Golfing Round the World
Chapter XV Casual Water
Life in these days is really a steady and continuous process of disillusionment. I had imagined the Pacific to be something very vast and awful, but it seemed that no sooner were we fairly in it than we were over it, so rapid and uneventful has modern transport become. In a few years, of course, we shall whirl round this planet through its circumambient ether, and oceans and continents will offer no obstacle to our progress. Even today we pick up our morning paper and learn that Mr. So and So has arrived in the Antipodes when it seemed only yesterday that cheering crowds gave him a send off from Croydon.
The Pacific, then, is nothing more than a good sized lake sprinkled with innumerable islets. From Yokohama to Honolulu is three thousand five hundred miles, and I had always supposed it to be a great lone waste of ocean, whereas in fact one is never more than two hundred miles away from land of some sort or another.
As we neared the tropics once more and carried our deck chairs right aft, for shade and shelter, and dreamed our day dreams in the hypnotic spell of our turbulent wake, it was a never ending puzzle to account for those giant birds which swooped and swerved and nosedived and velplaned in our track. For three days there were but a couple of these huge petrels but on the fourth day they were joined by a third, and on the seventh day out from Yokohama we had a flock of something like a score. One could understand these winged adventures picking up a vessel near the land and following it for days, but for them to suddenly appear when the ship was midway between two ports nearly four thousand miles apart, was a mystery which was only solved when we realised that a chain of islands extends right across the Pacific from the coast of Japan to the Hawaiian islands.
However long I may happen to live I shall always remember the 21st of April, not because it was my birthday, or that of any one else in whose birthday I take a vicarious interest, but on account of the fact that I have enjoyed one more day in April than I am, strictly speaking, entitled to. Shortly before our arrival at Honolulu we crossed that interesting spot, second only in importance to the Equator, known as the International Date Line, or the 180th degree of Longitude west and east of Greenwich. It is unnecessary to explain to persons of intelligence that by proceeding continually in an easterly direction one meets the rising sun appreciably earlier every day, and therefore to avoid the inconvenience of spending your days at night you periodically deprive each day of a portion of its quota of twentyfour hours. When you have journey as far as the 180th degree, you recompense yourself for these attenuations by adding a full extra day to your calendar, otherwise you would sail into tomorrow a day too soon, and pass the rest of your life in an unending series of yesterday.
I celebrated 'Doubleday' by solemnly eating a waffle in honour of the United States of America, which appeared to me to be a more delicate way of signifying my homage than the usual raising of the glass. So far as I can ascertain this was the first dry 'toast' that has ever been eaten.
Now this was a very charming period in the voyage for we were returning to the tropics, where the weather is unimpeachable. Forget for a moment the necessary role of loyal Britons who have taken their lead from the immortal falsehood of the Merry Monarch - 'That the climate of England invited men to walk abroad more often than in any other country'. Be honest and admit that however much you protest you enjoy those cold frosty mornings verging into the fog, that bitter keen easterly nip, your real preference is for sunny June and mellow September with a hope that the intervening months may be reasonably warm and fine. If you admit so much, then your choice is for tropical weather, for the sun, for cheerfulness and warmth.
Personally I make no bones about the matter, I enjoy fresh air all the time, but I have no manner of use for the fiend who possesses an 'all weather' body and loves nothing so much as to break the ice in his bath, or to gloat in a railway carriage with both windows open to the blast of wintry winds or damp chill air. Japanese weather in April was as fitful as an English spring, Peking was a boisterous but sunny March, but here in mid Pacific it was perfect summer.
Day and night the decks of the "Imperatrice" were gay with the colour and fallalery of summer dresses and even the men made a brave show with palm beach suits and cool white duck. Stars and sunsets were once more objects of prime interest vying with the lure of deck concerts and dances, while all around us was the never ceasing ever haunting melody of the sea.
On board were all sorts and conditions of men and women, old and young, but it was the rarest thing for any of them to suffer any discomfort from the sea. An eighteen thousand tonner is seldom pitched and tossed about with the scant ceremony accorded to a pilot boat or small coaster. During the whole voyage of thirty odd thousand miles I never saw the fiddles used at all, nay more, tall specimen glasses with top heavy flowers would stand on the tables in the saloon for days and weeks together.