Here Kahéle's heart rejoiced. Here, close by the little chapel of Kaupo, he discovered one whom he proclaimed his grandfather; though, judging from the years of the man, he could scarcely have been anything beyond an uncle. I was put to rest in a little stone cell, where the priests sleep when they are on their mission to Kaupo. A narrow bed, with a crucifix at the foot of it, a small window in the thick wall, with a jug of water in the corner thereof, and a chair with a game-leg, constituted the furnishment of the quaint lodging. Kahéle rushed about to see old friends,—who wept over him,—and was very long absent, whereat I waxed wroth, and berated him roundly; but the poor fellow was so charmingly repentant that I forgave him all, and more too, for I promised him I would stay three days, at least, with his uncle-grandfather, and give him his universal liberty for the time being.
From the open doorway I saw the long sweep of the mountains, looking cool and purple in the twilight. The ghostly procession of the mists stole in at the windward gap; the after-glow of the evening suffused the front of the chapel with a warm light, and the statue of the Virgin above the chapel-door,—a little faded with the suns of that endless summer, a little mildewed with the frequent rains,—the statue looked down upon us with a smile of welcome. Some youngsters, as naked as day-old nest-birds, tossed a ball into the air; and when it at last lodged in the niche of the Virgin, they clapped their hands, half in merriment and half in awe, and the games of the evening ended. Then the full moon rose; a cock crew in the peak of the chapel, thinking it daybreak, and the little fellows slept, with their spines curved like young kittens. By and by the moon hung, round and mellow, beyond the chapel-cross, and threw a long shadow in the grass; and then I went to my cell and folded my hands to rest, with a sense of blessed and unutterable peace.
THE CHAPEL OF THE PALMS.
OH, the long suffering of him who threads a narrow trail over the brown crust of a hill where the short grass lies flat in tropical sunshine! On one side sleeps the blue, monotonous sea; on the other, crags clothe themselves in cool mist and look dreamy and solemn.
The boy Kahéle, who has no ambition beyond the bit of his foot-sore mustang, lags behind, taking all the dust with commendable resignation.
As for me, I am wet through with the last shower; I steam in the fierce noonday heat. I spur Hoké the mule into the shadow of a great cloud that drifts lazily overhead, and am grateful for this unsatisfying shade as long as it lasts. I watch the sea, swinging my whip by its threadbare lash like a pendulum,—the sea, where a very black rock is being drowned over and over by the tremendous swell that covers it for a moment; but somehow the rock comes to the surface again, and seems to gasp horribly in a deluge of breakers. That rock has been drowning for centuries, yet its struggle for life is as real as ever.
I watch the mountains, cleft with green, fern-cushioned chasms, where an occasional stream silently distils. Far up on a sun-swept ledge a white, scattering drift, looking like a rose-garden after a high wind, I know to be a flock of goats feeding. But the wind-dried and sun-burnt grass under foot, the intangible dust that pervades the air, the rain-cloud in the distance, trailing its banners of crape in the sea as it bears down upon us,—these annoyed me somewhat, and make life a burden for the time being; so I spur my faithless Hoké up a new ascent as forbidding as any that we have yet come upon, and slowly and with many pauses creep to the summit.
Kahéle, "the goer," belies his name, for he loiters everywhere and always; yet I am not sorry. I have the first glimpse of Wailua all to myself. I am not obliged to betray my emotion, which is a bore of the worst sort.
Wailua lies at my feet,—a valley full of bees, butterflies, and blossoms, the sea fawning at the mouth of it, the clouds melting over it; waterfalls gushing from numerous green corners; silver-white phaëtons floating in mid-air, at a loss to choose between earth and heaven, though evidently a little inclined earthward, for they no sooner drift out of the bewildering bowers of Wailua than they return again with noticeable haste.
Down I plunge into the depths of the valley, with the first drops of a heavy shower pelting me in the back; and under a great tree, that seems yearning to shelter somebody, I pause till the rain is over.