The White Man's Foot Part 6

"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 superst.i.tion on their part."

"Oh, no," he retorted with flashing eyes: "it was no superst.i.tion. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 Pele's daughter was the G.o.ddess of disease; and when Pele was angrily searching for a victim, or when Pele's son, the humpbacked G.o.d, 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 G.o.ddess of disease went forth through the land to p.r.i.c.k the people with the goads and thorns that she pushed into their flesh and their veins and their marrow. Pele had many sons and daughters; all of them worked the will of their mother. The G.o.ddess of disease was the eldest and n.o.blest--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 Pele's daughter that some one among them, a n.o.ble-minded youth, would willingly offer himself up as a propitiation to Pele. Then Pele'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 Sat.u.r.day next, and you won't be well enough to get out by then. The moon will be full on Sat.u.r.day at midnight. Eruptions come oftenest at the full moon. Our fathers had a foolish old reason for that, they said that Pele 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 Pele'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 Pele'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 Sat.u.r.day."

Kalaua's face changed suddenly at the word. "An eclipse!" he cried, with intense solemnity. "An eclipse of the moon! On Sat.u.r.day!--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 Sat.u.r.day! 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 pa.s.sed 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."