Several of our passengers belonged in Honolulu, and these were sent ashore; but nobody could go ashore and return.  There were people on shore who were booked to go with us to Australia, but we could not receive them; to do it would cost us a quarantine-term in Sydney.  They could have escaped the day before, by ship to San Francisco; but the bars had been put up, now, and they might have to wait weeks before any ship could venture to give them a passage any whither.  And there were hardships for others.  An elderly lady and her son, recreation-seekers from Massachusetts, had wandered westward, further and further from home, always intending to take the return track, but always concluding to go still a little further; and now here they were at anchor before Honolulu positively their last westward-bound indulgence—­they had made up their minds to that—­but where is the use in making up your mind in this world?  It is usually a waste of time to do it.  These two would have to stay with us as far as Australia.  Then they could go on around the world, or go back the way they had come; the distance and the accommodations and outlay of time would be just the same, whichever of the two routes they might elect to take.  Think of it:  a projected excursion of five hundred miles gradually enlarged, without any elaborate degree of intention, to a possible twenty-four thousand.  However, they were used to extensions by this time, and did not mind this new one much.

And we had with us a lawyer from Victoria, who had been sent out by the Government on an international matter, and he had brought his wife with him and left the children at home with the servants and now what was to be done?  Go ashore amongst the cholera and take the risks?  Most certainly not.  They decided to go on, to the Fiji islands, wait there a fortnight for the next ship, and then sail for home.  They couldn’t foresee that they wouldn’t see a homeward-bound ship again for six weeks, and that no word could come to them from the children, and no word go from them to the children in all that time.  It is easy to make plans in this world; even a cat can do it; and when one is out in those remote oceans it is noticeable that a cat’s plans and a man’s are worth about the same.  There is much the same shrinkage in both, in the matter of values.

There was nothing for us to do but sit about the decks in the shade of the awnings and look at the distant shore.  We lay in luminous blue water; shoreward the water was green-green and brilliant; at the shore itself it broke in a long white ruffle, and with no crash, no sound that we could hear.  The town was buried under a mat of foliage that looked like a cushion of moss.  The silky mountains were clothed in soft, rich splendors of melting color, and some of the cliffs were veiled in slanting mists.  I recognized it all.  It was just as I had seen it long before, with nothing of its beauty lost, nothing of its charm wanting.