initial commit of ebook 34744HEADmain

1 files changed, 4043 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/34744-8.txt b/old/34744-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f258e02
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/34744-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4043 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Man's Foot, by Grant Allen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The White Man's Foot
+
+Author: Grant Allen
+
+Illustrator: J. Finnemore
+
+Release Date: December 26, 2010 [EBook #34744]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE MAN'S FOOT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Andrea Ball and Marc D'Hooghe at
+http://www.freeliterature.org
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE MAN'S FOOT.
+
+BY
+
+GRANT ALLEN,
+
+AUTHOR OF "BABYLON," "IN ALL SHADES," ETC., ETC.
+
+
+_WITH SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. FINNEMORE._
+
+LONDON:
+
+HATCHARDS, PICCADILLY, W.
+
+1888.
+
+RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
+
+LONDON AND BUNGAY.
+
+
+[Illustration: 'BOWING DOWN TOWARDS THE MOUTH OF THE CRATER, THEY SEEMED
+TO SALUTE THE GODDESS OF THE VOLCANO.']
+
+
+DEDICATION.
+
+TO
+
+JERRARD GRANT ALLEN,
+
+_THE ONLY BEGETTER OF THESE ENSUING ADVENTURES._
+
+My Dear Grantie,
+
+From the following pages, written with a single eye to your own personal
+tastes and predilections, you may, I trust, learn three Great Moral
+Lessons.
+
+First, never to approach too near the edge of an active volcano.
+
+Second, never to continue your intimacy with a man who deliberately and
+wickedly declines to pull you out of a burning crater.
+
+And third, never to intrust the care of youth to a cannibal heathen
+South Sea Islander.
+
+With the trifling exception of these three now enumerated, I am not
+aware that you can extract any Great Moral Lesson whatsoever from the
+hairbreadth escapes of Kea and her associates.
+
+Having thus almost entirely satisfied your expressed wishes in this
+matter--for "a story without a moral"--I subscribe myself, with pride,
+
+Your obedient servant and very loving father,
+
+G.A.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+
+"BOWING DOWN TOWARDS THE MOUTH OF THE CRATER, THEY SEEMED TO SALUTE THE
+GODDESS OF THE VOLCANO" _Frontispiece._
+
+"IT'S MORE THAN DANGEROUS. IT'S ALMOST CERTAINLY FATAL"
+
+"ALL AT ONCE A GREAT BODY OF GAS WAS EJECTED INTO THE AIR, IN A BLAZE OF
+LIGHT"
+
+"'YOUNG MAN,' HE CRIED, '...I WARN YOU NOT TO TRIFLE WITH THE BURNING
+MOUNTAIN'"
+
+"I ROLLED DOWN RAPIDLY TO THE VERY BOTTOM"
+
+"I LAY THERE HORROR-STRICKEN, AND GAZED IDLY DOWN"
+
+"I CLUTCHED THE CRUMBLING PEAK WITH MY HOOKED FINGERS"
+
+"SHE CARRIED ME SLOWLY UP THE ZIG-ZAG PATH"
+
+"'IF YOU KNEW ALL,' SHE ANSWERED, 'HOW YOU WOULD PITY ME!'"
+
+"'EVERYTHING IS CORRECT,' HE WHISPERED"
+
+"SHE LOOKED UP IN AN AGONY OF SUSPENSE"
+
+"KEA TRIED ON ALL HER THINGS"
+
+"A STRANGE PROCESSION BEGAN SLOWLY TO DESCEND"
+
+"THE BAMBOO BENT OMINOUSLY DOWN"
+
+"WE RODE AT FULL SPEED IN BREATHLESS HASTE"
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE MAN'S FOOT.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+My brother Frank is a most practical boy. I may be prejudiced, but it
+seems to me somehow there's nothing like close personal contact with
+active volcanoes to teach a young fellow prudence, coolness, and
+adaptability to circumstances. "Tom," said he to me, as we stood and
+watched the queer party on deck, devouring taro-paste as a Neapolitan
+swallows down long strings of macaroni: "don't you think, if we've got
+to live so long in a native hut, and feed on this port of thing, we may
+as well use ourselves to their manners and customs, whatever they may
+be, at the pearliest convenient opportunity?"
+
+"Haven't you heard, my dear boy," said I, "what the naval officer wrote
+when he was asked to report to the Admiralty on that very subject of the
+manners and customs of the South Sea Islanders? 'Manners they have
+none,' he replied with Spartan brevity, 'and their customs are
+beastly.'"
+
+"Not a bit of it," Frank answered quickly in his jolly way. "For my part
+I think this sticky, pasty stuff they're eating with their fingers,
+though it's a bit stodgy, looks like real jam, and I'd much rather take
+my lunch off things like that up here on deck, out of a native calabash,
+than go down and eat a civilized meal with a knife and fork in that
+hoky-poky, stuffy little cabin there."
+
+I confess, for myself, I didn't exactly like the look of it.
+Cosmopolitan as I am, I object to fingers as a substitute for spoons. We
+were on board the Royal Hawaiian mail steamer _Liké Liké_, 500 tons
+registered burden, from Honolulu for Hilo, in the island of Hawaii; and
+a quainter group than the natives on deck I'm bound to admit, in all my
+wanderings, by sea or by land, I had never set eyes on. The tiny
+steamer was built in fact on purpose to accommodate all tastes alike,
+be the same savage or civilized. Down stairs was a saloon where regular
+meals in the European fashion were well served by a dusky Polynesian
+steward in a white linen jacket, to such luxurious persons as preferred
+to take them in that orthodox manner. But the unsophisticated natives,
+in their picturesque dress, believing firmly in the truth of the proverb
+that fingers were made before forks, liked better to carry their own
+simple provisions in their baskets with them. They picnicked on deck in
+merry little circles, laughing and talking at the top of their voices
+(when they weren't sea-sick) as they squatted on their mats of woven
+grass round the family taro-bowl. From this common dish, parents and
+children, young men and maidens, fed all alike, each dipping his
+forefinger dexterously into the sticky mess, and then twisting it round,
+as one might twist a lot of half-boiled toffee, till they landed it
+safely with a sudden twirl in their appreciative mouths. "It must be
+awfully good," Frank went on meditatively, eyeing the doubtful mixture
+with a hungry look. "They seem to enjoy it so, or else of course they
+wouldn't lick their fingers! I wish we could strike up a friendship now
+with some of these amiable light-coloured natives, and get them to share
+their lunch with us off-hand. I wonder what they call this precious
+stuff of theirs?"
+
+"We call it taro," one of the nearest group answered, greatly to our
+surprise, in perfectly good and clear English. "Would you like to taste
+some? It's very nice. We shall be delighted if you'll try it. Hawaiians
+are always proud indeed to show any hospitality in their power to
+friendly strangers."
+
+She was a pretty young girl of eighteen who spoke, lighter a good deal
+in complexion than most of the other natives around, and she was seated
+with a tall, dark, serious-looking old Hawaiian at a calabashful of the
+strange pasty mixture the appearance of which had so attracted Frank's
+favourable attention. As she spoke, she moved a little aside to make
+room for us on her mat, as if they were all playing Hunt-the-Slipper;
+and Frank, whose fault, I'm bound to admit, was never shyness, squatted
+down at once, nothing loth, tailor-fashion, on the deck by her side,
+and with many thanks accepted the courteous offer of a dip in the
+taro-bowl.
+
+"Upon my word, Tom," he said, twirling a great dab of the queer-looking
+paste awkwardly into his mouth, "it's first-rate grub when you come to
+taste it. A little sour to be sure, but as good as pancakes. If you're
+going to feed us like this on the islands, sir," he added, turning to
+the stern old man, "I don't think we'll be in any hurry to run away
+again."
+
+"Bring out some more food, Kea," the dark old Hawaiian half whispered to
+the girl politely, in English not quite so good as her own, but still
+very fluent, "and ask the gentleman," with a slight bow towards me, "if
+he won't be good enough to join us in our simple luncheon."
+
+"I shall be only too glad," I answered, immensely surprised, and with
+some qualms of conscience about my unfortunate remark as to the manners
+and customs, which I never expected any native on board to understand.
+"It will be much more pleasant, I'm sure, to take my meals up here on
+deck than to go down to that hot and stuffy little saloon below."
+
+As I seated myself, the girl Kea took up from her side a pretty basket
+of plaited palm-leaves, and produced from it a few pieces of dried fish,
+some cold roast pork, a stick or two of sugar-cane, several fresh
+oranges just picked from the tree, and a tempting display of bananas and
+bread-fruits. Frank and I were old enough sailors and old enough
+travellers to fare sumptuously off such excellent food stuffs; indeed we
+had just arrived in the Islands from San Francisco by the last mail
+steamer, and fresh fruit was a great luxury to us; while after so long a
+voyage on the open Pacific we thought nothing of this pleasant little
+summer cruise between the beautiful members of that volcanic
+archipelago.
+
+A meal together is a capital introduction. In the course of ten minutes
+we were all four of us on excellent terms with one another. Kea had
+introduced to us the dark old man as her Uncle Kalaua, a Hawaiian chief
+of the old stock of some distinction, whose house was remarkable for
+being situated higher up the slopes of the great volcano, Mauna Loa,
+than any other on the entire island. She herself, she let us know by
+casual side-glimpses, was a half-caste by birth, though she hardly
+looked as dark as many Europeans; her mother had been Kalaua's only
+sister, and her father the captain of an English whaling-ship; but both
+were dead, she added with a sigh, and she lived now with her grim old
+uncle near the very summit of the great burning mountain. She told us a
+vast deal about herself, in fact, by way of introduction, with the usual
+frankness of the simple, unsophisticated children of nature, and she
+asked us a lot of questions in return, being anxious to learn, as we
+were neither missionaries, nor whalers, nor sugar-planters, nor
+merchants, what on earth our business could be in Hawaii.
+
+"Well," said I, with a smile of amusement, "you'll think it a very funny
+one indeed when I tell you what it is. We've come to make observations
+on Mauna Loa."
+
+"To make observations!" Kea answered with a faint thrill of solemn awe
+in her hushed voice. "Oh, don't say that. It's--it's so very
+dangerous." And she glanced aside timidly at her uncle.
+
+Kalaua looked up at us quickly with a suspicious glance. "Observations
+on Mauna Loa?" he cried in a very stern tone. "On our great volcano?
+Scientific observations? The man is ill advised in truth who tries to go
+poking and prying too much about Mauna Loa!"
+
+"Oh, you needn't be afraid," Frank answered laughing; "need they, Tom?
+It's not by any means our first experience of eruptions. My brother's an
+awful dab at volcanoes, you know. He's seen dozens; and he's been sent
+out to examine this one in particular by the British Association for the
+Advancement of Science. I'm his assistant-examiner, without salary.
+Sounds awfully grand that, doesn't it? But we mean to have a jolly lark
+in Hawaii for all that. Expenses paid, and all found; and nothing to do
+but to go down the crater and look about us. We expect to have a
+splendid time. There's nothing I love like a really good volcano."
+
+But in spite of Frank's enthusiastic way of looking at the matter I
+could see at a glance that the mention of our object in visiting Hawaii
+had cast a shade of gloom at once over both Kea and her uncle. The old
+man seemed to grow moody and sullen; Kea was rather grieved and
+saddened. The rest of our meal passed off less pleasantly. It was not
+till we began to chew green sugar-cane together by way of dessert, that
+Kea's spirits at all returned. She laughed and talked then once more
+with native good-humour, showing us how to strip and peel the fresh
+cane, and making fun of us merrily because in our English awkwardness we
+got pieces of the fibre wedged hopelessly in between our front teeth.
+Yet even so I couldn't help suspecting that something was weighing upon
+her mind a little. Evidently they were either hurt or distressed that we
+should think of scientifically observing Mauna Loa. I wondered much
+whether they held the mountain too sacred a thing for inquisitive
+science to poke its nose into, or whether they only considered it too
+dangerous a crater for the bold explorer to meddle with carelessly. If
+it was merely the last, I didn't much mind. Frank and I were thoroughly
+at home with nasty-tempered volcanoes, and knew their tricks and their
+manners down to the ground far too well to be in the least afraid of
+them. I had been engaged in studying their manifestations indeed for the
+last six years; and Frank, who was born to face danger, had joined me in
+all my expeditions and explorations ever since he'd been big enough to
+carry a knapsack.
+
+In the course of the afternoon however I happened to be standing with
+pretty little Kea near the bow of the steamer, while her uncle was
+slowly pacing the quarterdeck, immersed in conversation with a Hawaiian
+acquaintance. She was a graceful young girl, with a wreath of yellow
+flowers twined, Pacific fashion, round her broad straw hat, and another
+garland of crimson hibiscus thrown lightly like a scarf like one
+well-shaped shoulder. She glanced timidly round to see if Kalaua was
+well out of earshot; then, seeing herself safe, she said to me in a low,
+half-whispered voice, "If I were you, Mr. Hesselgrave, I'd give up the
+idea of exploring Mauna Loa."
+
+"Give it up!" I cried. "Why, really, you know, that would be quite
+impossible! I've come all the way from England on purpose to visit it.
+Is the mountain so very dangerous then?"
+
+[Illustration: "IT'S MORE THAN DANGEROUS, IT'S ALMOST CERTAINLY FATAL."]
+
+Kea's voice dropped a tone lower still. "It's more than dangerous," she
+said very nervously. "It's almost certainly fatal."
+
+"How so?" I asked. I was not easily frightened.
+
+She hesitated a moment. Then she answered with a pained and
+half-terrified air, "Nobody in Hawaii will give you any assistance."
+
+"Why not?" I inquired. "Are they all so dreadfully afraid of the
+volcano?"
+
+"Not of the volcano," Kea replied with evident awe in her tone, "but of
+Pélé, of Pélé.----I suppose you've never even heard about Pélé, though!"
+
+"Never!" I repeated, laughing unconcernedly. "Enlighten my darkness. Who
+is he, or what is it?"
+
+"It's neither _he_ nor _it_," the Hawaiian girl answered in a hushed
+voice. "It's _she_, if it's anybody. Pélé's the goddess who lives, as
+our people used once to believe, in a fiery cave at the bottom of Mauna
+Loa!"
+
+"Nonsense!" I replied, amused at the girl's apparent superstition. "I
+thought you were all converted here long ago. You don't mean to say your
+people go on believing still in such childish nonsense as gods and
+goddesses?"
+
+Kea's voice sank lower than ever, and she glanced around her with a
+frightened little gaze. "We don't _worship_ them, you know," she
+answered apologetically, under her breath almost; "but we can't help
+believing there's somebody there, of course, some super-natural being,
+when we hear Pélé groaning and moaning and sobbing in the dead of night,
+or see her casting up huge red-hot stones and showers of lava, whenever
+she's angry." She paused a moment: then she added mysteriously in a
+solemn undertone. "There must be something in it. My father knew that.
+He was one of the bravest and most skilful whalers in the whole Pacific,
+and he always said there was something in it."
+
+I hadn't the heart to answer her back. I didn't consider the captain of
+a whaling ship a conclusive authority on such a point of science; but I
+couldn't bear to interfere with the poor girl's touching belief in her
+dead father's supreme wisdom; so I abstained humanely from adverse
+criticism. "And your uncle?" I asked after a brief interval.
+
+Kea seemed almost terrified at the question. "My uncle," she said, in a
+shuffling way, "knows one thing well--that, according to the firm
+tradition of our ancestors, if the White Man's Foot ever treads the
+inner floor of Pélé's home, the White Man himself must foil a victim
+that day to the anger of the goddess. It may be true, or it may be
+false: but at any rate, that was what our fathers told us."
+
+I laughed again. She was so absurdly and profoundly in earnest about it
+all. "In that case." I said with a little bow, "I may as well make my
+will at once, and leave my property to my nearest relations, for it's
+all up with me. I mean to explore the crater myself, and, I need hardly
+tell you, Frank will accompany me. We'll call in some morning at the
+front door, and drop a card on this terrible Pélé. I hope the lady will
+have the politeness to be at home to receive visitors."
+
+The girl shuddered. "Hush," she cried, with a terrified face. "Don't
+talk like that. Don't talk any more about the matter at all. You don't
+know what you're saying. My uncle is coming. I wouldn't for worlds he
+should overhear us. We don't believe in Pélé any longer, of course. But
+I hope for all that you'll never try to explore the crater."
+
+At that very moment the old chief Kalaua, who had long been deeply
+immersed in talk with his friend at the stern, apparently discussing
+some serious subject, strolled up and joined us. He bowed once more as
+he approached, with the strange old savage Hawaiian politeness; for in
+courtesy of manner these Pacific Islanders could give points to most
+educated Englishmen. "I was thinking," he said, withdrawing his cigar
+and addressing me, "that if you and your brother really want to make
+explorations in Mauna Loa you couldn't do better than come up and stop
+at my house on the top of the mountain. It's nearest the summit of any
+in the island, and it would be a convenient place for you always to
+start from on your exploring expeditions. You'd save the long ride up
+the slopes. May I venture to offer you the hospitality of a humble
+Hawaiian roof? It's a nice warm house, European built--it was put up by
+my English brother-in-law, Kea's father; and I think we could manage to
+make you as comfortable as anybody in Hawaii. Is it agreed? What say
+you?"
+
+"You would allow me to pay for our board and lodging, of course?" I
+answered interrogatively. "Otherwise I mustn't trespass so far as that
+on your kind indulgence."
+
+The old native drew himself up at once with offended dignity. "I'm a
+chief," he replied with quiet emphasis. "The blood of the great
+Kamehameha the First flows in my veins. When I ask you to my house, I
+ask you as my guest. Don't offend me, I beg of you, by offering me
+money!"
+
+I felt I had really hurt the old chief's pride and wounded his feelings,
+so I hastened to apologize with the best expressions I could summon up,
+and to protest that I hadn't the remotest intention of slighting in any
+way his generous offer. "In England," I continued, "we are not
+accustomed to be received by perfect strangers in such a princely style
+of open-handed hospitality."
+
+Kalaua bowed. "It is well," he answered with stately dignity. "Come to
+my house, and you shall have all that my house affords freely. May we
+expect you to stop with us then? It will give myself and my niece the
+greatest pleasure in life, I assure you, to receive you."
+
+Kea from behind framed her lips, to my surprise, into an emphatic "No."
+I saw it and smiled. She uttered no sound, but the old man seemed
+instinctively to recognize the fact that she was making signs to me. He
+turned round, half-angrily, though with perfect composure, and said
+something to her in Hawaiian, which I did not then fully understand,
+though I had been studying the language hard, with dictionary and
+grammar, all the way out on my voyage from England. Kea looked
+frightened and held her tongue at once. The old chief glanced back at me
+for a decisive answer. In spite of Kea's warning I thought the
+opportunity too good to be missed. "I shall be delighted," I answered
+with my warmest manner. "I'm sure it's most kind of you. How can I
+thank you enough? I had no idea you Hawaiians were so generously
+hospitable."
+
+When I told Frank of it that young rascal remarked with a solemn grin,
+"Of course they're hospitable! Why, didn't they take in Captain Cook,
+and roast him and eat him, they were so very fond of him? I expect
+that's what this sober old fellow of yours means to do with us. He'll
+give a dinner-party in our honour when we get there, no doubt, and you
+and I will be the joints for the occasion. That's the Pacific way of
+welcoming a stranger."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+"When we reached Hilo, I went ashore in a boat through the dangerous
+surf, and before arranging to go up the mountain with my host and his
+niece, I called first on an English merchant in the little palm-girt
+town, to whom we had letters of introduction from friends in Liverpool.
+
+"Going to stop with Kalaua, eh?" the merchant said, as soon as we had
+named our particular business. "A very good house, too! You couldn't do
+better. Quite close to the very mouth of the crater, and right in the
+track of the great red-hot lava streams. You'll see Pélé kicking up a
+shindy there simply to perfection. Her majesty's been getting precious
+uneasy of late--rumbling and growling I shouldn't be surprised if
+you're just in the nick of time for a first-rate eruption."
+
+"And what sort of person is my host?" I asked curiously. "He seems a
+very stern, old-fashioned cannibal."
+
+Our new acquaintance laughed. "You may well say that," he answered
+smiling. "In the good old days--or the bad old days, whichever of the
+two you prefer to call them--you pays your money and you takes your
+choice--Kalaua, they say, was the hereditary priest of that grim
+goddess, Pélé. His house was built on the highest habitable point of the
+mountain where Pélé dwells, that he might be close at hand to appease
+the angry spirit of the great crater whenever she began to pour down
+lava over the banana-grounds and cocoanut plantations at the foot of the
+volcano. Many a fat pig, and many a basketful of prime taro that
+hard-looking old man has offered up in his time to Pélé--ay, and I dare
+say many a human victim, too, if we only knew it. But all that's over
+long ago, thank goodness. He's a Christian now, of course, like all the
+rest of them; a very respectable old fellow in his way, with a keen eye
+of his own to business, and a thorough comprehension of the state of the
+sugar market. He keeps a good house. You've fallen on your feet, I can
+tell you, for Hawaii, if you've got an invitation to stop for an
+indefinite time as a guest at Kalaua's."
+
+I was glad to hear we had happened by chance upon such comfortable
+quarters.
+
+We slept that night at a little Hawaiian inn at Hilo, where we dined
+most sumptuously off roast pig and baked plantains; and at six next
+morning, Kalaua himself wakened us up to start on our long ride up the
+great lone mountain.
+
+When we sallied forth, four sure-footed ponies stood saddled at the
+door, and Kalaua, Kea, Frank, and myself, mounting our careering steeds
+(only they didn't career), began our ascent to the cloud-capped summit.
+Mauna Loa, that bald cone, is almost as high as any peak in the Alps,
+rising some 14,000 feet above sea level; but the ascent over the lava
+plains is gentle and gradual, and the top, in this warm and delicious
+climate, still remains far below the level of perpetual snow.
+Nevertheless it is a long and tedious ride, some thirty miles, from Hilo
+to the top; and our sure-footed little ponies clambered slowly on,
+planting their hoofs with the utmost deliberation on the treacherous
+surface of the rugged and honey-combed masses of lava. Frank and I were
+both quite tired out with their camel-like pace when we reached the
+summit. Kea and Kalaua, more accustomed to the ascent, were as fresh as
+daisies, and Kea, in particular, laughed and talked incessantly, though
+I fancied, she was ill at ease somehow, in spite of all her apparent
+merriment.
+
+At last, after crossing a wide expanse of broken blocks of black basalt,
+as big as the largest squares of freestone used in architecture, and
+then sliding and gliding over a hideous expanse of slippery, smooth
+lava, like ice for glassiness, we pulled up, wearied, at a house built
+close on the very summit, European or rather American, in its style and
+arrangements, but comfortable and even wealthy-looking in all its
+appointments. It was composed of solid volcanic stone, cut into large
+square masses, and round it ran a pleasant wooden verandah, with
+rocking-chairs temptingly displayed in a row under its broad canopy. An
+oleander blossomed profusely by the side, and tropical creepers of
+wonderful beauty festooned the posts and balconies with their hanging
+verdure and their trumpet-shaped flower-bells.
+
+"Come in," Kea cried, leaping down with ease from her mountain pony,
+which a native boy seized at once and took away to the stables. "Come
+in, and make yourselves at home in our house. Dinner will be ready in
+twenty minutes."
+
+"I should hope so," Frank answered, with his free-and-easy manner; "for
+I'm free to confess I want my grub awfully after such a long ride. And
+then I shall go out and inspect this precious volcano we hear so much
+about."
+
+Kalaua's brow darkened somewhat, as if he didn't like to hear Mauna Loa
+so cavalierly described, and he murmured a few words in Hawaiian to Kea,
+in which I could only catch the name of Pélé, repeated very earnestly
+several times over.
+
+The house was large, roomy, and well furnished, with bamboo chairs and
+neat native bedsteads; and the dinner, to which Frank at least did full
+justice, seemed to promise well for our future treatment under the old
+chief's hospitable roof. Kalaua himself grew somewhat less grim, too, as
+the meal progressed. Nothing thaws the soul like dinner. He warmed by
+degrees, and told us several amusing stories of the old heathen days,
+delighting Frank's heart by narrating, in glowing language, how, in his
+youth, he had charged, a naked warrior at the head of his naked troops,
+when Kamehameha the Second attacked the island. Frank was charmed to
+find himself so nearly face to face with aboriginal savagery. "And what
+did you do with the prisoners?" he asked inauspiciously.
+
+The old man smiled a grimly terrible smile. "The less said about the
+prisoners the better," he answered at last, with some faint show of
+conventional reluctance. "Remember, we were heathens then, and knew no
+better. The English have come since and taught us our duty. We no longer
+fight; we are civilized now; we buy horses, and cultivate yam and
+bread-fruit and sugar-cane." And he helped himself as he spoke to
+another piece of fresh ginger.
+
+I don't think Frank quite saw what he meant; but I confess a shudder
+passed through my own frame as I realized exactly what the old chief was
+driving at. It was strange to stand so very close to the lowest
+barbarism known to humanity. They had eaten the prisoners.
+
+After dinner we strolled out, in the beautiful, clear, tropical evening,
+to the edge of the crater. Accustomed as I was to volcanoes everywhere,
+I never beheld a more grand or beautiful sight than that first glimpse
+of Mauna Loa in all its glory. We looked over the edge of the great ring
+of basalt, and saw below us, down three successive ledges of rock,
+seething and tossing, a vast and liquid sea of fire. Here and there the
+lava boiled and bubbled into huge, inflated, balloon-like crests; here
+and there it rose into monstrous black stacks and irregular chimneys,
+from whose fiery mouths belched forth great columns of red flame,
+interspersed with dark wreaths of smoke and sulphur. It was the wildest,
+noblest, and most awful volcano I had ever yet visited--and my
+acquaintance with the family was by no means superficial. Frank stood
+aghast with awe and wonder for a moment by my side. "Why, Vesuvius is
+nothing to it!" he cried, astonished, "and Etna's just nowhere in the
+matter of craters! I say, Tom, how I should love to see it in a good
+tip-top blazing eruption!"
+
+As he spoke Kea, who had come out with us, clad from head to foot in her
+simple, long Hawaiian robe, gazed steadily over the brink, and looked
+down with a familiar glance into the gigantic crater. For a minute or
+two she kept her eyes fixed on a certain jagged peak or furnace of lava,
+round whose base the sea of liquid fire was surging and falling, like
+water in a saucepan on a kitchen stove. At last she broke out into
+sudden surprise, "Why, it's rising!" she cried breathlessly. "It's
+rising! It's rising!"
+
+"How jolly!" Frank called out from a few yards down, where he had
+clambered to get a better view of the inner crater. "I hope that fellow
+in the town was right after all, and that we're going to come in at the
+very right point for a regular good eruptive outburst!"
+
+Kea's face grew pale with terror. "You are," she answered, "I can see it
+rise. The bubbles are bursting; the steam's crackling. It always does so
+before it begins to flow out upon the slopes of the mountain."
+
+She was quite right. It was clearly rising. I was overjoyed. Nothing
+could have happened more neatly or opportunely for the interests of
+science. Our arrival at Mauna Loa seemed to prove, as it were, the
+signal for the mountain to burst out at once into full activity. We were
+in luck's way. We had come on the very eve of an eruption.
+
+Kea ran down to fetch her uncle. The old man came up, and peered over
+cautiously into the depths of the crater. Then he called aloud in
+Hawaiian to his trembling niece. I couldn't catch all the words he said,
+but I caught one sentence twice repeated, "Pélé ké loa," and a single
+word that recurred over and over again in his frantic outbursts,
+"Areoi," "Areoi."
+
+I had brought my Hawaiian-English pocket dictionary with me from Hilo,
+and I turned up the words in their places one by one, to see if I could
+understand them. To my great surprise I found I had heard them quite
+aright; it's so hard to catch any part of an unknown language when
+rapidly spoken between natives. "Pélé ké loa," I discovered, meant in
+English, "Pélé is angry," and "areoi" was defined by my book as "a
+stranger, a foreigner, especially a white man, a European or American."
+
+We stood long on the brink of the crater and watched it rising slowly
+before our very eyes. Kea pointed out to us with demonstrative finger
+the various floors or ledges on the inner wall. "That first," she said
+with an awestruck face, "is the Floor of the Strangers; as far as that
+everybody may go; it is as it were the mere threshold, or outer
+vestibule, of the volcano. The second, that you see further down below,
+in the dark glare, is the Floor of the Hawaiians; as far as that, by the
+rule of our fathers, only natives may dare to penetrate. If a white
+man's foot ever treads that floor, our people used to say, Pélé will
+surely claim him for her victim. The third, that you can just
+distinguish down there in the bright light, where the fiery lava is
+this moment rising--that's the Floor of Pélé: none but the priests of
+Pélé might venture in the old days to tread its precincts. If any other
+man or woman were to dream of descending upon it, in the twinkling of an
+eye, like a feather in the flame, our fathers said, Pélé would surely
+shrivel him to ashes."
+
+"And you believe all that nonsense?" I cried incredulously.
+
+Kea turned towards me with a very grave face. "It isn't nonsense," she
+answered, in her most serious manner. "It's perfectly true. As true as
+anything. Of course I don't believe the superstition, but whoever falls
+into that third abyss is burnt to a cinder before aid can arrive, by the
+wrath of the volcano."
+
+"I dare say," I answered carelessly. "It looks quite hot enough to
+frizzle up anything. Whoever falls into an ordinary blast furnace (if it
+comes to that) is burnt to a cinder before aid can arrive, by the
+unconscious wrath of the molten metal."
+
+"Don't talk so!" Kea cried, with a terrified face. "You distress me. You
+frighten me."
+
+The volcano meanwhile rose faster and faster. The gray evening began to
+close in. A deep red glow spread over the open mouth of the crater. The
+clouds above reflected and repeated the lurid light. Every moment the
+glare grew deeper and yet deeper. As night came on, it seemed to rain
+fire. I saw at once that we were in for a good thing. We had hit on the
+exact moment of a first-class eruption.
+
+A more awful or grander night than that I never remember. I'm a
+scientific man, and my business is to watch and report upon volcanoes;
+but that night, I confess, was every bit as hot as I care to have it.
+Anything hotter than that, indeed, would fry one like a herring. By nine
+o'clock, the mountain was in full glare; by ten, it was pouring out red
+fragments of stone and showers of ashes; by eleven, a stream of white
+glowing lava was pushing its way in one desolating flood down the
+ravines on the southern slope of the mountain. Before the final
+outburst, light curling wreaths of vapour ascended from fissures in the
+wall of the crater, and hung like a huge umbrella over the mountain top.
+The red glare, reflected from this strange cloud-like canopy, gave the
+whole scene for many miles around the appearance of being lighted up by
+giants at play with some vast and colossal Bengal fires. We looked on
+awestruck. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, a sound reached
+our ears, a terrific sound, as of ten thousand engines blowing off
+steam; and all at once a great body of gas was ejected into the air, in
+a blaze of light, while huge fragments of rock were hurled violently
+upward, only to fall again in fiery heat upon the naked slopes of the
+cone and shoulders. All night long we were positively bombarded with
+these aërial shells; they fell in thousands round us on every side,
+though fortunately none of them happened to touch either the house
+itself or any one of its inhabitants.
+
+Not a living soul remained upon the spot save Frank and myself, and Kea
+and her uncle. All the rest of the natives fled headlong down in wild
+panic and terror to the sea at Hilo.
+
+A man of science, however, like a soldier on the battle-field, must know
+how to take his life in his hand. I got out my pencil, my sketch-book
+and my colours, and, true to the orders of the Association in whose
+interest I was travelling, I endeavoured to reproduce, as well as I
+could, in a spirited sketch, the whole awful scene as it unfolded itself
+in vivid hues before us. Frank, who is certainly the most intrepid boy
+of my acquaintance, ably seconded me in my difficult task. Kea looked on
+at us in speechless amazement. "Aren't you afraid?" she asked at last,
+in a hushed voice.
+
+[Illustration: "ALL AT ONCE A GREAT BODY OF GAS WAS EJECTED INTO THE
+AIR, IN A BLAZE OF LIGHT."]
+
+"Yes," I answered boldly, telling the plain truth, "if you will allow me
+to say so, I'm very much afraid indeed. But I'm a man of science; I've
+got to do it; and I shall do it still till the lava comes down and
+drives us away bodily. And you? Aren't you afraid, too, of the stones
+and ashes?"
+
+"No," she replied, though her tone belied her. "The eruptions never hurt
+my uncle nor me. You see, he's been accustomed to them from his
+childhood upward. In the old days, he was taught to think he was under
+Pélé's protection."
+
+Frank looked up, imperturbable as ever. "For my part," he said, tossing
+the curls from his forehead, "I'm not a man of science, like Tom, you
+know; and I'm not under the protection of a heathen goddess, like you
+and your uncle, Kea; but I call it the grandest set of fireworks I ever
+saw in all my life--beats the Crystal Palace hollow--and I wouldn't have
+missed it for fifty pounds, I can tell you."
+
+As for Kalaua, he stood sombre, alone, with folded arms and
+tight-pressed lips, looking down unmoved into the depths of the crater.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+All night long we remained outside on the platform of the summit,
+watching and sketching that terrific convulsion. The mountain poured
+forth endless floods of lava. Heaven and earth were lighted up with its
+awful glow. Kalaua stood by us still, erect and grim, like one conscious
+that the fiery hail and the red-hot boulders had no terrors for him, and
+could not harm him. Kea, pale and tremulous, yet too brave at heart to
+flinch ever so, crouched by his side, too awestruck to speak in mute
+expectation. Frank alone seemed undisturbed by the appalling commotion
+going on around him. Boy enough to feel nothing of the terror of the
+moment, he was simply excited by the grandeur and magnificence of that
+wonderful pyrotechnic display. "It's the jolliest sight I ever saw,
+Tom," he exclaimed with delight more than once during the evening. "Why,
+to live here would be almost as good as to have a season-ticket all the
+year round for all the _fętes_ and gala-days in England!"
+
+By morning however the eruption slackened; the internal fires had worn
+themselves out. "Pélé has grown tired of kicking up such a rumpus,"
+Frank remarked cheerfully; and as he himself was tired of watching her,
+too, he proposed we should go in and rest ourselves a little after our
+arduous labours. Indeed, the lava was now almost ceasing to flow, and
+the bombardment of pumice-stone and fiery cinders had intermitted a
+little. We returned to the house, and flung ourselves down on our beds
+in the clothes we wore, too fatigued after our long and sleepless watch
+to trouble ourselves with the needless bother of undressing. When you've
+sat up all night observing an eruption, you don't much care about such
+luxuries of an advanced civilization as nightshirts. Before we retired
+however Kea brought us in a big bowl of fresh taro-paste, and on this
+simple food we made a most excellent and substantial breakfast. In ten
+minutes we were snoring so hard on our bamboo beds that I don't believe
+even another eruption would have roused us up, if it had thundered at
+our doors with one of its monstrous subterranean boulders.
+
+It was five in the evening before we woke again. Frank stretched himself
+with a yawn. "I don't know how _you_ feel, Tom," he cried as he jumped
+out of bed, "but _I_ feel as if that extinct instrument, the rack, had
+been invented over again for my special benefit. There's not a bone in
+my body that isn't aching."
+
+"What does that matter," I answered, "if science is satisfied? I've got
+the very finest sketch of a first-class eruption that ever was taken
+since seismology became a separate study."
+
+"Bother seismology!" Frank exclaimed with a snort. "What a jolly long
+word for such a simple thing! As if one couldn't say straight out,
+earthquakes. For my part, what I want satisfied isn't science at all,
+but an internal yearning for some breakfast or some supper, whichever
+you choose to call it."
+
+The supper was soon upon the board (for by this time the native servants
+had returned), and as soon as it was finished, we sallied forth, all
+four together, to inspect the changes wrought in the mountain by last
+night's events. The effects of the eruption were indeed prodigious.
+Great streams of fresh lava still lay dull and half-hot along the
+fertile valleys of the mountain side; and the ground about the house was
+strewn thick and deep with a white coat of powdery ashes. "This is
+splendid!" I said. "I shall have my work cut out for me now for several
+weeks. Nobody had ever a better chance afforded him of observing in
+detail the effects of a great volcanic effort."
+
+Kalaua glanced grimly across at me as I spoke. "I wonder," he murmured,
+with a sort of sphinx-like sardonic smile, "you have escaped so safe to
+observe and report upon them."
+
+"Ah, you see, chief," Frank answered carelessly, "he was under your
+protection. Pélé wouldn't hurt us, you know, as we were guests of a
+friend of hers. That was awfully nice of her. She's a perfect lady, as
+volcanoes go. I call her a most polite and obliging goddess."
+
+Kalaua turned away with a half angry look. It was clear that, converted
+or unconverted, he considered the terrible deity of his fathers no
+proper subject for light chaff or jesting.
+
+We spent the next six weeks pleasantly enough in the old man's house,
+observing and making notes upon the curious facts connected with the
+crater and its recent outbreak. I will not narrate my results here at
+full for fear of boring you--the more so, as I have already devoted two
+large volumes to the subject in the British Association _Reports_,
+Manchester Meeting. It will be enough for the present to mention that
+Frank and I thoroughly explored the whole top of the crater, as far as
+the first floor, which Kea had described to us as the Floor of the
+Strangers. We measured and mapped it out in every direction with
+theodolite and chain, and we made numerous interesting, and, I venture
+to add, important observations upon the most disputed points in the
+phenomena of eruptions. We knew our way about the Floor of the
+Strangers, in fact, as well as we knew our way down from our own home at
+Hampstead Heath to Charing Cross Station. Kalaua and Kea were surprised
+to find how accurately we had learnt the whole geography of the
+district; and Kalaua in particular seemed far from pleased at our
+perfect familiarity with the mountain and its ways, though he was much
+too polite ever to say so openly, holding his peace on the matter, at
+least to our faces, with true antique Hawaiian courtesy. For bland
+courtesy of demeanour, commend me to a cannibal.
+
+One morning however about six weeks after our first arrival, I had
+occasion to send Frank by himself down to Hilo, on one of the
+sure-footed little mountain ponies, to fetch up some ropes and other
+articles we needed for our exploration from the stores in the town; and
+I said good-bye to him just outside the house, where Kalaua was seated,
+smoking a cigarette, and wrapped up as usual in his own stern and sombre
+reveries.
+
+"Good-bye, old fellow,"' Frank cried in farewell, as he mounted his
+horse and cantered gaily off. "Mind you take care of yourself while I'm
+away. Give the crater a wide berth. Don't try to go exploring any
+further without me!"
+
+"All right," I shouted back. "I won't get into mischief. Trust me for
+saving my own skin. I shall just potter about a bit to amuse myself
+alone on the outer edge of the Floor of the Strangers."
+
+"What do you want the rope for?" Kalaua asked moodily, looking up from
+his cigarette as Frank rode away. "Better not go trusting yourself with
+any rope too far in the crater of Mauna Loa."
+
+"I'm not afraid," I answered, with a short little laugh. "I want the
+rope to let myself down to the lower levels."
+
+"What, the Floor of the Hawaiians?" the old chief cried with flashing
+eyes.
+
+"Well, yes," I answered; "that first, of course, and then, after that,
+the Floor of Pélé."
+
+If I had dropped a bomb-shell right in front of his house, the stern old
+chief could not have looked that moment more appalled and horrified.
+"Young man," he cried, rising hastily to his feet and standing like a
+messenger of fate before me, "I warn you not to trifle with the burning
+mountain. Tread the Floor of the Strangers as much as you like, but the
+lower ledges of the crater are very dangerous. You're my guest, and I
+advise you. For unskilled feet to approach those levels is almost
+certain death. In the dark old days when we were all heathen, we used to
+say in our folly that the wrath of Pélé would burn you up like a leaf if
+you ventured to touch them. We no longer say that: we know better now.
+But we still say to all who would tamper with them that the mouth of the
+crater is most treacherous and perilous."
+
+"Oh," I answered lightly, turning on my heel, "don't trouble for me. I'm
+accustomed to volcanoes. I don't object I think no more of them than a
+sailor thinks of chapters of a storm at sea. Let them boil and seethe
+as much as they like. They're nothing after all, when a fellow's used to
+them."
+
+[Illustration: "'YOUNG MAN,' HE CRIED, '...I WARN YOU NOT TO TRIFLE WITH
+THE BURNING MOUNTAIN.'"]
+
+The old man answered me never a word. He rose, and with a gesture of
+solemn dissent wrapped his native cloak severely round him; then he
+walked in grim and gloomy silence back by himself into his own chamber.
+
+As for me, I strolled off quietly, sketch-book in hand, up to the broken
+brink of the great crater. I had nothing in particular to do that
+morning, having in fact by this time quite exhausted the first ledge or
+Floor of the Strangers: and I could accomplish no work, now I had
+finished there, till Frank returned from town with the rope to lower us
+down to the Floor of the Hawaiians, the next ledge that I thought of
+mapping. So I sat myself down on a jagged peak of hardened cinders,
+cemented together by molten volcanic matter, and began in a lazy, idle,
+half-sleepy kind of way to sketch a distant point of the interior
+crater.
+
+I had sat there listlessly, sketching and musing, for about twenty
+minutes, when I saw a sight I can never resist. A beautiful butterfly,
+of a species quite new to me, attracted my attention on the side of the
+crater-wall over which my legs were carelessly dangling. Now, though I
+am by trade (saving your presence) a seismologist and vulcanologist--no
+offence meant by those awesome words--I've always had a sneaking
+kindness in an underhand way for other departments of natural science,
+especially zoology; and a new butterfly, with a red spot on its tail, is
+a severe temptation that my utmost philosophy can never induce me to
+disregard under any circumstances. There are some scientific men, I
+know, who seem to think science ought to be made as dull and as dry and
+as fusty as possible: for my own part, I never could take that eminently
+correct and respectable view: I like my science as amusing as I can get
+it, with a considerable spice of adventure thrown in; and I prefer
+specimen-hunting among the Pacific Islands to name-hunting among the
+prodigiously learned and stupid memoirs of the British Museum. Between
+ourselves, too (but I wouldn't like this to reach the ears of the Royal
+Society), I regard a man as much more useful to science when engaged in
+catching birds or insects in the Malay Archipelago or the African
+mountains than when inventing names for them out of his own head in a
+fusty, dusty, musty room in the museum at South Kensington. Have the
+kindness to keep this dark however if you ever go to a British
+Association Meeting: for if it reached the ears of the Committee, they
+might think me an unfit person to entrust with any further volcanic
+investigations.
+
+Well, my butterfly was resting, poised like a statue, on a pretty
+flowering plant that grew out of a cranny in the sheer wall of rock, a
+yard or two below the precise point where I was then sitting. Said I to
+myself, with an eager dart forward, "I shall nab that specimen;" and
+laying aside my pencil and drawing-pad at once, I proceeded forthwith,
+at the top of my speed, incontinently to nab him.
+
+It was with great difficulty however that I clambered down the side of
+the crag, for the lava just there was porous and bubbly. It crumbled and
+broke like thin ice under my feet; and wherever I thought I had just
+secured myself a firm foothold it gave way after a moment, bit by bit,
+with the force of my pressure. Nevertheless I managed somehow, to my
+great delight, to reach the plant that sprouted from the cranny without
+at all disturbing my friend the butterfly, who, engrossed on his dinner,
+was hardly expecting an attack from the rear; and clapping my hand upon
+him before he could say Jack Robinson, I popped him, triumphant, into my
+pocket collecting case. Then, with a light heart, and the proud
+consciousness of a duty performed, I turned once more to climb up the
+cliff again.
+
+But that, I found, was by no means so easy a matter as descending. I had
+got down partly by the mean and illegitimate device of letting my feet
+slide; to get back I must somehow secure a firm and certain foothold in
+the loose lava. To my surprise and horror there was none to be found.
+The soft and creamy pumice-stone seemed nowhere to afford a single solid
+point of support. I struggled in vain to recover my balance; at last, to
+my dismay, I stumbled and fell--fell, as I feared, towards the Floor of
+the Hawaiians, that yawned a full hundred and twenty feet of sheer depth
+in the crater below me. With a wild lunge I clutched for support at the
+plant in the cranny. It broke short in my hand, and my one chance gone,
+I rolled down rapidly to the very bottom. I didn't exactly tumble down
+the entire sheer height in a single fall; if I had I shouldn't be here
+to tell you. I broke the force of the descent somewhat by digging my
+hands and feet with frantic efforts into the loose wall of rotten lava.
+But before I could realize precisely what was happening I lost my head.
+The world reeled round me; my eyes closed. Next moment I was aware of a
+horrid thud, and a fierce blow against some hard surface. I knew then
+just where I had landed. I had fallen or rolled by stages the whole way
+down the crag, and was lying on my side on the Floor of the Hawaiians!
+
+[Illustration: "I ROLLED DOWN RAPIDLY TO THE VERY BOTTOM."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+My first thought, as I lay half-stunned and almost unconscious upon that
+naked bed of hard black rock, was that at any rate I had caught and
+fairly boxed my butterfly. My second, a much less agreeable one to
+encounter, was that I had certainly broken my leg in my full to the
+bottom.
+
+I was conscious, in fact, of a dull but very deep-seated pain in my
+right thigh. I tried to move it. The agony was intense. It threw me back
+into my momentary faint again. For a minute or two I could hardly
+realize my position. Then it slowly came home to me by gradual stages
+that I was lying helpless, with a broken leg, unseen and unattended, on
+the Floor of the Hawaiians, a hundred and twenty feet down the gap of
+the crater.
+
+Would anybody come to help me? I wondered. That was more than doubtful.
+As a rule, the whole day passed on those lonely heights without anybody
+approaching the mouth of the volcano, let alone climbing down by the
+zig-zag path into the floor above me. Kalaua's household were the sole
+frequenters of that solitary spot. However, Frank would at least be back
+from Hilo by six o'clock, or thereabouts, and then he would be sure to
+come up and look for me, when he missed me from my accustomed place on
+the verandah. I took out my watch, in order to see how long I might have
+to lie there in frightful pain, waiting for my brother's return to save
+me. We had learnt early rising with a vengeance since we came to the
+islands--breakfast at Kalaua's was at six sharp--to my horror, I found
+it was even now only half-past seven!
+
+More than ten weary, dreary hours to watch and wait, with my broken leg,
+in that dismal crater!
+
+It was an unpleasant outlook. I gazed around and tried to take in the
+situation.
+
+Above me, a steep black wall of granite rose sheer and straight towards
+the open heaven. Below me, I could hear, though I could not see, the
+lake of liquid fire hissing and bubbling with horrible noises in its
+eternal cauldron. Around, the floor was composed of solid dark green
+obsidian, as hard and transparent and sharp as bottle-glass. I must lie
+as best I could, on my uneasy bed, and brave it out for ten hours
+somehow.
+
+Fortunately, I soon discovered that as long as I lay quite still, the
+pain of my leg was comparatively trifling. It was only when I moved or
+stirred restlessly that it hurt me much, and then, the agony was enough
+to drive one frantic. I laid down my watch, to mark the time, on the
+rock in front of me. Happily, being a good naval chronometer, it had not
+been injured in the shock of my fall. I had nothing to do now but to
+count the hours till Frank could come up and relieve me at last from my
+awkward and even dangerous situation.
+
+Ten hours is a very long time, with a broken leg, in the crater of Mauna
+Loa.
+
+The floor of the ledge, I observed, as I gazed around, was covered with
+long strings of dark thread-like lava--as thin and delicate as a
+spun-glass tissue. These strings are a well-known product of the
+volcanic action of Mauna Loa, and the natives call them "Pélé's hair."
+They look upon them as the veritable tresses of the goddess. Having
+nothing else to do, I picked some up and examined it closely. No wonder
+the superstitious old Hawaiians took it in their time for the actual
+combings of their dread goddess's hair! I never in my life saw anything
+so exactly resembling human locks, at a first rough glance: and I was
+not surprised that even Kea herself should regard it as a token of the
+presence of that mysterious being who dwelt, as she still half believed,
+all alone among the eternal fires of the great crater.
+
+Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock, passed, and I began by that
+time to get most unfeignedly weary of my enforced imprisonment. It was
+impossible to lie in one position all the time; and whenever I turned,
+or even moved, my leg gave me the most excruciating jerks of pain and
+agony. I was heartily sick now of the crater and all that belonged to
+it. What on earth, I thought, made me ever take to such a trade as
+vulcanology? I said to myself more than once in my despair that
+henceforth I'd give up volcanoes for ever, and go in for some safe and
+honest trade--like a light-house-man's or an inspector of mines--for a
+livelihood.
+
+About half-past ten however, as I lay half dozing with fatigue and pain,
+an incident occurred which broke the monotony of the situation: my
+attention was suddenly and vividly aroused by a noise that sounded like
+the report of a pistol.
+
+What on earth could it be? I raised myself on my arms and gazed all
+round. The crater of Mauna Loa was a queer place indeed for even the
+most enthusiastic sportsman to come shooting in. The only game he could
+expect to find in such a spot would be surely salamanders. But firing
+was without doubt going on in the crater, not indeed on the floor on
+which I myself lay, but strange to say, on the other and still deeper
+ledges below me. As I strained my ear to listen, I heard frequent
+reports of pistols, one after another, in all directions down the hollow
+of the crater.
+
+Then, with a sudden flash of recollection it burst in upon my memory
+that Frank and I had heard similar reports the year before on the slopes
+of Hecla, just on the eve of a serious eruption, when we were engaged in
+investigating the volcanoes of Iceland.
+
+In a second, the appalling and terrible truth came home to me in all its
+ghastly awfulness. The lava in the crater must be rising explosively!
+
+I was never much frightened of a volcano before, but that moment, I
+confess, I felt distinctly nervous.
+
+From where I lay, I couldn't see over into the lake of liquid fire
+below, and my broken leg made it almost impossible for me to move or
+even to drag myself towards the steep edge, where I could gaze down into
+the abyss and make sure whether the lava was really rising. But such
+suspense was more than one could bear. With a supreme effort I raised
+myself a second time, very cautiously, upon my two hands and my left
+knee, and, trailing my right leg with difficulty behind me, I crawled or
+crept with unspeakable pain over yards of rough rock to the brink of the
+precipice.
+
+An ineffable sight there met my eye. The black slaggy bottom of the huge
+crater, which generally reposed in tranquil peace like a calm sea, just
+broken here and there by fiery fissures, was now transformed into one
+bubbling mass of flame and vapour, all alive with a horrible livid
+glare, that lit up its seething and blazing billows with an awful
+distinctness. Loud, snorting puffs of steam burst thick and fast from
+the gaping fissures, and from many of the chinks great jets of molten
+material were willing out in huge floods, and rising gradually towards
+the Floor of Pélé, the third and last ledge immediately below me. If the
+eruption continued for two hours longer at its present rate, by
+half-past twelve, I felt fully convinced, the sea of lava would be
+wildly surging and roaring above the very spot whence I now surveyed
+it.
+
+What was to be done? I lay and pondered.
+
+Unless somebody came to my rescue meanwhile, I had only two hours more
+to live on earth; and then inch by inch I would be scorched to death, in
+unspeakable agony, before an advancing tide of liquid fire, by the most
+awful fate ever known to humanity!
+
+It was ghastly; it was horrible: but I had to face it.
+
+I peered over the edge, and watched with eager and tremulous awe the
+gradual approach of the devouring fire-flood. Slowly, slowly, foot by
+foot, and yard by yard, my inanimate enemy rose and rose, and rose
+again, by constant, cruel, crawling stages. Not always regularly, but in
+fluctuating billows. At times the molten sea leapt upward with a bound;
+at times it fell again, in a vast sink-hole, like some huge collapsing
+bubble of metal; but all the while, in spite of every apparent
+fluctuation, it mounted steadily in the long run up the black wall of
+rock, as the tide rises over a shelving beach, with its hideous gas jets
+hissing and groaning, and its angry flames drawing nearer and nearer
+each moment to devour me.
+
+I lay there horror-stricken, and gazed idly down.
+
+[Illustration: "I LAY THERE HORROR-STRICKEN, AND GAZED IDLY DOWN."]
+
+Nothing on earth that I myself could do would now avail me in any way to
+escape my destiny. I tried to turn and attempt the wall behind me. I
+might as well have tried to scale the naked side of a smooth and
+polished granite monument. The crag was like glass. There was nothing
+for it but to lie back in quiet and await my death as a brave man should
+await it. Science had had many martyrs before. I felt sure, as I lay
+there, that I too was to be numbered upon the increasing roll-call of
+its illustrious victims.
+
+It is easy enough to fight and die; but to lie still and be slowly
+roasted to death--that, I take it, is quite a different matter.
+
+Eleven o'clock went past on my watch. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty
+minutes. The fire had mounted half way up the side of the ledge on which
+I lay. I could feel its hot breath borne fiercely towards me. A jet of
+steam raised itself now and then to the level of my own floor. Ashes and
+cinders were falling freely around. The eruption was gathering strength
+as it went. It was dangerous any longer to lie so close to the broken
+edge. I must drag myself away, near the further precipice.
+
+Frank would not return from town much before six, I felt sure. He always
+loitered when he got down to Hilo. Unless somebody came to relieve me
+soon I must surely be killed by slow torture.
+
+I gazed all around me with a last despairing glance. As I did so, a cry
+of relief burst on a sudden from my parched throat. On the precipice
+above, leaning over the edge of the Floor of the Strangers, I saw
+distinctly a man's face--a man's face, a Hawaiian's as I thought,
+peering down curiously into the depths of the crater.
+
+If only I could attract that man's attention I felt there might yet be
+some small chance for me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The man was looking the other way. I must somehow manage to make him
+turn round to me.
+
+I raised myself on my knees, put my hands to my mouth, and shouted aloud
+at the top of my voice, with the utmost force of which my lungs were
+capable. You never know how hard you can shout, till you've had to shout
+for dear life through a storm at sea, or some other terrible natural
+convulsion.
+
+Could I make myself heard, I wondered to myself, above the constant hiss
+and roar and din of that volcanic outburst?
+
+Thank Heaven, yes! The man turned and heard me. I could see him start
+and look sharply in the direction where I lay on the ledge. By the
+movement of his face I felt sure he observed me. He saw me and jumped
+back. He recognized the deadly peril in which I lay. "Help! help!" I
+shouted with terrific energy. "Quick! quick! a rope! The fire is almost
+upon me!"
+
+The man rose and stood close to the brink. I could see by his dress
+quite clearly now that he was a native Hawaiian. Awe and surprise were
+visible on his face. He understood and drank in the full horror of my
+situation. Surely, surely, he would make haste to help me!
+
+To my utter horror he did nothing of the sort. He stood still as if
+rooted to the spot in superstitious fear, and gazed down on my face with
+his own like a statue's. I never saw anything more stolid than his
+features, or the pose of his limbs. I flung up my arms appealingly for
+aid: I pointed with every gesture of pain and helplessness to my broken
+limb: I tried to express to him by natural pantomime the absolute
+necessity for immediate assistance. The native folded his arms in front
+and gazed placidly down with horrible unconcern in spite of my cries and
+shrieks and signs of agony. I knew now what it was to be a savage. He
+seemed utterly careless whether I lived or died. If I had been a worm or
+a scorpion or a venomous reptile he couldn't more wholly and totally
+have disregarded my obvious suffering.
+
+At last, with the same look of indifference, he turned on his heel
+slowly, without one sign of encouragement, and disappeared from my sight
+towards the lip of the crater.
+
+Had he gone to seek aid on my behalf, I wondered? Had he gone to call
+other natives to his assistance, and to bring ropes and ladders to haul
+me up from that unearthly crater?
+
+I could not say, but I hardly dared hope it.
+
+And all the while those billows of molten lava in the lake below surged
+madly on, rising and rising, and ever rising, tossing the wild
+fire-spray upon their angry crests, and making ready their greedy jagged
+teeth of flame as if on purpose to close on me and devour me piecemeal.
+
+The volcano seemed indeed to be really alive. I didn't wonder the
+natives once saw in it a horrible, hungry, implacable goddess.
+
+For ten minutes more I lay there still, half smothered by the sulphurous
+fumes of the rising gases, and whitened with a powdery shower of gray
+dust, waiting in agony for the inevitable end to arrive and stifle me.
+Then I looked up again, and saw to my surprise the native had come back
+to his former station. But not alone. Nor yet to save me. Three other
+Hawaiians, tall and shapely men, stood silent and moody by the
+first-comer's side, and gazed down as he had done, unmoved and
+unhorrified, upon myself and the crater.
+
+Above the roar and crackling of the unquenchable fire, my ear, quickened
+by the straits in which I lay, caught just once the sound of the words
+they were saying. I had learnt a fair amount of Hawaiian since my
+arrival, and I could tell that in their talk "the anger of Pélé,"
+"victim" and "stranger," occurred frequently. Could it be that they
+meant deliberately to leave me there unaided to die? Were they afraid to
+meddle with the prisoners of the goddess?
+
+Christianized and civilized as they were in name, I knew too well then
+how deeply the old heathen superstitions must still be ingrained in the
+very core and fibre of their inmost being, not to fear that this might
+really be their hideous intention. The worship of Pélé might be dead,
+indeed, as a direct religion, but the awe and terror of Pélé's power I
+had long observed was as vivid and real in their hearts as ever. Even
+Kea herself, English as she was on her fathers side, half feared and
+propitiated that blood-thirsty goddess.
+
+The four men drew slowly to the edge of the precipice. I couldn't hear,
+but I could see by their actions they were consulting together very
+earnestly. The heat by this time was growing intensely painful. I lifted
+up my hands and clasped them as if in prayer. After all, they were
+human. I trusted they might still be inclined to help me.
+
+To my unspeakable terror, alarm, and dismay, the men shook their heads
+grimly in concert. Then all four of them, bowing down as if in worship
+towards the mouth of the crater, with their hands spread open in solemn
+accord, seemed to salute and adore the goddess of the volcano. I knew
+what it meant. I understood their gestures. Converts by profession as I
+doubt not they were, in their secret souls they were votaries of Pélé!
+
+At that sight, I flung myself down on my side and gave up all for lost
+for ever. I thought of those who were nearest and dearest to me at home,
+and who would never behold my face again. I must die where I lay,
+unaided and unpitied.
+
+When Frank returned to Kalaua's that night he would find no trace of me
+left on earth--not even a charred and blackened skeleton! The fire would
+have burnt me to fine gray ashes.
+
+Presently, as I looked, a fifth man joined the group above--a man
+dressed as I had never before beheld any one. His head was covered with
+a huge shapeless mask, which seemed to me to represent a cruel grinning
+lace, with teeth and eyes of white mother-of-pearl, that glistened
+hideously in the ruddy glare of the fierce volcano. I had seen such a
+mask once in my life, I remembered well, before leaving England--in the
+ethnological room at the British Museum. That one, I knew, was made of
+rare Hawaiian red and yellow feathers, and was said to be used by the
+old heathen priests of cannibal days in offering up sacrifices to their
+blood-thirsty idols. The new-comer was further draped from head to foot
+in a long mantle of the same costly plumes, which concealed his limbs
+from view altogether. I don't know how, but I felt sure by the very way
+he moved across the ledge that the man with the mask was none other than
+Kalaua!
+
+He was a priest of Pélé, then, to this very day! In spite of his outer
+veneer of civilization, in spite of his pretended conversion to a
+gentler creed, he still believed at heart in the vindictive and cruel
+goddess of the crater.
+
+The man in the mask, walking slowly as in a solemn dance, approached the
+edge of the beetling precipice. The other four men grouped themselves
+around in set attitudes, two and two on either side of him. Their looks
+were impressive. The priest lifted up his hands slowly. His action as he
+lifted them, graceful yet majestic, convinced me more than ever that it
+was really Kalaua, I recognized the old chief's grim and stately
+statuesque air--the air as of a last surviving scion of the old
+man-eating Hawaiian nobility.
+
+The priest stood still with his hands erect. The four others, in pairs
+on either side, bowed down their faces in awe to the ground. It was
+growing every moment more intolerably hot. I could scarcely watch them.
+The priest lifted up his voice aloud. I could catch not one word or
+syllable of what he said, but I was dimly aware in my intervals of pain
+that he was chanting some sort of measured savage litany. Every now and
+again he paused a moment, and then I could hear that his four companions
+answered him back in a solemn but loud response, in which I frequently
+fancied I caught the name of Pélé.
+
+At that awful moment Kea's words came back distinctly to my mind. "The
+second ledge that you see down below there, in the dark glow, is the
+Floor of the Hawaiians: as far as that, only natives may penetrate. If a
+white man's foot ever treads that floor, Pélé will surely claim him for
+her victim. In the twinkling of an eye, like a feather in the flame,
+Pélé will shrivel him in her wrath to ashes."
+
+I knew then what was happening up above. The priest of Pélé had come
+forth to the crater in his sacrificial garb, attended by his acolytes,
+and was performing a sort of dedicator death-service over Pélé's own
+chosen victim, before the flames rose up to embrace and devour me!
+
+In spite of the heat, in spite of the pain, in spite of the bodily
+terror in which I lay and writhed, I remembered, too, what Kea had once
+told me--how in the old days when men sacrificed to Pélé they never
+burnt their offerings with earthly fire, but flung them whole, a living
+gift, into the cracks and fissures of the burning lava, that the goddess
+might consume her own victims for herself in her own unearthly
+subterranean furnaces!
+
+It was an awful ceremony, yet surely an appropriate one.
+
+The flames were rising nearer and nearer now. These cruel and
+hard-hearted men would do nothing to save me. I could see great jets of
+burning gas rise from time to time above the wall of the crater. I could
+hear the loud hiss and shiver of the unearthly steam. I could feel the
+hideous heat baking me slowly to death where I lay. I crossed my arms
+resignedly, and gave up all for lost. I would die at least at the post
+of honour, as an Englishman ought to die, without fear and without
+flinching. I only waited for the merciful flames to come and put me out
+of my lingering misery. It could not be long now I felt sure. The lava
+would soon flow fast all round me.
+
+And above there, on the jagged edge of the precipice, the priest was
+still droning his terrible death-song, and the four tall men, bowed down
+to the ground almost, were still crying aloud in a strange monotone
+their hideous responses.
+
+As the first few bubbles of boiling lava rose level at last with the
+top of the Floor of the Hawaiians, I caught the final words of their
+triumphant song. I knew what they meant; they were simple and easy.
+"Pélé has avenged herself on the WHITE MAN'S FOOT; the White Man's Foot
+that trod her floor; we offer up the white man's body in expiation to
+Pélé."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+While the ring of their heathen death-song still echoed in my ear, and
+the hiss and roar of the volcanic fires still boomed and resounded
+wildly around me, I was dimly conscious in an interval of heat that the
+lava-flood fell back for a few moments, and that a lull had intervened
+in that surging tide of fiery liquid. I was sorry for that. It would do
+nothing now but needlessly prolong my horrible torture. When once one
+has made up one's mind to face death, in whatever form, the sooner one
+can get the wrench over the better. To be roasted alive is bad enough in
+all conscience; but to be roasted alive by intermittent stages is a
+thing to make even a soldier or a man of science shrink back appalled
+from the ghastly prospect.
+
+In my agony, I looked up once more at the sheer precipice. As I looked,
+I saw yet another person had come down to join the group by the edge. My
+heart bounded with a faint throb of hope. It was Kea, Kea, pretty,
+gentle Kea.
+
+"Surely," I said to myself in my own soul, "Kea at least will not desert
+me. Kea will try her very best to save me."
+
+The light of the volcano lit up the faces of the men and the girl with a
+ruddy glow. I could see every movement of their muscles distinctly. Kea
+came down with clasped hands, and blanched lips, like one frantic with
+terror, and seemed to beg and implore the man in the mask to aid or
+assist her in some projected undertaking. The man in the mask shook his
+head sternly. It was clear he was adamant. Kea redoubled her prayers and
+entreaties. The priest rejected her petition with his hands outspread,
+and turned once more as if in blind worship toward the mouth of the
+crater. I knew that Kea was begging hard for my life, and that Kalaua,
+sternly refusing her prayer, was devoting me as a victim to his
+unspeakable goddess.
+
+There are moments that seem as long as years. This was one of them.
+
+Presently, Kea seemed to ask some favour, some last favour. The stern
+old priest made answer slowly. I fancied he was relenting. She turned to
+the men, as if to ask a question. The men in return assented with a
+solemn movement of their awestruck bodies. Then Kea looked up at her
+uncle again imploringly. She spoke with fervour, I could see it was some
+sort of compact or bargain between them she was trying to negotiate. At
+last the man in the mask gave in. He nodded his head and folded his
+arms. He appeared to look on like a passive spectator. I imagined
+somehow, quickened as my senses were by the extremity of the moment,
+that he had entered into an agreement with her, not indeed to save me,
+but to abstain from active interference with Kea's movements if she
+wished herself to assist me in any way.
+
+I breathed more freely. As soon as their hasty conference was over, the
+girl drew near to the brink of the precipice. She raised her hands as if
+pulling at an invisible rope: then she made signs to me to wait
+patiently, if wait I could, for that help was going to arrive shortly.
+After that, she broke eagerly away with a gesture of sympathy, and ran
+off in hot haste towards the winding path that led from the floor to the
+summit of the crater.
+
+I lay there some minutes more in an agony of suspense. Would she come
+back in time, or would the fiery flood burst up once more to the level
+where I lay before she had time to arrive with assistance?
+
+The man in the mask, whom I took to be Kalaua, and the four natives who
+stood by his side, still watched me, unmoved, with stolid indifference,
+from the jagged brink of that high granite precipice.
+
+By and by, they looked down with deeper attention still. I could tell by
+their gestures and their excited manner that the lava, after its lull,
+had begun to ascend afresh. The man in the mask advanced and prostrated
+himself. He quivered with emotion. He flung his arms up wildly. His
+limbs shook. He seemed as if in the bodily presence of Pélé.
+
+Next moment, a roar like the roar of thunder, or the discharge of a
+volley of heavy artillery, boomed forth from the crater, loud and
+sharp, with explosive violence. The ledge about me began to gape with
+chinks. Fissures opened up in the solid rock by my side with a crackling
+noise. The Floor of the Hawaiians sweated fire. Liquid lava oozed forth
+from a huge rent not three hundred yards away from the place where I
+lay, and flowing in a stream over the bed inward, fell back again in a
+surging cataract of fire into the central hollow. I wondered I was not
+scorched to death outright, so near was the lava-flood. But the place
+where I lay still remained solid. How long it would remain so, I did not
+even dare to speculate.
+
+At that instant, as I looked up in my agony of suspense towards the
+brink of the precipice, with the liquid fire rising apace to seize me, I
+saw Kea, all breathless with haste, rush eagerly up to the edge and lean
+over towards me. In her hands, O joy, she held a large coil or ring of
+something. Thank heaven! Thank heaven! My heart bounded with delight.
+Saved! saved! It was rope she was carrying!
+
+She flung it down in a curl, sailor-fashion, towards the spot where I
+lay. I saw as it fell it was of different sizes, and knotted together
+with big rude knots in many places. Clearly she had not been able to
+find a single rope long enough for her purpose. She had made up this
+length as well as she was able out of different pieces hunted up by
+hazard in odd corners at Kalaua's on the spur of the moment.
+
+It was a giddy height to which to trust one's self, even with the
+stoutest and strongest cable ever woven on earth. But with that weak and
+patched-up line of rotten old cords? Impossible! Impossible! If one of
+the knots were to give way with my weight, if one of the pieces were to
+break in the middle, I should be hurled down again a second time, yet
+more helpless than ever, and dashed into little pieces in an instant on
+that sharp and stubborn granite platform!
+
+But drowning men clutch at straws. This was no moment to deliberate or
+reason. I would have trusted myself just then, broken leg and all, to a
+line of whipcord, if nothing else came handy.
+
+The rope descended in a whirl through the air. It fell taut--plumb to
+the bottom. A fresh disappointment! To my utter horror, the end still
+dangled some ten feet above me!
+
+I couldn't possibly jump up to reach it. With a loud cry of distress Kea
+saw it was too short. In a moment without stopping to think or hesitate,
+she had torn the lower part of her long native dress into strips and
+shreds, and lengthened the frail cord by this insecure addition just far
+enough to reach me as I stood on tip-toe.
+
+I clutched it at last with both my hands, and threw back my head as a
+signal to Kea that all was right, and she might begin pulling.
+
+Never shall I forget the awful sensations that coursed through my body
+as I dangled there, half-way in air, while that delicate young girl,
+thin and graceful, but strong of limb, with the inherited strength of
+her savage country-women, hauled me slowly up by main force of
+struggling nerve and sinew, past all possible conception of her natural
+powers.
+
+She hauled me up by first passing the rope round a jagged peak of lava,
+which thus acted as a sort of rude natural pulley, enabling her to get
+rid of the direct strain, and to throw the weight in part on the edge of
+the precipice, and then by winding it round her own waist as a living
+windlass. Slowly, slowly, clinging by my hands to the hard rope, that
+cut and bruised my poor bleeding fingers, and with my broken leg
+dangling painfully in mid-air with excruciating twitches, I rose by
+degrees towards the brink of the abyss. How Kea had ever strength to
+raise me I do not know to this very day. I only know that as each knot
+on the rope grated and jerked round the edge of the peak that served for
+pulley it sent a thrill of incredible and unutterable pain through my
+injured limb, and almost made me let go my hands off the hard rope they
+were grasping and clutching with all their energy.
+
+Meanwhile, the man in the feather mask and the natives by his side stood
+stolidly by, neither helping nor hindering, but gazing at me as I
+dangled in mid-air with sublime indifference, as one might gaze at a
+spider running up his own web with practised feet towards his nest on
+the ceiling. It was clear my life was no more to them than that. If the
+rope had given way, if the crumbling peak of honey-combed lava had
+broken short with the weight, and precipitated me, a mangled mass, to
+the bottom, they would have stood there as stolidly, and smiled as
+imperturbably at my shattered limbs in the awful embrace of their fiery
+goddess. Truly, truly, the dark places of the earth are full of cruelty.
+
+[Illustration: "I CLUTCHED THE CRUMBLING PEAK WITH MY HOOKED FINGERS."]
+
+As I rose in the air the lava, now belching forth with renewed vigour,
+followed me fast up the mouth of the crater. It followed me fast, like a
+living creature. One might almost have fancied that Pélé, disappointed
+of her victim, made haste in her frantic efforts to snatch him from the
+hands of that frail mortal maiden who strove almost in vain to rescue
+him in time by violent means from her cruel clutches. I didn't wonder
+any longer that those ignorant and superstitious natives should picture
+the volcano to themselves in their own souls as a living will. I almost
+felt it alive myself, so wildly and eagerly did the tongues of flame
+seem to dart forth towards me with their forked and vibrating tips, as
+if thirsting to lick me up and swallow me down in their hungry lunges.
+
+The time I took in rising was endless. Could I hold on till the end?
+that was the question. At last, after long intervals of giddy suspense,
+I reached the top, or almost reached it; I clutched the crumbling peak
+with my hooked fingers. Kea still wound the rope round and round her
+body, as she approached to help me. She held out her hand. I grasped it
+eagerly. "You must jump," she cried: and all wounded as I was, I jumped
+with wild force on to the solid floor of the upper platform. My broken
+leg thrilled through with pain. But I was safe--safe. I was standing by
+her side on the Floor of the Strangers. The lava sank down again with a
+hideous sob, as if disappointed of its living prey. I gazed around me
+for the priest and his acolytes. Not a sign or a mark of them anywhere
+was to be seen. I stood alone with Kea by the brink of the precipice.
+The rest had melted away to their hidden lairs as if by magic.
+
+I was rescued, indeed, but by the skin of my teeth. Such peril leaves
+one unmanned as one escapes it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+I couldn't walk with my broken leg. My gentle preserver took me up in
+her arms with tender care, and lifted me, strong man as I am, bodily
+from the ground as if I had been a week-old baby. It was partly her
+powerful Hawaiian limbs and sinews that did it no doubt, but still more,
+I believe, that wonderful nervous energy with which Nature supplies
+even the weakest of our kind when they stand face to face at last in
+some painful crisis with a great emergency.
+
+She carried me slowly up the zig-zag path, and over the lip of the
+crater to Kalaua's house. Then she laid me down to rest upon a bamboo
+bed, and went out to fetch me food and water.
+
+What happened next I hardly knew, for once on the bed, I fainted
+immediately with pain and exhaustion.
+
+When I next felt conscious, it was well on in the night. I found myself
+stretched at full length on the bed, with Frank leaning over me in
+brotherly affection, and an American doctor, hastily summoned from Hilo,
+endeavouring to restore me by all the means in his power.
+
+At the foot stood Kalaua, no longer grim and severe as formerly, but,
+much to my surprise, the very picture of intelligent and friendly
+sympathy.
+
+"How did you get here so soon?" I asked the doctor, when I was first
+able to converse with him rationally. "You must have hurried up very
+fast from Hilo."
+
+"I did," he answered, going on with his work uninterruptedly. "Your
+friend Kalaua fetched me up.
+
+"He happened to be here when that brave girl rescued you from the
+crater, and he rode down on one of his little mountain ponies in the
+quickest time I ever remember to have known made between Hilo and the
+summit. He was extremely anxious I should get back quickly to see you at
+once, and we cantered up on the return journey as I never before
+cantered in the whole course of my life. I've nearly broken my own
+bones, I can tell you, in my haste and anxiety to set yours right for
+you."
+
+"That's very good of you," I answered gratefully.
+
+"Oh! you needn't thank me for it," he replied, with a laugh. "It was all
+our good friend Kalaua's doing. He wouldn't even allow me to draw rein
+for a moment till I halted at last beside his own verandah."
+
+I gazed at Kalaua in the blankest astonishment. Could it really be he
+who had stood so stolidly by in the feather mask and devoted my head
+with awful rites to the nether gods while I lay helpless on the Floor
+of the Hawaiians? My confidence in his identity began distinctly to
+waver. After all, I hadn't seen the features of that grim heathen priest
+while I lay at the bottom. Perhaps I was mistaken. He was Kea's uncle.
+For Kea's sake, I ardently hoped so.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE CARRIED ME SLOWLY UP THE ZIG-ZAG PATH."]
+
+They set my leg that very night, and Frank and Kalaua in turns sat up to
+nurse me. I can hardly say which of the two was kinder or tenderer.
+Kalaua watched me, indeed, as a woman watches by her son's bedside. He
+was ready with drink, or food, or medicine, whenever I wanted it. His
+wakeful eyelids never closed for a moment. No mother could have tended
+her own child more patiently.
+
+"Is the volcano still at work, Frank?" I asked once, in a painless
+interval. I could never forget, even on a sick bed, that I was by trade
+a man of science.
+
+"No, my dear old fellow," Frank answered affectionately. "The volcano,
+finding you were no longer in a fit condition to observe it, has
+politely retired to the deepest recesses of its own home till you're in
+a proper state to continue your investigations. The moment you were
+safely out of the hole, Kea tells me, it sank back like a calm sea to
+its usual level."
+
+"Pélé is satisfied," the old man muttered to himself in Hawaiian from
+the bottom of the bed, not thinking I understood him. "She has given up
+her claim to the victim who offered himself of his own accord upon her
+living altar."
+
+It was not till next morning that I saw Kea again. The poor girl was
+pale and evidently troubled. She received all my expressions of
+gratitude with a distracted air, and she hardly appeared at times to be
+quite conscious of what was passing around her. But she was gentle and
+considerate and kind as ever--even more kind, I fancied, than we had yet
+known her.
+
+For the next week, Frank, Kalaua, and Kea in turn each bore their fair
+share in nursing and watching me. I wondered to myself, after all that
+had happened, that I wasn't afraid of stopping any longer under the old
+chief's roof; yet now that it was all over, my staying there for the
+time seemed somehow quite natural. Indeed, it would have been impossible
+to carry me further along the rugged road that led down the mountain,
+with my leg in splints, and my general health in a most enfeebled
+condition. And I wasn't in the least afraid, either that Kalaua would
+cut my throat in his own house, or otherwise offer me personal violence.
+Nothing could possibly exceed his personal kindness to me now: and I
+felt as safe in the old chief's hands as I did in his niece's, or in my
+own brother's.
+
+My conversations with the American doctor too reassured me greatly in
+this curious matter. A day or two later, I told him the whole strange
+and romantic story, in far fuller detail than I have told it here (for
+all the incidents were then fresh in my memory), and he listened with
+the air of a man to whom such marvellous recitals of savage superstition
+were hardly anything out of the common.
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised if it really _was_ Kalaua," he said to me
+confidentially, when I had finished my narrative. "The fact is, the old
+man has always been more or less suspected of persistent Pélé worship.
+Beliefs like that don't die out in a single generation. But you needn't
+be afraid on that account that he'll do you any bodily harm now. Pélé
+cares nothing for unwilling victims. She takes those only who go to her
+willingly. You fell in of yourself, and therefore Kalaua wouldn't pull
+you out. To have done so would have been to incur the severest wrath of
+Pélé. But now that you've once got safe out again, every good
+old-fashioned heathen Hawaiian will hold to it as a cardinal article of
+faith, that you're absolutely inviolable. The goddess had you once in
+her power, and of her own free will she has let you go again. If she
+liked, she might have eaten you, but she let you go. That shows you are
+one for whom she has a special concern and regard. The moment you got up
+in safety to the brink once more, the lava fell back. To Kalaua, that
+would be a certain sign and token that Pélé relinquished all claim upon
+your body. She may take some other victim, unawares, in your stead: but
+you yourself, the Hawaiians believe, are henceforth and for ever next
+door to invulnerable. You are Taboo to Pélé.
+
+"Well, I've been very nearly dipped in Styx," I answered, smiling, "so I
+ought to be inviolable. But you don't think, then, I run any risk by
+remaining under this roof till my leg gets well again?"
+
+"Quite the contrary," the doctor replied with perfect confidence. "I
+should think you would nowhere be treated with greater care,
+consideration, and courtesy than here at Kalaua's. Whatever it may have
+been a very few days ago, these people regard you now as Pélé's
+favourite. If you were to ask politely for a White Elephant, they'd
+import one for you direct, I verily believe, by the first mail steamer
+in from Burmah."
+
+"That's lucky," I said, "though after what I saw in the crater the other
+day, I confess I feel a little nervous at times about our personal
+safety."
+
+As the doctor was just taking his leave, he turned and said to me in a
+very serious tone, "If I were you, do you know, Mr. Hesselgrave, I think
+I wouldn't say anything at all in public while you remain in Hawaii
+about the scene in the crater."
+
+"No?" I said interrogatively.
+
+"No," he answered. "You see, it's impossible to _prove_ anything. After
+all, when one looks the thing squarely in the face, what did you really
+see and feel sure of? Why, just five natives looking down at you in the
+crater, on the very eve of a serious outbreak of the volcano. Well,
+nobody's bound to risk his life to rescue a stranger from the jaws of an
+eruption. As to the mask, the less said about that the better. People
+won't believe you: they'll say it's impossible. _I_ believe you, because
+I understand Hawaiians down to the very ground: I know how skin-deep
+their civilization goes: but folks who don't, will think you're
+romancing. Besides, Kalaua wouldn't like it, of course. It's _bad form_
+to be a heathen in Hawaii. Whatever the natives may be in their own
+hearts, in their outer lives they prefer to be considered civilized
+Christians. There's nothing riles your true-born Hawaiian like a public
+imputation of cannibalism or heathendom."
+
+"All right," I answered. "You may depend upon my discretion," For Kea's
+sake indeed I should have been sorry to bring disgrace upon her stern
+old uncle, however richly the old chief might have merited it. I was
+profoundly grateful to her for her gallant rescue; it would have been an
+ill reward indeed to repay her kindness by betraying the terrible secret
+of her family.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+All that night Kea sat up with me; and somewhat to my surprise she
+occupied herself for most of the time in working at a great white veil
+of very fine material.
+
+"That looks like a bridal veil, Kea," I said at last, regarding it
+curiously in an interval of sleeplessness.
+
+Kea laughed, not merrily as heretofore, but a very sad laugh. "It _is_ a
+bridal veil," she answered, blushing and stammering. "I--I'm working at
+it at present for--for one of my family."
+
+I saw she was embarrassed, so I asked her no further questions about it.
+Perhaps, I thought, she's going to be married. Even in Polynesia, young
+girls are naturally reticent upon that subject. And Kea was hardly a
+Polynesian at all: on her father's side she was an English lady. So I
+turned on my back and dismissed the matter for the moment from my
+consideration.
+
+For eight long weary weeks I lay there on my bed, or on the adjoining
+sofa, with my leg slowly and tediously healing, and my head much
+bothered by such long inaction. What made me more impatient still of my
+enforced idleness was the fact that, according to Frank's continuous
+report, Mauna Loa was now rumbling, and grumbling, and mumbling away in
+a more persistently threatening style than ever. I was afraid there was
+going to be a really grand eruption on the large scale--and that I
+wouldn't be well enough to be there to observe it. It would be
+ignominious indeed for the accredited representative of the British
+Association for the Advancement of Science to be carried down the
+mountain on a hospital stretcher at the very moment when perhaps the
+finest volcanic display of the present century was just about to
+inaugurate its arrival by a magnificent outburst of lava and ashes. I
+should feel like a soldier who turned his back upon the field of battle:
+like a sailor who went below to the ladies' cabin at the first approach
+of a West Indian hurricane.
+
+The idea distressed me and gnawed my heart out. If you are a man of
+science you will understand and sympathize with me. If you are not, you
+will perhaps consider me a donkey.
+
+Kalaua meanwhile remained as courteous and attentive as ever. But he
+often came in from the mountain much perturbed in soul, as I could see
+by his manner, and as I gathered, also, from his remarks to Kea. I
+understood Hawaiian pretty well by this time. I'm naturally quick at
+languages, I believe, and I've travelled about the world so much, in
+search of the playful and pensive volcano, that a new idiom comes to me
+readily: and besides, I had nothing to do while I lay idle on my bed but
+to take lessons in the native dialect from Kea. Now a pretty girl, it is
+well known, is the best possible teacher of languages. You understand at
+once from her mouth what you would only vaguely guess at on a man and a
+brother's. You read from her eyes what her lips are saying.
+
+"Pélé's uneasy again, my niece," the old man would murmur often as he
+entered. "I never knew the crater more disturbed. Pélé is angry. She
+will flood Hawaii. She will drown the people. We must try to quiet her."
+
+Kea looked down always when he spoke like that with a guilty look upon
+her poor young face. I understood that look. I knew she considered she
+had cheated the goddess by rescuing me from the flames, and I grieved to
+think that I should cause her unhappiness.
+
+"Kea," I said to her one day, as she sat still sewing away at a pure
+white dress in the room by my side, "do you know anything of your
+English relations--your father's people?"
+
+Kea burst suddenly into a flood of tears. "I wish I did!" she cried
+earnestly. "I wish I could go to them. I wish I could get away from
+Hawaii for ever. I'm tired of this terrible, terrible island. It wears
+my heart out." And she flung away the dress from her in an agony of
+horror, and fled from the room, still crying bitterly.
+
+"I see what it is," I said to myself pityingly. "They want to marry
+that helpless young girl to somebody or other she doesn't like. Probably
+a fat old native with a good thing in cocoa-nuts and sugar-plantations.
+Poor child! I can easily understand her feelings. She, an English girl
+almost, in blood and sentiment, to be tied to some wretched old Hawaiian
+ex-cannibal--some creature incapable of appreciating or sympathizing
+with her! I don't wonder she shrinks from the horrid prospect. She's a
+great deal too good and too sweet for any of them."
+
+I may mention however, to prevent misconception, that I was not myself
+the least little bit in the world in love with Kea. I merely regarded
+her from a brotherly point of view, with friendship and gratitude. The
+fact is, a certain young lady in a remote English country rectory, who
+received a letter from me by every Honolulu mail regularly, might have
+had just ground of complaint against me had I harboured any trace of
+such a feeling in my heart towards the gentle little Hawaiian maiden. It
+was the thought of that particular English lady that caused me so much
+agony as I lay on the floor of Mauna Loa that awful morning. Nothing
+else could have made me cling to the last chance of life with so fierce
+a clinging. For my own part, as a man of science, I have rather a
+contempt for any fellow who will not willingly risk his own neck, under
+ordinary circumstances, for any great or noble cause on which he may be
+occupied: and among such great and noble causes I venture to hold the
+pursuit of truth and natural knowledge by no means inferior to the
+pursuit of liberty or of material welfare. But when there's a lady in
+the case--why, then, of course, the case is altered. A man must then, to
+some extent, consult his own personal safety. His life is not entirely
+his own to lose: he has mortgaged it as it were on behalf of another.
+This however is a pure digression, for which I must apologize, on the
+ground that it is needful to prevent misapprehension of the relation in
+which I stood to Kea. Forgive me for thus for a moment dragging in my
+own private and domestic feelings.
+
+In a few minutes Kea returned again. She had an envelope with a name and
+address on it in her hand. She gave it to me simply. Her eyes were still
+red with crying. "That's where my father's people live," she said
+quietly. "I wish I was with them. My father wanted me to return to them
+when he died. But I was afraid to go, because--because, though they
+asked me after his death, they never wrote to me while he was
+alive--they never wrote to _him_ either--They were angry with him for
+marrying my mother."
+
+She said it with infinite tenderness and regret. I glanced at the
+address Kea had given me, and saw to my surprise the name of her
+father's brother, he was a clergyman in Kent, well known, as it
+happened, to my own family in England.
+
+"I wish you could go to them, Kea," I cried earnestly. "Whatever they
+think and feel now, they couldn't help liking you and loving you when
+they saw you. I wish you could get away from this dreadful Hawaii!"
+
+"I wish I could," Kea answered in a hopeless voice. "But--" she paused
+for a moment. "I must stop here now; I must stop here--till my
+marriage!"
+
+She pointed to the white dress that lay huddled upon the floor; and,
+with the tears welling up into her eyes once more, rushed madly and
+desperately out of the room like one distracted.
+
+I couldn't help contrasting the life of that peaceful Kentish rectory
+with the awful surroundings of the priest of Pélé, and wishing I could
+rescue that gentle girl from so terrible a place, as she herself had
+rescued me from the floor of Mauna Loa.
+
+And I wondered to myself to whom on earth they could ever mean against
+her will to marry her.
+
+Meanwhile, in spite of my broken leg, the volcano itself attracted no
+little share of my distinguished attention. I couldn't go out to call on
+it in person, to be sure; but I had in Frank an acute and well-trained
+assistant, who could be trusted to keep a steady eye upon its daily
+proceedings, and who knew exactly what traits in its character I wished
+him to report to me. In order that I might the more fully be kept
+informed from time to time of the state of the crater, and the momentary
+changes taking place in its temper and the lava level, I taught Frank in
+his leisure moments how to work a heliograph. For that purpose I
+fastened a slanting piece of looking-glass to my own bed-head, and
+stationed my brother with a second mirror on the summit of the mountain,
+in a good position for observing the lake of fire and the smoke-stacks
+in its centre. On this simple form of telegraphic arrangement Frank
+flashed me news by the Morse code; so many long and short flashes in
+certain fixed and regular orders standing each for a certain letter: and
+I flashed him back by the same method my directions and remarks on his
+own despatches. In this way we constantly kept up quite a brisk
+conversation by means of the mirrors. "Lava now rising in the main
+basin;" Frank would flash over to me. "Any fissures?" I would ask. In a
+minute the answer came promptly back, "Yes, two, in the black basalt."
+"Steam issuing from them?" "None at present, but clouds of dense smoke
+forming slowly in the second cavern." "All right: then note its volume
+and direction." And so forth for an hour at a time together. It relieved
+the monotony of my existence on my sick bed thus to carry on by proxy my
+accustomed avocations: and I was glad to feel I wasn't quite useless,
+even with my broken leg to weigh me down, but was honestly earning my
+bread (or at least my taro-paste) from the subscribers to the British
+Association Seismological Committee Fund.
+
+One evening, towards the end of my convalescence, Frank came in in very
+high spirits (for Mauna Loa had been smoking like a German student that
+day) and found Kea busy as usual at her endless task of making her own
+very extensive trousseau. She was at work now on a long white satin
+train, which certainly seemed to me far more expensive and handsome in
+texture and quality than I should ever have expected a Hawaiian half
+caste girl to wear for her wedding.
+
+"What a swell you are, Kea!" Frank cried, half chaffingly. "I wonder
+what sort of a match you expect to make, that you're getting yourself up
+so smart for the occasion?"
+
+Kea glanced back at him with a painfully sad and serious face. "I'm
+going to marry a very important personage indeed," she said solemnly.
+
+"A chief, perhaps?" Frank suggested laughing, and peeling a banana.
+
+The tears stood in poor Kea's eyes, though Frank did not notice them.
+"Higher than a chief," she answered slowly, with a deep-drawn sigh.
+
+"A prince of the blood-royal of Hawaii, then," Frank went on, boy-like,
+without observing how serious and painful the conversation seemed to the
+poor little half-caste.
+
+"Higher than a prince," Kea replied once more almost reverently.
+
+"What! Not the King!" Frank exclaimed in astonishment.
+
+"The King is married already," Kea replied with dignity, the tears
+trickling one by one down her cheeks, unseen by Frank, who, busy with
+his banana, couldn't observe her downcast face as well as I could from
+my place on the pillow.
+
+"Higher than a chief! Higher than a prince! Higher than the King!" Frank
+cried incredulously. "Hang it all, Kea; why, then, you must be going to
+marry the captain of an American whaler!"
+
+I laughed in spite of myself. Hawaiian royalty, to say the truth, when
+you see it on the spot (as we had done at Honolulu) is such a very
+cheap sort of imitation kingship! But Kea, instead of laughing, burst
+suddenly into tears, and flung down her work on the floor in an agony of
+despondency. "Frank," I cried, "how on earth can you tease her so? Don't
+you see poor Kea's dreadfully distressed? It's downright cruelty to
+chaff on such a subject."
+
+[Illustration: "'IF YOU KNEW ALL,' SHE ANSWERED,--'HOW YOU WOULD PITY
+ME!'"]
+
+Kea turned her big brown eyes full upon me, all tearful as they were.
+"If you knew all," she answered, "you would say so indeed. You would
+pity me, both of you--oh, how you would pity me!"
+
+And without another word, she rose like a queen and glided from the
+room, muttering to herself some inaudible sentence in Hawaiian as she
+retreated.
+
+When she had left us alone, Frank turned to me, abashed, with unusual
+earnestness and wonder in his voice. "Tom," said he impressively, "does
+it ever strike you there's something very mysterious indeed about this
+marriage of Kea's?"
+
+"How so?" I asked; though in fact I felt it quite as much as he did, but
+I wanted to hear Frank's own unadulterated idea about the matter.
+
+"Why, you see," he answered, "they're getting ready for a wedding: but
+where's the bridegroom? A marriage is never quite complete without a man
+in the proceedings. Now, we've never seen any young man come courting
+around; especially not any one so very important as Kea makes her future
+husband out to be. A bridegroom, I take it, is an indispensable sort of
+accompaniment to every respectable civilized wedding. You can't very
+well get on without him. But he's not forthcoming here. It seems to me
+there's something awfully uncanny about it all."
+
+"I often hear them speak among themselves," I said, "about somebody
+called Maloka. I wonder who on earth this Maloka is? I expect it's
+Maloka she's going to marry."
+
+"I'll make inquiries," Frank answered decisively. "We must get to the
+bottom of it. For my part, Tom I don't half like the look of it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Next morning, as I lay on the sofa in the verandah, humming and idling,
+with Kea still stitching away at the very last touches on her wedding
+garments beside me, I saw by a sudden glitter in my mirror that Frank
+was anxious to heliograph me a message. Pulling the cord that moved my
+looking-glass, I flashed back "Well?" Frank answered by signal, "Big
+ship off Hilo. Gunboat apparently. Flying British colours. A party is
+landing."
+
+I signalled back by code, "Try to attract their attention if possible,
+and ask them what's their business in Hawaii."
+
+For a few minutes Frank seemed engaged in establishing communications
+with the newly-arrived gunboat, and made me no reply; but I soon saw he
+had succeeded in forcing himself upon their notice at last, for he was
+flashing back question and answer rapidly now, as I judged by the
+frequent and hasty movements of his dancing mirror.
+
+By and by he turned the ray upon my sofa again.
+
+"Gunboat _Hornet_," he signalled in swift flashes, "Pacific squadron:
+party of twenty men sent ashore by admiral's orders to make arrangements
+for observing total eclipse of the moon on Saturday evening."
+
+I was glad to hear it, for we began to feel the want of civilized
+society.
+
+That same morning the doctor rode up to see me again, and brought me a
+very welcome present--a pair of crutches. On these I was now to be
+permitted to hobble about, and I took advantage of my liberty that very
+afternoon by stumping up, with Frank's aid, to the mouth of the crater.
+
+While I stood there, supported on my two sticks, and watching the lava
+still grunting and grumbling as uneasily as ever--for it was clear that
+Pélé was in a grumpy mood and a big eruption was slowly brewing--we
+were joined by the officers and doctor of the _Hornet_ on their eclipse
+observation expedition, accompanied by several sailors and natives, with
+ponies, tents, and other necessaries for camping out on the very summit,
+high above the level of the ordinary cloud-veil. The new-comers were
+surprised to find a scientific man already on the spot, in possession as
+it were, and gladly availed themselves of my knowledge of the mountain
+in choosing a good and suitable station for their tents and instruments.
+
+I confess, after the terrors by which I had lately been surrounded, it
+was no small relief to me to find ourselves reinforced as it were by a
+strong and armed body of our own fellow-countrymen. I breathed a little
+more freely when I knew at least that help was at hand should we ever
+chance to stand in need of it.
+
+I sent off Frank at once to show the naval men what seemed to me the
+best position on the whole mountain for pitching their tents and setting
+up their observatory, and, under my directions, he led them straight to
+a low peak on the right of Kalaua's, over-looking the crater and the
+Floor of the Hawaiians.
+
+It was a jutting point with a good open platform on the very summit,
+composed of rock a good deal softer than the mass of basaltic lava which
+makes up in great part the cone of that vast and seething volcano. The
+men of the _Hornet_ were delighted with my selection, which combined all
+the advantages of shelter and position, and began forthwith to unpack
+their belongings and settle themselves down in their new quarters. For
+myself. I hobbled back after a while to the house to rest and observe
+their actions through a field-glass from a distance.
+
+Now, at any rate, we should be quite safe from any machinations of our
+Hawaiian entertainers.
+
+As I reached the door Kalaua came out, his face all livid with anger and
+excitement. Evidently the new turn of affairs had greatly displeased
+him. He had been away all the morning, and had only just returned. His
+eyes were fixed now on the party on the summit, and some strange passion
+seemed to be agitating his soul as he watched their preparations for
+camping on the platform.
+
+"Who are all these people here?" he cried out to me in English, flinging
+up his hand as soon as I was well within speaking distance, "and what do
+they want with their tents and their instruments here on the open top of
+Mauna Loa?"
+
+"They're a party of English naval officers," I answered, "from a gunboat
+that has just steamed into the harbour, and they've come up by order of
+the admiral to observe the eclipse of the moon on Saturday."
+
+Kalaua's countenance was an awful sight to look upon. Never before or
+since has it been my lot to behold a human face so horribly distorted
+with terror and indignation as his was that moment. His features were
+ghastly. They reminded me of the mask of his heathen ancestors. It
+seemed as if some cherished hope of his life was frustrated and
+disappointed, dashed to the ground at once by some wholly unexpected and
+untoward incident. "Kea," he cried aloud in Hawaiian to his niece
+within, "this is awful! This is unendurable! Come out and see! The
+English are camping on the Platform of Observation."
+
+At the words, Kea sprang out upon the balcony from the room within where
+she had been sitting alone, and shaded her eyes with her hands as she
+looked up in an agony of suspense and expectation towards the distant
+peak. In a moment some sudden passion thrilled her. Then she clasped her
+fingers hard and tight in front of her, as it seemed to me with some
+internal spasm of joy and satisfaction. "I see them," she cried, "I see
+them! I see them."
+
+"They shall never remain there!" Kalaua shouted again, stamping his foot
+on the ground with resolute determination. "If they stop there till
+Saturday, it will spoil all! I won't permit it! I can't permit it!" Then
+he turned to me more calmly, and went on in English, "I know a much
+better place than that, up on the left yonder, less exposed a great deal
+to the open wind and the glare of the volcano."
+
+He pointed as he spoke to another peak, away off to the west; a peak
+that did not look down nearly so sheer into the hollow of the crater and
+the sea of fire. I had thought of that place too, and rejected it at
+once, as being in fact far more exposed and windy than the other.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE LOOKED UP IN AN AGONY OF SUSPENSE."]
+
+I shook my head. "Oh, no," I said, "the peak they've chosen is by far
+the best one."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I am sure of it."
+
+Kalaua turned away with an angry gesture. "Better or worse, they shall
+never camp there!" he exclaimed with warmth. "The Hawaiians are masters
+still in Hawaii. Whether they will or whether they won't, the Englishmen
+shall move their tents from that peak there. We will never allow them to
+occupy that spot. We will make them shift from the Platform of
+Observation."
+
+"I don't think you'll find it easy to turn away an English detachment,"
+I observed quietly.
+
+Kalaua clenched his fist hard, and ground his teeth. "Anywhere but
+there," he muttered, "and there, never!"
+
+He stalked away angrily with long hurried strides towards the point
+where Frank and the sailors, all unconscious, were pegging their tents
+and staking out their encampment with a merry hubbub. What happened next
+I could only observe vaguely at a distance through the medium of my
+glass; I learned the details afterwards more fully from Frank and the
+officers. But what I could notice for myself most clearly nearer home
+was this--that all the time while Kalaua was parleying with the
+Englishmen on the mountain, Kea stood still quite breathless on the
+verandah, watching the result of her uncle's action with the keenest
+interest and the wildest emotion. She watched so closely that I couldn't
+help feeling the result was a matter of life and death to her, and it
+somehow seemed to me that her hopes were now fixed entirely on the white
+men's resolve to maintain the position they had first taken up on the
+point of the mountain.
+
+It was clear from what we saw that the Englishmen insisted on
+maintaining their position.
+
+In about an hour, Kalaua returned, trembling with rage. "It's no use,"
+he cried, "I can't turn them off. They _will_ camp there. I've said my
+best, but I can't dislodge them: they must take their lives in their own
+hands." And he flung himself like a sulky child into an American
+rocking-chair on the broad verandah.
+
+As for Kea, I saw her look up suddenly, with a wild flash of relief
+coming over her white face. Next moment, a fixed despair succeeded it.
+"No use, no use," she seemed to say to herself. "They will have to go
+yet. A respite, perhaps, but not a rescue."
+
+Kalaua sat and rocked himself moodily up and down like one who resolves
+some desperate adventure.
+
+When Frank returned late at night to Kalaua's, he told me the full story
+of that hasty interview. The old Hawaiian had gone up to the mountain
+determined to put a stop to the camp on the platform at all hazards. At
+first, his manner was all politeness and sweet reasonableness. He
+offered them water from the well at his own house, and he had come, he
+said, with the utmost suavity, to save them from choosing an unsuitable
+spot, and putting themselves in the end to immense inconvenience by
+having to move to some better position. He pointed out a thousand
+imaginary disadvantages in their present site, and a thousand equally
+imaginary points of superiority in the one he himself had selected for
+them. He knew the mountain from top to bottom: no one could choose as
+well as he could. But the officers stuck to their point steadily. This
+was the place to observe the eclipse from, and here they meant to camp
+out accordingly.
+
+Wouldn't they at least sleep down at his house? No, thanks, they
+p>referred to camp out by themselves, according to orders, here on the
+open. Then Kalaua began to lose his temper. What right had they, he
+asked in a threatening voice, to come trespassing there on private
+property? The first lieutenant responded promptly by showing a letter
+from the King at Honolulu, authorizing the officers and men of the
+_Hornet_ to choose a place for themselves anywhere on the open summit of
+Mauna Loa, all of which was Government demesne, with the solitary
+exception of Kalaua's garden. The old native's anger grew hotter and
+hotter. They couldn't say why, but it was quite clear that some private
+end of his own would be interfered with if the officers were allowed to
+camp out within view of the crater and the Floor of the Hawaiians. I had
+very little doubt myself, from what Frank told me, that some native
+superstition was at the bottom of his objection. I thought it probable
+there was a taboo upon the place--it was in all likelihood a seared spot
+of Pélé's.
+
+I remembered the fate of the man who trod the Floor of Pélé and I
+wondered what would happen to our friends from the _Hornet_. However, in
+the end, as the naval men refused to be moved by either threats or
+entreaties, Kalaua retired at last in silent wrath, muttering to himself
+some unintelligible words about the folly of white men and the might of
+the volcano.
+
+"Take care," he cried, as he turned on his heel, flinging back his last
+words at them. "You've chosen the most dangerous spot on the whole
+mountain. It reeks with fire. The rock about there is all inflammable.
+Mauna Loa will take care of itself. If you drop a match upon it, it'll
+burn like sulphur."
+
+The officers laughed and took no more notice. They didn't know as well
+as I did how deep and fierce a hold heathendom still exercised over the
+minds and actions of these half-savage natives.
+
+When Frank told me all this in the silence of our own rooms by ourselves
+that evening, my heart somehow sank ominously within me. "Frank," I
+said, "I don't know why, but I'm sure there's mischief brewing somewhere
+for us and for Kea. I wish we knew something more about this man Maloka
+they're always talking about. I feel that some terrible plan is on foot
+for that poor girl's marriage. The mystery darkens everywhere around us.
+Thank heaven, the English sailors have come to protect us."
+
+"I asked several natives about Maloka to-day," Frank replied quietly;
+"but though they all knew the name, they only laughed, and refused to
+answer. They seemed to think it an excellent joke. One of them said he
+didn't trouble himself at all about people like Maloka. And then they
+all looked very serious, and glanced around as if they thought he might
+possibly hear them. But when I asked if Maloka lived near by, behind the
+peaks, they burst into roars of laughter again, and advised me not to be
+too inquisitive."
+
+"Strange," I answered. "He seems to live close here upon the summit, and
+yet we never happen to come across him."
+
+"Where's Kalaua now?" Frank asked.
+
+"Gone out," I answered. "He went away early in the evening. Perhaps he's
+visiting his friend Maloka."
+
+"I wish I could follow him," Frank cried eagerly. "I'd like to catch
+this Maloka by the throat, whoever he is, and I'll bet you sixpence, if
+I once caught him he'd be pretty well choked before I let him go again."
+
+"Did the _Hornet's_ men send down for water to Kalaua's well?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," Frank answered. "They took up some pailfuls."
+
+"Humph!" I said. "I hope Kalaua hasn't put anything ugly into it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+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!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+"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 compassed.
+
+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 _himenés_, 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 assistants at this ghastly ceremony. I saw them all clearly but
+two hundred yards off, though the chasm in the rock with its red mass of
+molten lava below separated me from them far more effectually than a
+mile of intervening distance could possibly have done.
+
+[Illustration: "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 _himenés_. 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 Pélé, 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 _himenés_. Kalaua placed himself on the edge of
+the precipice, at the very spot where I myself had fallen over in
+pursuit of the butterfly. 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 Pélé," Kalaua began, intoning his words on a single note
+and dividing his address into curious irregular verses--"Great Mother
+Pélé, who dwellest in the fire-lake, Queen of the Hawaiians, we, thy
+children, bow ourselves down in worship before thee.
+
+"We assemble 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 Pélé.
+
+"No hand might save him against thy will: the force of a mortal avails
+not against the fiery might of a living goddess.
+
+"Thou, Pélé, 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 snatches an offering from
+Pélé, himself must satisfy the wrath of the goddess.
+
+"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 Pélé: give me this maiden who
+snatched away thy victim.'
+
+"Thou, Pélé, 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 god, 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 goddess. 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 mass 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.
+
+But how to attract the notice of the Englishmen! If only I could manage
+to catch Frank's face! If only I could fling up my arms and sign to him
+to come! But he _would_ not look! It was terrible! It was agonizing!
+
+Suddenly, an inspiration seized me unawares. The heliograph to the
+rescue! I might signal to him by the moonlight. One chance yet left! My
+mirror! My mirror!
+
+I felt for it in my pocket with trembling fingers. One moment of hope.
+Then an abyss of despair. I had left it at home by the sofa at Kalaua's.
+That chance was fruitless.
+
+To have made my way back for it would have been of little avail. I could
+not fail in that case to attract Kalaua's keen attention, as I hobbled
+painfully in the broad moonlight up the zig-zag path: and to attract
+attention under existing circumstances would probably mean all the
+sooner to hasten poor trembling Kea's impending fate. I must think of
+some other means of communicating with Frank. I must find some less
+obtrusive and dangerous way of calling the sailors and officers to our
+assistance.
+
+How short a time still remained to us! I took out my watch and gazed at
+it hopelessly.
+
+In another burst of inspiration, then, I saw my way clear. A mirror! A
+mirror! all ready to hand! I could signal still! I could call their
+attention!
+
+My watch was a gold one--a naval chronometer: the inside of the case was
+burnished and bright. I held it up straight in the bright beams of the
+moon, and as Frank's face turned for a moment in the direction where I
+stood, or rather crouched under cover of the pinnacle, I flashed the
+light full in his eyes from the reflecting surface. Thank heaven! Thank
+heaven! he started and observed it. I signalled three rapid flashes for
+attention. Frank flashed me back, yes, from his own pocket mirror. My
+hands shook so that I could hardly hold the watch aright: but with
+tremulous fingers I managed somehow to spell out the words, "Come quick.
+Bring sailors. Steal cautiously round the dark corner. There's foul play
+on. Kalaua means to make Kea leap into the crater as a bride to Pélé's
+son at the moment of totality."
+
+In a second, I saw that Frank and the officers had taken it all in in
+its full ghastliness, and that, if time enough remained, Kea might yet
+be saved from that awful death in the fiery abysses. Without one
+moment's delay their men seized the horses, and leaving one or two,
+officers alone to continue the observations, dashed wildly down the
+ravine, and into the gloom of the gully.
+
+Then, for a few minutes more, I lost sight of them entirely.
+
+When they emerged again to view, on the Floor of the Strangers, they had
+left their horses, and, headed by Frank in his white jacket, were
+creeping cautiously, unperceived, under cover of the broken masses of
+lava, round the sharp corner of the jutting platform. My heart bounded
+as I saw them approach. There was still some chance, then, of saving
+Kea!
+
+Had she been my own sister I could not have felt the suspense more
+awful.
+
+As we gazed below we saw, to our dismay, that the lake of fire was still
+tossing and rolling with wild wreathing billows, and that it had risen
+visibly several feet in the last few minutes.
+
+While we still looked, the moon's face began slowly to darken. The
+eclipse had commenced. We had only a quarter of an hour yet to the
+period of totality.
+
+In a few short words, I explained to Frank and the sailors he had
+brought with him the entire situation in all its gravity. I told them
+all I had seen and heard; and their own eyes confirmed my report: for
+there stood Kea full in view, round the corner of the pinnacle, beyond
+the open chasm, in her white dress, with her hands clasped in
+inarticulate prayer, and her pale face turned up appealingly towards the
+cold moonlight. She had but a quarter of an hour left to live. Yet near
+as we were to her, it would have taken us more than fifty minutes to
+ride round the crater by the outer rim to the only practicable path on
+the other side of the chasm.
+
+"What are we to do?" I cried, in my horror, though in a low voice, for
+it was necessary above all things not to arouse the Hawaiians' quick
+attention.
+
+"We must cross the chasm somehow," the eldest officer of the party
+answered at once. "We can't let the poor girl be sacrificed before our
+very eyes."
+
+"If we only had a rope, and could once get it fastened on the other
+side, we might sling ourselves across, hand over hand," Frank suggested
+eagerly.
+
+"We have rope, lots of it, on my saddle over yonder," the officer
+answered. "But we can't get it fastened. If only the chasm were narrow
+enough to leap! But it's quite impossible. No athlete on earth could
+ever jump it."
+
+"Stop!" Frank cried. "The bamboo! The bamboo!--I had a big bamboo down
+here the other day, stirring up lava in a liquid pool in the small
+craters. There it is--over yonder. I think with that--"
+
+He said no more, but creeping over for the bamboo, crawled noiselessly
+on with it to the edge of the chasm. We all followed him on our hands
+and knees, skulking behind the pinnacles, and concealed from the
+Hawaiians by the rough lava-masses. I seemed to forget my half-mended
+leg in the excitement of the moment, and to crawl along as easily and as
+quickly as any of them. On the very edge of the deep fissure, now
+boiling below with liquid fire, Frank laid across the bamboo from cliff
+to cliff, so that it hung, a frail bridge, across that yawning abyss of
+sulphurous vapour. With great difficulty, he thrust it home on the far
+side into a honey-combed mass of crumbling scoriae lava. "Now stand, you
+fellows, on the end," he said, "to give it weight and keep me from
+slipping. I'm the lightest of the lot: it'll bear me, I suppose, if
+it'll bear anybody. I'm going to cross it, hand over hand, and take a
+rope with me for you others to come over by. If it breaks, I shall fall
+into the lava below. No matter: it's jolly white hot down there now;
+it'd frizzle me up, if it came to the worst, before I could feel it."
+
+The sailors brought all their weight to bear upon the loose end. I knelt
+by myself, breathless with suspense, to see the result of this mad
+experiment. The bamboo was frail and supple indeed: if it broke, as
+Frank said, all would be up with him. But Frank was too brave to heed
+much for that. He tied the rope round his waist in a running noose,
+caught hold of the bamboo with both his hands, and swinging himself off
+the edge with a quiet and gentle swaying motion, so as to lessen as far
+as possible the strain of that slender bridge, hung one moment like a
+gymnast, from a trapeze, suspended between the sky and the gulf of
+liquid lava.
+
+It was a terrible moment. All eager with excitement, we leaned over the
+abyss, and watched him rapidly but quietly passing hand over hand across
+that frightful chasm. As he reached the middle, the bamboo for one
+indivisible second of time bent ominously down under his light weight.
+Would it yield? Would it crack? If so, the next instant we should see
+him falling, a lost life, into that hideous strait of liquid fire. For
+half a throb of the heart, our agony of doubt and suspense was
+unspeakable. Next instant, he had passed in safety the central point;
+the weight was easier; the faithful bamboo curved slowly up again.
+
+We breathed more freely. He had reached the far end; he was grasping the
+cliff, the further cliff, in eager confidence, with that brave young
+hand of his. The lava was loose; all bubbly with holes like a piece
+of rotten pumice-stone. "Frank, Frank," I cried in a low voice, but
+beside myself with terror, "take care how you trust it. The stuff's all
+dry. It never can bear you. Don't try to grasp it!"
+
+[Illustration: "THE BAMBOO BENT OMINOUSLY DOWN."]
+
+"All right," Frank answered low, as he struggled on. "There's no
+foothold anywhere near the edge. I must go in for a somersault. Thank
+goodness that gymnasium work I used to hate so has done something for me
+unexpectedly at last."
+
+As he spoke, he vaulted with a light leap on his hands up the edge of
+the precipice. The next thing we knew, he was standing, safe and sound,
+with the rope round his waist, a living soul, on the further brink
+beyond the chasm.
+
+A sigh of relief burst simultaneously from all our lips. "Now, quick!"
+the officer cried. "Not a moment to be lost! Swing yourselves over, men,
+and make haste about it!"
+
+Frank held the end of rope in both hands firmly, twisting it for greater
+security twice round his body: and the slenderest of the sailors,
+trusting himself the first to this safer bridge, crossed over the chasm
+with the ease and rapidity due to long practice on the masts and
+rigging. As soon as he had landed unhurt on the far side, he helped
+Frank to hold the end of the rope; and one by one his five companions
+and the officer last of all made good their passage in the self-same
+manner. I alone was left to keep up touch and facilitate their return to
+the hither side; for we felt we must probably fight for Kea. Our plan
+was to seize her by main force, before the natives were aware, retire
+with her to our horses, and ride down at all speed to the _Hornet_ at
+Hilo.
+
+"Now, look sharp: make a dash for it!" the officer said, in a muffled
+voice. "Out into the open, and seize the girl at once! Never mind the
+men. Carry her off in your arms before they know what's happening, and
+back here again to the rope immediately."
+
+I stood and watched on the further bank of that fiery strait. The moon's
+light meanwhile had been growing each instant dimmer and dimmer. The
+greater part of the orb was already obscured. The moment of totality
+was rapidly approaching. Kea, warned by a word from her uncle, stood up
+in her bridal dress and faced the awful flood of surging lava. Kalaua,
+by her side, began once more to drone out in long notes his monotonous
+chant. He flung a handful of taro, with a solemn incantation, into the
+mouth of the volcano. "See, Pélé," he cried, "we bring thee thy
+daughter-in-law. See, Maloka, we bring thee thy chosen bride. At the
+stroke of midnight, at the appointed hour, thou hast put out the lamp in
+heaven, the moon. This is thy signal: we mortals obey it. O humpbacked
+favourite of Pélé the long-haired, the bride will go into the
+bridegroom's chamber.--Maloka, hold up thy hands for thy handmaid! leap,
+Kea, leap, into the arms of your husband!"
+
+I looked and trembled. Kea stepped forward with marvellous courage.
+Through the dim light of the ruddy volcanic fires I could see her draw
+back her white veil from her face, and make as though she would meet
+some lovers embraces. Then the last corner of the moon disappeared all
+at once in darkness from my sight, and for half a moment, at that
+critical point, I saw and heard nothing with distinctness or certainty.
+
+Next instant, as if by magic, a weird red glare illumined the scene.
+Great arms of fire lunged forth spasmodically from the open crater.
+Maloka had leaped forward with his scorching hands, to claim his bride
+in fiery wedlock. The eruption had at last begun in real earnest. Huge
+volumes of flame darted up with commingled black smoke towards the vault
+of heaven. A lurid light hung upon the massive clouds overhead. Stones
+and ashes and cinders fell wildly around us. The crater had broken loose
+in its fiercest might. The rivers of liquid fire were welling up all
+round and bursting their bounds with majestic grandeur.
+
+And in the midst of all, by the uncertain light of that deep red glare,
+I could just see Frank and the friendly sailors bearing off Kea in her
+bridal robe, half fainting, half unwilling, before the very eyes of the
+astonished and amazed Hawaiians. Our party had rushed upon them from
+behind, unawares, at the very first instant of total eclipse, and
+seized her in their arms, in the act to jump, from the circling ring of
+baffled natives.
+
+Thank heaven, then, they had been in time; in time to save her from the
+cruel volcano and the crueller superstition of her heathen ancestors.
+
+"Back, now, back, to the chasm and your horses!" the officer cried in a
+tune of command, at the top of his voice, as Kalaua and the natives,
+recovering after a moment from their first shock of surprise, and
+gathering together into an angry knot, began to show signs of attempting
+an organized resistance. "Carry off the girl between you, there, at the
+top of your speed. No time to lose! The lava's rising." He pointed his
+revolver. "And if one of you heathen brown fellows come a single step
+nearer," he added with a menace, "I'll put a bullet through his ugly
+black head, as soon as look at him."
+
+Kalaua leaped forward with a wild and almost inarticulate cry of rage
+and disappointment. "Seize them, friends," he shrieked aloud in his
+hoarse Hawaiian. "Kill them! Tear them to pieces! How dare they
+interfere with the bridals of Maloka?" Bat even as he spoke, a river of
+lava burst suddenly forth from the mouth of the seething crater, and
+spread a broad stream of liquid fire between the infuriated natives and
+the little band of Kea's gallant protectors.
+
+"Run, run," Kalaua cried. "Down the other road! By the black rocks!
+Intercept them at the gulley. Kill them! kill them! They're Pélé's
+enemies! However you do it, kill them, kill them!"
+
+The officer, unheeding their savage threats, stalked on to the chasm,
+and pointed firmly but quietly to the rope that still spanned it. Kea,
+dazed and frightened, yet graceful and light of limb as ever, clasping
+it hard in her small fair hands, swung herself across to my side with
+native ease, while the sailors held the ends of the cable on the bank
+opposite. Then one by one the others followed swiftly in turn, with
+admirable discipline, in spite of the shower of ashes, till only Frank
+was left by himself beyond the deep abyss of boiling lava.
+
+"How will he ever get over?" I cried, looking across at him in alarm and
+terror.
+
+"Oh, don't be afraid, old fellow!" Frank shouted back cheerily. "Leave
+that to me! I'm as right as ninepence. Thank goodness, I can hang from a
+rope like a monkey!" And with a hasty movement, he began to roll the end
+of the cable tight around his waist and to tie it firmly in a slip-knot
+to his sturdy shoulders.
+
+How he could ever drop himself down so steep an abyss with flame below,
+I had no notion. On the other hand, I knew he dared not trust the bamboo
+again. It had bent already too severely with his weight, almost indeed
+to the point of breaking; and half charred as it now was with the
+constant heat ascending for ever from that subterranean furnace, it
+would no doubt have snapped short in the middle by this time, if he had
+been foolish enough to attempt crossing by its aid a second time over
+the few yards of chasm that intervened to divide us.
+
+Frank however had a device of his own. Planting his feet hard against
+the edge of the precipice, he swung himself off like a monkey, with the
+rope grasped hard in his two hands; and even as he fell, kicking off
+from the side, he gripped it quickly hand over hand, till he brought
+himself up with wonderful agility level with the opposite side where we
+were all standing. Half a dozen stout arms were extended at once to pull
+him safe to solid land; and in another moment we all stood secure, with
+Kea in our midst, a recovered party, on the brink of the crater,
+undeterred by anything more serious in its way than an ordinary everyday
+volcanic outburst.
+
+"Off to the horses!" the officer cried aloud; and before I knew what was
+happening, two of the sailors had seized me in their arms, and were
+hurrying me away at a break-neck pace up the steep zig-zag to the level
+of the summit.
+
+In the ravine, we came, sure enough, upon the horses, tethered and
+guarded by a couple of sailors. "Mount," the officer cried with military
+promptitude: and the men mounted, not exactly, I must confess, with the
+ease or grace of cavalry orderlies. I mounted myself, too, with what
+skill I could command, taking into consideration that broken leg of
+mine; and giving the trusty little ponies their heads, we rode at full
+speed in breathless haste, but in long Indian file down the narrow
+bridle path to the base of the mountain.
+
+I knew well the gully where the two roads joined, and where Kalaua had
+threatened to meet us in hostile array with his proscribed band of
+heathen followers. It was an ugly spot, with great overhanging rocks to
+defend the pass, and if they got there first, I knew we should have to
+fight them for possession of Kea. All depended now upon the swiftness
+and sureness of foot of our ponies. To be sure, we were mounted, while
+Kalaua and his party were all on foot; but then, most of us had been
+greatly delayed by the necessity for recrossing the chasm on the rope
+bridge in order to get at our path and our horses; and even apart from
+this unavoidable stoppage, very few ponies, at the best of times, can
+cover the ground faster than an unimpeded Hawaiian. Those fellows can
+run like a deer or greyhound. I trembled for the result if they held the
+rocks above the fort in full force. They could hurl down stones upon us
+from the heights with infinite ease, crush us like locusts as we passed
+beneath them: even fire-arms there would be useless against a party that
+held the pass in any numbers.
+
+[Illustration: "WE RODE AT FULL SPEED IN BREATHLESS HASTE."]
+
+On, on, we rode, in fear and trembling. The volcano now was all in full
+blast. Ashes and pumice stone kept falling around us. Smoke and steam
+obscured our way. But the dangers of nature frightened us little in
+comparison; what we dreaded most was the desperate onslaught of the
+enraged Hawaiians.
+
+As we drew near the fort however I breathed again more freely. Not a
+sign of Kalaua was anywhere to be seen. We rode along, cautiously, under
+the overhanging rocks. No Hawaiian showed his grim black head above or
+below us. Then Kea, with a shriek, guessed in a moment exactly what had
+happened. "The lava has overwhelmed them!" she cried, clasping her hands
+together in girlish trepidation. "They are dead! They are dead! My
+uncle! My people! Pélé will not be robbed of her victim at any rate. The
+lava has burst forth in one great flood and swallowed them."
+
+And indeed, when we reached a turn in the bridle path, and looked up the
+ravine down whose rugged centre the other road descended tortuously, a
+terrible sight met our astonished eyes. The summit of the mountain was
+now one red and lurid mass of living fire. Through the gully along whose
+course Kalaua and his followers had plunged in the first darkness of the
+total eclipse to cut off our retreat, a vast river of red-hot lava was
+pouring onward resistlessly in huge fiery cataracts. We could see the
+fierce stream descending apace over ledges of rock like a flood of
+molten metal poured forth from the smelting-bowl; we could see it
+engulfing trees and shrubs and stumps and boulders in its plastic mass;
+we could see it overwhelming the whole green ravine with one desolating
+inundation of fire and ashes. "Quick, quick," I cried; "ride, ride for
+your lives. You may think volcanoes are nothing much to be frightened
+of; but, I tell you, a volcano in such a temper as that is not by any
+means a thing to be trifled with. She's mad with rage. The stream's
+coming down the valley straight for the fork; take at once to the ridge,
+and ride on for your lives. Ride, ride across country, anyhow, to the
+_Hornet_ at Hilo!"
+
+"And me!" Kea cried, looking back at me appealingly, for she headed our
+little hasty procession. "What's to become of me? Of me, who have
+brought it all by my sin upon you! Of me, for whose sake Pélé is so
+angry! Of me, who roused her wrath by stealing away her victim! Leave me
+here to die! Kalaua is dead! My people are swallowed! I meant myself to
+die in their place, but you wouldn't let me! Leave me here to perish! If
+you don't leave me, Pélé in her anger will pursue you on your way to the
+sea itself, to the foot of the mountain!"
+
+"Ride on!" I answered. "Ride on to Hilo. Is this a time to make plans
+for the future? We'll discuss all that, Kea, on the deck of the
+_Hornet_."
+
+That evening, on board the British gunboat, lighted up by the terrific
+glare overhead, we had time to reflect what it all meant, and to feel
+ourselves free to think and speak again.
+
+"What will you do now, Kea?" I asked the poor girl, as she sat there,
+trembling, in a small cabin chair, while the red flames still illumined
+for miles and miles the summit and flanks of Mauna Loa. "Do you wish to
+stop here in your own island?"
+
+Kea looked up at me with a half terrified glance. "I wish," she said in
+a low voice, "to be as far away from Pélé and Maloka as possible.....
+Kalaua is dead. Pélé has devoured him..... I will leave my husband on my
+wedding night. I will go home to my father's people."
+
+"That is best so," I answered quietly. "Hawaii is no place for such as
+you. I don't think Maloka will ever miss you. We will go on the _Hornet_
+away to Honolulu. There you can take passage with Frank and me on the
+next steamer for San Francisco, on your way home to dear, peaceful
+England."
+
+"Why," Frank exclaimed, with a look of immense surprise, "you don't mean
+to say, Tom, you're going to turn your back upon a volcano--and in
+actual eruption, too, into the bargain!"
+
+"Bother volcanoes!" I answered testily. "One may have too much of a good
+thing. I don't care if I never set eyes on another eruption as long as I
+live. So that's flat for you."
+
+"Nonsense!" Frank promptly replied with spirit, refusing to desert an
+old friend in a moment of vexation. "That's all very well now, when
+you're annoyed with Pélé for misbehaving herself; but I'll bet you
+sixpence, in spite of that, you'll be off again before twelve months are
+over, exploring some other jolly crater in Sumatra or Teneriffe, or the
+Antarctic regions."
+
+And sure enough, as I put the last finishing touches to these lines for
+press, the post brings me in a letter in an official envelope, "On Her
+Majesty's Service," informing me that the Lords Commissioners of the
+Admiralty have been graciously pleased to accept my suggested
+appointment for three years on a scientific mission to investigate the
+volcanic phenomena of Cotopaxi and other craters in the chain of the
+Andes. By the same post, I have also received a note from my sister,
+who is now stopping down at the Kentish rectory where Kea lives with her
+English relations, and who says, among sundry other pieces of domestic
+criticism, "What a dainty, charming, lovable girl your pretty little
+Hawaiian really is, Tom! So gentle and good-natured, and so sweetly
+pensive! I can hardly believe, myself, there's anything of the cannibal
+Sandwich Islander in her! She's as fair as I am, and quite as European
+in all her ideas and thoughts and sentiments. When she doesn't talk
+nonsense about Pélé, in fact, I almost forget she isn't one of
+ourselves, she's so perfectly English. But the rector says he can't
+allow her to teach in the Sunday school till she's quite got over that
+heathenish rubbish. By the way, I shouldn't be surprised if she and her
+Cousin Hugh were some day to make a nice little match of it, if only
+Hugh can ever persuade her that it wouldn't be bigamy, and that she
+isn't already duly married to some ugly, mythical, humpbacked creature
+of the name of Maloka."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The White Man's Foot, by Grant Allen
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE MAN'S FOOT ***
+
+***** This file should be named 34744-8.txt or 34744-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/7/4/34744/
+
+Produced by Andrea Ball and Marc D'Hooghe at
+http://www.freeliterature.org
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.