After that, only repetition mattered, and even at twilight, just before the green flash, when he was tired, Sharkey’s form was good enough to allow him to ride his board all the way to the beach, striding off it onto the sand in a dance step he perfected. He might be exhausted then, not realizing how tired he was until he began walking on the beach, stumbling up the sand of the steep eroded part of the foreshore, now and then overcome and dropping to his knees. And it was odd, that tottering on land, because his swimming had been effortless. You didn’t know how tired you were until you came ashore.

The frolicking of the hui—Eddie and his friends—was a game that grew to a form of competition. They dared each other to take a wave, they teased, they chased each other across the swells and in their moves attempted to be singular. Sharkey tried to keep up with them, and though they were more experienced and stronger, they sometimes acknowledged his effort.

“You da weenah,” one of them called out at the end of one surfing day—a day on which Sharkey was aware of his easy balance on the board, and, relaxed, able to ride more easily, his confidence making him supple, with a greater control.

The satisfying part was that Sharkey had been unaware that he’d been competing—and his instinct was that competing went against everything Uncle Sunshine had taught him. But the others had noticed his improvement.

They surfed Waimea and Sunset, Chun’s and Leftovers; but the best, the most symmetrical barrel was at Banzai Pipeline. Eddie said, “If you can ride here, you can ride anywhere.” So Sharkey concentrated his effort on the Pipe, where he’d once painfully wiped out, to master the wave and course through the barrel, kicking out before the reef.

On these weekdays of his playing hooky the beach was usually empty, so he was surprised to see a gathering of workmen one morning putting up a white canopy and a staging for seats—men with tools assembling and bolting pipes, tightening the guy ropes of the tentlike shelter, which gave to the beach a gaudy air of clutter, circuslike, the setting up of an encampment.

“If the surf stays up, we got a contest,” Eddie said, and named the sponsor.

“Are you in it?”

Eddie shrugged and tossed his hair. “Just like every other day out here except some people they wen’ try judge us—give us points. But you gotta sign up.”

Before the day was over, Eddie took Sharkey to the tent where the organizers sat and introduced him, vouching for him.

“Dis my braddah Joe Sharkey—he a shark, like his name. Try put him down.”