“Ah, wahine, it must have been noticed when I was bathing in the lagoons by my home. You must know, wahine, that there are always half-caste men on my isle willing to sacrifice the lives of others for the sake of getting the reward which is paid by the great council chiefs, and so I too was betrayed. And when the leper-hunters did come one night through the forest with masks over their faces, for they do not wish their faces seen since my people would kill such perfidious betrayers were they to recognise them, I did escape into the mountains by Kaulea. For a long, long time I did roam homeless alone, then I met more lepers who were hiding from the hunters in the mountains. We were all near to dying of hunger when we at last sighted a schooner lying just off the shore by the feet of the mountains near Sakaboa. With much stealth we did manage to secure a large canoe so that we could paddle by night out to the ship. It was by the mercy of Atua and Kuahilo that the night was dark and hid our forms as we stole on board and crept down into the ship’s hold. Next day the ship sailed. We were near to death when we did find ourselves anchored off the South American coast, where we were discovered by the crew and recaptured. Then the white papalagis tied our legs and hands in thongs and placed as on a ship’s hulk off the coast, as men unclean. For many weeks we were prisoners, awaiting to be retransported back to Hawaii so that we might be sent to Molokai. Then one night some men did come and place our limbs in chains. And when we were helpless and could not move more than enough for our feet to move slowly one before the other, we were taken round the coast to Acapulco. There we found a boat awaiting our arrival, and we were at once taken out to a schooner, which we knew was to take us back to Hawaii, and to Molokai and death.” Saying the foregoing, the Hawaiian sighed, then, looking sorrowfully into Sestrina’s face, he added: “It was the Belle Isle, wahine, which we were taken to and imprisoned down in the hold; and, to thy great sorrow, thou knowest the rest.” Relighting his cigarette by the embers of the small cooking fire, Hawahee placed his hand meditatively to his chin and continued: “I tell thee, wahine, I would sooner meet the gods in death than risk capture by the merciless papalagi or my own countryman and be banished to the lazaretto. True enough, the ‘kaukas’ (doctors) are good to the stricken, and kind men make coffins by night for the dying, but still, ’tis more than a living death. Still, in my dreams, I do often see the skeletons of the dead lepers walking and crawling by night along the craggy beach and under the dark pandanus and palms by Kalawao.”
As Hawahee spoke on and Sestrina listened, the ocean’s monotone, resounding on the reefs below, seemed to moan in sympathy with all he told her.
“Ah, wahine, thou knowest not the sorrow of my people,” he murmured; then he once more lapsed into pidgin English, which he usually did when speaking under the stress of deep emotion. “Sestra, when I was once a helper of the afflicted on Molokai, I did often see some beautiful wahine with flying hair and starry eyes, running along the beach by moonlight, wringing her hands, as she cried and answered the moaning voice of the winds in the palms that sighed to her dying ears, like to the dead laughter and the memories of lost children, lovers and husband; I know not which. Then she would jump into the sea. And the waves, closing over her head, did bring the peace of Atua, Pelé, and the great White God, whichever may be the most merciful.”
Such were the incidents connected with Hawahee’s history, and which he deigned to tell Sestrina that night and the next night as she sat by the kitchen cooking-fire of her solitary home on their lone isle of the vast Pacific. And often, when Hawahee had crossed the hollow and entered his hut for sleep, the imaginative castaway girl would lie in her own chamber and fancy she could hear the dead laughter of children and the calling voices of the dying lepers, shrieking and calling somewhere out in the wind swept palms, that sighed fitfully on the valley’s ridge by her homestead. In these dreams Sestrina fully realised that, to the lepers at least, her lonely desert isle was a haven of refuge, an oasis in the desert of their life’s misery. For not in all the world was sorrow so heart-rending, so hideous and intense as on Molokai. Yes, notwithstanding that missionaries devoted their days as ministering angels to the stricken exiles, and that the heroic martyr-priest Damien, the lepers’ Christ, and Father Albert the good dwelt in their midst. For who can stay the dead from dreaming in their living tombs, or from leaping from the grave to run along the dark, beetling crags of the moonlit beach, listening to the memories of the wind swept palms and calling to the skies for mercy?
CHAPTER II
AFTER Sestrina’s experience with Lupo by the lagoon, everything went along quietly for a week, during which time she and Hawahee busied themselves by making their dwellings as comfortable as possible. Sestrina gathered stiff grasses for the thatching of their kitchen roof, which Hawahee was building so that they could have their meals in each other’s company. It was only through Sestrina’s insistent appeals that Hawahee agreed to this arrangement. Though Hawahee had discovered, to his great joy, that the small leper patch on his arm had dried and seemed to be healing, he still feared the girl’s close presence, and demanded her not to touch him. Sestrina, happy in his society, worked feverishly to help him improve their rough homes. She found that the work distracted her thoughts from those longings and memories which often came and filled her heart with anguish when she dwelt upon them. Hawahee, too, did his best to comfort her. He often sang weird, beautiful Hawaiian melodies to her and played on a bamboo flute which he had fashioned as they sat in the shade of the lovely breadfruit that grew on the valley’s side, just by their dwelling. Sestrina’s heart went out to him as he piped away or sang in the shadows. At other times he would tell her wonderful legends connected with the lore of his native isle. Sestrina’s eyes would open wide, as, with his eyes bright with the light of belief, he told her of the splendour and wonders of Atua, Kuahilo, Tangalora, and Pelé, the gods and goddesses of his childhood’s creed. Sestrina discovered that he was a native of Lahaina, and had been a chief of the village where he dwelt till he had become converted to Christianity.
“And do you not believe in the God of my creed?” said Sestrina, as she thought of his devotion to the little ivory idol and his continuous prayers to his heathen deities.
“I believe in all the gods of the heavens, wahine,” he had replied. And then he had told the Haytian girl how he had once been a teacher in the mission-rooms at Kailo, a fact which explained why Hawahee spoke a mixture of pidgin and biblical English. “I play on flute, nice hymns once,” he said; then he took his cleverly improvised flute from the folds of his tappa-robe and played many melodies that were familiar to Sestrina. He had already constructed a flute for Sestrina, making it out of a slender bamboo stem, placing a broad blade of stiff grass in the mouthpiece for a reed. “Thou hast a perfect ear, wahine,” he had said when Sestrina astonished him by her perfect rendering of one of his pagan melodies. Indeed, it was wonderful the headway Sestrina made with her flute-playing as she sat alone under the breadfruits and practised so as to distract her thoughts. Hawahee’s delight was unbounded to find that Sestrina liked his heathen melodies. He had looked sideways at the girl with a kind, yet artful, glance, and had said: “Thou playest well, and ’tis well for thee to pray to the great White God, but better still to turn thy head away and give praise unto the glory of Atua, Pelé and Kuahilo—eh?”
Withal, Hawahee was a noble-souled, clean-minded man, and, like many of his type, possessed the great virtue of truly believing all that he professed to believe. Hawahee possessed the deep instincts of a pagan fanatic combined with the pagan’s poetic sympathy with the beauties of nature. No leaf dropped, no flower danced in the sunlight, no bird sang, but Hawahee’s visualising imagination saw or heard it as some symbol of human joy or sorrow, some natural living representation of the thousand and one fancies that haunted his mind. Consequently nature was, to him, some mysterious pageant of the deep thoughts of his gods blossoming in multitudinous hues, or winging the sky as birds, or singing happily and sometimes moaning angrily in the starlit, solemn big-trunked breadfruit trees.
As Sestrina sat listening by night to his fascinating, poetic speech that sparkled with spontaneous similes, she came under the influence of his poetic, deeply-religious personality. This influence was a blessing in disguise, for that too helped her forget the anguish and despair that came when she thought of Royal Clensy of the great world, of her father, Claircine and all she had left behind in the world that was fast becoming a misty past to her sorrowing mind.