In life there are those who keep just ahead of the breaking wave, and others who halt and it engulfs them. Marshall P. Wilder describes in the extract below the skill of the Hawaiian natives with their canoes:
We donned bathing-suits and took a surf ride. This is the national sport and, being at all times sufficiently thrilling, must be taken in a high surf, a tremendous experience. The boats are long, deep and very narrow canoes, with an outrigger at one side to keep them from tipping.
Two natives, and they must be skilled, usually operate these canoes. Three or four passengers at a time are taken out, the natives rowing with broad paddles a quarter or half mile from the shore, where they wait for a large wave. With the nicest precision they keep ahead of it, just as it breaks, and are carried smoothly in, poised on its crest. I sat facing the stern, and the experience was something to remember, the swift bird-like swoop of the canoe, with the white, seething wall of water behind it, apparently just about to engulf us. After we were safely on shore again they told us stories of how the wave, if the rowers miscalculate, will break over the canoe, driving it to the bottom.
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