The next moment she had dodged the green seas that were leaping over the side, and had entered the silent cuddy. The Hawaiian had followed her. Grasping the iron posts in the cuddy to save herself from falling, for the schooner was still rolling very heavily, she opened the small lockers and brought forth tinned meats, tinned fruits, bread, jam, and all the table delicacies she could lay her hands on. She looked up, sorrow and surprise in her eyes as the Hawaiian stood devouring a lump of the bread. Yes, so great was his hunger.
“Come on!” she said.
Then she ran out on deck. Seeing the lepers huddled by the starboard scupper, all clinging to the bolts and ropes as they swayed on their knees in their helplessness, she held the food up and beckoned the tall Hawaiian to take it to them. In a moment Hawahee, for such was the tall Hawaiian’s name, approached his stricken comrades and gave them bread.
“Here, quick!” said Sestrina, as she saw him trying to burst the lid of one of the tins of meat open. She had handed him a strong ship’s clasp-knife. In a second he had wrenched the lid off. As the lepers crawled about the deck, picking up the scattered crumbs and bits, Sestrina could hear them murmuring, “O Jesu, Maki, kola, se moaa Langi.” She knew that they were thanking her and the gods of their own creed and her own Saviour.
Such was Sestrina’s experience on the Belle Isle when the crew were washed overboard. Daylight and the bright tropic sun shining over the ocean eased her first terrors. Strange as it may seem, the sight of the stricken lepers, and her knowledge that she could help them, made her accept the tragical position with a strange feeling of calmful fear and happiness. The Hawaiian, Hawahee, had an intellectual countenance, and his manner was reserved and gentle. Sestrina thanked God on her knees when she discovered that he had the scourge only in its first stage, and very slight. She trembled when she thought of what her position would have been had she found herself alone on those tropic seas with stricken lepers who were nearly all in an advanced stage. Four of them were quite blind, the rest were able to walk about and help Hawahee put things ship-shape on board as the days went by. Hawahee spoke little to her, but his sad demeanour, and the little he did say when he spoke to her, convinced Sestrina that he was a true friend.
Two or three days after she had rescued the lepers from the fetid hold, they nearly all showed signs of improvement. Even the four blind men would stand out on deck and bathe in the hot sunlight. It was a terrible sight, though. Sestrina would turn her eyes away as they put forth their withered, almost fleshless hands and chanted strange prayers to the skies. On the fourth night after the typhoon, one of the blind lepers rushed out of the forecastle and jumped overboard. Sestrina and Hawahee, who were standing aft by the cuddy with an oil-lamp, sorting out tinned fruits that they had found in the lazaretto, heard a cry and at once rushed forward. The swell was still heavy, causing the schooner to roll at times in an alarming way. As Hawahee and Sestrina stared over the side they heard the cry again, a faint cry like the wail of a child, but they could see nothing. Then the moon, which had been concealed by a wrack of cloud, seemingly floated into the blue space and sent a great silver radiance over the waters.
“Look! there he is!” cried Sestrina, as she pointed away towards the rolling, glassy waters.
True enough, as Hawahee and the three stronger lepers, Lupo, Rohana, and Steno, stared over the side they could see their comrade’s struggling form. For a moment the moon once more disappeared behind a dark cloud, and the sad watchers on the wrecked Belle Isle only heard a faint cry as they stared into the darkness. Then a long shaft of moonlight fell slantwise, down to where they had seen the struggling form, and touched the waters. And as Sestrina watched, it seemed to her that a door in Heaven had suddenly been opened by the Hand of divine sympathy. They saw the dying man’s hands toss for the last time from his watery grave, as though in some pathetic appeal to the heavens. Though the seas still rolled on and the tangled ropes and torn sails flapped aloft and the schooner’s deck creaked and moaned to the eternal roll, it seemed that a great silence followed that last sad moment. Hawahee sighed and Sestrina’s form trembled as she stood there, her hair outstreaming to the wind. Yet they both knew that their dead comrade had at last found rest and peace.
Sestrina’s brain became strangely etherealised through sorrow. Grief had the effect of strengthening her mind. Even Hawahee gazed on the lonely girl in calm admiration as she ran about attending his stricken comrades with unremitting solicitude.
“Here are pillows and blankets,” she said, as she handed Hawahee all the bedclothes she had found in the cuddy’s cabins.