“Major” Lee, one-time American engineer in the Inter-Island Steamship Company, demonstrated the workings of a newly installed steam poi factory. He was in the gayest of humors, and ever so proud of his spick-and-span machinery. “We’re not so badly off here as the Outside chooses to think,” he announced, patting a rotund boiler. And then, with explosive earnestness: “I say, Mr. London—give ’em a breeze about us, will you? Tell ’em how we really live. Nobody knows—nobody has told half the truth about Molokai and the splendid way things are run. Why, they give the impression that you can go around with a basket and pick up fingers and toes and hands and feet. They don’t take the trouble to find out the truth, and nobody seems to put ’em straight. Why, leprosy doesn’t work that way, anyhow. Things don’t fall off: they take up—they absorb. We’ve got our pride, you know and we don’t like the wrong thing believed on the Outside, naturally. So you give the public a breeze about us, Mr. London, and you’ll have the gratitude of the fellows on Molokai.”
And I thought I saw, in Jack’s active eye, a hint of the fair breeze to a gale that he would set a-blowing on the subject of “the fellows on Molokai.”
When “Major” Lee sailed his last trip on the old Line, the luckier engineers of the Noeau, taking him to Kalaupapa, said: “Come on down to our rooms, and be comfortable.” Lee protested—No, it would not be right; it wouldn’t be playing the game; he was a leper now, a leper, do you hear?—and things were different, old fellows.... “Different, your granny!” and with friendly oaths and suspicious movements of shirtsleeves across eyes, the chief and his men had their old comrade into their quarters and gave him the best they had, even to a stirrup-cup—an infringement of orders, as alcohol is the best accomplice of leprosy.
Leaving Kalaupapa, we drove to the elder village, Kalawao, across the mile of the rolling peninsula, a pathway of beauty from the iron-bound, surf-fountained sea line, to the grandeurs of the persistent pali to the south, which is beyond word-painting, unfolding like a giant panorama even along that scant mile. Such crannied canyons, crowded with ferns; such shelves for waterfalls that banner out in the searching wind; such green of tree and purple of shadow. Midway of the trip, Dr. Hollmann turned to the left up a short, steep knoll, from the top of which our eyes dropped into a tiny crater—deep, emerald cup jeweled with red stones, a deeper emerald pool in the bottom, fringed with clashing sisal swords. We came near having a more intimate view of the inverted cone, for a sudden powerful gust of the strong trade that sweeps the peninsula caught us off guard and obliged us to lean sharply back against the blast. Descending the outer slopes of the miniature extinct volcano, we poked around amidst some nameless graves, the old cement mounds and decorations crumbling to dust. The place was provocative of much speculation upon human destiny.
In Kalawao we called at the Catholic Home for Boys, presided over by Father Emmerau and the Brothers, and met up with Brother Dutton, veteran of the Civil War, Thirteenth Wisconsin, who later entered the priesthood, and has immolated himself for years among the leper youth. We found him very entertaining, as he found Jack, with whose career he proved himself well acquainted.
Across the road in a little churchyard, we stood beside the tombstone of Father Damien—name revered by every one who knows how this simple Belgian priest came to no sanitary, law-abiding, well-ordered community such as to-day adorns this shunned region. He realized his destination before he leaped from the boat; and, once ashore, did not shrink nor turn back from the duty he had imposed upon himself. A life of toil and a fearful lingering death were the forfeit of this true martyr of modern times. We have seen photographs of him in the progressing stages of his torment, and nothing more frightful can be conjured.
Never had we thought to stand beside his grave. Just a little oblong plot of tended green, inclosed in iron railing, with a white marble cross and a footstone—that is all; fittingly simple for the simple worker, as is the Damien Chapel alongside, into which we stepped with the Bishop, our fellow passenger on the Noeau, and Fathers Emmerau and Maxime, to see the modest altar. Standing before the shrine in the subdued light, it seemed as if there could have been no death for the devoted young priest who came so far to lay down his life for his friends.
After dinner, cooked by the pretty Japanese Masa and her husband, the other household came over to our lanai. And while we talked, in through the twilight stole vibrations of swept strings, and the sob of a violin, and voices of the men’s “Glee Club” that wove in perfect harmonies—voices thrilling as the metal wires but sharpened and thinned by corroded throats. There we sat in plenitude of health and circumstance, while at the gate, through which none but the clean may ever stray, outside the pale of ordinary human association, these poor pariahs, these shapes that once were men in a world of men, sang to us, the whole, the fortunate, who possess return passage for that free world, the Outside—lost world to them.
On and on they sang, the melting Hawaiian airs, charming “Ua Like No a Like,” and “Dargie Hula,” “Mauna Kea” beloved of Jack, and his more than favorite, Kalakaua’s “Sweet Lei Lehua,” with tripping, ripping hula harmonies unnumbered. At the end of an hour bewitched, to Mr. McVeigh’s low “Good night, boys,” their last Queen’s “Aloha Oe,” with its fadeless “Love to You,” that has helped to make Hawaii the Heart-Home of countless lovers the world over, laid the uttermost touch of eloquence upon the strange occasion. The sweet-souled musicians, who in their extremity could offer pleasure of sound if not of sight to us happy ones, melted away in the blue starlight, the hulaing of their voices that could not cease abruptly, drifting faint and fainter on the wind.