The Cruise of the Snark (1913) is a memoir of Jack and Charmian London's 1907-1909 voyage across the Pacific. His descriptions of "surf-riding", which he dubbed a "royal sport", helped introduce it to and popularize it with the mainland. London writes:
Through the white crest of a breaker suddenly appears a dark figure, erect, a man-fish or a sea-god, on the very forward face of the crest where the top falls over and down, driving in toward shore, buried to his loins in smoking spray, caught up by the sea and flung landward, bodily, a quarter of a mile. It is a Kanaka on a surf-board. And I know that when I have finished these lines I shall be out in that riot of colour and pounding surf, trying to bit those breakers even as he, and failing as he never failed, but living life as the best of us may live it.
(Excerpted from Wikipedia)
Through the white crest of a breaker suddenly appears a dark figure, erect, a man-fish or a sea-god, on the very forward face of the crest where the top falls over and down, driving in toward shore, buried to his loins in smoking spray, caught up by the sea and flung landward, bodily, a quarter of a mile. It is a Kanaka on a surf-board. And I know that when I have finished these lines I shall be out in that riot of colour and pounding surf, trying to bit those breakers even as he, and failing as he never failed, but living life as the best of us may live it.
(Excerpted from Wikipedia)
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Chapters
- Chapter 1
Chapter I -- Foreword
22:23 - Chapter 2
Chapter II -- The Inconceivable And Monstrous
31:31 - Chapter 3
Chapter III -- Adventure
17:25 - Chapter 4
Chapter IV -- Finding One's Way About
23:12 - Chapter 5
Chapter V -- The First Landfall
15:11 - Chapter 6
Chapter VI -- A Royal Sport
24:20 - Chapter 7
Chapter VII -- The Lepers Of Molokai
30:42 - Chapter 8
Chapter VIII -- The House Of The Sun
29:06 - Chapter 9
Chapter IX -- A Pacific Traverse
35:49 - Chapter 10
Chapter X -- Typee
30:51 - Chapter 11
Chapter XI -- The Nature Man
27:49 - Chapter 12
Chapter XII -- The High Seat of Abundance
38:29 - Chapter 13
Chapter XIII -- The Stone-fishing of Bora Bora
15:15 - Chapter 14
Chapter XIV -- The Amateur Navigator
40:05 - Chapter 15
Chapter XV -- Cruising in the Solomons
38:45 - Chapter 16
Chapter XVI -- Beche de Mer English
15:39 - Chapter 17
Chapter XVII -- The Amateur M.D.
39:03 - Chapter 18
Back Word
10:04