Kiana
A Tradition of Hawaii
9781465630513
118 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
To be alone on the great ocean, to feel besides the ship that bears you, nothing human floats within your world’s horizon, begets in a thoughtful mind a deep solemnity. The voyager is, as it were, at once brought before the material image of eternity. Sky and sea, each recedes without limit from his view; a circle above, a circle around, a circle underneath, no beginning, no ending, no repose for the sight, no boundary on which to fix the thought, but growing higher and higher, wider and wider, deeper and deeper, as the eye gazes and finds no resting point,—both sea and sky suggest, with overpowering force, that condition of soul which, knowing neither time nor space, forever mounts Godward. In no mood does Nature speak louder to the heart than in her silence. When her thunders roll through the atmosphere and the hills tremble, the ocean surges and the wind wails; when she laughs through her thousand notes from bird or blossom, the heart either exults at the strife, or grows tender with sympathy in the universal joy. But place man alone on the ocean, shrouded in silence, with no living thing beyond his own tiny, wooden world for companionship, he begins to realize in the mighty expanse which engulfs his vision his own physical insignificancy. The very stars that look down upon him, with light twinkling and faint, from the rapidity with which they have sent their rays through distant firmaments to greet his vision and tell him there are countless worlds of greater beauty and higher perfection for his spirit to explore; even they deepen his feeling of littleness, till, finally, his soul recovers its dignity in the very magnitude of the scenery spread for its exploration. It knows that all this is but a portion of its heritage; that earth, air and water, the very planets that mock its curiosity, are ministering spirits, given with all their mysteries to be finally absorbed into its own all-penetrating nature. Few, however, can so realize their own spirit-power, as to be calm in a calm. A motionless ship upon a silent ocean has a phantom look. The tall, tapering spars, the symmetrical tracery of ropes, the useless sails in white drooping folds, the black body in sharp relief in the white light, added to the ghost-ship,—the twin of the one in the air,—in dimly-shadowed companionship, hull uppermost and her masts pointing downwards in the blue water, make up a spectral picture. As day after day passes, overhead a hot burning sun whose rays blind without rejoicing, no ripple upon the water, no life, because neither fish nor bird can bear the heat; the very garbage thrown overboard floating untouched, as if destruction rejected her own; the night mantling all in darkness, making silence still more oppressive,—for even the blocks refuse their wonted creaking;—all this consumes the body like rust slowly eating into iron. Nature faints and man sinks into her lassitude. He feels deserted of his own mother. She that bore him mocks him. Perchance a cold grey sky, pregnant with gloom, shuts down all around him, reflecting itself in the ocean which looks even greyer and colder. The atmosphere grows barren of light. No wind comes. Silent, motionless, and despairing, the vessel lies upon the waters; not slumbering, for every nerve within is quickened to unnatural keenness to catch a sign of change. It comes not. The seamen’s hearts, too worn to pray or curse, daily sink deeper within them, like masses of lead slowly finding their way through the fathomless depths of the ocean. A sail, a floating spar, a shark or devil fish, anything that were of man or beast, a shrub, the tiniest sea-snail or wildest bird, would be welcomed as Columbus hailed the floating signs that told to his mutinous crew a coming shore.
