We spent the night in the mountain rest house. This small stone cabin is provided for visitors to the summit. We curled up in our blankets—but not to sleep. The fireplace balked and the smoke went everywhere but up the chimney. We stood it as long as we could and then concluded that we would rather freeze than be smoked to death. We threw the fire outdoors and spent the rest of the night in a cold but smokeless cabin. A bucket of water in the room was frozen over with ice a half inch thick. We didn't sleep a wink.
In the morning we saw the greatest of all sunrises—a Haleakala Sunrise. The great crater had filled with clouds during the night. In the grey morning light one could imagine that he was looking over an immense body of water. Clouds had settled around the mountain so that the view of the ocean was shut off. We seemed to be standing on an island with clouds all about us. The first rays of the sun were caught up by the mass of mist in the crater. In an instant the great pit was turned into a sea of fire. Back and forth flashed the light as it was reflected through the abyss of fog. In three minutes it was all over. As the sun rose the clouds began to take flight, like giant birds, and in a few minutes the crater was empty.
We rolled rocks over the edge and watched them go bounding down the two thousand foot slope to the floor of the crater. When a boulder in its flight struck another, imbedded in the side of the mountain, pieces dashed up like a fountain and the noise was like the muffled discharge of a cannon.
It only took us a little over four hours to make the twenty miles back to Paia. We scarcely felt tired that evening, but the following morning I thought I was a hundred years old. The constant pounding of our heels on the hard trail affected the muscles in the back of our legs and for two or three days we could hardly walk. If human beings ever have springhalt, we surely had it.
We returned to Honolulu by the Mauna Kea. All went well in the steerage and we arrived in the morning. Instead of going to the wharf, the ship anchored at the quarantine station. We thought this was something unusual and one of us asked an officer the cause. Bubonic plague, one of the most feared of all diseases, had appeared on Maui—only two cases—and all the steerage passengers were to be landed at quarantine and inspected by the port doctor before being allowed to go ashore.
We were steerage by environment but not by heredity. Within two minutes we had business in the engine room. We tarried there a brief moment and went on deck—the first-class deck. Every one was in a rush and our appearance was not even noticed. We knew several of the passengers and at once entered into conversation with them.
Soon the ship's boats were lowered and the first-class passengers—and two steerage—were landed at the wharf. In ten minutes we were on shore, two travel-stained, tired and lame, but cheerful looking tramps. Haleakala was a wonder. It was worth travelling steerage to see—even worth taking a chance on the plague.