Aloha Oe

Jack London

Never are there such departures as from the dock at Honolulu. The great transport lay with

steam up, ready to pull out. A thousand persons were on her decks; five thousand stood on

the wharf. Up and down the long gangway passed native princes and princesses, sugar kings

and the high officials of the Territory. Beyond, in long lines, kept in order by the native

police, were the carriages and motor-cars of the Honolulu aristocracy. On the wharf the

Royal Hawaiian Band played "Aloha Oe," and when it finished, a stringed orchestra of

native musicians on board the transport took up the same sobbing strains, the native woman

singer's voice rising birdlike above the instruments and the hubbub of departure. It was a

sides. Just aft the gangway, on the promenade deck, stood a score of United States Senators

with their wives and daughters--the Senatorial junketing party that for a month had been

dined and wined, surfeited with statistics and dragged up volcanic hill and down lava dale

to behold the glories and resources of Hawaii. It was for the junketing party that the

transport had called in at Honolulu, and it was to the junketing party that Honolulu was

saying good-bye.

The Senators were garlanded and bedecked with flowers. Senator Jeremy Sambrooke's stout

neck and portly bosom were burdened with a dozen wreaths. Out of this mass of bloom and

blossom projected his head and the greater portion of his freshly sunburned and perspiring

face. He thought the flowers an abomination, and as he looked out over the multitude on the

would have seen that, in place of the young girl of fifteen he had brought to Hawaii a short

month before, he was now taking away with him a woman.

Hawaii has a ripening climate, and Dorothy Sambrooke had been exposed to it under

exceptionally ripening circumstances. Slender, pale, with blue eyes a trifle tired from poring

over the pages of books and trying to muddle into an understanding of life--such she had

been the month before. But now the eyes were warm instead of tired, the cheeks were

touched with the sun, and the body gave the first hint and promise of swelling lines. During

that month she had left books alone, for she had found greater joy in reading from the book

of life. She had ridden horses, climbed volcanoes, and learned surf swimming. The tropics

had entered into her blood, and she was aglow with the warmth and colour and sunshine.

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board rider, a bronzed god of the sea who bitted the crashing breakers, leaped upon their

backs, and rode them in to shore.

Dorothy Sambrooke was unaware of the change. Her consciousness was still that of a young

was terrifying. She could not face it, and her own eyes continually drooped before it. Yet

there was something alluring about it, as well, and she continually returned to catch a

glimpse of that blazing, imperious, yearning something that she had never seen in human

eyes before. And she was herself strangely bewildered and excited.

The transport's huge whistle blew a deafening blast, and the flower- crowned multitude

surged closer to the side of the dock. Dorothy Sambrooke's fingers were pressed to her ears;

and as she made a moue of distaste at the outrage of sound, she noticed again the imperious,

yearning blaze in Steve's eyes. He was not looking at her, but at her ears, delicately pink

and transparent in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. Curious and fascinated, she gazed

at that strange something in his eyes until he saw that he had been caught. She saw his

Ke hone ae nei i ku'u manawa,

O oe no kan aloha

A loko e hana nei."

Steve had taught her air and words and meaning--so she had thought, till this instant; and in

this instant of the last finger clasp and warm contact of palms she divined for the first time

the real meaning of the song. She scarcely saw him go, nor could she note him on the

crowded gangway, for she was deep in a memory maze, living over the four weeks just past,

rereading events in the light of revelation.

When the Senatorial party had landed, Steve had been one of the committee of

entertainment. It was he who had given them their first exhibition of surf riding, out at

youngest man on the committee, a youth, himself, of twenty. He had not entertained by

speechmaking, nor had he shone decoratively at receptions. It was in the breakers at

Waikiki, in the wild cattle drive on Manna Kea, and in the breaking yard of the Haleakala

Ranch that he had performed his share of the entertaining.

She had not cared for the interminable statistics and eternal speechmaking of the other

members of the committee. Neither had Steve. And it was with Steve that she had stolen

Steve and she had been much together from the first. He had been her playfellow. She had

taken possession of him while her father had been occupied in taking possession of the

statistics of the island territory. She was too gentle to tyrannize over her playfellow, yet she

had ruled him abjectly, except when in canoe, or on horse or surf-board, at which times he

had taken charge and she had rendered obedience. And now, with this last singing of the

song, as the lines were cast off and the big transport began backing slowly out from the

dock, she knew that Steve was something more to her than playfellow.

expression!--when he had been pouring his heart out in his voice. She knew now, and it was

too late. Why had he not spoken? Then she realized that girls of her age did not marry. But

girls of her age did marry--in Hawaii--was her instant thought. Hawaii had ripened her--

Hawaii, where flesh is golden and where all women are ripe and sun-kissed.

Vainly she scanned the packed multitude on the dock. What had become of him? She felt

she could pay any price for one more glimpse of him, and she almost hoped that some

mortal sickness would strike the lonely captain on the bridge and delay departure. For the

first time in her life she looked at her father with a calculating eye, and as she did she noted

with newborn fear the lines of will and determination. It would be terrible to oppose him.

And what chance would she have in such a struggle? But why had Steve not spoken? Now

it was too late. Why had he not spoken under the hau tree at Waikiki?

And then, with a great sinking of the heart, it came to her that she knew why. What was it

she had heard one day? Oh, yes, it was at Mrs. Stanton's tea, that afternoon when the ladies

of the "Missionary Crowd" had entertained the ladies of the Senatorial party. It was Mrs.

Hodgkins, the tall blonde woman, who had asked the question. The scene came back to her

why matrimony had affected Susie Maydwell's friendships.

to think about our children."

Dorothy turned to her father, resolved to put it to the test.

you know what that means."

"Oh," Dorothy said faintly, while she felt a numb despair creep into her heart.

Steve was not a hapa-haole--she knew that; but she did not know that a quarter-strain of

tropic sunshine streamed in his veins, and she knew that that was sufficient to put him

outside the marriage pale. It was a strange world. There was the Honourable A. S.

Cleghorn, who had married a dusky princess of the Kamehameha blood, yet men

considered it an honour to know him, and the most exclusive women of the ultra-exclusive

"Missionary Crowd" were to be seen at his afternoon teas. And there was Steve. No one had

disapproved of his teaching her to ride a surf-board, nor of his leading her by the hand

through the perilous places of the crater of Kilauea. He could have dinner with her and her

breakers, or towed her at the end of an alpenstock up the stern lava crest of the House of the

Sun. There was something subtler and mysterious that she remembered, and that she was

even then just beginning to understand--the aura of the male creature that is man, all man,

masculine man. She came to herself with a shock of shame at the thoughts she had been

thinking. Her cheeks were dyed with the hot blood which quickly receded and left them

pale at the thought that she would never see him again. The stem of the transport was

already out in the stream, and the promenade deck was passing abreast of the end of the

dock.

"There's Steve now," her father said. "Wave good-bye to him, Dorothy."

Steve was looking up at her with eager eyes, and he saw in her face what he had not seen

There was no need for speech to tell their story. About her, passengers were flinging their

garlands to their friends on the dock. Steve held up his hands and his eyes pleaded. She

"Dorothy!" he cried sharply.