Kalaupapa, Molokai, July 2.
We are trying to reconstruct whatever mind-picture we have hitherto entertained of that grave of living death, Molokai. But it is no use, and we would best give it up. Eye and brain are possessed of the bewildering actuality, and having expected Heaven knows what lugubrious prospect, we are all at sea. Certain it is that our preconceptions were far removed from the joyous sunny scene now before us, as I rock in a hammock on the Superintendent’s lanai, shaded from the late sunshine by a starry screen of white jasmine. Jack stretches at length on a rattan lounge, cigarette in one hand and long cool glass in the other; and what we see is a serene pasture of many acres, a sort of bulging village green, in the center a white bandstand breathing of festivity. Around the verdant semi-hemisphere, widely straggling as if space and real estate values were the least consideration of mankind, are dotted the flower-bedecked homes of the leprous inhabitants. Breaking gaily into this vision of repose, a cowboy on a black horse dashes across the field and out of sight. A leper. Two comely wahines in ruffly white holokus, starched to a nicety, stroll chatting by the house, looking up brightly to smile Aloha with eyes and lips. Lepers. Jack looks at me. I look at Jack. And this is Molokai the dread; Molokai, isle of despair, where Father Damien spent his martyrdom.
The Settlement lies on a low triangle, a sort of wide-based peninsula, selected by Dr. Hutchinson in 1865, shut effectively off as it is from the rest of the island to the south by a formidable wall rising over two thousand feet against the deep-blue sky—a wall of mystery, for it is well-nigh unscalable except by the bands of wild goats that we can discover only by aid of Mr. McVeigh’s telescope. Every little while, as a sailor sweeps the horizon, he steps to the glass, hidden from the community by the jasmine screen, and studies the land of his charge, keeping track of the doings of the village.
The only trail out of or into this isolated lowland zigzags the bare face of the pali near its northern end, at the seagirt extremity of the Settlement reserve. A silvery-green cluster of kukui trees marks the beginning of the trail not far up from the water’s edge. Thus far and no farther may the residents of the peninsula stray; and the telescope is most often trained to this point of the compass. That trail does not look over-inviting; but we have set our hearts upon leaving Kalaupapa by this route, albeit Mr. McVeigh, who knows what is in our thought, warns that it is undergoing repairs and is unsafe. Indeed, he has gone so far as to hint that it is out of the question for us to ascend now.
In view of the pleasant reality of the island, yesternight’s racking experience seems a nightmare. Over and above pity for the stricken exiles, we were none too comfortable ourselves. In the tiny stuffy staterooms it was impossible to sleep, and except for coolness the populous deck was scarcely less disturbing. Besides the Superintendent, the other passengers were hapa haoles and a white Catholic father with his Bishop, bound for the Settlement to inspect their institutions.
We turned in early on deck-mattresses, after listening to some thrilling yarns from the captain and mate of the sorry little steamer, to say nothing of those of Mr. McVeigh, who sparkles with Hibernian wit. As the miles and time increased between the lepers and the harbor of farewells, they searched out their ubiquitous ukeleles and guitars, and rendered us happier for their presence. All would have been well, and the music and murmuring voices soon have had us drowsing, but for a tipsy native sailor who chipped in noisily with ribald song and speech that was loudly profane.
At intervals the captain and mates issued from their unrestful cubbies on to the short strip of plunging deck (these interisland channels have a reputation equal to the passage between Dover and Calais), and conversed at length in unmuffled accents. To cap my sleepless discomfort, Jack, who had been fighting all night, he avers unconsciously, to wrest away the soft pillow he had insisted upon my using, finally appropriated the same with a determined “pounding of the ear” in hobo parlance. And poor I, lacking the meanness to reclaim it at price of rousing him from his troubled slumber, languished upon a neck-wrenching bolster stuffed, I swear, with scrap-iron. It has since occurred to us that it may have been a life-preserver.
At the chill hour of four, all passengers for Kalaupapa were landed in a rough-and-ready life-boat through breakers which, to our regret, were the reverse of boisterous. We had looked forward to making through a breach of surf like that shown in photographs of Kalaupapa Landing. But it was novel enough, this being let down the lurching black flank of the ship where she rolled in the unseen swell, into an uncertain boat where muscular arms eased us into invisible seats. The merest fitful whisper of air was stirring, and there was something solemn in our progress, deep-dipping oars sending the heavy boat in large, slow rhythm over a broad swell and under the frown of a wall of darker darkness against the jeweled southern sky.
The landing is a small concrete breakwater, into the crooked arm of which we slipped, trusting in the lantern gleam to hands of natives that reached to help. We wondered, entirely without alarm, if they were leprous fingers we grasped, but rested upon fate and climbed our spryest.
The wall was rimmed with sitting figures, and when our twenty-five leper passengers set foot on the cement, some were greeted in low, hesitant Hawaiian speech as if by acquaintances. In the flicker of the swinging lanterns we saw a white woman’s anxious face and two pale hands stretched out. And tears were in my eyes to see the German mother and child united, even in their awful plight.