“Yes, I know,” gasped Sestrina, her breath still laboured through running so fast.
“Hawahee, what do the lepers want with me?” she said quietly in sudden wonder over all she had experienced.
The tall, handsome Hawaiian gazed steadily into the childlike, wide-open eyes, and seeing that the girl was innocent in heart and soul, made no reply to her query, but said: “Wahine, I shall be angry if you stray from here again. Mind that you keep on this side of the valley, and bathe no more at present.”
“I will do as you wish,” replied Sestrina, who put Hawahee’s fears down to some dread in his mind that she might be contaminated by the terrible scourge.
That same night Hawahee came across the slope and sat by Sestrina’s homestead, telling her many of his own sorrows, and how it was he had become incarcerated down in the hold of the Belle Isle. It was a sad story that Sestrina listened to as the Hawaiian spoke on, telling her many things about the horrors of leprosy on his native isles. Maybe he did not wish Sestrina to think too ill of his comrades, the lepers on the isle, whose sad lot was cast on the unknown waters with his own. And be it known that of all the races of mankind, the Hawaiians are the most sympathetic and lovable towards each other in sorrow or illness, their hearts being endowed with a love passing the love of woman. Indeed, many Hawaiians have been known to risk the contagion of leprosy in their efforts to hide their relatives, wives, children, lovers and comrades, from the relentless hands of the leper-hunters, who were ever on the look-out for the victims of the hideous scourge.
Sestrina’s eyes filled with tears as the sad man sat before her and told her of the terrors of Molokai, the leper isle, the sufferings of the banished victims and of the heroic priest and martyr, Damien, and the few Catholic missionaries who devoted their days and sacrificed their lives for the sake of the stricken lepers.
“And how did you know all these things about the terrible isle where poor lepers are banished to, since you yourself escaped and fled successfully from the leper-hunters?”
Then Hawahee told Sestrina that he had once been a resident on Molokai in the capacity of a missionary at Kalawao, and it was there that he had contracted the complaint, as well as becoming only too familiar with the horror of the dreadful lazaretto. Sitting there smoking by the lonely girl, he continued his story, and told how the Hawaiian officials hired brutal men to hunt and deliver up all men who showed the least sign of the dreaded plague, so that they could be banished to the lazaretto on Molokai.
From all that Hawahee said, it appeared that even the unafflicted were in danger of being captured by the merciless hunters and sent away to the dreaded isle. For leprosy develops slowly, the first symptom being extremely faint, taking months, and even years, before becoming externally evident. Consequently the brutal hunters, who sought to secure the reward offered by the authorities, were only too eager to pronounce the slightest bruise as evidence of incipient leprosy.
“Since your leprosy is hardly to be seen now, how is it that the authorities knew anything about it, Hawahee?” said Sestrina.