Summer Cruising in the South Seas

by Charles Warren Stoddard

It seemed the boy had engaged a special guide for the crater,—one accustomed to feeling his way through the bleak hollow, where any unpractised feet must have surely gone astray. Kahéle offered him a tempting bonus to head our little caravan at once, though it goes sorely against the Hawaiian grain to make up a mind inside of three days. Kahéle managed the financial department, whenever he had the opportunity, with a liberality worthy of a purse ten times as weighty as mine; but as he afterward assured me, that guide was a fine man, and a friend of his whom it was a pleasure and a privilege to serve.

Of course, it was all right, since I couldn't help myself; and we three pulled up the long slopes of Haleakala, while the clouds multiplied, as the sun sank, and the evening grew awfully still. Somewhere up among the low-hanging mist there was a house full of haolis, and there we proposed to spend the night. We were looking for this shelter with all our six eyes, while we rode slowly onward, having scarcely uttered a syllable for the last half-hour. You know there are some impressive sorts of solitude, that seal up a fellow's lips; he can only look about him in quiet wonderment, tempered with a fearless and refreshing trust in that Providence who has enjoined silence. Well, this was one of those times; and right in the midst of it Kahéle sighted a smoke-wreath in the distance. To me it looked very like a cloud, and I ventured to declare it such; but the youngster frowned me down, and appealed to the special guide for further testimony. The guide declined to commit himself in the matter of smoke or mist, as he ever did on all succeeding occasions, being a wise guide, who knew his own fallibility. It was smoke!—a thin, blue ribbon of it, uncoiling itself from among the branches of the overhanging trees, floating up and up and tying itself into double-bow knots, and then trying to untie itself, but perishing in the attempt.

In the edge of the grove we saw the little white cottage of the haolis; and, not far away, a camp fire, with bright, red flames dancing around a kettle, swung under three stakes with their three heads together. Tall figures were moving about the camp, looking almost like ghosts, in the uncertain glow of the fire; and towards these lights and shadows we jogged with satisfaction, scenting supper from afar.

"Halloo!" said we, with voices that did not sound very loud up in that thin atmosphere.

"Halloo!" said they, with the deepest unconcern, as though they had been through the whole range of human experience, and there was positively nothing left for them to get excited over.

Some of their animals whinnied in a fashion that drew a response from ours. A dog barked savagely until he was spoken to, and then was obliged to content himself with an occasional whine. Some animal—a sheep, perhaps—rose up in the trail before us, and plunged into bush, sending our beasts back on their haunches with fright. A field-cricket lifted up its voice and sang; and then a hundred joined him; and then ten thousand times ten thousand swelled the chorus, till the mountains were alive with singing crickets.

"Halloo, stranger! Come in and stop a bit, won't you?" This was our welcome from the chief of the camp, who came a step or two forward, as soon as we had ridden within range of the camp fire.

And we went in unto them, and ate of their bread, and drank of their coffee, and slept in their blankets,—or tried to sleep,—and had a mighty good time generally.

The mountaineers proved to be a company of California miners, who had somehow drifted over the sea, and, once on that side, they naturally enough went into the mountains to cut wood, break trails, and make themselves useful in a rough, out-of-door fashion. They had for companions and assistants a few natives, who, no doubt, did the best they could, though the Californians expressed considerable contempt for the "lazy devils, who were fit for nothing but to fiddle on a jew's-harp."

We ate of a thin, hot cake, baked in a frying-pan over that camp fire; gnawed a boiled bone fished out of the kettle swung under the three sticks; drank big bowls of coffee, sweetened with coarse brown sugar and guiltless of milk; and sat on the floor all the while, with our legs crossed, like so many Turks and tailors. We went to our blankets as soon as the camp fire had smothered itself in ashes, though meanwhile Jack, chief of the camp, gathered himself to windward of the flames, with his hips on his heels and his chin on his knees, smoking a stubby pipe, and talking of flush times in California. He was one of those men who could and would part with his last quarter, relying upon Nature for his bed and board. He said to me, "If you can rough it, hang on a while,—what's to drive you off?" I could rough it: the fire was out, the night chilly; so we turned in under blue blankets with a fuzz on them like moss, and, having puffed out the candle,—that lived long enough to avenge its death in a houseful of villainous smoke,—we turned over two or three times apiece, and, one after another, fell asleep. At the farther side of the house lay the natives, as thick as sheep in a pen, one of them a glossy black fellow, as sleek as a eunuch, born in the West Indies, but whose sands of life had been scattered on various shores. This sooty fellow twanged a quaint instrument of native workmanship, and twanged with uncommon skill. His art was the life of that savage community at the other end of the house. Again and again, during the night, I awoke and heard the tinkle of his primitive harp, mingled with the ejaculations of delight wrung from the hearts of his dusky and sleepless listeners.