The chief told Waylao how he had loved the maid since she was a little child; how before she had reached womanhood the leprosy spot had appeared on her body. Then came the terrible edict that condemned all lepers to life exile on the Isle of Molokai. He told Waylao how he had hidden the Hawaiian girl in a cave by the shores of his native isle. But notwithstanding all his precautions they had discovered that he had a lover hidden somewhere, a lover who had the dreaded leper spot, and was striving to elude the clutch of the leper-hunters.
One night a terrified scream broke the silence of the shore caves, and Aiola was taken away across the seas to the dread lazaretto. Then, to the chief’s delight, he discovered the dread Mai Pake—the leper spot—on his own body. He, too, was sent to the leper lazaretto, and so met Aiola again.
They had clung to each other with the arms of love, but, still, the loathsome sights, ever haunting their eyes, had made them yearn to escape, anywhere, anywhere across the seas, from that living tomb.
Pointing to the hulk that lay high on the sands, for the tide had left it dry, he said:
“That hulk was the means of our deliverance; it was washed ashore on the Isle of Molokai through a hurricane. One night, under the cover of great darkness, we did creep down to the shore. When we got on to the hulk and stowed away in the dark hold, awaiting to push it into deep water as the tide rose, we discovered that another lot of lepers had also stowed away, ready for the outgoing tide. At first we were sorry, then we became exceedingly glad, for it was only by their help that we were enabled to push the hulk with bamboo rods into deep water.
“So did we drift away to sea. A great storm was blowing from the north-west. The matagia [gale] blew for five days. We all hid in the hold, for we were frightened that some ship might sight the drifting hulk and search and find us. But the great white God heard our prayers, and so we were not discovered!”[[7]]
[7]. It was a common thing in those days for travellers to find skeletons in the coast caves and the forests of the Hawaiian Isles, and in many of the surrounding isles of the North Pacific. Some, maybe, were the skeletons of shipwrecked white men and natives, or escapes from the convict settlements of Noumea. More often they were the remains of the stricken, who had fled from the leper-hunters, preferring to cast themselves adrift in a canoe or raft, and risk the terrors of the ocean to the dreadful exile to the lazaretto on Molokai. Often the fugitives were accompanied by a wife, husband, child or lover. And often those who shared their sorrows died by their own hand when the tragedy had ended in the death of the afflicted. It may be some will think that I have overdrawn the horrors of leprosy and its effects physically and mentally. I can assure my readers that, in my attempt to depict the scenes of leprosy and its consequences in those times, I am obliged to leave out a good deal. The full truth were too terrible to write about in a book that only touches on the matter so far as it concerns Waylao.
As the Father and I listened to the girl’s story, we marvelled with astonishment, so evident was the intense interest the exiled girl had taken in those stricken people, completely forgetting her own troubles. The Father’s eyes were blind with tears, and so were mine.
Waylao came to love those Hawaiian exiled lepers. She also would kneel beside the castaways and pray and sing with them.
Though they were both cursed with the plague, no spot had, as yet, commenced to show its hideous presence on either of their faces.