“Now I can go to Hawaii with you for a few weeks. And I’ll write a new dog book while I’m there. And we’ll see Kauai, too.”
The few weeks became five months, and “Jerry of the Islands” was begun and finished, to be followed by “Michael, Brother of Jerry.”
So it came to pass that Jack alone of our small family saw Kauai, the “Garden Isle,” with its exquisite Hanalei Valley and bay, one of the most beautiful in Hawaii; and Waimea Canyon, which he said beggared description in grandeur and coloring, only comparable with the Grand Canyon of Colorado. Jack came back promising that next trip to the Islands we should together visit Kauai.
The president of the Board of Health, Dr. John S. B. Pratt, being absent from the Territory, Governor Pinkham, always full of aloha toward us, sent to Mr. D. S. Bowman, Acting, his earnest kokua (recommendation) that we be granted a permit to revisit the Leper Settlement. We had long since heard from Jack McVeigh, who affectionately assured us of his personal welcome. He had lately asked Jack to give a lecture in Honolulu, the proceeds to be applied toward erecting a new motion-picture theater at Kalaupapa; but shortly the means came from some other source, and the lecture did not take place.
Jack always disliked repeating even the most desired experience in exactly the same manner; so this time, for the sake of variety, we were to descend the Molokai Pali. To this end, we landed from the Likelike one midnight, bag and saddle, at Kaunakakai, where waited Henry Ma, a wizzled, clever little old Hawaiian, sent all the way from Kalaupapa with horses. Miss Myers, a sister of Kalama of hearty memory, going home from Honolulu, accompanied us up-mountain.
(1) Jack and Charmion London, Waikiki. (2) A Race around Oahu. (3) Sailor Jack Aboard the Hawaii. (4) Pá-u-Rider.
Thus, under a full moon, we retraced the road descended eight years earlier in the heat of midday. The moonlight bewitched the remembered landscape, and silvered the receding ocean floor; and very tenuous and unreal it all seemed, as the eager horses forged lightly up, mile upon inclining mile, into chill air, for which I, for one, was unprepared. To Jack’s insistence that I wear his coat I refused to listen, until, riding alongside, he pressed his warm hands to my cheek. “See—how warm I am—you know me!” His circulation was always of the best, and never have I known his hands to be cold. Even on frosty days, tobogganing or sleighing, or long, damp hours at the Roamer’s winter wheel up the Sacramento or San Joaquin rivers, it was the same; “See—how warm my hands are!”
Ten very short miles to ourselves and the home-bound animals lay behind when we-reached the Myers’ house-gate. I shall always blame-sweet Hawaiian backwardness that set a silence upon Kalama’s red lips. No word she spoke except “Aloha,” as smiling she led the flagged way to the guest-cottage. And how were we to know that this imperial-bodied, full-blossomed Juno was molded on the frame of that tall, slim, strapping cow-girl we had met nearly ten years ago? There was something only vaguely familiar about her, and I dared to ask: “We knew you here before?” Oh, shades of night, protect and hide! “Why, yes,” quietly, “I am Kalama—don’t you remember?” Kalama! Kalama! Will you ever forgive? Why were you so gorgeously, amply different that we knew you not?
“Do you know where you are?” this, when, after three hours’ sleep, Henry Ma had tapped upon the begonia-screened window, and we had breakfasted and mounted and were galloping over green pastures to Molokai’s great falling-off place. Almost, as one hesitates to unlock a long-sealed box of letters and pictures, I drew back from the imminent verge. How I should like to have been the first who ever came suddenly upon this unexpected void of disaster and gazed upon the incredible lapse of the world below! We had yet to search for its equal.