One evening as the sunset swept ineffable hues across the great storied remote window of Hawahee’s vast heathen cathedral—the western sea sky line—Sestrina opened her eyes in unbounded astonishment. “What’s that?” she cried as he put his arm forth, and muttered weird words to an image which he held in his hand.
“’Tis a vassal of the great goddess, Pelé!” replied Hawahee, as he held the image close to Sestrina’s horrified looking eyes—she was staring on the ivory idol which the aged, dying Chinaman on the Belle Isle had worshipped so fervently!
The sight of that heathenish relic, and of Hawahee’s reverent attitude before its wonderfully carved little face, strangely impressed the Haytian girl’s mind. A weird, uncanny kind of atmosphere seemed to fall over her life, filling her mind with superstitious thoughts. The strange, long-necked birds that perched at dawn on the palms by her little homestead, no longer sang cheerful notes, but muttered dismal chants that made her frightened—of she knew not what! But in a day or two she regained the cheerful confidence that had so helped her in her castaway loneliness, and once more sang as she toiled over her primitive domestic duties.
One day, Hawahee suddenly approached Sestrina, and said, “Wahine, do not roam about the isle unless I am near you.” He looked troubled as he placed his hand to his brow, undecided as to how to continue.
Sestrina wondered why he should fear for her since they were castaways on an uninhabited isle. “Is there a sail in sight?” she said, a great hope springing into her heart.
“No, wahine,” murmured Hawahee, still gazing intently at the girl’s face, an expression in his eyes as though his heart wished to say something which his lips dare not express.
Then he said: “My comrades are not as I am; they have forgotten the virtues of the great goddess Pelé, and of Kauhilo, and Atua of Langi, and so, ’tis best that you should keep from their path.”
Sestrina, who had seldom seen the lepers, because the sight of their afflicted forms made her feel miserable, gazed in wonder up at Hawahee’s face. The five lepers were, to her, poor helpless, cursed, pathetic beings, who calmly awaited the second death of their mortal existence. Though they dwelt within five hundred yards of her homestead, she had spoken only twice to them as they sat in the wattled shelter, and as the two blind lepers gazed with pathetic indecision towards her, a great wave of pain and sympathy had come to her heart.
Then Lupo, Rohana, and Steno had fallen on their knees, and, with their hands lifted, had gazed upon her as though she were some goddess. And as they wailed and wailed in their strange but musical tongue she imagined they were thanking her for her timely rescue of them all from the Belle Isle’s stifling hold.
“They look upon me as their benefactress; perhaps in the delirium of their fevered illness, they really think I am some heathen goddess?” she thought as Rohana and Lupo continued to wail, and crawling a little nearer, pointed to her shining tresses, murmured, “Aloah! wahine, makoa, maikai!” Then the lepers had placed their hands to their swollen mouths, making signs as they blew kisses to her, and cried “Maika! maikai!” (thank you). For she had taken a flower from the folds of her hair, and had thrown it towards them. Seeing the flower lying on the silver sands, Lupo, Rohana and Steno had rushed forward, had started struggling in a frantic way to secure the fading blossom. When Lupo placed the blossom to his lips, the others had crowded round him, had sought to place their lips against the faded petals. Such had been Sestrina’s experiences with the lepers during three months of isolation on that Pacific isle. When Hawahee stood before Sestrina and gave her the second warning, she still remained ignorant of the meaning of it all.