That night I hardly closed my eyes in sleep. My leg, which for several
days had scarcely pained me, became troublesome once more with a sort of
violent twitching neuralgic rheumatism. Never before had I felt anything
so curiously spasmodic. I had tossed about during the evening indeed a
great deal more than usual, and Kalaua, who noted my discomfort with his
keen and observant Hawaiian glance, asked me more than once how I felt,
with apparent kindliness. I told him my symptoms in perfect frankness.
"Aha," he cried grimly, looking back at me with a smile. "That settles
the matter. We shall have an eruption then. The old-time folk in heathen
days always noticed that all neuralgic and rheumatic pains became far
more severe when an eruption was brewing."
"Did they?" I answered languidly; "that was no doubt a mere heathen
superstition on their part."
"Oh, no," he retorted with flashing eyes: "it was no superstition. It
was solemn fact. Wounds would never heal at such times, and broken limbs
would set with difficulty. You see, in the old clays, we knew a good
deal about wounds, of course--far more than nowadays. We were all
warriors then. We fought and hacked each other. We were often liable to
get severely injured. Stone hatchets cut a man up so awkwardly."
"Why," I cried, "now you come to mention it, I remember the year I was
working at Etna, the Sicilians at Catania all declared that sprains and
cuts and rheumatic affections would never get well before or during
eruptive periods. I hardly believed them at the time, I confess; but if
two people so widely apart in race and space as you and the Sicilians
both say so, I dare say there may really be something in it."
"There _is_ something in it," Kalaua echoed gravely. "I know it by
experience."
"An atmospheric or electric condition, no doubt," I said, lighting a
cigarette.
"Our fathers used to think," Kalaua corrected slowly, "that Pélé's
daughter was the goddess of disease; and when Pélé was angrily searching
for a victim, or when Pélé's son, the humpbacked god, who lives with his
mother among the ashes of the crater, was in search of a fresh wife
among the daughters of men, then, our heathen forefathers used to say,
the goddess of disease went forth through the land to prick the people
with the goads and thorns that she pushed into their flesh and their
veins and their marrow. Pélé had many sons and daughters; all of them
worked the will of their mother. The goddess of disease was the eldest
and noblest--she searched everywhere for a victim for her mother."
"And did she ever get one?" I asked with curdling blood.
"Yes," Kalaua answered. "The Hawaiians are brave. Sometimes the people
would suffer so much from Pélé's daughter that some one among them, a
noble-minded youth, would willingly offer himself up as a propitiation
to Pélé. Then Pélé's wrath would be appeased for the time, and the
eruptions would cease, and the land would have slumber. But those, we
know, were only foolish old heathen ideas. Nowadays of course the
Hawaiians are wiser.
"Yes," I replied, smiling and withdrawing my cigarette. "The Hawaiians
nowadays are nominally Christian."
The phrase seemed to excite Kalaua's suspicions. "We know now," he went
on more quietly, with a searching look, "that eruptions are due to
purely natural causes."
"I hope," I said, "if an eruption's coming, I shall be well enough
anyhow to get out and watch it. The doctor promised soon to let me have
a pair of crutches."
Kalaua smiled. "If an eruption comes at all," he answered, with the air
of a man who speaks of what he knows, "it'll come, I take it, on
Saturday next, and you won't be well enough to get out by then. The moon
will be full on Saturday at midnight. Eruptions come oftenest at the
full moon. Our fathers had a foolish old reason for that, they said that
Pélé and her son had a grudge against the moon, and strove always to put
it out with their belching fire, for eclipses, they thought in their
ignorance and folly, were caused by Pélé's humpbacked son trying to
strangle the moon in its cradle."
"Why," I said, "that's likely enough, when one comes to think of it."
Kalaua gazed at me in speechless amazement. "That Pélé's son is the
cause of eclipses!" he cried, astonished.
"No, no," I answered. "No such nonsense as that. But the connection may
be real between phases of the moon and volcanic phenomena. The moon's
attraction must be just as powerful on the lava in a volcano as on the
water in the sea. There may be a sort of spring-tide tendency towards
eruptions so to speak. And curiously enough, since you mention eclipses,
there's going to be an eclipse of the moon on Saturday."
Kalaua's face changed suddenly at the word. "An eclipse!" he cried, with
intense solemnity. "An eclipse of the moon! On Saturday!--impossible!"
"No, not impossible," I said. "I see it by the almanac."
"Not total?" Kalaua asked excitedly.
"Yes, total." I answered, amused at his excitement. "You think that will
bring an eruption in its train?"
"Eclipses always bring eruptions," Kalaua said solemnly. "Our fathers
told us so, and we ourselves have proved it."
"Well, you may be right:" I replied smiling; "we really know so little
about these things as yet that it's impossible to dogmatize in any
particular instance. But for my own part, I believe there's no counting
upon eruptions. Sometimes they come and sometimes they don't! They're
like the weather--exactly like the weather--products of pure law, yet
wholly unaccountable."
Kalaua rose width great resolution. "An eclipse of the moon!" he
repeated to himself aloud in Hawaiian. "Kea, Kea, come here and listen!
An eclipse on Saturday! How very strange, Kea! That's earlier than any
of us at all expected. How lucky we made our arrangements so well
beforehand, or else this thing might have taken us all quite unprepared.
There'll be an eruption. We must look out for that! I must go at once
and tell Maloka!"
Maloka, then, the mysterious bridegroom, lived quite near! Kalaua could
go out at a minute's notice, and speak to him easily. I longed to ask
him who Maloka was, where he lived, and what he did, but a certain sense
of shame and propriety restrained me. After all, Kalaua was my host. I
had no business to go prying into the private affairs of a native family
who had been kind enough to extend to me their friendly hospitality.
Kalaua left the room and went out hurriedly. I turned on my bed and
tried to sleep. But try as I would, my leg still kept me persistently
awake. Frank was soon snoring soundly in his own room next door. I
envied him his rest, and gave myself up to a sleepless night with what
resignation I could manage to summon.
Gradually, as the night wore on I began to doze. A numb drowsiness stole
slowly over me. I almost slept, I fancy; at any rate, I closed my eyes
and ceased to think about anything in particular. For half an hour I was
practically unconscious. Then on a sudden, as I lay there dozing, a
slight noise attracted my attention. I opened my eyes and stared out
silently. The door of my bedroom was pushed gently open. A hand held it
gingerly ajar for a while. A brown head was thrust in at the slit, and
then another. "Softly!" a voice murmured low in Hawaiian. I lay still,
and never moved a thread or muscle of my face, but gazing across dimly
through my closed eyelids I could see that one of the men was Kalaua;
the other, I imagined, was a perfect stranger. My heart beat fast.
Strange thoughts thronged me. "Surely," I said to myself, "this must be
Maloka."
I was dying with curiosity to learn something more about that unknown
bridegroom. But I dared not move. I dared not speak. A solemn awe seemed
to thrill and overcome me.
"Is he asleep?" the stranger asked in a low voice.
"Yes, fast asleep," Kalaua replied in Hawaiian. "Can he understand if he
hears?" the stranger said again.
"Not much, if anything," Kalaua answered. "He has only been such a short
time in Hawaii."
I was glad they under-estimated my knowledge of their language. It
enabled me to learn what they were talking about.
"Then we can speak with safety," the stranger went on.
Kalaua nodded, went out once more, and closed the door softly behind
him. They both seated themselves as far as I could guess, on chairs in
the sitting-room. Oh, how I longed to hear the rest of their
conversation! It was quite irresistible. Curiosity got the better of my
native prudence. I couldn't catch a word of what they were saying with
any distinctness where I lay on the bed. I must rise and listen. I
undid the splints that bound up my leg; crawled carefully across the
room without jerking or hurting it; and throwing myself down at the
bedroom door, bent eagerly though cautiously down to the key-hole.
Even so, I could catch but little.
Kalaua and the stranger were conversing in low and earnest tones in
their native language. Though I could understand Hawaiian pretty well by
this time, I found it hard to follow so rapid and familiar a colloquy
between two Hawaiians in half-whispered accents.
They spoke of many things I didn't understand. But one thing I was sure
I caught from time to time quite distinctly, and that was the
oft-repeated name, Maloka. They were talking of Maloka, Maloka, Maloka.
Was this Maloka? I asked myself more than once. If so, I should like to
take a good look at the man who has to be Kea's future husband.
Why all this mystery? This midnight meeting? Why couldn't Kea be quietly
married like any one else? Why couldn't Kea's lover come to the house
at a reasonable hour, like all the rest of humanity? I must clear up
this question, one way or the other. It was very wrong of me, no doubt;
but in my anxiety to learn the whole truth of the case, I held my eye
for a second to the key-hole. The stranger's face was turned towards me
now. I recognized him in a moment. He was one of the four tall, stately
natives who had stood by Kalaua's side on the brink of the precipice
that awful day when Kea rescued me. This, then, was Maloka!
My blood ran cold. Kea married to this cold stern creature!
But no. A minute later I caught their words once more. The stranger
himself was speaking this time. "And you went down and told Maloka
exactly when and where to expect her?" he asked seriously.
"Yes," Kalaua answered. "It's all arranged. I told Maloka. I went out at
once to see him and to tell him."
A sudden thrill passed through me irresistibly. Wrong again. This, then,
was not Maloka after all! But Maloka, whoever he was, lived quite near.
It had taken Kalaua only half an hour or so apparently to go to his
house and tell him the story of the expected eruption.
"She may well be honoured," the stranger murmured. "So great a marriage
is indeed an honour to any girl in Hawaii."
They whispered together for a few minutes longer in a lower voice, even
more mysteriously, but I could catch very little of all they said,
except that now and then the words "marriage," "bridegroom," "bride,"
and "distinction" fell upon my ears quite unmistakably. Once, to my
surprise, my own name, too, came into their colloquy. I strained my ears
to catch the meaning. They repeated it once more. Strange! I couldn't
quite understand what they meant, but I seemed to be somehow mixed up
with the mystery. Was this--could it be, some wonderful heathen plot or
contrivance to carry me off and marry me perforce against my will to
Kea?
"She rescued him," I heard Kalaua say in a very stern tone: the next
words I couldn't quite catch, then he added more distinctly, "and she
must marry him."
"It is the law of our forefathers," the strange Hawaiian repeated. "Life
for life. Bride for husband."
"For fifty years have I served faithfully," Kalaua said, "and now I may
surely be honoured in the marriages of my family."
"Good," the other man answered. "You will see to the bride; and I for my
part will take every care that the bridegroom is ready."
"Don't fear for me," Kalaua replied. "The daughters of the Hawaiians
shrink not from their duty."
He rose, and walked across the room in the opposite direction from that
of the door where I still sat crouching on the ground in my night-shirt,
with my broken leg extended sideways in front of me. He went up to the
wall and pushed aside a picture that hung from a nail near the ceiling
before me. Behind it was a small brass knob. He took a little key from
his pocket, which he fitted into the midst of the knob, and suddenly,
with a spring a door opened. It was the door of a cupboard or small
recess let into the wall, and in it I saw for the twinkling of an eye an
apparition of something brilliantly red and yellow. I knew in a second
what that thing was. It was the royal robe of sacred feathers that
Kalaua had worn as his priest's costume when he solemnly dedicated me to
the anger of Pélé.
Behind it, two horrible goggle eyes shone forth with lurid gleams into
the blank room. I knew those too, they were the eyes of the mask--that
grinning mask that Kalaua wore as the sign of his priestship.
Hideous, barbaric, staring things; but Kalaua regarded them with the
utmost veneration.
"Everything is correct," he whispered, looking over the strange
paraphernalia with a stern look of content and handling them reverently.
"The wedding shall come off, then, duly as arranged. We know the place,
the day, and the hour. I answer for the bride: you answer for the
bridegroom. All is well. It is an auspicious marriage. May they live
happily ever after!"
"Such is the prayer of all the Hawaiians," the stranger answered, with
the air of a man who recites some liturgy.
[Illustration: "'EVERYTHING IS CORRECT,' HE WHISPERED."]
Kalaua bowed his head solemnly. "Among the faithless," he said, "we at
least are faithful."
He shut the door once more, and locked it securely. Then he turned
towards the room where I was eagerly watching him through that narrow
key-hole. How I knew what was coming next I can never tell, but I _did_
know somehow that they were moving across once more to my hiding place.
Fear supplied me with strength and agility. Dragging my leg after me
again with breathless haste, I managed to scramble back into my bed
somehow, and, pulling the sheet over me, to feign sleep, before those
two savage devotees of a dead religion were once more leaning over the
pillow beside me. Next instant, I heard the door pushed cautiously open
a second time; and peering afresh through my closed eyelids, I saw
Kalaua and his nameless satellite steal over softly to where I lay half
dead with terror and excitement.
I closed my eyes and waited, awestruck.
Were they really come to murder me or to carry me off by force? Were
they going to marry me against my will to Kea? Did Kalaua mean to put
me there and then through some hideous and inhuman wedding ceremony? Was
I the bridegroom for whom the stranger was to answer? Was this the
secret of their sudden kindness to me? Was I bound to atone for the
saving of my life by accepting in wedlock the last daughter and heiress
of the priests of Pélé?
But no! My suspicions must surely be wrong. It was Maloka, Maloka, that
unknown Maloka, who was destined to be the simple little brown maiden's
hated bridegroom. I must find out soon who Maloka was; but for the
moment, fear got the better of curiosity.
The two Hawaiians approached on tiptoe to my side. My heart beat hard,
but I gave no token. I lay as still as death, and breathed heavily. I
felt rather than heard them stoop down and look at me.
"Asleep?" asked the stranger.
"Asleep!" Kalaua answered.
"Let us see!" the stranger said, and moved his robe a little. I knew he
had drawn a knife from his girdle. I felt him raise it but I never
cringed.
There was a moment's suspense--an awful suspense, for I didn't feel sure
they hadn't come to murder me--and then, apparently satisfied, the men
withdrew; the footsteps retreated as stealthily as they had approached;
and the door was closed again noiselessly behind them.
They had only come, after all, to make sure I was asleep and had heard
nothing. Whatever this business might be on which they were engaged,
they evidently meant to conduct it with the utmost secrecy. Whatever
these things meant, they did not mean murder.