Kanaka boys were
at play. Soon we were out in deep water where the big smokers came
roaring in. The mere struggle with them, facing them and paddling
seaward over them and through them, was sport enough in itself. One had
to have his wits about him, for it was a battle in which mighty blows
were struck, on one side, and in which cunning was used on the other
side—a struggle between insensate force and intelligence. I soon
learned a bit. When a breaker curled over my head, for a swift instant
I could see the light of day through its emerald body; then down would
go my head, and I would clutch the board with all my strength. Then
would come the blow, and to the onlooker on shore I would be blotted
out. In reality the board and I have passed through the crest and
emerged in the respite of the other side. I should not recommend those
smashing blows to an invalid or delicate person. There is weight behind
them, and the impact of the driven water is like a sandblast. Sometimes
one passes through half a dozen combers in quick succession, and it is
just about that time that he is liable to discover new merits in the
stable land and new reasons for being on shore.
Out there in the midst of such a succession of big smoky ones, a third
man was added to our party, one Freeth. Shaking the water from my eyes
as I emerged from one wave and peered ahead to see what the next one
looked like, I saw him tearing in on the back of it, standing upright
on his board, carelessly poised, a young god bronzed with sunburn. We
went through the wave on the back of which he rode. Ford called to him.
He turned an airspring from his wave, rescued his board from its maw,
paddled over to us and joined Ford in showing me things. One thing in
particular I learned from Freeth, namely, how to encounter the
occasional breaker of exceptional size that rolled in. Such breakers
were really ferocious, and it was unsafe to meet them on top of the
board. But Freeth showed me, so that whenever I saw one of that calibre
rolling down on me, I slid off the rear end of the board and dropped
down beneath the surface, my arms over my head and holding the board.
Thus, if the wave ripped the board out of my hands and tried to strike
me with it (a common trick of such waves), there would be a cushion of
water a foot or more in depth, between my head and the blow. When the
wave passed, I climbed upon the board and paddled on. Many men have
been terribly injured, I learn, by being struck by their boards.
The whole method of surf-riding and surf-fighting, learned, is one of
non-resistance. Dodge the blow that is struck at you. Dive through the
wave that is trying to slap you in the face. Sink down, feet first,
deep under the surface, and let the big smoker that is trying to smash
you go by far overhead. Never be rigid. Relax. Yield yourself to the
waters that are ripping and tearing at you. When the undertow catches
you and drags you seaward along the bottom, don’t struggle against it.
If you do, you are liable to be drowned, for it is stronger than you.
Yield yourself to that undertow. Swim with it, not against it, and you
will find the pressure removed. And, swimming with it, fooling it so
that it does not hold you, swim upward at the same time. It will be no
trouble at all to reach the surface.
The man who wants to learn surf-riding must be a strong swimmer, and he
must be used to going under the water. After that, fair strength and
common-sense are all that is required. The force of the big comber is
rather unexpected. There are mix-ups in which board and rider are torn
apart and separated by several hundred feet. The surf-rider must take
care of himself. No matter how many riders swim out with him, he cannot
depend upon any of them for aid. The fancied security I had in the
presence of Ford and Freeth made me forget that it was my first swim
out in deep water among the big ones. I recollected, however, and
rather suddenly, for a big wave came in, and away went the two men on
its back all the way to shore. I could have been drowned a dozen
different ways before they got back to me.
One slides down the face of a breaker on his surf-board, but he has to
get started to sliding. Board and rider must be moving shoreward at a
good rate before the wave overtakes them. When you see the wave coming
that you want to ride in, you turn tail to it and paddle shoreward with
all your strength, using what is called the windmill stroke. This is a
sort of spurt performed immediately in front of the wave. If the board
is going fast enough, the wave accelerates it, and the board begins its
quarter-of-a-mile slide.
I shall never forget the first big wave I caught out there in the deep
water. I saw it coming, turned my back on it and paddled for dear life.
Faster and faster my board went, till it seemed my arms would drop off.
What was happening behind me I could not tell. One cannot look behind
and paddle the windmill stroke. I heard the crest of the wave hissing
and churning, and then my board was lifted and flung forward. I
scarcely knew what happened the first half-minute. Though I kept my
eyes open, I could not see anything, for I was buried in the rushing
white of the crest. 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. And
for four hours I had exposed the tender backs of my legs, at
right-angles, to that perpendicular Hawaiian sun. It was not until
after I got ashore that I discovered the sun had touched me. Sunburn at
first is merely warm; after that it grows intense and the blisters come
out. Also, the joints, where the skin wrinkles, refuse to bend. That is
why I spent the next day in bed. I couldn’t walk. And that is why,
to-day, I am writing this in bed. It is easier to than not to. But
to-morrow, ah, to-morrow, I shall be out in that wonderful water, and I
shall come in standing up, even as Ford and Freeth. And if I fail
to-morrow, I shall do it the next day, or the next. Upon one thing I am
resolved: the _Snark_ shall not sail from Honolulu until I, too, wing
my heels with the swiftness of the sea, and become a sun-burned,
skin-peeling Mercury.