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Walter E. Traprock - The Cruise of the Kawa
But sail! Lord bless you, how Triplett could sail! It was wizardry, sheer wizardry; "devil-work," the
natives used to call it. Triplett, blindfolded, could find the inlet to a hermetically sealed atoll. When there
wasn't any inlet he would wait for a seventh wave - which is always extra large - and take her over on the
crest, disregarding the ragged coral below. The Kawa was a tight little craft, built for rough work. She
stood up nobly under the punishment her skipper gave her.
Triplett's assistant was an individual named William Henry Thomas, a retired Connecticut farmer who
had chosen to end his days at sea. This, it should be remarked, is the reverse of the usual order. The
back-lots of Connecticut are peopled by retired sea-captains who have gone back to the land, which
accounts in large measure for the condition of agriculture in these communities. William Henry Thomas
had appeared as Triplett's selection. Once aboard ship his land habits stood him in good stead in his
various duties as cook, foremost-hand, butler and valet, for it must not be supposed that the Kawa, tight
though she might be, was without a jaunty style of her own.
Our first-class cabin passengers were three, Reginald K. Whinney, scientific man, world wanderer,
data-demon and a devil when roused; Herman Swank, bohemian, artist, and vagabond, forever in search
of new sensations, and myself, Walter E. Traprock, of Derby, Connecticut, editor, war correspondent,
and author, jack-of-all-trades, mostly literary and none lucrative.
Our object? What, indeed, but life itself!
I had known my companions for years. We had been class-mates at New Haven when our fathers were
working our way through college. How far away it all seemed on that torrid Fourth of July as we sat on
the Kawa's deck singing "Oralee", to which we had taught Triplett the bass.
"Like a blackbird in the spring,
Chanting Ora-lee...."
"Very un-sanitary," said Whinney, "a blackbird ... in the spring ... very un-sanitary."
We laughed feebly.
Suddenly, as they do in the tropics, an extraordinary thing happened. A simoon, a monsoon and a
typhoon met, head on, at the exact corner of the equator and the 180th meridian. We hadn't noticed one
of them, - they had given us no warning or signal of any kind. Before we knew it they were upon us!
I have been in any one of the three separately many a time. In '95 off the Blue Canary Islands I was
caught in an octoroon, one of those eight-sided storms, that spun our ship around like a top, and killed all
the canaries for miles about - the sea was strewn with their bodies. But this!
"Below," bellowed Captain Triplett, and we made a dive for the hatch. William Henry Thomas was the
last in, having been in the bow setting off a pinwheel, when the blow hit us. We dragged him in. My last
memory is of Triplett driving a nail back of the hatch-cover to keep it from sliding.
How long we were whirled in that devil's grip of the elements I cannot say. It may have been a day - it
may have been a week. We were all below, battened down ... tight. At times we lost consciousness - at
times we were sick - at times, both. I remember standing on Triplett's face and peering out through a
salt-glazed port-hole at a world of waterspouts, as thick as forest trees, dancing, melting, crashing upon
us. I sank back. This was the end ...
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