Hawaii, James Mitchener's epoch-spanning 930-page novel, was released in 1959—the same year Hawaii became America's 50th state. This excerpt below takes place in 1820. The first missionaries have arrived in Lahaina, Maui. Some are being dropped off while others, including John Whipple (played by Gene Hackman in the 1966 movie) and his wife Amanda, are preparing to sail for Honolulu.

And then, to the eastward, where the stout waves broke on the coral reef, thundering shoreward in long, undulant swells whose tips were spumed in white, the missionaries witnessed for the first time one of the mysteries of the islands. Tall men and women, graceful as gods, stood on narrow boards and by deftly moving their feet and the gravity of their bodies, directed the boards onto the upper slopes of the breaking waves, until at last they sped with frightening swiftness over the waters. And when the wave died on the coral beach, somehow the swimmer and his board subsided back into the water, as if each were a part of the Hawaiian sea.

“It’s unbelievable!” Dr. Whipple cried. “The momentum creates the balance,” he explained.

“Could a white man do that?” Amanda asked.

“Of course!” her husband replied, excited by the vicarious sense of speed and control created by the deft athletes.

“I’m going to do it,” John replied, “as soon as we get to Honolulu.”

One of the older missionaries frowned at this intelligence, marking it down as one more proof of their doctor’s essentially trivial attitude toward life, but his adverse opinion was not reported to his companions, because from a point forward of the Thetis a new board swept into view, and this one bore not a mere swimmer, but a nymph, a nude symbolization of all the pagan islands in the seven seas. She was a tall girl with sun-shot black hair streaming behind her in the wind. She was not grossly fat like her sisters but slim and supple, and as she stood naked on the board her handsome breasts and long firm legs seemed carved of brown marble, yet she was agile, too, for with exquisite skill she moved her knees and adjusted her shoulders so that her skimming board leaped faster than the others, while she rode it with a more secure grace. To the missionaries she was a terrifying vision, the personification of all they had come to conquer. Her nakedness was a challenge, her beauty a danger, her way of life an abomination and her existence an evil.

“Who is she?” Dr. Whipple whispered, in hushed amazement at her skill.

“Her name Noelani,” proudly explained a Hawaiian who had shipped on whalers and who had mastered the barbarous pidgin of the seaports. “Wahine b’long Malama. Bimeby she gonna be Alii Nui.” And as he spoke the wave subsided near the shore; the fleet rider and her board died away from vision and returned to the sea, yet even when the missionaries looked away they could see her provocative presence, the spirit of the pagan island, riding the waves, so that a blasphemous thought came to the mind of John Whipple. He was tempted to express it, but fought it down, knowing that none would understand his meaning, but at last he had to speak and in a whisper he observed to his tiny wife: “Apparently there are many who can walk upon the waters.”

Amanda Whipple, a truly devout woman, heard these strange words and caught their full savor. At first she was afraid to look at her scientifically minded husband, for sometimes his thoughts were difficult to follow, but the implications of this blasphemous conclusion no one could escape, and at last she turned to look at John Whipple, thinking: “One person can never understand another.” But instead of censuring the young doctor for his irregular thoughts, she looked at him analytically for the first time. Coldly, dispassionately, carefully, she looked at this strange cousin who stood beside her in the hot Hawaiian sunlight, and when she was finished studying him, she loved him more than ever.

“I do not like such words, John,” she admonished.

“Do so, always, but only to me,” she whispered.

“APPARENTLY, THERE ARE MANY WHO CAN WALK UPON THE WATERS.” EXCERPT FROM JAMES MICHENER'S “HAWAII”

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