Once in smoother water we waited for the proper moment, counting the foam-crests as they passed.  Waves go in multiples of three, the third being longer and going farther than the two before it, and the ninth, or third third, being strongest of all.  This ninth wave we waited for.  Choosing any other meant being spilled in tumbling water when it broke far from land, and falling prey to the succeeding ones, which bruised unmercifully.

[Illustration:  Double canoes]

[Illustration:  Harbor sports]

But taking the ninth monster at its start, we rode marvelously, staying at its summit as it mounted higher and higher, shouting above the lesser rollers, until it dashed upon the smooth sand half a mile away.  Exultation kept the heart in the throat, the pulses beating wildly, as the breaker tore its way over the foaming rollers, I on the roof of the swell, lying almost over its front wall, holding like death to my plank while the wind sang in my ears and sky and sea mingled in rushing blueness.

To take such a ride twice in an afternoon taxed my strength, but the Marquesan boys and girls were never wearied, and laughed at my violent breathing.

The Romans ranked swimming with letters, saying of an uneducated man, “Nec literas didicit nec natare.” He had neither learned to read nor to swim.  The sea is the book of the South Sea Islanders.  They swim as they walk, beginning as babies to dive and to frolic in the water.  Their mothers place them on the river bank at a day old, and in a few months they are swimming in shallow water.  At two and three years they play in the surf, swimming with the easy motion of a frog.  They have no fear of the water to overcome, for they are accustomed to the element from birth, and it is to them as natural as land.

It should be so with all, for human locomotion in water is no more tiresome or difficult than on the earth.  One element is as suitable to man as the other for transportation of himself, when habitude give natural movement, strength, and fearlessness.  A Marquesan who cannot swim is unknown, and they carry objects through the water as easily as through a grove.  I have seen a woman with an infant at her breast leap from a canoe and swim through a quarter of a mile of breakers to the shore, merely to save a somewhat longer walk.

One’s hours at the beach were not all spent in the water.  Many were the curious and delicious morsels we found on the rocks that were uncovered at low tide, stranded fish, crabs, and small crawling shell-fish.  One of our favorites was the sea-urchin, called hatuke, fetuke, or matuke.  Round, as big as a Bartlett pear, with greenish spines five or six inches long, they were as hideous to see as they were pleasant to eat.  In the last quarter of the moon they were specially good, though what the moon has to do with their flavor neither the Marquesans nor I know.  It is so; the Marquesans have always known it, and I have proved it.