The White Man's Foot Part 9

"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 Pele. 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 a.n.a.lysis. 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 a.s.sist at any of their preparations; I could only sit on the verandah like an idle man, and watch them through a good field-gla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 coa.r.s.e, 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. 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 n.o.body 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 Princ.i.p.al of Clifton or Cheltenham College.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "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-gla.s.s 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. n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 Pele'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 Pele'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 G.o.d! 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 Pele!

CHAPTER XII.