We Change Our Course and Arrive at Honolulu--The City Viewed from
the Sea--Its Mixed Population--We Are Detained Ten Days For Engine
Repairs.


When we were a week out from San Francisco and were eight hundred or
a thousand miles north of the Hawaiian Islands, the _Buford_ stopped
one evening just at sunset, and for at least twenty minutes slopped
about in the gentle swell. There is a curious sense of dulness when the
engines cease droning and throbbing; and the passengers, who had just
come up from dinner, were affected by the unusual silence. We hung over
the rail, talking in subdued tones and noting the beauty of the sunset.

Behind us the sea lay purple and dark, with the same sad, sweet
loneliness that a prairie has in the dusk; but between us and the sun
it resembled a molten mass, heaving with sinister power. Our bowsprit
pointed straight at the fiery ball hanging on the sky rim, above which
a pyramidal heaping of clouds aped the forms of temples set on rocky
heights. And from that fantastic mingling of gold and pink and yellow
the sky melted into azure streaked with pearl, and faded at the zenith
into what was no color but night--the infinity of space unlighted.

When the engines started up, the gorgeous picture swung around until
it stood on what is technically called the starboard beam, whereupon
one of the engineers called my attention to the fact that we had
changed our course. Since we were then headed due south, he added,
we must be bound for Honolulu.

Everybody was pleased, though there was some little anxiety to know the
cause of this disregard of orders and of our turning a thousand miles