The White Man's Foot Part 10

"Which way have they gone, you hag?" I cried, shaking her in my fierce anger.

The old woman raised one skinny brown finger, and pointed with a grin in the direction of a zig-zag path which lay to the left of Kalaua's roadway.

Without waiting one second to deliberate, or question her, I set off at once upon my crutches, bounding and scurrying over the ground like a kangaroo by successive leaps, and hastening forward at a brisk rate which I should have thought beforehand no crutches on earth would possibly have compa.s.sed.

I reached the path, and turned hastily down it. The track was rough and difficult to traverse, even for an active man with both his legs to go upon; but for me, in my present halt and maimed condition, it was terribly hard and all but impracticable. Nevertheless, impelled by horror and fear for poor Kea's safety, T hurried along at a mad rate down the steep zig-zag, careless whether I fell or not in my wild haste, but eager only to prevent I knew not what awful heathenish catastrophe.

I only prayed I might yet be in time to save her life. After many stumbles and hairbreadth escapes, rolling over and over with my crutches by my side, I found myself at last on the Floor of the Strangers, not far from the spot from which I had fallen before, but separated from it by a narrow chasm in the black basalt--a chasm, riven deep in the solid rock, and filled below, as I saw at once, with a fiery strait of white-hot lava.

It was full moonlight. Away off to the left, on the summit of the mountains, I saw the camp-fires of the naval eclipse parties. They were standing there, etched out distinctly against the pale sky-line; and I could recognize every one of their faces with ease through that clear air in the bright light of a tropical moon. But not a sign of Kea was to be seen anywhere. I looked anxiously round for her, and met no token anywhere. The old woman must surely have misdirected me on purpose. Fool that I was to have believed that hag! Kea and her party could hot have come this way at all towards the crater.

I saw my mistake. They had sent me wrong by deliberate design! At this supreme moment Kalaua had intentionally attempted to escape my notice.

Suddenly, as I looked and wondered in awe, a strange procession began slowly to descend the mountain side opposite, beyond the chasm, into the mouth of the crater. At its head came the man in the feather mask whom I had seen that day that I broke my leg on the edge of the precipice, and whom I now more distinctly than ever recognized as indeed Kalaua. There was no mistaking his gait and carriage. He stalked on proudly in front of the procession. Next after him, bearing rods with bunches of feathers fluttering in the breeze from their tops, came the four acolytes who had stood by his side that awful morning when he solemnly devoted me to the devouring volcano. Then four Hawaiian girls in white bridesmaids'

dresses, with long garlands of oleanders strung round their necks, followed in order, two by two, waving their hands slowly above their heads, and chanting native _himenes_, as they call their long monotonous wails and dirges. My heart stood still as I saw with horror that Kea walked last, with downcast eyes, habited in her full bridal dress, and with the white veil falling round her in folds almost to her ankles.

Behind her straggled a few hushed and awe-smitten spectators, half friendly a.s.sistants at this ghastly ceremony. I saw them all clearly but two hundred yards off, though the chasm in the rock with its red ma.s.s of molten lava below separated me from them far more effectually than a mile of intervening distance could possibly have done.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A STRANGE PROCESSION BEGAN SLOWLY TO DESCEND."]

My first impulse was to cry aloud with indignation and horror. My next, for Kea's sake, was to hide myself at once behind a black jagged pinnacle of hardened lava before they caught sight of me. I did so almost as soon as the procession began to file slowly past the turn of the road; and it was by peering with caution round the corner of the pinnacle that I had observed them all as they descended two by two along the narrow foot-path.

Step after step they moved gradually down, to the long-drawn music of those unearthly _himenes_. Kea, in particular, glided on like a ghost, with downcast eyes and shrinking demeanour, yet not so much in the manner of a victim as of one who willingly and heroically devotes herself to some terrible end for the good of her country.

I knew she believed she was averting the wrath of Pele, and I gasped with horror at her awful resolution.

Presently, the procession reached the Floor of the Strangers, on whose platform I myself was already crouched flat, though always separated from me by that terrific chasm; and advancing still to the lugubrious sound of these doleful _himenes_. Kalaua placed himself on the edge of the precipice, at the very spot where I myself had fallen over in pursuit of the b.u.t.terfly. Kea, moving forward with slow and solemn steps, stood at his right hand, in her bridal dress, with her bloodless fingers clasped downward in front of her.

Then Kalaua began, in a strange cramped voice, to drone out some horrible dedicatory service. It sounded like the service he had droned out over myself on the morning of my accident: but I understood Hawaiian much better now, and could follow the words of his frightful litany with very little difficulty. Crouching behind the shadow of my broken lava pinnacle, I saw and heard the whole savage orgy like some unseen presence in that vast and self-lighted natural cathedral.

"Great Mother Pele," Kalaua began, intoning his words on a single note and dividing his address into curious irregular verses--"Great Mother Pele, who dwellest in the fire-lake, Queen of the Hawaiians, we, thy children, bow ourselves down in worship before thee.

"We a.s.semble in thy temple, oh, thou, that delightest in the flesh of white-skinned chickens: we come into the outer threshold of thy house, oh, thou, that ridest on the red flaming surges.

"Sugar-cane, and tappa-cloth we offer to thy children: a bride, a wife, to thy favourite, to Maloka.

"Five sons thou hast borne in thy home, below; and one is humpbacked; thy favourite Maloka.

"A white man came from the lands beyond the sea: a pale-faced stranger; a wanderer to Hawaii.

"Of thy own accord thou chosest him a victim for thyself. He fell into thy trap. The white man's foot trod forbidden ground: the Floor of thy children, of thy children, the Hawaiians.

"In thy wrath, thou rosest to crumple him to ashes: thy flames soared upward like tongues of fire; dancing and surf-riding on the billows of flame, didst thou put forth thy red right hand to seize him.

"Come forward, Kea!"

The trembling girl came forward timidly.

Kalaua continued his awful chant once more, shaking his robe, and slowly dancing.

"A maiden rescued him: a mortal maiden. She stole the victim from the clutches of Pele.

"No hand might save him against thy will: the force of a mortal avails not against the fiery might of a living G.o.ddess.

"Thou, Pele, lettest him go for very contempt; thou gavest up the prey from thy fingers willingly.

"For such as her, a law is laid down.

"Victim for victim: life for life: whoever s.n.a.t.c.hes an offering from Pele, himself must satisfy the wrath of the G.o.ddess.

"Were it not so, thou wouldst deluge the land with lava; thou wouldst swallow the towns in the jaws of earthquakes: thou wouldst lick up the cane-fields with red tongues of fire.

"Thy son, Maloka, thy favourite, the humpbacked, he cried aloud to his mother for the maiden in marriage.

"'Give me this girl, he cried aloud, Oh Pele: give me this maiden who s.n.a.t.c.hed away thy victim.'

"Thou, Pele, madest answer: 'My son, I give her thee.' Thou didst turn uneasily in thy flaming home, and threaten the Hawaiians with a deadly vengeance.

"See, we bring her: and we give her to Maloka; willingly, of her own accord, the maiden comes: on Maloka's night, arrayed as a bride in snow-white raiment, eager for her fate.

"Come forward, attendants!"

The bridesmaids, in their wreaths and garlands, stepped forward. I listened, horror-struck.

"Kea, do you take this G.o.d, Maloka, for your wedded lord?"

In a stifled voice, tremulous but firm, Kea answered aloud in her soft Hawaiian, "Kalaua, I take him."

"Maloka, do you take this girl, Kea, for your wedded wife?" And even as he spoke Kalaua cast something invisible from his hand with a dexterous throw, into the yawning abyss of lava below him. I then observed, for the very first time, that while the ceremony went on, the lake of fire had risen by slow degrees in the crater, and stood flush now with the Floor of the Hawaiians.

The volcano, as if in response to his direct question, gave a hideous roar, excited, I suppose, into some minor eruptive effort by the object he cast into it, which seemed to crash down and break upon a smouldering smoke-stack. It was as though the mountain had answered back in words, "Oh, priest, I take her."

Kalaua leaned forward, shaking and agitating his sacrificial robes. "At the stroke of midnight," he went on solemnly, "at the actual moment when Maloka the humpbacked climbs aloft to put out the moon, we will take the bride into the bridegroom's chamber. When Maloka the humpbacked puts out the moon, then leap, Kea, into the arms of your husband. See, see, how lovingly he stretches out his fiery arms for you in his chamber below there! When he rises in his might to put out the lamp that rides in heaven, then leap into his embrace. 'Tis the signal he gives you! Till then, sit still, and await your husband!"

Kea sat down by the edge of the precipice, on an isolated block of black basalt, and leaning her little chin on her small white hand, gazed below in awe and silent expectation on the flood of lava.

I knew, then, exactly what Kalaua meant. At the precise moment of the total eclipse, Kea was to leap into the abyss of the volcano.

I took out my watch, and consulted it anxiously, It wanted more than half-an-hour still to the actual point of absolute totality. I had that half-hour only to save Kea in. I saw her there seated on the edge of the abyss. I knew that the moment the moon was finally obscured, she would rise from her place, and leap madly forward of her own accord, into that sea of lava. She thought it her duty to appease the G.o.ddess. How to rescue her I could form no plan. Even if I rushed forth in my horror and managed by some miracle to span with a leap that yawning chasm that spread so wide between us, what was one lame white man among so many wild and heathenish Hawaiians? I could do nothing. I was helpless, powerless. If I set out to call the naval officers to my aid, long before I reached them, Kea's charred and mangled corpse would be floating, a ma.s.s of blackened ashes, on the fiery flood in the still rising crater. I trembled with horror. And yet--and yet--

And yet I must do _something_ to rescue Kea!

CHAPTER XIII.

On the summit above, all unconscious of this ghastly and incredible tragedy taking place within a stone's throw of where they stood, I could see Frank and the men from the gunboat, busying themselves quietly with their eclipse arrangements, as if nothing more terrible than an ordinary volcanic outburst were proceeding anywhere in their immediate neighbourhood. The bright tropical moonlight revealed their forms and faces to me almost as clearly as the noonday sun: I could even distinguish the play of their features, and notice how Frank was laughing and talking, with his usual good-humoured boyish merriment, to the officers and sailors. The contrast was nothing short of appalling.

On one side, those easy-going sea-faring men, with their finished instruments of modern science, calmly engaged in observing and noting down the face of our distant satellite: on the other side, that group of stern and sombre half-heathen Hawaiians, occupied in the horrible and cruel rites of an effete and proscribed barbaric religion. Never, I thought to myself, did civilization and savagery stand closer together, cheek by jowl: never did the two extremes of human thought and human sentiment come in nearer contact, all unconscious and heedless one of the other. For neither party could see round the corner of jagged rock that overhung and divided them; I alone, looking either way up and down the crater, could take in both groups at a single glance--the scientific observers and the wild heathen priests of that human sacrifice.