I couldn't walk with my broken leg. My gentle preserver took me up in
her arms with tender care, and lifted me, strong man as I am, bodily
from the ground as if I had been a week-old baby. It was partly her
powerful Hawaiian limbs and sinews that did it no doubt, but still more,
I believe, that wonderful nervous energy with which Nature supplies
even the weakest of our kind when they stand face to face at last in
some painful crisis with a great emergency.
She carried me slowly up the zig-zag path, and over the lip of the
crater to Kalaua's house. Then she laid me down to rest upon a bamboo
bed, and went out to fetch me food and water.
What happened next I hardly knew, for once on the bed, I fainted
immediately with pain and exhaustion.
When I next felt conscious, it was well on in the night. I found myself
stretched at full length on the bed, with Frank leaning over me in
brotherly affection, and an American doctor, hastily summoned from Hilo,
endeavouring to restore me by all the means in his power.
At the foot stood Kalaua, no longer grim and severe as formerly, but,
much to my surprise, the very picture of intelligent and friendly
sympathy.
"How did you get here so soon?" I asked the doctor, when I was first
able to converse with him rationally. "You must have hurried up very
fast from Hilo."
"I did," he answered, going on with his work uninterruptedly. "Your
friend Kalaua fetched me up.
"He happened to be here when that brave girl rescued you from the
crater, and he rode down on one of his little mountain ponies in the
quickest time I ever remember to have known made between Hilo and the
summit. He was extremely anxious I should get back quickly to see you at
once, and we cantered up on the return journey as I never before
cantered in the whole course of my life. I've nearly broken my own
bones, I can tell you, in my haste and anxiety to set yours right for
you."
"That's very good of you," I answered gratefully.
"Oh! you needn't thank me for it," he replied, with a laugh. "It was all
our good friend Kalaua's doing. He wouldn't even allow me to draw rein
for a moment till I halted at last beside his own verandah."
I gazed at Kalaua in the blankest astonishment. Could it really be he
who had stood so stolidly by in the feather mask and devoted my head
with awful rites to the nether gods while I lay helpless on the Floor
of the Hawaiians? My confidence in his identity began distinctly to
waver. After all, I hadn't seen the features of that grim heathen priest
while I lay at the bottom. Perhaps I was mistaken. He was Kea's uncle.
For Kea's sake, I ardently hoped so.
[Illustration: "SHE CARRIED ME SLOWLY UP THE ZIG-ZAG PATH."]
They set my leg that very night, and Frank and Kalaua in turns sat up to
nurse me. I can hardly say which of the two was kinder or tenderer.
Kalaua watched me, indeed, as a woman watches by her son's bedside. He
was ready with drink, or food, or medicine, whenever I wanted it. His
wakeful eyelids never closed for a moment. No mother could have tended
her own child more patiently.
"Is the volcano still at work, Frank?" I asked once, in a painless
interval. I could never forget, even on a sick bed, that I was by trade
a man of science.
"No, my dear old fellow," Frank answered affectionately. "The volcano,
finding you were no longer in a fit condition to observe it, has
politely retired to the deepest recesses of its own home till you're in
a proper state to continue your investigations. The moment you were
safely out of the hole, Kea tells me, it sank back like a calm sea to
its usual level."
"Pélé is satisfied," the old man muttered to himself in Hawaiian from
the bottom of the bed, not thinking I understood him. "She has given up
her claim to the victim who offered himself of his own accord upon her
living altar."
It was not till next morning that I saw Kea again. The poor girl was
pale and evidently troubled. She received all my expressions of
gratitude with a distracted air, and she hardly appeared at times to be
quite conscious of what was passing around her. But she was gentle and
considerate and kind as ever--even more kind, I fancied, than we had yet
known her.
For the next week, Frank, Kalaua, and Kea in turn each bore their fair
share in nursing and watching me. I wondered to myself, after all that
had happened, that I wasn't afraid of stopping any longer under the old
chief's roof; yet now that it was all over, my staying there for the
time seemed somehow quite natural. Indeed, it would have been impossible
to carry me further along the rugged road that led down the mountain,
with my leg in splints, and my general health in a most enfeebled
condition. And I wasn't in the least afraid, either that Kalaua would
cut my throat in his own house, or otherwise offer me personal violence.
Nothing could possibly exceed his personal kindness to me now: and I
felt as safe in the old chief's hands as I did in his niece's, or in my
own brother's.
My conversations with the American doctor too reassured me greatly in
this curious matter. A day or two later, I told him the whole strange
and romantic story, in far fuller detail than I have told it here (for
all the incidents were then fresh in my memory), and he listened with
the air of a man to whom such marvellous recitals of savage superstition
were hardly anything out of the common.
"I shouldn't be surprised if it really _was_ Kalaua," he said to me
confidentially, when I had finished my narrative. "The fact is, the old
man has always been more or less suspected of persistent Pélé worship.
Beliefs like that don't die out in a single generation. But you needn't
be afraid on that account that he'll do you any bodily harm now. Pélé
cares nothing for unwilling victims. She takes those only who go to her
willingly. You fell in of yourself, and therefore Kalaua wouldn't pull
you out. To have done so would have been to incur the severest wrath of
Pélé. But now that you've once got safe out again, every good
old-fashioned heathen Hawaiian will hold to it as a cardinal article of
faith, that you're absolutely inviolable. The goddess had you once in
her power, and of her own free will she has let you go again. If she
liked, she might have eaten you, but she let you go. That shows you are
one for whom she has a special concern and regard. The moment you got up
in safety to the brink once more, the lava fell back. To Kalaua, that
would be a certain sign and token that Pélé relinquished all claim upon
your body. She may take some other victim, unawares, in your stead: but
you yourself, the Hawaiians believe, are henceforth and for ever next
door to invulnerable. You are Taboo to Pélé.
"Well, I've been very nearly dipped in Styx," I answered, smiling, "so I
ought to be inviolable. But you don't think, then, I run any risk by
remaining under this roof till my leg gets well again?"
"Quite the contrary," the doctor replied with perfect confidence. "I
should think you would nowhere be treated with greater care,
consideration, and courtesy than here at Kalaua's. Whatever it may have
been a very few days ago, these people regard you now as Pélé's
favourite. If you were to ask politely for a White Elephant, they'd
import one for you direct, I verily believe, by the first mail steamer
in from Burmah."
"That's lucky," I said, "though after what I saw in the crater the other
day, I confess I feel a little nervous at times about our personal
safety."
As the doctor was just taking his leave, he turned and said to me in a
very serious tone, "If I were you, do you know, Mr. Hesselgrave, I think
I wouldn't say anything at all in public while you remain in Hawaii
about the scene in the crater."
"No?" I said interrogatively.
"No," he answered. "You see, it's impossible to _prove_ anything. After
all, when one looks the thing squarely in the face, what did you really
see and feel sure of? Why, just five natives looking down at you in the
crater, on the very eve of a serious outbreak of the volcano. Well,
nobody's bound to risk his life to rescue a stranger from the jaws of an
eruption. As to the mask, the less said about that the better. People
won't believe you: they'll say it's impossible. _I_ believe you, because
I understand Hawaiians down to the very ground: I know how skin-deep
their civilization goes: but folks who don't, will think you're
romancing. Besides, Kalaua wouldn't like it, of course. It's _bad form_
to be a heathen in Hawaii. Whatever the natives may be in their own
hearts, in their outer lives they prefer to be considered civilized
Christians. There's nothing riles your true-born Hawaiian like a public
imputation of cannibalism or heathendom."
"All right," I answered. "You may depend upon my discretion," For Kea's
sake indeed I should have been sorry to bring disgrace upon her stern
old uncle, however richly the old chief might have merited it. I was
profoundly grateful to her for her gallant rescue; it would have been an
ill reward indeed to repay her kindness by betraying the terrible secret
of her family.