along. While it certainly makes a Cook's tour look like thirty
cents, on top of that, amid on top of the fun and pleasure, it is a
splendid education for a young man--oh, not a mere education in the
things of the world outside, of lands, and peoples, and climates,
but an education in the world inside, an education in one's self, a
chance to learn one's own self, to get on speaking terms with one's
soul. Then there is the training and the disciplining of it.
First, naturally, the young fellow will learn his limitations; and
next, inevitably, he will proceed to press back those limitations.
And he cannot escape returning from such a voyage a bigger and
better man. And as for sport, it is a king's sport, taking one's
self around the world, doing it with one's own hands, depending on
no one but one's self, and at the end, back at the starting-point,
contemplating with inner vision the planet rushing through space,
and saying, "I did it; with my own hands I did it. I went clear
around that whirling sphere, and I can travel alone, without any
nurse of a sea-captain to guide my steps across the seas. I may not
fly to other stars, but of this star I myself am master."

As I write these lines I lift my eyes and look seaward. I am on the
beach of Waikiki on the island of Oahu. Far, in the azure sky, the
trade-wind clouds drift low over the blue-green turquoise of the
deep sea. Nearer, the sea is emerald and light olive-green. Then
comes the reef, where the water is all slaty purple flecked with
red. Still nearer are brighter greens and tans, lying in alternate
stripes and showing where sandbeds lie between the living coral
banks. Through and over and out of these wonderful colours tumbles
and thunders a magnificent surf. As I say, I lift my eyes to all
this, and through the white crest of a breaker suddenly appears a
dark figure, erect, a man-fish or a sea-god, on the very forward