THE SCOURGE OF GOD
But there was trouble of a quite unexpected kind brewing.
The yellow men in their lives had slain a certain number of the brown.
In their deaths they slew still more.
The whites had hoped that, with the introduction of new food supplies,
the unnatural but deep-rooted native craving for human flesh would have
disappeared. The final rites of the battlefield shocked them
exceedingly, and words had so far failed to convince Ha'o and his
people of the error of their ways.
"You eat pig," was Ha'o's blunt argument in reply, "and man is cleaner
than pig."
There was, however, an argument in preparation for him with which the
white men had nothing whatever to do, but which drove home conviction
beyond dispute and in the most terrifying fashion.
Ever since the fighting, and the subsequent orgies, the villages had
been unusually quiet. Even the wholesale submission of Ra'a's men
produced little excitement among them.
"They are like snakes after a full meal," said Cathie. "They've eaten
too much, and it'll take 'em all their time to digest it."
Evans, however, had his doubts. He hinted to Blair that he feared an
outbreak of sickness, but as yet could form no opinion as to its
character. The men had lost all their energy, the women were
depressed, the children listless. It was as though the strenuous
doings at One-Tree Pass had sucked all the life out of them. And Evans
went in and out of the houses with a keen eye for symptoms.
It was about a fortnight after the fight that Blair, going up to the
village, met him coming hastily from it, and was startled at the sight
of his face.
"What is it, Evans?" he asked.
"It's come--I feared it, but could not be sure--smallpox."
"God help us! ... How has it got here?"
"I can only imagine," said Evans, with a quick, meaning look at him.
"Good God! How very horrible!"
"Yes. They'll have a lesson they'll never forget, and many of them
will never have the chance to. What about our wives, Blair? Shall we
send them away till it is over?"
Kenneth Blair's lips pinched tight at the thought of it all, and he
walked heavily and in silence.
"We are in God's hands," he said at last. "I think it must be left to
themselves to decide."
"Then they will stop," said Evans decisively.
"Yes, they will stop," said Blair. "God grant us a safe deliverance!"
"Amen!" said Evans, and they walked in the shadow of the coming death.
The ladies received the news with white faces but stout hearts, and did
not hesitate one moment.
Their place was beside the men. They did not wait to count the cost,
though in each one of them was the dull, dread knowledge of what that
cost might be. Their duty was to these brown kinsfolk of their
adoption, and they were British born.
Evans took charge of the defence with all the energy and skill that
were in him, and, possessing their souls in God, they all went quietly
into the fight, compared with which the battle of One-Tree Pass was
veriest child's play.
The village was sheltered by the bush and the crowding palms. Every
man was taken off the dismantled _Torch_, and set to work building a
hospital on the beach, a long, open house of poles and palm-leaves,
through which the fresh sea breezes could blow at will. Soft springy
couches of palm-leaves were ranged inside, and the simple preparations
were complete.
Not the smallest of the horrors and perplexities of the situation was
the wholesale nature of the seizure. Springing from one identical
cause, the results came all together. The hospital was filled before
it was finished, and the builders could not keep pace with the demands
for accommodation.
Not one of Ra'a's people suffered--clear indication of the ghastly
origin of the evil. Blair induced them to return for the time being to
their village on the hillside, and such of Ha'o's people as showed no
signs of infection he camped temporarily on the opposite hill. Every
house from which the sick were carried was promptly burned. The brown
folk could not understand such radical measures, but they were scared
by the sights they saw, and they did as they were told.
So suddenly had the catastrophe come upon them, and in so wholesale a
fashion, that their thoughts had had no time to travel beyond their own
immediate concerns. But when the work was steadily under way Blair
bethought him suddenly of their new allies on the east coast, and he
begged Captain Cathie to run round in the launch and see how matters
were going with them.
Cathie returned in due course with a long face and the news that things
were just as bad there, and Stuart and his wife promptly offered to go
round and carry out the same measures as had been started at the home
settlement. They were given half a dozen _Torch_ men, whom they could
ill spare. Evans promised to come round as soon as he possibly could,
and the launch chuffed gallantly away to the relief of the still more
necessitous on the other side of the island. Stuart could still only
limp, and would have been better not to attempt even that, but the
healing of his own wound was a small thing compared with that which had
to be done. As a matter of fact he limped slightly for the rest of his
life in consequence--a most honourable limp.
Then followed for all of them a time of patient endurance and endless
self-sacrifice, which, trying as it was, still wrought mightily for and
in them.
They went to and fro in that long open shed with quiet set faces,
soothing and alleviating as far as these were possible, whispering hope
to the hopeless, and insisting inflexibly on the observance of rules in
which the only hope lay, rules the meaning of which these brown
children could not understand, and which they broke at every
opportunity.
Death sat grimly down before them and laid siege to them, and the
little band of white-faced women and grim-faced men fought him day by
day and life by life, losing heavily but refusing to be beaten.
They met one another with such cheerfulness as they could muster, and
even with quiet strained smiles at times, but ever with keen
apprehensive glances for what each feared any day to find in the other.
A time for the trying of souls, with none of the glamour and activities
of actual warfare, but with perils infinitely more appalling in their
insidiousness and impalpability.
"Ech, Jean, my dear!" murmured Aunt Jannet Harvey one evening, as she
and Jean and Alison Evans met outside for a few full draughts of sweet
sea air. "It's terrible, terrible work. You're looking white; child.
I wish you were back in London."
"I don't," said Jean cheerfully. "We're doing our appointed work, and
I feel as if I'd never done anything worth doing at home. Kenneth says
he believes this will be a corner-stone in the building up of the
island."
"Ay, ay! Well, it's good to be able to take a hopeful view of things
when they're about as bad as they can be. And I don't see that they
could be much worse."
"Oh yes, they could," said Jean quickly. "Some of us might have taken
it, which would be very much worse. We have to thank Mr. Evans for
that, Alison."
"Charlie says he thinks we're through the worst," said Alison quietly.
"I wish I could see it," said Aunt Jannet.
"We have only had three deaths to-day, and most of the others are past
the crisis. It's been a terrible clearance. There's that poor little
baby crying again. I must go," and they separated to their various
duties.
It was Nai's baby boy that cried, and it died in its mother's arms that
night. She yielded it sorrowfully to those who took away the dead, and
returned wearily to her husband's couch to keep the flies off him with
a palm branch. Nai herself had been too much occupied with her baby to
go with the others across the island after the fight, and she had not
developed the disease. The baby had taken it, however, and Nai had
nursed him and his father indefatigably, and now the boy was gone just
as his father turned the corner, and the little mother was
broken-hearted. They comforted her by telling her that Ha'o would
live, and she fanned away wearily to the tune of her sobs that would
not be kept in.
Jean, as she flitted noiselessly to and fro, with cold water for this
one and medicine for that, and hopeful words for all, and special ones
for Nai, thought now and again of the mighty change her marriage had
wrought in her life, but never once regretted what she had done and all
she had left. And more than once the dreadful thought came upon
her--"Supposing Ken were to take the sickness and die and leave me
alone!" Ah, then she felt as though her world would fall to pieces,
and she prayed, as she had never prayed in her life before, that he
might be spared, or that they might go together.
The one thing that wrought itself indelibly into all their memories was
the contrast between their hospital work and its setting. Inside the
long palm-thatched sheds--the moans and murmurs and restless movements
of the sufferers; the ever-fluttering fans which kept off the plague of
insects, and alleviated to some extent the pungency of the atmosphere;
the irresistible depression induced by the close presence of insidious,
crawling death. And outside--the implacable glare of the sunshine; the
smooth, slow-heaving, blue mirror of the lagoon; the metronomic roar
and long white flashes of the surge on the reef; the palms swinging
slowly and solemnly with a sound like the patter of falling rain; and
up above, the pale blue sky. Death in its most repulsive form, set in
a picture of surpassing beauty, which yet had in it something of
pitilessness from the very sharpness of the contrast. These things
they never forgot.
They held no regular services at these times, for some were always on
duty. But there was much prayer among them, and when the watches
changed, the one in charge, Blair, Evans, or Cathie, would give his
band of helpers a few brave words to carry with them--grateful thanks
for perils past, hopeful prayers for safety in the hours to come. For
they never knew but what the evil seeds might even then be working in
any one of them, and they went with fear in their hearts though their
faith and hope were strong, and their faces were tuned to quietness.
Evans wore himself thin with his ceaseless toils. As medical director
the burden of the fight was on his shoulders, and he divided himself
between the stricken camps in proportion to their needs. The going to
and fro consumed much time, though he himself maintained that it did
him good. But he showed the wear and tear so visibly at last that his
wife, who had had a medical training at home, insisted on taking over
the east coast hospital herself, and she joined Stuart and his wife
there.
The epidemic ran its course, the dead were reverently wrapped in their
mats, weighted with rocks, and towed out to sea on a small raft, and
there committed to the deep. The convalescents began to creep about
the beach and show a languid interest in life.
Ha'o was among the first to get into the sunshine. While none were
neglected, Blair and Jean and Nai had nursed him as though all their
lives depended on his recovery. And indeed, to Blair's thinking, very
much more than their simple lives depended on Ha'o. He looked on him
as the corner-stone of the work on Kapaa'a, and his death would have
been a terrible blow to them all.
As Jean had said, he had great hopes that this sharp trial might also
turn to good. He tackled Ha'o the very first day he judged him well
enough for discussion.
"This has been a terrible time, Ha'o, my friend. Have you any idea why
it came upon you?"
"It was your new God sent it, I suppose," said Ha'o gloomily, with the
air of a child giving an expected answer with mental reservations of
his own.
"God permits such things. If men will do wrong they must suffer. That
is how they learn to do right. If you want to bang your head against
this rock, God won't stop you. But the recollection of what you suffer
may stop you doing the same again."
"What wrong did we do? You killed the yellow men too."
"But we did not eat them. Not one of us has been ill. Not one of
Ra'a's people has been ill. They also kept apart."
Ha'o looked sombrely out over the lagoon. He was thinking of his boy.
"Kenni," he said presently, "I know you do not like us to eat men; but
our fathers did so, and their fathers, and never have we had this
crawling death before."
"Perhaps it was to teach you and your people. See, Ha'o! We want you
to take your right place in the world. It was for that we came. It
was for that we beat off the yellow men who would have carried you
away. We are ready to give our lives to help you. But we must have
the foundations firm or we cannot build. You do not build a house on
running sand, nor a platform on cracking poles."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Promise me, here and now, that you will never eat man again, and that
you will make it tabu to your people. They will do what you say. They
are frightened. God never meant man to be eaten."
"How do you know, Kenni?"
"He forbade man even to kill man, but of the beasts He has provided He
said, 'Kill and eat.'"
"You killed the yellow men," he said again.
"To save you from them."
"Then you did wrong too. Why did the crawling death not touch you?"
"It is not right to kill men, yet if a man attacks you, and in
defending yourself he gets killed, the blame is his, not yours."
"You never tasted man, Kenni, did you?"
"No, never," said Blair, with an expression of disgust.
"Then you cannot know how good he is. My people think there is nothing
equal to man--except woman or child, which are better still. But I
will promise you never to eat yellow man again, Kenni."
"That is not enough. Unless you will give up eating man of any kind we
must go. We have provided other food. You cannot go hungry. The pigs
and the goats are all over the island. The paw-paws grow while you
sleep. You have taro and bananas, and breadfruit and coco-nuts. You
have the chance to become a nation, strong and powerful. You are sole
chief on Kapaa'a now. I would have you chief of the other islands
also. But if you prefer to eat man I can do nothing for you. It is
the foundation of all the rest that you give up eating man."
"My little son did not eat of the yellow men, Kenni, but your God took
him. Why?"
"It was the disease took him. It is the most terrible thing for
passing from one to another. Could you stand the thought of your
little son being eaten, Ha'o?"
"My son? No! I would have died sooner than let him be eaten."
"Yet you say other men's babies are good to eat."
Ha'o looked at him, and then lay looking out over the lagoon.
"See, Ha'o," said Blair at last, "if the thought of your little son
will turn you from flesh-eating, he will have done more for Kapaa'a in
the short time he lived than you have done in all your life, and we
shall remember Ha'o's little son always as the beginning of the better
times."
The brown man lay thinking a long time and one may not know his
thoughts. But at last he said quietly--
"Twice you have saved my life and my people, Kenni. I am your man.
You must not go away. For the thought of my little son who is dead I
will give up eating man. I will become a nation."
"And you will answer for the rest?"
"I will answer for the rest. If any man eats man I will kill him."
Ha'o kept his word, and so, in the death of his little son, the
foundations were laid in Kapaa'a, and the black cloud broke once more
in blessing.