The cloaked man groaned. The others crouched, shuddering, and their eyes in the red torch-flame were the eyes of goblins. In another moment a shock ran through the group, for another voice, clear and stern, commanded, “As you value your lives, don’t stir. Men, do not fire unless I tell you.”
A light flashed up, then another, and the bandits discovered themselves in the centre of a ring formed by twenty men, with the young captain in command. Resistance would have been foolish, flight impossible; yet, as the captain stepped toward the brigand leader, the man in the cloak attempted the foolish and impossible; he fired his pistol full at the captain’s head, flung the weapon after the bullet, missing his aim each time, then started to run, upsetting one of the soldiers as he did so.
“Fire!” cried the captain.
Two musket-shots came upon the word. The tall man tumbled headlong. “It is one the less to hang,” exclaimed the officer, as he snatched a torch from the hand of one of his men. He bent over the prostrate form: the robber had been killed instantly. He withdrew the cloak from the face and looked long without speaking. Finally he said, “I was a better ghost than I supposed. These brigands will have to elect a new leader, and Puerto Principe must have a new prosecuting attorney.”
In the deserted inn, under the kitchen floor, were found the remains of Enrique Carillo and several other victims of the robbers. And it is said that on All Souls’ eve their ghosts block the road and beg all who pass to pray for them and to pay for a few masses. Most importunate of all is the ghost of Pablo Ramirez.
In the Pacific
Finding of the Islands
One of the oldest legends of the Hawaiians relates to the finding of their islands by Hawaiiloa, a great chief and great-grandson of Kinilauamano, whose twelve sons became the founders of twelve tribes. Guided by the Pleiades he sailed westward from America, or northward from some other group,—doubtless the latter,—and so came to these pleasant lands, to the largest of which he gave his own name, while the lesser ones commemorate his children. In another tradition the islands of Oahu and Molokai were the illegitimate children of two of his descendants, who were wedded, but jealous of one another and faithless. Still another folk-tale runs to the effect that an enormous bird, at least as large as the American thunder-bird or the roc of Arabia, paused in its flight across the sea and laid an egg which floated on the water. The warmth of the ocean and the ardor of the sun hatched the egg, and from it came the islands, which grew, in time, to their present size, and ever increased in beauty. Some years after they were found by a man and a woman who had voyaged from Kahiki in a canoe, and liking the scenery and climate, they went ashore on the eastern side of Hawaii, and remained there to become the progenitors of the present race. It suggests the ark legend that this pair had in their canoe two dogs, two swine, and two fowls, from which animals had come all that were found running wild there a hundred years ago. The people can never be thankful enough that these visitors differed from Nuu in their lack of regard for the snakes, scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas, and mosquitoes that are so common to tropic lands, for, having neglected to import these afflictions, the islands got on without them until recently. Mosquitoes were taken to Hawaii on an American ship. The hogs and dogs are descendants of animals that escaped from the wreck of the Spanish galleon Santo Iago in 1527.