There was a break in the reef before us; the sea knew it, and seemed to take special delight in rushing upon the shore as though it were about to devour sand, savages, and everything. Kahéle and I watched the surf-swimmers for some time, charmed with the spectacle. Such buoyancy of material matter I had never dreamed of. Kahéle, though much in the flesh, could not long resist the temptation to exhibit his prowess, and having been offered a surf-board that would have made a good lid to his coffin, and was itself as tight as cork and as smooth as glass, suddenly threw off his last claim to respectability, seized his sea-sled, and dived with it under the first roller which was then about to break above his head, not three feet from him. Beyond it, a second roller reared its awful front, but he swam under that with ease; at the sound of his "open sesame," its emerald gates parted and closed after him. He seemed some triton, playing with the elements, and dreadfully "at home" in that very wet place. The third and mightiest of the waves was gathering its strength for a charge upon the shore. Having reached its outer ripple, again Kahéle dived and reappeared on the other side of the watery hill, balanced for a moment in the glassy hollow, turned suddenly, and, mounting the towering monster, he lay at full length on his fragile raft, using his arms as a bird its pinions,--in fact, soaring for a moment with the wave under him. As it rose he climbed to the top of it, and there, in the midst of foam seething like champagne, on the crest of a rushing sea-avalanche about to crumble and dissolve beneath him, his surf-board bidden in spume, on the very top bubble of all, Kahéle danced like a shadow. He leaped to his feet and swam in the air, another Mercury, tiptoeing a heaven-kissing hill, buoyant as vapour, and with a suggestion of invisible wings about him,--Kahéle transformed for a moment, and for a moment only; the next second my daring sea-skater leaped ashore, with a howling breaker swashing at his heels. It was something glorious and almost incredible; but I saw it with my own eyes, and I wanted to double his salary on the spot.
Sunset in the valley of Méha. The air full of floating particles, that twinkled like diamond-dust; the great green chasm at the head of the valley illuminated by one broad bar of light shot obliquely through it, tipped at the end with a shower of white rockets that fringed a waterfall, and a fragment of rainbow like a torn banner. That deep, shadowy ravine seemed, for a moment, some mystery about to be divulged; but the light faded too soon, and I never learned the truth of it. The sea quieter than usual; very little sound save the rhythmical vibration of the air, that suggested flowing waters and quivering leaves; the lights shifted along the upper cliffs; a silver-white tropic-bird sailed from cloud to cloud, swiftly and noiselessly, like a shooting-star. A delicious moment, but a brief one; soon the sun was down, and the deepening shadows and gathering coolness set all the valley astir.