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Publication of the
book was delayed, probably due to the overriding concerns with the war
in Europe.
"White Shadows
was not a book that many thought publishable.
Completed in
1914, it made a few publisher rounds before being shelved for nearly five
years."
Geiger: Facing
the Pacific, (2007) page 81.
In Chapter XXXIV
O'Brien gives an extended account of native surfboard riding and his attempts
at the sport in the Marquesas islands at the turn of the 20th century.
Illustrations: A canoe in the surf at
Oomoa page 377
Importantly, he appears to have encounted traditional skills that have
survived the European political, religous and economic influences that
decimated many of the native cultural practices in the islands of the Pacific.
For example contrast with O'Brien's own report of the demise of surfing
in Tahiti in Mystic
Isles of the South Seas (1921), below.
Notes:
1. Geiger,
Jeffrey : Facing the Pacific: Polynesia and the U.S. imperial imagination.
University of Hawai'i
Press, Honolulu, 2007
Geiger gives a biographic
account of O'Brein's life and work in Chapter 2 and notes that he
had a brief but intense affair with Jack London's widow, Charmian, page
74.
See Charmian
London: Surfriding at Waikiki
1907-1917
2. White
Shadows in the South Seas was one of the first non-fiction works made
as a film, circa 1928.
See Wikipedia:
To be busy about anything not necessary to living is, in Marquesan wisdom, to be idle.
Swimming in the
surf, lolhng at the via puna, angling from rock or canoe or fishing with
line and spear outside the bay, searching for shell-fish, and riding or
walking over the hills to other valleys, filled their peaceful, pleasant
days.
A dream-like,
carefree life, lived by a people sweet to know, handsome and generous and
loving.
Page 79.
We arrived at
a merry scene upon the beach.
Women and children
were in the surf, or on rocks under the cliffs, fishing for popo, the young
of uua. With bamboo poles twenty feet long and lines of even greater length,
we stood up to our necks in the sea and threw out the hook baited with
a morsel of shrimp.
The breakers
tumbled us about, the lines became tangled, amid gales of laughter and
a medley of joyous shouts.
Tiring of fishing,
Vanquished Often and I would breast the creaming waves side by side, to
turn far out and dash in on the breakers, overturning all but the wary.
Or a group of
us, climbing high on the cliffs, would fling ourselves again and again
into the sea, turning in mid-air, life and delight quickening every muscle.
Chapter XXXIV
Page 400.
As the old routine
closed around me pleasantly; mornings in the shade of my palms and breadfruit,
eating the breakfasts prepared for me by Exploding Eggs over the fire of
cocoanut husks, baths in the clear pool of the river with my neighbors,
afternoons spent in the cocoanut-groves or with merry companions on the
beach.
Exploding Eggs directed the surf board with a sure hand, lying flat, kneeling or even standing on the long ...
Page 401
... plank as he
came in on the crest of the breakers.
I had now and
again succeeded in being carried along while flat on my stomach on the
board, but failed many-times oftener than I succeeded.
Now I set myself
in earnest to learn the art of mastering the surf.
Three or four
o'clock in the afternoon was the time I usually chose for the sport, and
once I had made it a practice, all the boys and girls of the village accompanied
me, or waited for me at the shore, sure of hilarious hours.
I must make children
my companions here, for my older friends were so oppressed by the gloom
of race extinction that save for SIalicious Gossip and one or two others,
there was no capacity for joyousness left in them.
Exploding Eggs
was my chum, paid as forager and firemaker, but giving from friendliness
his services as a wise and admirable teacher of the unknown to one unmade
by civilization.
The bay of Atuona,
narrow between high cliffs covered with cocoanut-trees, was the scene of
my lessons.
The tide came
booming into this cove from the Bay of Traitors, often with bewildering
force, and a day or two a month as gently as the waves at Waikiki.
The river spread
a broad mouth to drink the brine, and the white sand was over-run by the
flowered vines that crept seaward to taste the salt.
No house was
in sight, no man-made structure to mar the primitive, as our merry crew
of boys and girls sported naked in the surf, fished from the rocks, or
lay upon the shining beach.
For my first essay
I used the lid of a box that had enclosed an ornate coffin ordered from
Tahiti by a chief who anticipated dying.
It was large,
and weighty to drag or push through the surf to the proper distance.
Page 402.
Laboring valiantly with it, I reached some distance from the shore, and prepared a triumphal return. The waves were big, curving above me in sheets of clearest emerald, crested with spray breaking into foam and rising again, endlessly reshaping, repeating themselves.
Awaiting my opportunity,
I chose one as it rose behind me, and flung myself upon it.
Up and up and
still higher I went, carried by resistless momentum, and suddenly like
a chip in a hurricane I was flung forward at a fearsome speed, through
rushing chaos of wind and water, seeing the beach dashing toward me, shouting
with exultation.
At the next instant
my trusty board turned traitor.
Its prow sank,
the end beneath me rose, and like a stone discharged from a sling I was
thrown under the waves, head over heels, banging my head and body on the
sand, leaped upon by following waves that piled me into shallow water,
rolling me over and over, striking me a blow with the coffin-lid at every
roll.
I lay high and
dry, panting and aching, while from all the beach rose shouts of laughter.
Exploding Eggs
rolled on the sand in his delight, holding his gasping sides, scarcely
able to remind me of the necessity, which in my excitement I had forgotten,
of keeping the prow of the board pointed upward as I rode.
Often as I repeated
this instruction in my mind, firmly as I determined to remember it while
I toiled
sea-ward again
with the coffin-lid, the result was always the same.
A moment of rest
in the unresting waves, a quick, agile stiring (?), a moment of
mad, intoxicating joy,
and then — disaster.
I became a mass
of bruises, the skin scraped inch by inch from my chest by contact ...
Page 403
... with the rough
wood.
I would not give
up until I had to, and then for a week I was convalescing.
One stiff ache from head to foot, I lay ignominiously on the sand, and watched Exploding Eggs, with a piece of box not bigger than a fat man's shirt-front, take wave after wave, standing on the board, dashing far across the breakers to the shore, with never a failure, while Gedge's little half-breed daughter, a beautiful fairy-like creature, darted upon the sea as a butterfly upon a zephyr.
After several
weeks of effort and mishap, one day the secret came to me like a flash,
and the trick was learned.
I had been using
the great board and was weary.
I exchanged with
Exploding Eggs for a plank three feet long and fourteen inches wide.
Almost exhausted,
I waited as usual with the butt of the board against my stomach for the
incoming breaker to be just behind and above me, and then leaped forward
to kick out vigorously, the board pressed against me and my hands extended
along its sides, to get in time with the wave.
But the wave was
upon me before I had thought to execute these instructions, I straightened
myself out rigidly, and lo! I shot in like a torpedo on the very top of
the billow, holding the point of the board up, yelling like a Comanche
Indian.
So fast, so straight
did I go, that it was all I could do to swerve in the shallow water and
not be hurled with force on the sand.
"Metai! Me metair" (?) cried my friends in excited congratulation, while like all men who succeed by accident, I stood proudly, taking the plaudits as my due.
From that afternoon I had most exhilarating sport, ...
Page 404.
... and indeed,
this is the very king of amusements for fun and exercise.
Skeeing (sic?),
tobogganing, skating, all land sports fade before the thrills of this;
nor will anything give such abounding health and joy in living as surfriding
in sunny seas.
A hundred afternoons
on Atuona Bay I spent in this exhilarating pastime.
To it we added
embellishments, multiplying excitements.
A score of us
would start at the same moment from the same line and race to shore; we
would carry two on a board; we would stand and kneel and direct our course
so that we could touch a marked spot on the beach or curve about and swerve
and jostle each other.
Exploding Eggs
was the king of us all, and Teata was queen.
She advanced
as effortlessly as a mermaid, her superb figure shining on the shining
water, tossing her long black hair, and shrieking with delight.
Occasionally we
varied these sports by a much more dangerous and arduous game.
We would push
our boards far out in the bay, half a mile or more, diving under each wave
we faced, until after tremendous effort we reached the farthest sea-ward
line of breakers.
Often while I
swam, clinging to the board and struggling with the waves for its possession,
I saw in the emerald water curling above me the shadowy shapes of large
fish, carried on the crests of the combers, transfigured clearly against
the sky fins and heads and tails outlined with light.
Once in smoother water we waited for the proper moment, counting the foam-crests as they passed. Waves go in multiples of three, the third being longer and going farther than the two before it, and the ninth, or ...
Page 405.
... third third,
being strongest of all.
This ninth wave
we waited for.
Choosing any
other meant being spilled in tumbling water when it broke far from land,
and falling prey to the succeeding ones, which bruised unmercifully.
But taking the
ninth monster at its start, we rode marvelously, staying at its summit
as it mounted higher and higher, shouting above the lesser rollers, until
it dashed upon the smooth sand half a mile away.
Exultation kept
the heart in the throat, the pulses beating wildly, as the breaker tore
its way over the foaming rollers, I on the roof of the swell, lying almost
over its front wall, holding like death to my plank while the wind sang
in my ears and sky and sea mingled in rushing blueness.
To take such a ride twice in an afternoon taxed my strength, but the Marquesan boys and girls were never wearied, and laughed at my violent breathing.
The Romans ranked
swimming with letters, saying of an uneducated man, "Nee literas didicit
nee nature".
He had neither
learned to read nor to swim.
The sea is the
book of the South Sea Islanders.
They swim as
they walk, beginning as babies to dive and to frolic in the water.
Their mothers
place them on the river bank at a day old, and in a few months they are
swimming in
shallow water.
At two and three
years they play in the surf, swimming with the easy motion of a frog.
They have no
fear of the water to overcome, for they are accustomed to the element from
birth, and it is to them as natural as land.
It should be so with all, for human locomotion in water is no more tiresome or difficult than on the earth.
Page 406.
One element is
as suitable to man as the other for transportation of himself, when habitude
give natural movement, strength, and fearlessness.
A Marquesan who
cannot swim is unknown, and they carry objects through the water as easily
as through a grove.
I have seen a
woman with an infant at her breast leap from a canoe and swim through a
quarter of a mile of breakers to the shore, merely to save a somewhat longer
walk.
T'yonni's house
was half a mile from my own.
A quarter of
a mile farther, and the same distance from the junction of lagoon and river,
we had our swimming-place.
On an acre or
two of grass and moss, removed from any habitation, grew a score of lofty
cocoas, and under these we threw off our pareus or trousers and shirts.
The bank of the
stream was a fathom from the water which was brackish at high tide and
sweet at low.
With a short
run and a curving leap we plunged into the flowing water.
It was refreshing
at the hottest hour.
The Tahitians
seldom dived head first, as we did, but jumped feet foremost, and the women
in a sitting posture, which made a great splash, but prevented their gowns
from rising.
As I remarked
before, we three Americans bathed stark when with men, but the modest Tahitian
men never for a moment uncovered themselves, but wore their pareus.
Captain Cook
said that in their houses he had not seen a single instance of immodesty,
though families slept in one room.
Choti avowed
that he had to make love to his girl models to induce them to pose in the
altogether, for money would not make them adopt the garb of Venus.
The Tahitians
did not enter the sea for pleasure.
The rivers and
brooks were their bathing- and resting-places.
They attributed
sicknesses to the too frequent touch of salt water.
They had not
the habitude of swimming within the lagoons, as at Hawaii; it was not with
them an exercise or luxury, but a part of their every-day activities in
fishing and canoeing.
A farmer after
his day's work does not run foot-races.
Yet in gatherings
these people often vied for supremacy in every sort of sea sport, and beforetime,
in bays free of coral, developed an astonishing skill in surf-riding on
boards, in canoes, and without artificial support.
Such skill was
ranked on a par with or perhaps the same as proficiency in the pastimes
of war, as did the Greeks, who addressed Diagoras, after he and his two
sons had been crowned in the arena: "Die, for thou hast nothing short of
divinity to desire."
These ambitions
had been ended in Tahiti by the frowns of the missionaries, to whom athletics
were a species of diabolical possession, unworthy souls destined for hell
or heaven, with but a brief span to avert their birthright of damnation
in sackcloth and ashes.
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