FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, COMPLETEThe Project Gutenberg EBook of Following the Equator, Completeby Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.netTitle: Following the Equator, CompleteAuthor: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)Release Date: August 18, 2006 EBook #2895Last Updated: May 25, 2018Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: UTF-8. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, COMPLETE.Produced by David WidgerFOLLOWING THE EQUATORA JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLDBYMARK TWAINSAMUEL L. CLEMENSHARTFORD, CONNECTICUT. CHAPTER I.A man may have no bad habits and have worse.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris,where we had been living a year or two.We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations.

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This took butlittle time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also acarbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor isout of place in a dictionary.We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to managethe platform-business as far as the Pacific. It was warm work, all theway, and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregonand British Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week ofsmoke at the seaboard, where we were obliged to wait awhile for our ship.She had been getting herself ashore in the smoke, and she had to be dockedand repaired.We sailed at last; and so ended a snail-paced march across the continent,which had lasted forty days.We moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and sparkling summersea; an enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and apparently a welcome seato all on board; it certainly was to me, after the distressful dustingsand smokings and swelterings of the past weeks.

The voyage would furnish athree-weeks holiday, with hardly a break in it. We had the whole PacificOcean in front of us, with nothing to do but do nothing and becomfortable. The city of Victoria was twinkling dim in the deep heart ofher smoke-cloud, and getting ready to vanish and now we closed thefield-glasses and sat down on our steamer chairs contented and at peace.But they went to wreck and ruin under us and brought us to shame beforeall the passengers. They had been furnished by the largestfurniture-dealing house in Victoria, and were worth a couple of farthingsa dozen, though they had cost us the price of honest chairs.

In thePacific and Indian Oceans one must still bring his own deck-chair on boardor go without, just as in the old forgotten Atlantic times—thoseDark Ages of sea travel. Ours was a reasonably comfortable ship, with the customary sea-going fare—plentyof good food furnished by the Deity and cooked by the devil. Thediscipline observable on board was perhaps as good as it is anywhere inthe Pacific and Indian Oceans. The ship was not very well arranged fortropical service; but that is nothing, for this is the rule for shipswhich ply in the tropics. She had an over-supply of cockroaches, but thisis also the rule with ships doing business in the summer seas—atleast such as have been long in service.

Our young captain was a veryhandsome man, tall and perfectly formed, the very figure to show up asmart uniform’s finest effects. He was a man of the best intentions andwas polite and courteous even to courtliness. There was a soft and graceand finish about his manners which made whatever place he happened to bein seem for the moment a drawing room. He avoided the smoking room. He hadno vices.

He did not smoke or chew tobacco or take snuff; he did notswear, or use slang or rude, or coarse, or indelicate language, or makepuns, or tell anecdotes, or laugh intemperately, or raise his voice abovethe moderate pitch enjoined by the canons of good form. When he gave anorder, his manner modified it into a request. After dinner he and hisofficers joined the ladies and gentlemen in the ladies’ saloon, and sharedin the singing and piano playing, and helped turn the music. He had asweet and sympathetic tenor voice, and used it with taste and effect.After the music he played whist there, always with the same partner andopponents, until the ladies’ bedtime. The electric lights burned there aslate as the ladies and their friends might desire; but they were notallowed to burn in the smoking-room after eleven. There were many laws onthe ship’s statute book of course; but so far as I could see, this and oneother were the only ones that were rigidly enforced.

The captain explainedthat he enforced this one because his own cabin adjoined the smoking-room,and the smell of tobacco smoke made him sick. I did not see how our smokecould reach him, for the smoking-room and his cabin were on the upperdeck, targets for all the winds that blew; and besides there was no crackof communication between them, no opening of any sort in the solidintervening bulkhead. Still, to a delicate stomach even imaginary smokecan convey damage.The captain, with his gentle nature, his polish, his sweetness, his moraland verbal purity, seemed pathetically out of place in his rude andautocratic vocation. It seemed another instance of the irony of fate.He was going home under a cloud.

The passengers knew about his trouble,and were sorry for him. Approaching Vancouver through a narrow anddifficult passage densely befogged with smoke from the forest fires, hehad had the ill-luck to lose his bearings and get his ship on the rocks. Amatter like this would rank merely as an error with you and me; it ranksas a crime with the directors of steamship companies. The captain had beentried by the Admiralty Court at Vancouver, and its verdict had acquittedhim of blame.

But that was insufficient comfort. A sterner court wouldexamine the case in Sydney—the Court of Directors, the lords of acompany in whose ships the captain had served as mate a number of years.This was his first voyage as captain.The officers of our ship were hearty and companionable young men, and theyentered into the general amusements and helped the passengers pass thetime. Voyages in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are but pleasure excursionsfor all hands. Our purser was a young Scotchman who was equipped with agrit that was remarkable. He was an invalid, and looked it, as far as hisbody was concerned, but illness could not subdue his spirit. He was fullof life, and had a gay and capable tongue. To all appearances he was asick man without being aware of it, for he did not talk about hisailments, and his bearing and conduct were those of a person in robusthealth; yet he was the prey, at intervals, of ghastly sieges of pain inhis heart.

These lasted many hours, and while the attack continued hecould neither sit nor lie. In one instance he stood on his feettwenty-four hours fighting for his life with these sharp agonies, and yetwas as full of life and cheer and activity the next day as if nothing hadhappened.The brightest passenger in the ship, and the most interesting andfelicitous talker, was a young Canadian who was not able to let the whiskybottle alone. He was of a rich and powerful family, and could have had adistinguished career and abundance of effective help toward it if he couldhave conquered his appetite for drink; but he could not do it, so hisgreat equipment of talent was of no use to him. He had often taken thepledge to drink no more, and was a good sample of what that sort ofunwisdom can do for a man—for a man with anything short of an ironwill.

The system is wrong in two ways: it does not strike at the root ofthe trouble, for one thing, and to make a pledge of any kind is to declarewar against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking andreminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.I have said that the system does not strike at the root of the trouble,and I venture to repeat that. The root is not the drinking, but the desireto drink. These are very different things. The one merely requires will—anda great deal of it, both as to bulk and staying capacity—the othermerely requires watchfulness—and for no long time. The desire ofcourse precedes the act, and should have one’s first attention; it can dobut little good to refuse the act over and over again, always leaving thedesire unmolested, unconquered; the desire will continue to assert itself,and will be almost sure to win in the long run. When the desire intrudes,it should be at once banished out of the mind.

One should be on the watchfor it all the time—otherwise it will get in. It must be taken intime and not allowed to get a lodgment. A desire constantly repulsed for afortnight should die, then.

That should cure the drinking habit. Thesystem of refusing the mere act of drinking, and leaving the desire infull force, is unintelligent war tactics, it seems to me.

I used to takepledges—and soon violate them. My will was not strong, and I couldnot help it. And then, to be tied in any way naturally irks an otherwisefree person and makes him chafe in his bonds and want to get his liberty.But when I finally ceased from taking definite pledges, and merelyresolved that I would kill an injurious desire, but leave myself free toresume the desire and the habit whenever I should choose to do so, I hadno more trouble. In five days I drove out the desire to smoke and was notobliged to keep watch after that; and I never experienced any strongdesire to smoke again.

At the end of a year and a quarter of idleness Ibegan to write a book, and presently found that the pen was strangelyreluctant to go. I tried a smoke to see if that would help me out of thedifficulty. I smoked eight or ten cigars and as many pipes a dayfor five months; finished the book, and did not smoke again until a yearhad gone by and another book had to be begun.I can quit any of my nineteen injurious habits at any time, and withoutdiscomfort or inconvenience. I think that the Dr. Tanners and those otherswho go forty days without eating do it by resolutely keeping out thedesire to eat, in the beginning, and that after a few hours the desire isdiscouraged and comes no more.Once I tried my scheme in a large medical way.

I had been confined to mybed several days with lumbago. My case refused to improve. Finally thedoctor said,—“My remedies have no fair chance.

Consider what they have to fight,besides the lumbago. You smoke extravagantly, don’t you?”“Yes.”“You take coffee immoderately?”“Yes.”“And some tea?”“Yes.”“You eat all kinds of things that are dissatisfied with each other’scompany?”“Yes.”“You drink two hot Scotches every night?”“Yes.”“Very well, there you see what I have to contend against. We can’t makeprogress the way the matter stands. You must make a reduction in thesethings; you must cut down your consumption of them considerably for somedays.”“I can’t, doctor.”“Why can’t you.”“I lack the will-power. I can cut them off entirely, but I can’t merelymoderate them.”He said that that would answer, and said he would come around intwenty-four hours and begin work again.

He was taken ill himself and couldnot come; but I did not need him. I cut off all those things for two daysand nights; in fact, I cut off all kinds of food, too, and all drinksexcept water, and at the end of the forty-eight hours the lumbago wasdiscouraged and left me. I was a well man; so I gave thanks and took tothose delicacies again.It seemed a valuable medical course, and I recommended it to a lady. Shehad run down and down and down, and had at last reached a point wheremedicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I couldput her upon her feet in a week. It brightened her up, it filled her withhope, and she said she would do everything I told her to do.

So I said shemust stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for four days, andthen she would be all right again. And it would have happened just so, Iknow it; but she said she could not stop swearing, and smoking, anddrinking, because she had never done those things. So there it was. Shehad neglected her habits, and hadn’t any. Now that they would have comegood, there were none in stock.

She had nothing to fall back on. She was asinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw overbpard and lighten shipwithal. Why, even one or two little bad habits could have saved her, butshe was just a moral pauper. When she could have acquired them she wasdissuaded by her parents, who were ignorant people though reared in thebest society, and it was too late to begin now. It seemed such a pity; butthere was no help for it.

These things ought to be attended to while aperson is young; otherwise, when age and disease come, there is nothingeffectual to fight them with.When I was a youth I used to take all kinds of pledges, and do my best tokeep them, but I never could, because I didn’t strike at the root of thehabit—the desire; I generally broke down within the month. Once Itried limiting a habit. That worked tolerably well for a while. I pledgedmyself to smoke but one cigar a day. I kept the cigar waiting untilbedtime, then I had a luxurious time with it. But desire persecuted meevery day and all day long; so, within the week I found myself hunting forlarger cigars than I had been used to smoke; then larger ones still, andstill larger ones.

Within the fortnight I was getting cigars made for me—ona yet larger pattern. They still grew and grew in size. Within the monthmy cigar had grown to such proportions that I could have used it as acrutch. It now seemed to me that a one-cigar limit was no real protectionto a person, so I knocked my pledge on the head and resumed my liberty. To go back to that young Canadian. He was a “remittance man,” the firstone I had ever seen or heard of. Passengers explained the term to me.

Theysaid that dissipated ne’er-do-wells belonging to important families inEngland and Canada were not cast off by their people while there was anyhope of reforming them, but when that last hope perished at last, thene’er-do-well was sent abroad to get him out of the way. He was shippedoff with just enough money in his pocket—no, in the purser’s pocket—forthe needs of the voyage—and when he reached his destined port hewould find a remittance awaiting him there. Not a large one, but justenough to keep him a month.

A similar remittance would come monthlythereafter. It was the remittance-man’s custom to pay his month’s boardand lodging straightway—a duty which his landlord did not allow himto forget—then spree away the rest of his money in a single night,then brood and mope and grieve in idleness till the next remittance came.It is a pathetic life.We had other remittance-men on board, it was said.

At least they said theywere R. There were two. But they did not resemble the Canadian; theylacked his tidiness, and his brains, and his gentlemanly ways, and hisresolute spirit, and his humanities and generosities. One of them was alad of nineteen or twenty, and he was a good deal of a ruin, as toclothes, and morals, and general aspect. He said he was a scion of a ducalhouse in England, and had been shipped to Canada for the house’s relief,that he had fallen into trouble there, and was now being shipped toAustralia.

He said he had no title. Beyond this remark he was economicalof the truth. The first thing he did in Australia was to get into thelockup, and the next thing he did was to proclaim himself an earl in thepolice court in the morning and fail to prove it. CHAPTER II.When in doubt, tell the truth.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.About four days out from Victoria we plunged into hot weather, and all themale passengers put on white linen clothes.

One or two days later wecrossed the 25th parallel of north latitude, and then, by order, theofficers of the ship laid away their blue uniforms and came out in whitelinen ones. All the ladies were in white by this time. This prevalence ofsnowy costumes gave the promenade deck an invitingly cool, and cheerfuland picnicky aspect.From my diary:There are several sorts of ills in the world from which a person can neverescape altogether, let him journey as far as he will. One escapes from onebreed of an ill only to encounter another breed of it.

We have come farfrom the snake liar and the fish liar, and there was rest and peace in thethought; but now we have reached the realm of the boomerang liar, andsorrow is with us once more. The first officer has seen a man try toescape from his enemy by getting behind a tree; but the enemy sent hisboomerang sailing into the sky far above and beyond the tree; then itturned, descended, and killed the man. The Australian passenger has seenthis thing done to two men, behind two trees—and by the one arrow.This being received with a large silence that suggested doubt, hebuttressed it with the statement that his brother once saw the boomerangkill a bird away off a hundred yards and bring it to the thrower. Butthese are ills which must be borne. There is no other way.The talk passed from the boomerang to dreams—usually a fruitfulsubject, afloat or ashore—but this time the output was poor. Then itpassed to instances of extraordinary memory—with better results.Blind Tom, the negro pianist, was spoken of, and it was said that he couldaccurately play any piece of music, howsoever long and difficult, afterhearing it once; and that six months later he could accurately play itagain, without having touched it in the interval.

One of the most strikingof the stories told was furnished by a gentleman who had served on thestaff of the Viceroy of India. He read the details from his note-book, andexplained that he had written them down, right after the consummation ofthe incident which they described, because he thought that if he did notput them down in black and white he might presently come to think he haddreamed them or invented them.The Viceroy was making a progress, and among the shows offered by theMaharajah of Mysore for his entertainment was a memory-exhibition. TheViceroy and thirty gentlemen of his suite sat in a row, and thememory-expert, a high-caste Brahmin, was brought in and seated on thefloor in front of them.

He said he knew but two languages, the English andhis own, but would not exclude any foreign tongue from the tests to beapplied to his memory. Then he laid before the assemblage his program—asufficiently extraordinary one. He proposed that one gentleman should givehim one word of a foreign sentence, and tell him its place in thesentence.

He was furnished with the French word ‘est’, and was told it wassecond in a sentence of three words. The next gentleman gave him theGerman word ‘verloren’ and said it was the third in a sentence of fourwords. He asked the next gentleman for one detail in a sum in addition;another for one detail in a sum of subtraction; others for single detailsin mathematical problems of various kinds; he got them. Intermediates gavehim single words from sentences in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese,Italian, and other languages, and told him their places in the sentences.When at last everybody had furnished him a single rag from a foreignsentence or a figure from a problem, he went over the ground again, andgot a second word and a second figure and was told their places in thesentences and the sums; and so on and so on. He went over the ground againand again until he had collected all the parts of the sums and all theparts of the sentences—and all in disorder, of course, not in theirproper rotation. His face broke—just a little—a wee glimmer, the momentaryflicker of a summer-lightning smile, seven years ahead of time—and Iwas out and gone as soon as it was.Ten years passed away before I saw him the second time. Meantime I wasbecome better known; and was one of the people appointed to respond totoasts at the banquet given to General Grant in Chicago—by the Armyof the Tennessee when he came back from his tour around the world.

Iarrived late at night and got up late in the morning. All the corridors ofthe hotel were crowded with people waiting to get a glimpse of GeneralGrant when he should pass to the place whence he was to review the greatprocession. I worked my way by the suite of packed drawing-rooms, and atthe corner of the house I found a window open where there was a roomyplatform decorated with flags, and carpeted. I stepped out on it, and sawbelow me millions of people blocking all the streets, and other millionscaked together in all the windows and on all the house-tops around.

Thesemasses took me for General Grant, and broke into volcanic explosions andcheers; but it was a good place to see the procession, and I stayed.Presently I heard the distant blare of military music, and far up thestreet I saw the procession come in sight, cleaving its way through thehuzzaing multitudes, with Sheridan, the most martial figure of the War,riding at its head in the dress uniform of a Lieutenant-General.And now General Grant, arm-in-arm with Major Carter Harrison, stepped outon the platform, followed two and two by the badged and uniformedreception committee. General Grant was looking exactly as he had lookedupon that trying occasion of ten years before—all iron and bronzeself-possession. Harrison came over and led me to the General andformally introduced me. Before I could put together the proper remark,General Grant said—“Mr.

Clemens, I am not embarrassed. On the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing up out of thewastes of the Pacific and knew that that spectral promontory was DiamondHead, a piece of this world which I had not seen before for twenty-nineyears.

So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the SandwichIslands—those islands which to me were Paradise; a Paradise which Ihad been longing all those years to see again. Not any other thing in theworld could have stirred me as the sight of that great rock did.In the night we anchored a mile from shore. Through my port I could seethe twinkling lights of Honolulu and the dark bulk of the mountain-rangethat stretched away right and left. I could not make out the beautifulNuuana valley, but I knew where it lay, and remembered how it used to lookin the old times. We used to ride up it on horseback in those days—weyoung people—and branch off and gather bones in a sandy region whereone of the first Kamehameha’s battles was fought. He was a remarkable man,for a king; and he was also a remarkable man for a savage. He was a merekinglet and of little or no consequence at the time of Captain Cook’sarrival in 1788; but about four years afterward he conceived the idea ofenlarging his sphere of influence.

That is a courteous modern phrase whichmeans robbing your neighbor—for your neighbor’s benefit; and thegreat theater of its benevolences is Africa. Kamehameha went to war, andin the course of ten years he whipped out all the other kings and madehimself master of every one of the nine or ten islands that form thegroup. But he did more than that.

He bought ships, freighted them withsandal wood and other native products, and sent them as far as SouthAmerica and China; he sold to his savages the foreign stuffs and tools andutensils which came back in these ships, and started the march ofcivilization. It is doubtful if the match to this extraordinary thing isto be found in the history of any other savage. Savages are eager to learnfrom the white man any new way to kill each other, but it is not theirhabit to seize with avidity and apply with energy the larger and noblerideas which he offers them. The details of Kamehameha’s history show thathe was always hospitably ready to examine the white man’s ideas, and thathe exercised a tidy discrimination in making his selections from thesamples placed on view.A shrewder discrimination than was exhibited by his son and successor,Liholiho, I think. Liholiho could have qualified as a reformer, perhaps,but as a king he was a mistake.

A mistake because he tried to be both kingand reformer. This is mixing fire and gunpowder together.

A king has noproper business with reforming. His best policy is to keep things as theyare; and if he can’t do that, he ought to try to make them worse than theyare. This is not guesswork; I have thought over this matter a good deal,so that if I should ever have a chance to become a king I would know howto conduct the business in the best way.When Liholiho succeeded his father he found himself possessed of anequipment of royal tools and safeguards which a wiser king would haveknown how to husband, and judiciously employ, and make profitable. Theentire country was under the one scepter, and his was that scepter.

Therewas an Established Church, and he was the head of it. There was a StandingArmy, and he was the head of that; an Army of 114 privates under commandof 27 Generals and a Field Marshal. There was a proud and ancientHereditary Nobility. There was still one other asset.

This was the tabu—anagent endowed with a mysterious and stupendous power, an agent not foundamong the properties of any European monarch, a tool of inestimable valuein the business. Liholiho was headmaster of the tabu.

The tabu was themost ingenious and effective of all the inventions that has ever beendevised for keeping a people’s privileges satisfactorily restricted.It required the sexes to live in separate houses. It did not allow peopleto eat in either house; they must eat in another place.

It did not allow aman’s woman-folk to enter his house. It did not allow the sexes to eattogether; the men must eat first, and the women must wait on them. Thenthe women could eat what was left—if anything was left—andwait on themselves. I mean, if anything of a coarse or unpalatable sortwas left, the women could have it.

But not the good things, the finethings, the choice things, such as pork, poultry, bananas, cocoanuts, thechoicer varieties of fish, and so on. By the tabu, all these were sacredto the men; the women spent their lives longing for them and wonderingwhat they might taste like; and they died without finding out.These rules, as you see, were quite simple and clear. It was easy toremember them; and useful.

For the penalty for infringing any rule in thewhole list was death. Those women easily learned to put up with shark andtaro and dog for a diet when the other things were so expensive.It was death for any one to walk upon tabu’d ground; or defile a tabu’dthing with his touch; or fail in due servility to a chief; or step uponthe king’s shadow. The nobles and the King and the priests were alwayssuspending little rags here and there and yonder, to give notice to thepeople that the decorated spot or thing was tabu, and death lurking near.The struggle for life was difficult and chancy in the islands in thosedays. Thus advantageously was the new king situated. Will it be believed thatthe first thing he did was to destroy his Established Church, root andbranch? He did indeed do that. To state the case figuratively, he was aprosperous sailor who burnt his ship and took to a raft.

This Church was ahorrid thing. It heavily oppressed the people; it kept them alwaystrembling in the gloom of mysterious threatenings; it slaughtered them insacrifice before its grotesque idols of wood and stone; it cowed them, itterrorized them, it made them slaves to its priests, and through thepriests to the king. It was the best friend a king could have, and themost dependable. To a professional reformer who should annihilate sofrightful and so devastating a power as this Church, reverence and praisewould be due; but to a king who should do it, could properly be duenothing but reproach; reproach softened by sorrow; sorrow for hisunfitness for his position.He destroyed his Established Church, and his kingdom is a republic today,in consequence of that act.When he destroyed the Church and burned the idols he did a mighty thingfor civilization and for his people’s weal—but it was not“business.” It was unkingly, it was inartistic. It made trouble for hisline.

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The American missionaries arrived while the burned idols were stillsmoking. They found the nation without a religion, and they repaired thedefect.

They offered their own religion and it was gladly received. But itwas no support to arbitrary kingship, and so the kingly power began toweaken from that day.

Forty-seven years later, when I was in the islands,Kamehameha V. Was trying to repair Liholiho’s blunder, and not succeeding.He had set up an Established Church and made himself the head of it.

Butit was only a pinchbeck thing, an imitation, a bauble, an empty show. Ithad no power, no value for a king. It could not harry or burn or slay, itin no way resembled the admirable machine which Liholiho destroyed.

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It wasan Established Church without an Establishment; all the people wereDissenters.Long before that, the kingship had itself become but a name, a show. At anearly day the missionaries had turned it into something very much like arepublic; and here lately the business whites have turned it intosomething exactly like it.In Captain Cook’s time (1778), the native population of the islands wasestimated at 400,000; in 1836 at something short of 200,000, in 1866 at50,000; it is to-day, per census, 25,000.

All intelligent people praiseKamehameha I. And Liholiho for conferring upon their people the great boonof civilization. I would do it myself, but my intelligence is out ofrepair, now, from over-work.When I was in the islands nearly a generation ago, I was acquainted with ayoung American couple who had among their belongings an attractive littleson of the age of seven—attractive but not practicably companionablewith me, because he knew no English. He had played from his birth with thelittle Kanakas on his father’s plantation, and had preferred theirlanguage and would learn no other. The family removed to America a monthafter I arrived in the islands, and straightway the boy began to lose hisKanaka and pick up English. By the time he was twelve he hadn’t a word ofKanaka left; the language had wholly departed from his tongue and from hiscomprehension. Nine years later, when he was twenty-one, I came upon thefamily in one of the lake towns of New York, and the mother told me aboutan adventure which her son had been having.

By trade he was now aprofessional diver. A passenger boat had been caught in a storm on thelake, and had gone down, carrying her people with her.

A few days laterthe young diver descended, with his armor on, and entered the berth-saloonof the boat, and stood at the foot of the companionway, with his hand onthe rail, peering through the dim water. Presently something touched himon the shoulder, and he turned and found a dead man swaying and bobbingabout him and seemingly inspecting him inquiringly. He was paralyzed withfright. His entry had disturbed the water, and now he discerned a number of dimcorpses making for him and wagging their heads and swaying their bodieslike sleepy people trying to dance.

His senses forsook him, and in thatcondition he was drawn to the surface. He was put to bed at home, and wassoon very ill.

During some days he had seasons of delirium which lastedseveral hours at a time; and while they lasted he talked Kanakaincessantly and glibly; and Kanaka only. He was still very ill, and hetalked to me in that tongue; but I did not understand it, of course. Thedoctor-books tell us that cases like this are not uncommon. Then thedoctors ought to study the cases and find out how to multiply them. Manylanguages and things get mislaid in a person’s head, and stay mislaid forlack of this remedy.Many memories of my former visit to the islands came up in my mind whilewe lay at anchor in front of Honolulu that night.

And pictures—picturespictures—an enchanting procession of them! I was impatient for themorning to come.When it came it brought disappointment, of course. Cholera had broken outin the town, and we were not allowed to have any communication with theshore. Thus suddenly did my dream of twenty-nine years go to ruin.Messages came from friends, but the friends themselves I was not to haveany sight of. My lecture-hall was ready, but I was not to see that,either.Several of our passengers belonged in Honolulu, and these were sentashore; but nobody could go ashore and return. There were people on shorewho were booked to go with us to Australia, but we could not receive them;to do it would cost us a quarantine-term in Sydney.

They could haveescaped the day before, by ship to San Francisco; but the bars had beenput up, now, and they might have to wait weeks before any ship couldventure to give them a passage any whither. And there were hardships forothers. An elderly lady and her son, recreation-seekers fromMassachusetts, had wandered westward, further and further from home,always intending to take the return track, but always concluding to gostill a little further; and now here they were at anchor before Honolulupositively their last westward-bound indulgence—they had made uptheir minds to that—but where is the use in making up your mind inthis world? It is usually a waste of time to do it.

These two would haveto stay with us as far as Australia. Then they could go on around theworld, or go back the way they had come; the distance and theaccommodations and outlay of time would be just the same, whichever of thetwo routes they might elect to take. Think of it: a projected excursion offive hundred miles gradually enlarged, without any elaborate degree ofintention, to a possible twenty-four thousand. However, they were used toextensions by this time, and did not mind this new one much.And we had with us a lawyer from Victoria, who had been sent out by theGovernment on an international matter, and he had brought his wife withhim and left the children at home with the servants and now what was to bedone? Go ashore amongst the cholera and take the risks? Most certainlynot. They decided to go on, to the Fiji islands, wait there a fortnightfor the next ship, and then sail for home.

They couldn’t foresee that theywouldn’t see a homeward-bound ship again for six weeks, and that no wordcould come to them from the children, and no word go from them to thechildren in all that time. It is easy to make plans in this world; even acat can do it; and when one is out in those remote oceans it is noticeablethat a cat’s plans and a man’s are worth about the same.

There is much thesame shrinkage in both, in the matter of values.There was nothing for us to do but sit about the decks in the shade of theawnings and look at the distant shore. We lay in luminous blue water;shoreward the water was green-green and brilliant; at the shore itself itbroke in a long white ruffle, and with no crash, no sound that we couldhear. The town was buried under a mat of foliage that looked like acushion of moss.

The silky mountains were clothed in soft, rich splendorsof melting color, and some of the cliffs were veiled in slanting mists. Irecognized it all. It was just as I had seen it long before, with nothingof its beauty lost, nothing of its charm wanting.A change had come, but that was political, and not visible from the ship.The monarchy of my day was gone, and a republic was sitting in its seat.It was not a material change. The old imitation pomps, the fuss andfeathers, have departed, and the royal trademark—that is about allthat one could miss, I suppose. That imitation monarchy, was grotesqueenough, in my time; if it had held on another thirty years it would havebeen a monarchy without subjects of the king’s race.We had a sunset of a very fine sort.

The vast plain of the sea was markedoff in bands of sharply-contrasted colors: great stretches of dark blue,others of purple, others of polished bronze; the billowy mountains showedall sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and blacks, andthe rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to stroke them,as one would the sleek back of a cat. The long, sloping promontoryprojecting into the sea at the west turned dim and leaden and spectral,then became suffused with pink—dissolved itself in a pink dream, soto speak, it seemed so airy and unreal. Presently the cloud-rack wasflooded with fiery splendors, and these were copied on the surface of thesea, and it made one drunk with delight to look upon it.From talks with certain of our passengers whose home was Honolulu, andfrom a sketch by Mrs.

Krout, I was able to perceive what theHonolulu of to-day is, as compared with the Honolulu of my time. In mytime it was a beautiful little town, made up of snow-white wooden cottagesdeliciously smothered in tropical vines and flowers and trees and shrubs;and its coral roads and streets were hard and smooth, and as white as thehouses. The outside aspects of the place suggested the presence of amodest and comfortable prosperity—a general prosperity—perhapsone might strengthen the term and say universal. There were no finehouses, no fine furniture. There were no decorations.

Tallow candlesfurnished the light for the bedrooms, a whale-oil lamp furnished it forthe parlor. Native matting served as carpeting. In the parlor one wouldfind two or three lithographs on the walls—portraits as a rule:Kamehameha IV., Louis Kossuth, Jenny Lind; and may be an engraving or two:Rebecca at the Well, Moses smiting the rock, Joseph’s servants finding thecup in Benjamin’s sack. There would be a center table, with books of atranquil sort on it: The Whole Duty of Man, Baxter’s Saints’ Rest, Fox’sMartyrs, Tupper’s Proverbial Philosophy, bound copies of The MissionaryHerald and of Father Damon’s Seaman’s Friend. A melodeon; a music stand,with ‘Willie, We have Missed You’, ‘Star of the Evening’, ‘Roll on SilverMoon’, ‘Are We Most There’, ‘I Would not Live Alway’, and other songs oflove and sentiment, together with an assortment of hymns.

A what-not withsemi-globular glass paperweights, enclosing miniature pictures of ships,New England rural snowstorms, and the like; sea-shells with Bible textscarved on them in cameo style; native curios; whale’s tooth withfull-rigged ship carved on it. There was nothing reminiscent of foreignparts, for nobody had been abroad. Trips were made to San Francisco, butthat could not be called going abroad. Comprehensively speaking, nobodytraveled.But Honolulu has grown wealthy since then, and of course wealth hasintroduced changes; some of the old simplicities have disappeared.

Here isa modern house, as pictured by Mrs. Krout:“Almost every house is surrounded by extensive lawns and gardensenclosed by walls of volcanic stone or by thick hedges of the brillianthibiscus.“The houses are most tastefully and comfortably furnished; the floorsare either of hard wood covered with rugs or with fine Indian matting,while there is a preference, as in most warm countries, for rattan orbamboo furniture; there are the usual accessories of bric-a-brac,pictures, books, and curios from all parts of the world, for theseisland dwellers are indefatigable travelers.“Nearly every house has what is called a lanai. It is a large apartment,roofed, floored, open on three sides, with a door or a draped archwayopening into the drawing-room. Frequently the roof is formed by thethick interlacing boughs of the hou tree, impervious to the sun and evento the rain, except in violent storms. Vines are trained about the sides—thestephanotis or some one of the countless fragrant and blossomingtrailers which abound in the islands. There are also curtains of mattingthat may be drawn to exclude the sun or rain. Crossed the equator.

In the distance it looked like a blueribbon stretched across the ocean. Several passengers kodak’d it. We hadno fool ceremonies, no fantastics, no horse play. All that sort of thinghas gone out. In old times a sailor, dressed as Neptune, used to come inover the bows, with his suite, and lather up and shave everybody who wascrossing the equator for the first time, and then cleanse theseunfortunates by swinging them from the yard-arm and ducking them threetimes in the sea. This was considered funny. Nobody knows why.

No, that isnot true. We do know why. Such a thing could never be funny on land; nopart of the old-time grotesque performances gotten up on shipboard tocelebrate the passage of the line could ever be funny on shore—theywould seem dreary and witless to shore people. But the shore people wouldchange their minds about it at sea, on a long voyage.

On such a voyage,with its eternal monotonies, people’s intellects deteriorate; the ownersof the intellects soon reach a point where they almost seem to preferchildish things to things of a maturer degree. One is often surprised atthe juvenilities which grown people indulge in at sea, and the interestthey take in them, and the consuming enjoyment they get out of them. Thisis on long voyages only.

The mind gradually becomes inert, dull, blunted;it loses its accustomed interest in intellectual things; nothing buthorse-play can rouse it, nothing but wild and foolish grotesqueries canentertain it. On short voyages it makes no such exposure of itself; ithasn’t time to slump down to this sorrowful level.The short-voyage passenger gets his chief physical exercise out of“horse-billiards”—shovel-board. It is a good game. We play it inthis ship. A quartermaster chalks off a diagram like this-on the deck.The player uses a cue that is like a broom-handle with a quarter-moon ofwood fastened to the end of it.

With this he shoves wooden disks the sizeof a saucer—he gives the disk a vigorous shove and sends it fifteenor twenty feet along the deck and lands it in one of the squares if hecan. If it stays there till the inning is played out, it will count asmany points in the game as the figure in the square it has stopped inrepresents. The adversary plays to knock that disk out and leave his ownin its place—particularly if it rests upon the 9 or 10 or some otherof the high numbers; but if it rests in the “10off” he backs it up—landshis disk behind it a foot or two, to make it difficult for its owner toknock it out of that damaging place and improve his record. When theinning is played out it may be found that each adversary has placed hisfour disks where they count; it may be found that some of them aretouching chalk lines and not counting; and very often it will be foundthat there has been a general wreckage, and that not a disk has been leftwithin the diagram.

Anyway, the result is recorded, whatever it is, andthe game goes on. The game is 100 points, and it takes from twenty minutesto forty to play it, according to luck and the condition of the sea. It isan exciting game, and the crowd of spectators furnish abundance ofapplause for fortunate shots and plenty of laughter for the other kind. Itis a game of skill, but at the same time the uneasy motion of the ship isconstantly interfering with skill; this makes it a chancy game, and theelement of luck comes largely in.

We had a couple of grand tournaments, to determine who should be “Championof the Pacific”; they included among the participants nearly all thepassengers, of both sexes, and the officers of the ship, and they affordedmany days of stupendous interest and excitement, and murderous exercise—forhorse-billiards is a physically violent game.The figures in the following record of some of the closing games in thefirst tournament will show, better than any description, how very chancythe game is. The losers here represented had all been winners in theprevious games of the series, some of them by fine majorities:Chase,102Mrs. D.,57Mortimer,105The Surgeon,92Miss C.,105Mrs.

T.,9Clemens,101Taylor,92Taylor,109Davies,95Miss C.,108Mortimer,55Thomas,102Roper,76Clemens,111Miss C.,89Coomber,106Chase,98And so on; until but three couples of winners were left. Then I beat myman, young Smith beat his man, and Thomas beat his. This reduced thecombatants to three. Smith and I took the deck, and I led off.

At theclose of the first inning I was 10 worse than nothing and Smith had scored7. The luck continued against me. When I was 57, Smith was 97—within3 of out. The luck changed then. He picked up a 10-off or so, and couldn’trecover. I beat him.The next game would end tournament No.

Thomas and I were the contestants. He won the lead and went to the bat—soto speak. And there he stood, with the crotch of his cue resting againsthis disk while the ship rose slowly up, sank slowly down, rose again, sankagain. She never seemed to rise to suit him exactly. She started up oncemore; and when she was nearly ready for the turn, he let drive and landedhis disk just within the left-hand end of the 10.

The umpireproclaimed “a good 10,” and the game-keeper set it down. I played: my diskgrazed the edge of Mr. Thomas’s disk, and went out of the diagram. Thomas played again—and landed his second disk alongside of thefirst, and almost touching its right-hand side. “Good 10.” (Greatapplause.)I played, and missed both of them. (No applause.)Mr. Thomas delivered his third shot and landed his disk just at the rightof the other two.

“ Good 10.” (Immense applause.)There they lay, side by side, the three in a row. It did not seem possiblethat anybody could miss them.

Still I did it. (Immense silence.)Mr. Thomas played his last disk. It seems incredible, but he actuallylanded that disk alongside of the others, and just to the right of them-astraight solid row of 4 disks. (Tumultuous and long-continued applause.)Then I played my last disk. Again it did not seem possible that anybodycould miss that row—a row which would have been 14 inches long ifthe disks had been clamped together; whereas, with the spaces separatingthem they made a longer row than that. But I did it.

It may be that I wasgetting nervous.I think it unlikely that that innings has ever had its parallel in thehistory of horse-billiards. To place the four disks side by side in the 10was an extraordinary feat; indeed, it was a kind of miracle. To miss themwas another miracle. It will take a century to produce another man who canplace the four disk.

In celebration of one of science fiction's most beloved franchises, an updated edition of the acclaimed Ships of the Line hardcover collection.They dared to risk it all in a skiff of reeds or leather, on a ship of wood or steel, knowing the only thing between them and certain death was their ship. To explore, to seek out what lay beyond the close and comfortable, every In celebration of one of science fiction's most beloved franchises, an updated edition of the acclaimed Ships of the Line hardcover collection.They dared to risk it all in a skiff of reeds or leather, on a ship of wood or steel, knowing the only thing between them and certain death was their ship. To explore, to seek out what lay beyond the close and comfortable, every explorer had to embrace danger. And as they did so, what arose was a mystical bond, a passion for the ships that carried them. From the very first time humans dared to warp the fabric of space, escaping from the ashes of the third World War, they also created ships. These vessels have become the icons of mankind's desire to rise above the everyday, to seek out and make the unknown known.

And these ships that travel the stellar seas have stirred the same passions as the ones that floated in the oceans.While every captain has wished that their starship could be outfitted in the same manner as the sailing ship H.M.S. Beagle—without weapons—that proved untenable. From the start, Starfleet realized that each vessel, due to the limited range of the early warp engines, must be able to stand alone against any attack. Thus arose the idea, taken from the days of wooden sailing ships, that every Starfleet vessel must stand as a ship of the line. Through the actions of their captains and crews, countless starships have taken on that role. Here we remember some of those ships and their heroic crews.In celebration of one of science fiction's most beloved franchises, this updated edition of the acclaimed Ships of the Line hardcover collection now includes dozens of additional images brought together for the first time in book format—spectacular renderings featured in the highly successful Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendar series. With text by Star Trek's own Michael Okuda, the story of each of these valiant starships now comes to life.™, ®, & © 2014 CBS Studios, Inc.

STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Oh okay every now and again I have to let the inner geek out and rum rampant (under adult supervision I promise) and this was the result.

I have always had a love of Star Trek although I do promise you I am too young to have seen the original series - I do remember not only the films but more importantly The Next Generation - how sad am I that I can remember some of major teenage accomplishments against airing dates of this show!Anyway moving swiftly on I still enjoy reading the books that came Oh okay every now and again I have to let the inner geek out and rum rampant (under adult supervision I promise) and this was the result. I have always had a love of Star Trek although I do promise you I am too young to have seen the original series - I do remember not only the films but more importantly The Next Generation - how sad am I that I can remember some of major teenage accomplishments against airing dates of this show!Anyway moving swiftly on I still enjoy reading the books that came from this franchise - and this I will admit was one of the better produced ones. From bitter experience I know that the quality varies hugely - not only in the content and style but also in the actual printing and presentation. However this book does not disappoint, the production and presentation is without fault and the images are all to a very high standard - something I will admit that I have not seen for Star Trek books in a long time. Bookworm Speaks!Star Trek: Ships of the Lineby Doug Drexler and Margaret Clark.This edition of Bookworm Speaks is first for Bookworm, as it is not a novel. It is a science fiction book but it is an art book. In celebration of the beloved science fiction series’ fortieth anniversary, Star Trek Ships of the Line was created using images from the ships of the line calendar series.The Story: The book has no story in that there is no real plot or characters.

'star Trek' Epub Books Free Download

That being said, what it does have is Bookworm Speaks!Star Trek: Ships of the Lineby Doug Drexler and Margaret Clark.This edition of Bookworm Speaks is first for Bookworm, as it is not a novel. It is a science fiction book but it is an art book. In celebration of the beloved science fiction series’ fortieth anniversary, Star Trek Ships of the Line was created using images from the ships of the line calendar series.The Story: The book has no story in that there is no real plot or characters.

That being said, what it does have is art book story detailing the saga of the various Star Trek television shows. It begins with Enterprise, then The Original Series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the various films. Each image has a block of text that describes what is going in the picture.The Good: The fact that each picture tells a story is what really separates this from other art books as well as art say from the internet as well. It is always such a letdown when you come across this superb picture of a starship flying through space. It is beautiful and provocative and when you scroll down to the description and all you see is Drawn on Artprogram X and 1600 by 1600 pixels. We want to no more! Who is on the ship?

Where is it going and why is it going there at all? It’s these questions that inspire writers and these questions are answered in Ships of the Line. The little block of story on the page may be brief but it does add another layer of depth that makes the concurrent image more than just another pretty picture.In space opera stories, the main focus is the characters of course and how they interact with the setting around them, many times the stories do not move beyond the bulkheads of the ship that they call home. The starship is more than just where the show is set. We see it travel through outer space in all its beauty, it fights enemies and gets wounded in the process. It has it’s own quirks and issues that the crew must deal with. In essence, the starship becomes a character all its own.

It is exactly that motif that runs all throughout Star Trek, perhaps echoing the tales of ships and aircraft that were the mainstay of popular literature a generation ago.The illustrations are top of the line, as to be expected from the world of Star Trek. Even if you are indifferent to Star Trek in general, no science fiction fan can deny the appeal of seeing beautiful starships traveling the heaven in a quality hardcover format.The Flaws: The main problem Bookworm has encountered is the physical structure of the book itself. This book is obviously meant to be placed on a coffee table of someone’s house. It’s long and thin book and is an awkward fit on most standard bookshelves, it sticks out.

Also, if one is not familiar with Star Trek most of the things mentioned in the stories may very well go over their heads. It is unknown where these people actually are for their whereabouts are shrouded in mystery, but they’re out there somewhere.Final Verdict: Star Trek: Ships of the Line is a beautiful and creative look into one of the beloved aspects of the shows. A must have for any fan the legendary science fiction series or simply a fan of starships in general.Four out of Five StarsFor reviews and more visit: jordan.danbrantley.com. Ships of the Line by Doug Drexler and Margaret Clark (eds) with Michael Okuda providing text is a gorgeous book of Star Trek artwork. It features beautifully drawn images from the Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendars and was put together as part of the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of Star Trek.

The artists have taken various ships from all points of the ST universe (through 2006) and rendered them in scenes from both the series or movie from which they came as well as from their own Ships of the Line by Doug Drexler and Margaret Clark (eds) with Michael Okuda providing text is a gorgeous book of Star Trek artwork. It features beautifully drawn images from the Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendars and was put together as part of the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of Star Trek. The artists have taken various ships from all points of the ST universe (through 2006) and rendered them in scenes from both the series or movie from which they came as well as from their own imaginations.

The result is a delight for Trek fans.The book was a serendipitous find for me.just sitting there on the featured books shelf of our Friends of the Library bookstore waiting for me to bring it home. As any good Trek fan would, I did. And promptly sat down the same day (May 1) and read it straight through.

And somehow forgot to write up a review-so here it is, better late than never. Highly enjoyable-I spent a delightful evening flipping through the pages and reading the descriptions of each piece. Now I'll be passing it on to my son.This was first posted on my blog. Please request permission before reposting.

It's not a deep book but it wasn't meant to be. It's a picture book with slight notes or segments of stories attached. But that is it's intent.

If you like looking at really awesome 'Star Trek' ships, then this is a good book. It's a collection of art, much if not all of it from the 'Ships of the Line' calendars though some I've seen on the cover of novels so it has some ties to the expanded Trek universe (some of which was inspired by these images in the calendars).I'd love to have known more It's not a deep book but it wasn't meant to be. It's a picture book with slight notes or segments of stories attached. But that is it's intent.

If you like looking at really awesome 'Star Trek' ships, then this is a good book. It's a collection of art, much if not all of it from the 'Ships of the Line' calendars though some I've seen on the cover of novels so it has some ties to the expanded Trek universe (some of which was inspired by these images in the calendars).I'd love to have known more of some of these stories. And more images of the alien vessels too. But it's still a book full of the pretty! A beautiful book with artist illustrations of incidents from the various TV series and movies, and some that are just from an artist's imagination. Each illustration has a short blurb of text, that is basically an extract of what is occurring at the moment captured by the illustration. Many of these are straight from the episodes.

Others clearly had to come from the imagination of the author. But all seem quite appropriate, and even touching, The chapters are roughly in chronological order A beautiful book with artist illustrations of incidents from the various TV series and movies, and some that are just from an artist's imagination. Each illustration has a short blurb of text, that is basically an extract of what is occurring at the moment captured by the illustration. Many of these are straight from the episodes. Others clearly had to come from the imagination of the author. But all seem quite appropriate, and even touching, The chapters are roughly in chronological order (according to the original Star Trek timeline), so reading through the book is like seeing the 'history' of Star Trek. A great book for any Star Trek fan!!