face of the crest where the top falls over and down, driving in
toward shore, buried to his loins in smoking spray, caught up by the
sea and flung landward, bodily, a quarter of a mile. It is a Kanaka
on a surf-board. And I know that when I have finished these lines I
shall be out in that riot of colour and pounding surf, trying to bit
those breakers even as he, and failing as he never failed, but
living life as the best of us may live it. And the picture of that
coloured sea and that flying sea-god Kanaka becomes another reason
for the young man to go west, and farther west, beyond the Baths of
Sunset, and still west till he arrives home again.

But to return. Please do not think that I already know it all. I
know only the rudiments of navigation. There is a vast deal yet for
me to learn. On the Snark there is a score of fascinating books on
navigation waiting for me. There is the danger-angle of Lecky,
there is the line of Sumner, which, when you know least of all where
you are, shows most conclusively where you are, and where you are
not. There are dozens and dozens of methods of finding one's
location on the deep, and one can work years before he masters it
all in all its fineness.

Even in the little we did learn there were slips that accounted for
the apparently antic behaviour of the Snark. On Thursday, May 16,
for instance, the trade wind failed us. During the twenty-four
hours that ended Friday at noon, by dead reckoning we had not sailed
twenty miles. Yet here are our positions, at noon, for the two
days, worked out from our observations:

Thursday 20 degrees 57 minutes 9 seconds N
152 degrees 40 minutes 30 seconds W