That night, like the nights before, I tossed and turned on my bed
incessantly. The pain in my leg had come back once more. It was long
before I dropped asleep by degrees. When I did sleep, I slept very
heavily, almost as if some one had drugged or tampered with my drink at
dinner.
In the stillness of the night, a sound again awoke me. I raised my head
and gazed up suddenly. Could this be Kalaua and his friend again? No,
not this time. A red glare poured in at the window. And it was Frank who
stood with a warning finger uplifted close by my bedside in the glow of
Mauna Loa.
"Tom," he whispered in a hoarse, low voice, "there's foul play going on,
I'm certain. I see nobody in Kalaua's room, and just look how red it
all is to eastward."
At the word, I jumped out of bed awkwardly, and crept to the window as
well as my injured limb would permit me. Sure enough, a lurid light hung
over the peak where the sailors were encamped: "Give me the glass!" I
cried. Frank handed it to me hastily. I looked and saw a great glare of
fire surrounding the tents with their white awnings. At first my eyes
told me no more than that: after a while, as I grew more and more
accustomed to the gloom, I could see that a dozen little points of fire
were blazing away around the frail canvas shelters.
"There's something up on Mauna Loa," I cried. "An eruption!" Frank
inquired with bated breath.
"No, no," I answered. "Not a mere eruption. Worse than that--a fire, an
incendiary fire. The ground around them seems to be all one blaze."
"Kalaua said it was inflammable, you remember," Frank cried.
"But sulphur would never burn like that," I answered. "I fancy he must
mean to turn them out by fair means or foul; and as far as I can see
he's succeeding in his object."
"You think it's he who's set it on fire then?" Frank asked curiously.
"Run up and see," I answered. "The sailors are awake and moving about
hastily; but perhaps you may yet be of some use to them."
"All right," Frank answered, "I'll be with them like wildfire."
In a minute he had tumbled into his coat and trousers, pulled on his
boots, clapped his hat on his head, and run out lightly up the road to
the encampment. By the time he reached the burning summit, I could see
with the glass that the whole camp was in a perfect turmoil of wild
confusion. The sailors were rapidly unpegging the tents and carrying
away the instruments from the burning patch to a place of safety lower
down the mountain. I could make out Frank joining eagerly in the task;
he was helping them now with all his heart and soul. I only wished I
too was there to second him. In this struggle of science against savage
malignancy, my indignant sympathy went fiercely out on the side of
knowledge. But my lame leg kept me painfully inactive.
Presently, in the dim light, far nearer home, I saw two men creep slowly
down the crater path from the summit: two skulking men, with native
scarves tied loosely round their waists; tall and erect, lithe and
cautious. I recognized them at once; one was Kalaua, the other was his
visitor of the preceding evening. They crept down with the air of men
engaged on some criminal undertaking. In their hands they bore two empty
tin kegs: I knew the shape well; they were American petroleum cans!
Like lightning the truth flashed through my startled brain. For some
reason or other best known to themselves, these two secret votaries of
an almost extinct faith desired to dislodge the eclipse-observing party
from the peak that overhung and commanded the crater. They feared
perhaps the wrath of their hideous goddess. Unable to move the
Englishmen by force of reasoning, they had tried to drive them out from
this sacred site by means of fire. They had saturated the porous and
sulphurous soil here and there with petroleum. No pity, no remorse; they
must have meant to burn them as they lay, for then, applying a match to
it quietly, they had stolen away, leaving the flames to fight the battle
in their absence against the sleeping white men, whom they had perhaps
supplied with drugged water from the well in the garden.
At the gate they separated. It was a weird sight. Neither spoke, but
both together bowed down thrice in the direction of the steaming crater.
After that each placed his palms against his neighbour's. Then Kalaua
stalked silently on towards his own house; his companion descended the
zig-zag path that led right down to the Floor of the Strangers.
Could Maloka live in some cave of the platform? It was terrible to dwell
in an atmosphere like this--an atmosphere of doubt, suspicion, and
heathen treachery. Save for Kea's sake I would have left it at once.
But Kea's fate bound me still to the spot. I must learn the truth about
this terrible marriage.
For half an hour I sat and watched, while the observers on the hill-top
ran to and fro in their eager desire to save their tents and baggage
from the menaced destruction. Happily, they had waked before the fire
reached them. At the end of that time, Frank and the first lieutenant
came down with news. "How goes the fire?" I asked in breathless
eagerness.
"Almost under now," the officer answered cheerily. "We've managed to put
it out somehow for the present. But what can you do in the way of
putting out fire when the very earth under your feet's inflammable! I
never saw stuff burn like that. The flames spread at first on every side
with just wonderful rapidity."
"Ah," I put in as carelessly as I could. "Lava, I suppose, and sulphur,
and so forth?"
"H'm," the lieutenant answered with a dubious sniff. "_You_ may call it
sulphur and lava if you like; but for my part, I think it smelt
precious like petroleum."
"You don't mean to say so!" I cried, astonished at this independent
confirmation of my worst suspicions.
"Yes, I do," he answered. "That's just about the name of it. And
petroleum doesn't grow of itself in Hawaii."
"Tom," my brother said, coming up to me quietly, and speaking in a very
unwonted whisper; "this is not the place to discuss all these things.
The sooner you and I can get out of it the better. It's my belief Kalaua
has saturated the ground with something and set it on fire."
"I don't know what particular heathen did it," the officer put in with a
confident tone; "but of this I'm sure, that somebody's poured coal oil
all over the place. I smelt it distinctly. Now, I don't mind camping out
on volcanoes or craters when they're left to themselves, but I'm hanged
if I like them when they're stirred up with coal oil to go burning down
the tent over a fellow's head. It's clear these Sandwich Islanders are
inhospitable folk; they don't mean to let us pitch our tents on that
particular spot; and if they can't turn us out one way, why then they'll
turn us out in another. As it is, we've lost already two of our tents,
and it was a blessing we didn't lose the whole lot together, not to
mention the lives of Her Majesty's lieges to our care committed, for we
were snoring most peacefully when the fire began."
"How did it all happen?" I asked with interest.
"Why, just like this. We were lying asleep, like warriors taking their
rest, on our own mattresses--sound asleep, every man Jack of us--when I
saw a glare shining under the tent, which I suppose would never have
woke me if a spark hadn't happened to fall on my forehead. My first idea
was that the volcano had got up an eruption on purpose in our honour:
but when I got outside and looked at the ground, I came to the
conclusion it couldn't be that for various reasons, and I set it down to
your friend the native. For one thing, the place just reeked of
petroleum, and for another, it was only alight on the surface, in
half-a-dozen different places at once, exactly as if somebody had set a
match to it."
"And what did you do then?" I inquired.
"Oh, I waked the men--and I never knew men so hard to waken. By dint of
care however we've put it out, and I've come down here to talk the thing
over with you."
"Well, what do you think you'll do now?" I asked.
"Why, the British tar doesn't like to be beaten," my new friend
answered, "but I'm shot if I'm going to lie still and be roasted alive
in my bed like a salamander. These fellows seem too shifty for us to
deal with. Open fighting I don't object to, mind you, but I do object to
baking a man to death unawares while he's sleeping. It's distinctly
caddish. The other place seems a very decent one. It's not so good as
this in some ways, I admit, but it'll do anyhow better than a baking.
And as soon as we can get away down to Honolulu, we shall have the law
against these petroleum-spilling brown fellows."
"You will get no redress," I said. "No Hawaiian will believe any story
against Pélé. But at any rate you had better move for the present. Some
evil will befall you if you stop where you are. Kalaua sticks neither at
fire nor poison."
And sure enough, they were forced to shift their quarters next day to
the place Kalaua had at first pointed out to them.
By this time indeed I will frankly confess, it was beginning to strike
me that Kalaua's was not a safe place to live in. We had almost made up
our minds indeed that as soon as the eclipse was well over, we would
return on the _Hornet_ to Honolulu. Kea's wedding alone could detain us
longer: but my curiosity on that point was so strong and vivid that I
determined to ask our new friends to wait till it was over, and then to
take us with them to the neighbouring island. I couldn't bear to abandon
her to Kalaua's mercy. Meanwhile, the sailors were busy with their own
preparations, for the eclipse arrangements took up their whole time.
For the next few days accordingly Frank was all agog with this new
excitement. He was running about all over the summit from morning till
night, deeply engaged in the mysteries of tent-pegging, and absorbed in
discussions of level, theodolite, telescope, and spectrum analysis. He
was proud to display his knowledge of the volcano to his new friends. He
showed the first lieutenant every path and gully round that terrific
crater: leaped horrible fissures, yawning over abysses of liquid flame,
with the junior midshipman; and made the good-humoured and easy-going
sailors teach him marvellous knots, or instruct him in the art and
science of splicing. As for me, I hobbled about lamely on my crutches as
well as I could, envying him the ease with which he did it all, and
longing for the time when I too might get about up and down the crater
on my own two legs, without let or hindrance.
"Sailors are awfully jolly fellows," Frank confided to me one evening,
after a day spent in exploring and setting up instruments. "Upon my
word, do you know, Tom, if I wasn't so awfully gone on volcanoes, I
think I'd really run away to sea and be a gallant midshipmite."
"For my part I don't care for such dangerous occupations," I answered
prudently, gazing down with pensive regret into the slumbering crater,
that heaved now and then uncomfortably in its sleep with the most
enticing motion. "A storm at sea's an unpleasant sort of thing. I don't
like all that tossing and plunging. Give me the peace and quiet of dry
land, with no more excitement than one gets afforded one by an
occasional eruption or a stray earth-quake, just to diversify the
monotony of every-day existence."
And indeed I could never understand myself why anybody should want any
more adventurous life than that of a sober scientific man, with a taste
for volcanoes. None of your hurricanes and tornadoes for me. A good
eruption's fun enough for anybody.
The point finally selected by the naval men for their camp and
observatory lay at some considerable distance from Kalaua's house, but
full in view from the open verandah. It was difficult of access however
in spite of its position, because a huge gully or rent in the
mountain-side, descending to several hundred feet below, intervened to
separate us; and the interval could therefore only be covered by
something like half an hour's hard riding. I was not able myself
accordingly to assist at any of their preparations; I could only sit on
the verandah like an idle man, and watch them through a good
field-glass, which enabled me to follow all their movements
intelligibly, and to interest myself to some small extent in the details
and difficulties of their extensive arrangements.
During these few remaining days, before the expected eclipse, Kea sat
with me often on the verandah doing nothing, for her work on her
trousseau was now all finished; but she seemed more pre-occupied and
self-centred than usual, as if dreading and hating her expected
marriage. I felt sure she disliked the husband they had chosen for her.
Often when I spoke to her she brought her eyes back suddenly, as if from
a great distance, and sighed before she answered me, like one whose mind
has been fully engaged upon some very different and unpleasant subject.
She asked me much too, at times, about her father's brother and friends
in England, about the life in our quiet home country, about people and
places she had heard her father talk about in her early childhood. She
knew them all well by name; her father, she said, had loved to speak of
them to her. Evidently he had been one of those wild younger sons of a
good family, who had left home early and gone to sea, and taking to a
roving Pacific life had fallen in love with some young Hawaiian girl,
Kalaua's sister and Kea's mother, for whose sake at last he had made his
home for life upon a lofty peak of these remote islands. His family,
displeased at his marriage, no doubt, had all but cast him off; and even
if they invited Kea to come home to them in England after his early
death, they would have had no great affection, one may easily believe,
for their little unknown half-caste kinswoman. Yet I felt sure if only
they could once have really seen Kea they must have loved her dearly,
for there was something so sweetly pathetic and winsome in her
child-like manner that no one who saw her could help, in spite of
himself, sympathizing with her and liking her.
"Are there any volcanoes in England?" Kea asked me once, after a long
pause, with sudden energy.
"Unhappily, no," I answered, with a quiet sigh of professional regret.
"That's my one solitary cause of complaint against my native country.
It's disgustingly free from volcanic disturbances. Britain is much too
solid indeed for my private taste. It affords no scope for an
enterprising seismologist. There were some good craters once, to be
sure, in geological times, at Mull and Cader Idris, but they're all
extinct long since. We haven't a volcano, good, bad, or indifferent,
anywhere nearer us than Hecla or Vesuvius."
"Then I should love England," Kea replied very quietly. "Oh, Mr.
Hesselgrave, if that's so, what on earth made you ever leave England to
come to such a country as Hawaii?"
She spoke so earnestly, that I hardly liked to tell her in cold blood, I
came just for the sake of those very volcanoes which seemed to impress
her own private fancy so very unfavourably. There's no accounting for
tastes. I've known people who loved yachting and didn't mind a bear
hunt, yet wouldn't go near an eruption for a thousand pounds, and could
hardly even be induced by the most glowing descriptions to look over the
edge of a sheer precipice into the smoking crater of an active volcano.
Some folk's prejudices are really astonishing! As if volcanoes weren't
at bottom the merest safety-valves to the internal fires of our earth's
centre!
The few remaining days before the date of the eclipse passed by, I am
happy to say, uneventfully. I was grateful for that. Excitements indeed
had come so thick and fast during these late weeks that a little quiet
was a welcome novelty. And the presence of our English friends from the
gunboat gave us further a sense of confidence and security to which we
had far too long been strangers. We knew now, at least, that a British
war-vessel lay moored in the harbour below to watch over our safety.
On one of the intervening evenings, as I sat in the verandah smoking a
cigarette alone in the pleasant cool of tropical twilight, I heard two
natives, hangers-on of Kalaua's, talking together in the garden, where
they were busy picking fruit and flowers for the use of the house on the
grand occasion. At first I paid little heed to their conversation: but
presently I thought I overheard among their talk the mysterious name of
that strange Maloka. I pricked up my ears at the sound. How very
curious! Then they too were busy with the great event. I listened
eagerly for the rest of their colloquy.
"What are the flowers for?" the younger man asked, as he laid some roses
and a great bunch of plumbago into a palm-leaf basket.
"Garlands and wreaths for Maloka's wedding," the elder answered in a
hushed and lowered voice.
"It will be a very grand affair, no doubt," the younger went on quietly.
"They've made great preparations. I saw the dress that Kea is to wear,
and the bridesmaids' veils. Very fine, all of them. Quite a festival!
Shall you go and see it?"
"If Kalaua allows me," the other answered.
"She's a pretty young girl," the younger man continued in an unconcerned
voice, still filling his basket. "A great deal too good to my mind for a
wretched creature like Maloka. What does an ugly fellow such as that
want with a young and beautiful wife like Kea? I'd give him some ugly
old crone to match himself, I can tell you, if only I had my way about
it."
"Hush," the elder answered with a certain solemn tone of awe in his
voice I had often noticed the natives used when they talked together
about this unknown bridegroom. "Maloka may be ugly and dark if you will,
but he is a grand husband for any girl to light upon. You young men
nowadays have no respect for family or greatness. It is a proud thing
for a girl to marry such a bridegroom as Maloka."
"Well, as far as I'm concerned," the young native answered, with a
slight toss of his head, "I don't think so much as you do of the whole
lot of them. The family's all very well in its way, but an ugly girl
would be quite good enough for a fellow of that sort. What's the use of
throwing away beauty like hers upon Maloka? Nicely he'll treat her.
However, it's no affair of mine, of course; her uncle and herself have
settled the wedding. All I shall do is to go and look on. It'll be worth
seeing. They say it's going to be the grandest wedding that ever was
made in all Hawaii since King Kamehameha's daughter was married long ago
to another member of the same family."
The old man laughed at this, as if it were a joke: but somehow his
laughter sounded painfully grim. I felt that whatever Maloka's family
might happen to be--and it was clear that the natives thought it a very
distinguished one--it was not famous for kind treatment of the unhappy
women it took as brides to its illustrious bosom. My heart was sore for
poor little Kea. To be sure, she acquiesced in the marriage, no doubt,
but then girls will sometimes acquiesce in anything. It was painful to
think she was going to marry a native whom even coarse, common natives
like these regarded as unworthy of her on any ground except that of
family connection. But the Hawaiians, I knew, have still to the full all
the old barbaric love of aristocratic descent and distinguished
ancestry. "A good match" would atone for anything.
At last the Saturday of the expected eclipse arrived in due time, and
all the day was occupied by Frank and the naval officers in final
arrangements for their scientific observations. At Kalaua's house, too,
great preparations seemed to be going on; it was clear some important
event was at hand: we almost suspected that Kea's wedding must be fixed
for the Sunday, or at least the Monday morning following. Kea tried on
all her things early in the day, I believe; and many Hawaiian girls came
in to help her and to admire the effect of the veil and trimmings. But a
less merry wedding-party I never heard in my life before. A cloud seemed
to hang over the entire proceeding. Instead of laughing and talking, as
the natives generally do on the slightest provocation, we could hear
them whispering below their breath in solemn tones in Kea's room, and
though lots of flowers had been picked and arranged for the occasion in
long wreaths and garlands, the girls didn't make sport, as usual, out of
their self-imposed task, but went through with it all with profound and
most unwonted sombreness of look and movement. Kea had said her
betrothed was somebody of very great importance. I began to think he
must be some one so awfully important that nobody dare even smile when
they thought or spoke of him! I had never heard of any one quite so
important as that before, except the head master of a public school; and
it seemed in the highest degree improbable that Kea should be going to
marry the Provost of Eton, or the Principal of Clifton or Cheltenham
College.
[Illustration: "KEA TRIED ON ALL HER THINGS."]
When evening drew on, we all had supper together at Kalaua's--the naval
officers, Frank, and myself--and then the eclipse observation committee
went off under Frank's efficient guidance round the long gully to their
chosen station. I meant to observe them there through my field-glass
myself, and see what sort of scientific success was likely to attend
their arduous labours.
For a while I sat and mused in silence. The house seemed unusually still
and lonely after Frank left. Kalaua, Kea, and the native servants were
none of them loitering about on the verandah or in the sitting-room,
where they generally lounged. I seemed to be in sole possession of the
establishment, and I hobbled out by myself a little way on to the
platform in front of the house, wondering what on earth could have
become of all the inhabitants in a body together. My leg was nearly well
now, I could get along nicely with the aid of the crutches. I was almost
sorry indeed I hadn't tried to ride a horse, game leg and all, and go
round with the eclipse party to the camp of observation.
Yet somehow I felt uneasy, too, at Kea's absence, and my uneasiness was
increased, I don't know why, by the constant glare that overhung the
crater. The lava was unusually red-hot to-night; the great eruption we
had long expected must surely be coming. I hoped it would wait till my
leg was quite well; a lame foot is more than enough to spoil the whole
pleasure of the best and finest volcanic outburst to an enthusiastic
amateur. I went back to the house and called twice for Kea. Nobody
answered. My suspicions were quickened. I ventured to open the door of
her bedroom. It was empty--empty! All the wedding-dresses and wreaths
and veils were gone from their places, where I had often observed them
when the door stood ajar in the course of the morning. A vague sense of
terror fell upon my soul. What could all this mean? Where was Kea? and
why was she out at this time of night, with all her friends, and in her
wedding garments?
I called a third time, and nobody answered. But out on the platform in
front of the house I saw an aged Hawaiian hag, a witch-like old woman
who hung about the place and lighted the fires, sitting crouched on the
ground with her arms round her knees, and grinning hideously at my
obvious discomfiture.
"Where's Kea, old lady?" I cried to her in Hawaiian, as well as I could
manage it.
The horrible old woman grinned still more odiously and maliciously in
reply. "Gone out," she answered, mumbling her words in her toothless
mouth so that I could hardly make them out or understand them.
"Where to?" I asked angrily, for I was ill at ease.
"How should I know?" the old woman growled back. "I suppose to the
festival."
"The festival! Where? What? When? Whose festival?"
"The festival of Maloka," the old hag mumbled with a cunning smile.
With a sudden horror I remembered then that Maloka was the mysterious
person to whom, as I concluded, Kea was engaged--the person whom she and
Kalaua had so often mentioned in their low and whispered talk with one
another.
"Who's Maloka?" I cried, sternly laying my hand upon her withered
shoulder, "Quick! tell me at once, or it will be the worse for you."
"He's Pélé's son," the old hag answered, chuckling to herself with a
horrible chuckle. "He lives with his mother, his angry mother, away,
away, down in the depths of Mauna Loa. He's Pélé's favourite. She loves
him dearly: and she often asks for a wife for Maloka."
In an instant the whole hideous, incredible truth flashed wildly across
my bewildered brain. They were going to sacrifice Kea to this hateful
god! They were going to fling her into the mouth of the crater! They
were going to offer her up in marriage to the son of Pélé!