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Walter E. Traprock - The Cruise of the Kawa
"No ... what was it?"
"A sea-robin ... we must be near land ... there it is again."
I heard it that time ... the faint, sweet note of the male sea-robin.
Shortly afterward we heard the mewing of a sea-puss, evidently chasing the robin.
"Sure enough, sir," said Triplett. "It'll be land." Somehow we felt sure of it.
In calm elation and tired expectancy we strained our eyes through the slow crescendo of the day's birth.
Suddenly, the sun leaped over the horizon and the long crimson rays flashed forward to where, dead
ahead, we could see a faint swelling on the skyline. "Land-ho!" we cried in voices of strangled joy.
"Boys," said Captain Triplett, apologetically ... "we ain't got no yard-arm, but the sun's up and there's
land dead ahead, and I reckon..."
He paused. Through the hatchway came William Henry Thomas bearing a tray with four lily cups.
"Fair as a lily..." said Whinney (I knew he would).
Two minutes later we had fallen into heavy slumber while the Kawa steered by the faithful Triplett,
moved steadily toward our unknown haven.
CHAPTER II
A real discovery. Polynesia analyzed. The astounding nature of the Filberts. Their curious sound, and its
reason. We make a landing. Our first glimpse of the natives. The value of vaudeville.
There is nothing better, after a hurricane, than six hours' sleep. It was high noon when we were awakened
by William Henry Thomas and the odor of coffee, which drew us to the quarter-deck. There, for the first
time, we were able to make an accurate survey of our surroundings and realize the magnitude and
importance of what had befallen us. While we slept Captain Triplett had warped the denuded Kawa
through a labyrinth of coral and we now lay peacefully at anchor with the island lying close in-board.
Its appearance, to put it mildly, was astonishing. Let me remind the reader that for the previous four
months we had been prowling through the Southern Pacific meeting everywhere with disappointment
and disillusionment. We had inspected every island in every group noted on every map from Mercator to
Rand-McNally without finding any variation in type from, "A," the low lying coral-atoll of the
well-known broken doughnut formation, to, "B," the high-browed, mansard design popularized by F.
O'Brien. [Footnote: This is the type "E". of Melville's overrated classification - Ed.] In a few of
the outlying suburbs of Melanesia and the lower half of Amnesia, we had found a few designs which
showed sketchy promise of originality: coral reefs in quaint forms had been begun, outlining a scheme of
decoration in contrast with the austere mountains and valleys. But everywhere these had been abandoned.
Either the appropriation had given out, or the polyps had gotten to squabbling among themselves and left
their work to be slowly worn away by the erosive action of sea and shipwrecked bottoms. [Footnote: In
Micronesia it was even worse, the islands offering a dead-level of mediocrity which I have never seen
equalled except in the workingmen's cottages of Ampere, New Jersey, the home of the General Electric
Company.] Add to the geographic sameness the universal blight of white civilization with its picture
post-cards, professional hula and ooh-la dancers, souvenir and gift shops, automat restaurants,
movie-palaces, tourists, artists and explorers, and you have some idea of the boredom which had settled
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