Cudworth stepped to the _lanai_ telephone. He called up, in succession,
Waimea, Kohala, and Hamakua. Snatches of his conversation told me that
the wind was blowing: "Rip-snorting and back-jumping, eh? . . . How
long? . . . Only a week? . . . Hello, Abe, is that you? . . . Yes, yes .
. . You _will_ plant coffee on the Hamakua coast . . . Hang your wind-
breaks! You should see _my_ trees."
"Blowing a gale," he said to me, turning from hanging up the receiver. "I
always have to joke Abe on his coffee. He has five hundred acres, and
he's done marvels in wind-breaking, but how he keeps the roots in the
ground is beyond me. Blow? It always blows on the Hamakua side. Kohala
reports a schooner under double reefs beating up the channel between
Hawaii and Maui, and making heavy weather of it."
"It is hard to realize," I said lamely. "Doesn't a little whiff of it
ever eddy around somehow, and get down here?"
"Not a whiff. Our land-breeze is absolutely of no kin, for it begins
this side of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. You see, the land radiates its
heat quicker than the sea, and so, at night, the land breathes over the
sea. In the day the land becomes warmer than the sea, and the sea
breathes over the land . . . Listen! Here comes the land-breath now, the
mountain wind."
I could hear it coming, rustling softly through the coffee trees,
stirring the monkey-pods, and sighing through the sugar-cane. On the
_lanai_ the hush still reigned. Then it came, the first feel of the
mountain wind, faintly balmy, fragrant and spicy, and cool, deliciously
cool, a silken coolness, a wine-like coolness--cool as only the mountain
wind of Kona can be cool.
"Do you wonder that I lost my heart to Kona eighteen years ago?" he
demanded. "I could never leave it now. I think I should die. It would
be terrible. There was another man who loved it, even as I. I think he
loved it more, for he was born here on the Kona coast. He was a great
man, my best friend, my more than brother. But he left it, and he did
not die."
"Love?" I queried. "A woman?"
Cudworth shook his head.
"Nor will he ever come back, though his heart will be here until he
dies."
He paused and gazed down upon the beachlights of Kailua. I smoked
silently and waited.
"He was already in love . . . with his wife. Also, he had three
children, and he loved them. They are in Honolulu now. The boy is going
to college."
"Some rash act?" I questioned, after a time, impatiently.
He shook his head. "Neither guilty of anything criminal, nor charged
with anything criminal. He was the Sheriff of Kona."
"You choose to be paradoxical," I said.
"I suppose it does sound that way," he admitted, "and that is the perfect
hell of it."
He looked at me searchingly for a moment, and then abruptly took up the
tale.
"He was a leper. No, he was not born with it--no one is born with it; it
came upon him. This man--what does it matter? Lyte Gregory was his
name. Every _kamaina_ knows the story. He was straight American stock,
but he was built like the chieftains of old Hawaii. He stood six feet
three. His stripped weight was two hundred and twenty pounds, not an
ounce of which was not clean muscle or bone. He was the strongest man I
have ever seen. He was an athlete and a giant. He was a god. He was my
friend. And his heart and his soul were as big and as fine as his body.
"I wonder what you would do if you saw your friend, your brother, on the
slippery lip of a precipice, slipping, slipping, and you were able to do
nothing. That was just it. I could do nothing. I saw it coming, and I
could do nothing. My God, man, what could I do? There it was, malignant
and incontestable, the mark of the thing on his brow. No one else saw
it. It was because I loved him so, I do believe, that I alone saw it. I
could not credit the testimony of my senses. It was too incredibly
horrible. Yet there it was, on his brow, on his ears. I had seen it,
the slight puff of the earlobes--oh, so imperceptibly slight. I watched
it for months. Then, next, hoping against hope, the darkening of the
skin above both eyebrows--oh, so faint, just like the dimmest touch of
sunburn. I should have thought it sunburn but that there was a shine to
it, such an invisible shine, like a little highlight seen for a moment
and gone the next. I tried to believe it was sunburn, only I could not.
I knew better. No one noticed it but me. No one ever noticed it except
Stephen Kaluna, and I did not know that till afterward. But I saw it
coming, the whole damnable, unnamable awfulness of it; but I refused to
think about the future. I was afraid. I could not. And of nights I
cried over it.
"He was my friend. We fished sharks on Niihau together. We hunted wild
cattle on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. We broke horses and branded steers on
the Carter Ranch. We hunted goats through Haleakala. He taught me
diving and surfing until I was nearly as clever as he, and he was
cleverer than the average Kanaka. I have seen him dive in fifteen
fathoms, and he could stay down two minutes. He was an amphibian and a
mountaineer. He could climb wherever a goat dared climb. He was afraid
of nothing. He was on the wrecked _Luga_, and he swam thirty miles in
thirty-six hours in a heavy sea. He could fight his way out through
breaking combers that would batter you and me to a jelly. He was a
great, glorious man-god. We went through the Revolution together. We
were both romantic loyalists. He was shot twice and sentenced to death.
But he was too great a man for the republicans to kill. He laughed at
them. Later, they gave him honour and made him Sheriff of Kona. He was
a simple man, a boy that never grew up. His was no intricate brain
pattern. He had no twists nor quirks in his mental processes. He went
straight to the point, and his points were always simple.
"And he was sanguine. Never have I known so confident a man, nor a man
so satisfied and happy. He did not ask anything from life. There was
nothing left to be desired. For him life had no arrears. He had been
paid in full, cash down, and in advance. What more could he possibly
desire than that magnificent body, that iron constitution, that immunity
from all ordinary ills, and that lowly wholesomeness of soul? Physically
he was perfect. He had never been sick in his life. He did not know
what a headache was. When I was so afflicted he used to look at me in
wonder, and make me laugh with his clumsy attempts at sympathy. He did
not understand such a thing as a headache. He could not understand.
Sanguine? No wonder. How could he be otherwise with that tremendous
vitality and incredible health?
"Just to show you what faith he had in his glorious star, and, also, what
sanction he had for that faith. He was a youngster at the time--I had
just met him--when he went into a poker game at Wailuku. There was a big
German in it, Schultz his name was, and he played a brutal, domineering
game. He had had a run of luck as well, and he was quite insufferable,
when Lyte Gregory dropped in and took a hand. The very first hand it was
Schultz's blind. Lyte came in, as well as the others, and Schultz raised
them out--all except Lyte. He did not like the German's tone, and he
raised him back. Schultz raised in turn, and in turn Lyte raised
Schultz. So they went, back and forth. The stakes were big. And do you
know what Lyte held? A pair of kings and three little clubs. It wasn't
poker. Lyte wasn't playing poker. He was playing his optimism. He
didn't know what Schultz held, but he raised and raised until he made
Schultz squeal, and Schultz held three aces all the time. Think of it! A
man with a pair of kings compelling three aces to see before the draw!
"Well, Schultz called for two cards. Another German was dealing,
Schultz's friend at that. Lyte knew then that he was up against three of
a kind. Now what did he do? What would you have done? Drawn three
cards and held up the kings, of course. Not Lyte. He was playing
optimism. He threw the kings away, held up the three little clubs, and
drew two cards. He never looked at them. He looked across at Schultz to
bet, and Schultz did bet, big. Since he himself held three aces he knew
he had Lyte, because he played Lyte for threes, and, necessarily, they
would have to be smaller threes. Poor Schultz! He was perfectly correct
under the premises. His mistake was that he thought Lyte was playing
poker. They bet back and forth for five minutes, until Schultz's
certainty began to ooze out. And all the time Lyte had never looked at
his two cards, and Schultz knew it. I could see Schultz think, and
revive, and splurge with his bets again. But the strain was too much for
him."
"'Hold on, Gregory,' he said at last. 'I've got you beaten from the
start. I don't want any of your money. I've got--'"
"'Never mind what you've got,' Lyte interrupted. 'You don't know what
I've got. I guess I'll take a look.'"
"He looked, and raised the German a hundred dollars. Then they went at
it again, back and forth and back and forth, until Schultz weakened and
called, and laid down his three aces. Lyte faced his five cards. They
were all black. He had drawn two more clubs. Do you know, he just about
broke Schultz's nerve as a poker player. He never played in the same
form again. He lacked confidence after that, and was a bit wobbly."
"'But how could you do it?' I asked Lyte afterwards. 'You knew he had
you beaten when he drew two cards. Besides, you never looked at your own
draw.'"
"'I didn't have to look,' was Lyte's answer. 'I knew they were two clubs
all the time. They just had to be two clubs. Do you think I was going
to let that big Dutchman beat me? It was impossible that he should beat
me. It is not my way to be beaten. I just have to win. Why, I'd have
been the most surprised man in this world if they hadn't been all
clubs.'"
"That was Lyte's way, and maybe it will help you to appreciate his
colossal optimism. As he put it he just had to succeed, to fare well, to
prosper. And in that same incident, as in ten thousand others, he found
his sanction. The thing was that he did succeed, did prosper. That was
why he was afraid of nothing. Nothing could ever happen to him. He knew
it, because nothing had ever happened to him. That time the _Luga_ was
lost and he swam thirty miles, he was in the water two whole nights and a
day. And during all that terrible stretch of time he never lost hope
once, never once doubted the outcome. He just knew he was going to make
the land. He told me so himself, and I know it was the truth.
"Well, that is the kind of a man Lyte Gregory was. He was of a different
race from ordinary, ailing mortals. He was a lordly being, untouched by
common ills and misfortunes. Whatever he wanted he got. He won his
wife--one of the Caruthers, a little beauty--from a dozen rivals. And
she settled down and made him the finest wife in the world. He wanted a
boy. He got it. He wanted a girl and another boy. He got them. And
they were just right, without spot or blemish, with chests like little
barrels, and with all the inheritance of his own health and strength.
"And then it happened. The mark of the beast was laid upon him. I
watched it for a year. It broke my heart. But he did not know it, nor
did anybody else guess it except that cursed _hapa-haole_, Stephen
Kaluna. He knew it, but I did not know that he did. And--yes--Doc
Strowbridge knew it. He was the federal physician, and he had developed
the leper eye. You see, part of his business was to examine suspects and
order them to the receiving station at Honolulu. And Stephen Kaluna had
developed the leper eye. The disease ran strong in his family, and four
or five of his relatives were already on Molokai.
"The trouble arose over Stephen Kaluna's sister. When she became
suspect, and before Doc Strowbridge could get hold of her, her brother
spirited her away to some hiding-place. Lyte was Sheriff of Kona, and it
was his business to find her.
"We were all over at Hilo that night, in Ned Austin's. Stephen Kaluna
was there when we came in, by himself, in his cups, and quarrelsome. Lyte
was laughing over some joke--that huge, happy laugh of a giant boy.
Kaluna spat contemptuously on the floor. Lyte noticed, so did everybody;
but he ignored the fellow. Kaluna was looking for trouble. He took it
as a personal grudge that Lyte was trying to apprehend his sister. In
half a dozen ways he advertised his displeasure at Lyte's presence, but
Lyte ignored him. I imagined Lyte was a bit sorry for him, for the
hardest duty of his office was the apprehension of lepers. It is not a
nice thing to go in to a man's house and tear away a father, mother, or
child, who has done no wrong, and to send such a one to perpetual
banishment on Molokai. Of course, it is necessary as a protection to
society, and Lyte, I do believe, would have been the first to apprehend
his own father did he become suspect.
"Finally, Kaluna blurted out: 'Look here, Gregory, you think you're
going to find Kalaniweo, but you're not.'
"Kalaniweo was his sister. Lyte glanced at him when his name was called,
but he made no answer. Kaluna was furious. He was working himself up
all the time.
"'I'll tell you one thing,' he shouted. 'You'll be on Molokai yourself
before ever you get Kalaniweo there. I'll tell you what you are. You've
no right to be in the company of honest men. You've made a terrible fuss
talking about your duty, haven't you? You've sent many lepers to
Molokai, and knowing all the time you belonged there yourself.'
"I'd seen Lyte angry more than once, but never quite so angry as at that
moment. Leprosy with us, you know, is not a thing to jest about. He
made one leap across the floor, dragging Kaluna out of his chair with a
clutch on his neck. He shook him back and forth savagely, till you could
hear the half-caste's teeth rattling.
"'What do you mean?' Lyte was demanding. 'Spit it out, man, or I'll
choke it out of you!'
"You know, in the West there is a certain phrase that a man must smile
while uttering. So with us of the islands, only our phrase is related to
leprosy. No matter what Kaluna was, he was no coward. As soon as Lyte
eased the grip on his throat he answered:--
"'I'll tell you what I mean. You are a leper yourself.'
"Lyte suddenly flung the half-caste sideways into a chair, letting him
down easily enough. Then Lyte broke out into honest, hearty laughter.
But he laughed alone, and when he discovered it he looked around at our
faces. I had reached his side and was trying to get him to come away,
but he took no notice of me. He was gazing, fascinated, at Kaluna, who
was brushing at his own throat in a flurried, nervous way, as if to brush
off the contamination of the fingers that had clutched him. The action
was unreasoned, genuine.
"Lyte looked around at us, slowly passing from face to face.
"'My God, fellows! My God!' he said.
"He did not speak it. It was more a hoarse whisper of fright and horror.
It was fear that fluttered in his throat, and I don't think that ever in
his life before he had known fear.
"Then his colossal optimism asserted itself, and he laughed again.
"'A good joke--whoever put it up,' he said. 'The drinks are on me. I
had a scare for a moment. But, fellows, don't do it again, to anybody.
It's too serious. I tell you I died a thousand deaths in that moment. I
thought of my wife and the kids, and . . . '
"His voice broke, and the half-caste, still throat-brushing, drew his
eyes. He was puzzled and worried.
"'John,' he said, turning toward me.
"His jovial, rotund voice rang in my ears. But I could not answer. I
was swallowing hard at that moment, and besides, I knew my face didn't
look just right.
"'John,' he called again, taking a step nearer.
"He called timidly, and of all nightmares of horrors the most frightful
was to hear timidity in Lyte Gregory's voice.
"'John, John, what does it mean?' he went on, still more timidly. 'It's a
joke, isn't it? John, here's my hand. If I were a leper would I offer
you my hand? Am I a leper, John?'
"He held out his hand, and what in high heaven or hell did I care? He
was my friend. I took his hand, though it cut me to the heart to see the
way his face brightened.
"'It was only a joke, Lyte,' I said. 'We fixed it up on you. But you're
right. It's too serious. We won't do it again.'
"He did not laugh this time. He smiled, as a man awakened from a bad
dream and still oppressed by the substance of the dream.
"'All right, then,' he said. 'Don't do it again, and I'll stand for the
drinks. But I may as well confess that you fellows had me going south
for a moment. Look at the way I've been sweating.'
"He sighed and wiped the sweat from his forehead as he started to step
toward the bar.
"'It is no joke,' Kaluna said abruptly. I looked murder at him, and I
felt murder, too. But I dared not speak or strike. That would have
precipitated the catastrophe which I somehow had a mad hope of still
averting.
"'It is no joke,' Kaluna repeated. 'You are a leper, Lyte Gregory, and
you've no right putting your hands on honest men's flesh--on the clean
flesh of honest men.'
"Then Gregory flared up.
"'The joke has gone far enough! Quit it! Quit it, I say, Kaluna, or
I'll give you a beating!'
"'You undergo a bacteriological examination,' Kaluna answered, 'and then
you can beat me--to death, if you want to. Why, man, look at yourself
there in the glass. You can see it. Anybody can see it. You're
developing the lion face. See where the skin is darkened there over your
eyes.
"Lyte peered and peered, and I saw his hands trembling.
"'I can see nothing,' he said finally, then turned on the _hapa-haole_.
'You have a black heart, Kaluna. And I am not ashamed to say that you
have given me a scare that no man has a right to give another. I take
you at your word. I am going to settle this thing now. I am going
straight to Doc Strowbridge. And when I come back, watch out.'
"He never looked at us, but started for the door.
"'You wait here, John,' he said, waving me back from accompanying him.
"We stood around like a group of ghosts.
"'It is the truth,' Kaluna said. 'You could see it for yourselves.'
"They looked at me, and I nodded. Harry Burnley lifted his glass to his
lips, but lowered it untasted. He spilled half of it over the bar. His
lips were trembling like a child that is about to cry. Ned Austin made a
clatter in the ice-chest. He wasn't looking for anything. I don't think
he knew what he was doing. Nobody spoke. Harry Burnley's lips were
trembling harder than ever. Suddenly, with a most horrible, malignant
expression he drove his fist into Kaluna's face. He followed it up. We
made no attempt to separate them. We didn't care if he killed the half-
caste. It was a terrible beating. We weren't interested. I don't even
remember when Burnley ceased and let the poor devil crawl away. We were
all too dazed.
"Doc Strowbridge told me about it afterward. He was working late over a
report when Lyte came into his office. Lyte had already recovered his
optimism, and came swinging in, a trifle angry with Kaluna to be sure,
but very certain of himself. 'What could I do?' Doc asked me. 'I knew
he had it. I had seen it coming on for months. I couldn't answer him. I
couldn't say yes. I don't mind telling you I broke down and cried. He
pleaded for the bacteriological test. 'Snip out a piece, Doc,' he said,
over and over. 'Snip out a piece of skin and make the test.'"
"The way Doc Strowbridge cried must have convinced Lyte. The _Claudine_
was leaving next morning for Honolulu. We caught him when he was going
aboard. You see, he was headed for Honolulu to give himself up to the
Board of Health. We could do nothing with him. He had sent too many to
Molokai to hang back himself. We argued for Japan. But he wouldn't hear
of it. 'I've got to take my medicine, fellows,' was all he would say,
and he said it over and over. He was obsessed with the idea.
"He wound up all his affairs from the Receiving Station at Honolulu, and
went down to Molokai. He didn't get on well there. The resident
physician wrote us that he was a shadow of his old self. You see he was
grieving about his wife and the kids. He knew we were taking care of
them, but it hurt him just the same. After six months or so I went down
to Molokai. I sat on one side a plate-glass window, and he on the other.
We looked at each other through the glass and talked through what might
be called a speaking tube. But it was hopeless. He had made up his mind
to remain. Four mortal hours I argued. I was exhausted at the end. My
steamer was whistling for me, too.
"But we couldn't stand for it. Three months later we chartered the
schooner _Halcyon_. She was an opium smuggler, and she sailed like a
witch. Her master was a squarehead who would do anything for money, and
we made a charter to China worth his while. He sailed from San
Francisco, and a few days later we took out Landhouse's sloop for a
cruise. She was only a five-ton yacht, but we slammed her fifty miles to
windward into the north-east trade. Seasick? I never suffered so in my
life. Out of sight of land we picked up the _Halcyon_, and Burnley and I
went aboard.
"We ran down to Molokai, arriving about eleven at night. The schooner
hove to and we landed through the surf in a whale-boat at Kalawao--the
place, you know, where Father Damien died. That squarehead was game.
With a couple of revolvers strapped on him he came right along. The
three of us crossed the peninsula to Kalaupapa, something like two miles.
Just imagine hunting in the dead of night for a man in a settlement of
over a thousand lepers. You see, if the alarm was given, it was all off
with us. It was strange ground, and pitch dark. The leper's dogs came
out and bayed at us, and we stumbled around till we got lost.
"The squarehead solved it. He led the way into the first detached house.
We shut the door after us and struck a light. There were six lepers. We
routed them up, and I talked in native. What I wanted was a _kokua_. A
_kokua_ is, literally, a helper, a native who is clean that lives in the
settlement and is paid by the Board of Health to nurse the lepers, dress
their sores, and such things. We stayed in the house to keep track of
the inmates, while the squarehead led one of them off to find a _kokua_.
He got him, and he brought him along at the point of his revolver. But
the _kokua_ was all right. While the squarehead guarded the house,
Burnley and I were guided by the _kokua_ to Lyte's house. He was all
alone.
"'I thought you fellows would come,' Lyte said. 'Don't touch me, John.
How's Ned, and Charley, and all the crowd? Never mind, tell me
afterward. I am ready to go now. I've had nine months of it. Where's
the boat?'
"We started back for the other house to pick up the squarehead. But the
alarm had got out. Lights were showing in the houses, and doors were
slamming. We had agreed that there was to be no shooting unless
absolutely necessary, and when we were halted we went at it with our
fists and the butts of our revolvers. I found myself tangled up with a
big man. I couldn't keep him off me, though twice I smashed him fairly
in the face with my fist. He grappled with me, and we went down, rolling
and scrambling and struggling for grips. He was getting away with me,
when some one came running up with a lantern. Then I saw his face. How
shall I describe the horror of it. It was not a face--only wasted or
wasting features--a living ravage, noseless, lipless, with one ear
swollen and distorted, hanging down to the shoulder. I was frantic. In
a clinch he hugged me close to him until that ear flapped in my face.
Then I guess I went insane. It was too terrible. I began striking him
with my revolver. How it happened I don't know, but just as I was
getting clear he fastened upon me with his teeth. The whole side of my
hand was in that lipless mouth. Then I struck him with the revolver butt
squarely between the eyes, and his teeth relaxed."
Cudworth held his hand to me in the moonlight, and I could see the scars.
It looked as if it had been mangled by a dog.
"Weren't you afraid?" I asked.
"I was. Seven years I waited. You know, it takes that long for the
disease to incubate. Here in Kona I waited, and it did not come. But
there was never a day of those seven years, and never a night, that I did
not look out on . . . on all this . . . " His voice broke as he swept
his eyes from the moon-bathed sea beneath to the snowy summits above. "I
could not bear to think of losing it, of never again beholding Kona.
Seven years! I stayed clean. But that is why I am single. I was
engaged. I could not dare to marry while I was in doubt. She did not
understand. She went away to the States and married. I have never seen
her since.
"Just at the moment I got clear of the leper policeman there was a rush
and clatter of hoofs like a cavalry charge. It was the squarehead. He
had been afraid of a rumpus and he had improved his time by making those
blessed lepers he was guarding saddle up four horses. We were ready for
him. Lyte had accounted for three _kokuas_, and between us we untangled
Burnley from a couple more. The whole settlement was in an uproar by
that time, and as we dashed away somebody opened upon us with a
Winchester. It must have been Jack McVeigh, the superintendent of
Molokai.
"That was a ride! Leper horses, leper saddles, leper bridles,
pitch-black darkness, whistling bullets, and a road none of the best. And
the squarehead's horse was a mule, and he didn't know how to ride,
either. But we made the whaleboat, and as we shoved off through the surf
we could hear the horses coming down the hill from Kalaupapa.
"You're going to Shanghai. You look Lyte Gregory up. He is employed in
a German firm there. Take him out to dinner. Open up wine. Give him
everything of the best, but don't let him pay for anything. Send the
bill to me. His wife and the kids are in Honolulu, and he needs the
money for them. I know. He sends most of his salary, and lives like an
anchorite. And tell him about Kona. There's where his heart is. Tell
him all you can about Kona."