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Walter E. Traprock - The Cruise of the Kawa
"Drink?" said Captain Triplett in his most treacly manner. He held out a cup of lava-lava, the
most deadly beverage of the islands. It is mixed with phosphorus and glows and tastes like hell-fire. I
saw his plan and for once was grateful. We took the bowl from his hands and filed into the tiny cabin -
each picking out a corner to fall in.
In silence we filled our shells and raised them to our lips, the last thought of each of us for our lost loved
ones!
Hours - perhaps days - later I was dimly aware of a soft sobbing sound near my ear. Was it Swank
crying? And then I realized that it was the chuckling of water under the Kawa's counter as manned by the
intrepid Triplett she merrily footed it over the wrinkled sea.
CHAPTEK X
Once more the "Kawa" foots the sea. Triplett's observations and our assistance. The death of the
compass-plant. Lost! An orgy of desperation. Oblivion and excess. The "Kawa" brings us home. Our
reception in Papeete. A celebration at the Tiare.
That Triplett's refitting of the Kawa had been thorough and seamanlike was amply proven by the speed
with which she traveled under the favoring trades. When our saddened but still intrepid ship's company
reassembled on our limited quarterdeck there was no sign of land visible in any direction. The horizon
stretched about our collective heads like an enormous wire halo. It was as if the Filberts had never
existed.
The captain alone was cheerful. Joy bubbled from that calloused heart of his in striking contrast to the
gloom of his companions. Most of the time he was our helmsman, his eye cocked aloft at the taut
halyards of eva-eva, occasionally glancing from the sun to the compass-plant which bloomed in a
shell of fresh water lashed to an improvised binnacle.
At regular intervals he took observations, figured the results, and jotted down our probable course on his
chart. This document we could scarcely bear to look at for upon it our beloved island figured
prominently. But the course of the Kawa interested us. It was a contradictory course and even Triplett
seemed puzzled by the results of his calculations.
"Can't quite figger it out," he would mutter, lowering the astrolabe from its aim at the sun - "accordin' to
this here jackass-quadrant we orter be dee-creesing our latitude - but the answer comes out different."
"Too much jackass and too little quadrant," snapped Swank, whose nerves were still like E strings.
Little by little, however, the calm of the great ocean invaded our souls and that well-known influence
(mentioned in so many letters of consolation), "the hand of time," soothed the pain in our hearts. I think it
was the quiet, self-contained Whinney who brought the most reasoned philosophy to bear on the
situation.
"They will forget," he said one evening, as we sat watching the Double Cross slowly revolve about its
axis. "We must remember that they are a race of children. They have no written records of the past, no
anticipations of the future. They live for the present. Childlike, they will grieve deeply, for a day maybe;
then another sun will rise, Baahaabaa will give another picnic - " he sighed deeply.
"The tragedy of it is that their memories should be so short and ours so long," I commented.
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