Jack’s imagination went a-roving over the possibilities of the peninsula: “Why, look here, Mate Woman,” he planned, “we could, if ever we contracted leprosy, live here according to our means. I could go on writing and earning money, and we could have a mountain place, a town house down in the village, a bungalow anywhere on the seashore that suited us, set up our own dairy with imported Jerseys, and ride our own horses, as well as sail our own yacht—within the prescribed radius, of course—and let Dr. Goodhue experiment on our cure!—Isn’t it all practical enough?” this to the grinning “Jack” McVeigh, who was regarding him with unconcealed delight, and who assured us he wished us no harm, but for the pleasure of our company he could almost hope the plan might come to pass!
Hours Jack London spends “cramming” on leprosy from every book the doctors have in their libraries. And literally it is one of the themes about which what is not known fills many volumes. The only point upon which all agree is that they are sure of nothing as regards the means by which the disease is communicated. The nearest they can hazard is that it is feebly contagious, and that a person to contract it must have a predisposition. Thus, one might enter the warm blankets of a leper just risen, and, by hours of contact with the effluvia therein, “catch” the disease. The same if one slept long in touch with a victim—and then only if one had the predisposition. But who is to know if the predisposition be his? Certain theories as to the mode of contagion were given us as settled facts by the authorities of the Lazar Hospital in Havana, where we first became interested in leprosy; but that there is little dependence to be placed on these opinions is borne out by at least two known cases on Molokai; one, a native who has remained “clean” though living with a wife so far gone that she attends to her yearly babies with her deft feet; and the other, a wahine who has buried five successive leprous husbands, and has failed to contract their malady.
We recall that in Havana we were assured that no attendant, no Caucasian living for years within the confines of the institution, had ever become afflicted; and the same is held on Molokai—which reports make us, as visitors, feel secure. On the other hand, several of the few white men here assert that they are absolutely ignorant as to the means of their own contagion, not having, to their knowledge, been exposed. One of these is the village storekeeper, a hearty soul whom we have seen riding about in smart togs on a good horse. He possesses but a spot—on one foot—which to date has neither increased nor diminished. When he discovered the “damned spot,” promptly he reported himself to the Board of Health; and here he makes the courageous best of his situation.
No positive cure of leprosy has yet been discovered. But occasionally some patient is found upon bacteriological examination to have no leprosy in him—never having had leprosy. Such are discharged from the Settlement. Nine times out of ten, they do not want to go, and will practice any innocent fraud to retain residence in the place that has become a congenial home.
In some ways the inhabitants of this peninsula are the happiest in the world. Food and shelter are automatic; pocket-money may be earned. Several private individuals conduct stores. The helpers, kokuas, are in the main lepers, and earn salaries. The Board of Health carries on agriculture, dairying, stock-raising, and the members of the colony are paid for their labor, and themselves own many heads of cattle and horses which run pasture-free over some 5,000 acres. The men possess their fishing boats and launches, and sell fish to the Board of Health for Settlement consumption. Sometimes a catch of 4,000 pounds is made in a night. It is not an unhappy community—quite the reverse. And their religions are not interfered with, which is amply shown by the six different churches that flourish here. Also there is a Young Men’s Christian Association.
Long we rested on the Goodhue lanai to-night, and long the shadowy leper orchestra serenaded beyond the hibiscus hedges, while some one recalled a story of Charles Warren Stoddard’s “Joe of Lahaina,” in which a Hawaiian boy, bright companion of other days, crept to the gateway in the dusk, and there from the dust called to his old friend. Forever separated, they talked of old times when they had walked arm in arm, and arms about shoulders, in Sweet Lahaina.
July 4.
This morning we were shocked from dreams by noises so outlandish as to make us wonder if we were not struggling in nightmare—unearthly cackling mirth and guttural shoutings and half-animal cries that hurried us into kimonos and sandals to join our household at the gate where they were watching a scene as weird as the ghastly din. Only a little after five o’clock, the atmosphere was vague, and overhead we heard the rasping cry of a bosun bird, koae. In the eery whispering dawn there gamboled a score or so “horribles,” men and women already horrible enough, God wot, and but thinly disguised in all manner of extravagant costumings. They wore masks of home manufacture, in which the makers had unwittingly imitated the lamentable grotesquerie of the features of their companions—the lopping mouth, knobby or almost effaced nose, flapping ear; while, equally correct in similitude, the hue of these false-true visages was invariably an unpleasant, pestilent yellow. Great heaven!—do our normal countenances appear abnormal to them?
Some of the actors in this serio-comic performance were astride cavorting horses, some on foot; and one, an agile clown in dots and frills, seemed neither afoot nor horseback, in a way of speaking, for he traveled in company with a trained donkey that lay down peaceably whenever it was mounted. One motley harlequin, whose ghostly white mask did not conceal a huge bulbous ear, exhibited with dramatic gesture and native elocution a dancing bear personified by a man in a brown shag to represent fur.
And all the while the crowd kept up a running fire of jokes and mimicry that showed no mean originality and talent.