All through the busy morning hours, and the surf-boarding and swimming and romping of the afternoon, of all the remarkable impressions of that astounding week on Molokai, the pali endured. Again and again I seem to cling to the incredible face of it, creeping foot by foot, alert, tense, unafraid except for each other...[[5]]
Waikiki, July 11.
In a fine frenzy to give a just presentation of the Leper Settlement, Jack has lost no time finishing the promised article, “The Lepers of Molokai.”
In it he pictures himself having a “disgracefully good time,” yelling at the track-side with the lepers when the horses came under the wire, and presently branches off into a serious consideration of the situation, interspersed with bright items of life in the Settlement. The article is highly approved by Mr. Pinkham, and Mr. Lorrin A. Thurston avers it is the best and fairest that has ever been written.
Although the President of the Board of Health is entirely satisfied with himself and with the article, as well as with Jack’s press interviews regarding the trip, several prominent citizens have expressed themselves to the official as highly indignant that we should have been allowed in the Settlement. But the imperturable Pinkham has told them with asperity that it does not profit them or Hawaii to imitate ostriches and simulate obliviousness of the fact that the world knows of leprosy in Hawaii. And why should Hawaii be supersensitive? Leprosy is not unknown in the large cities even of America; and Hawaii should be proud to advertise her magnificent system of segregation, unequaled anywhere in the world, and be glad to have it exploited by men of conscience and intelligence.
Wailuku, Maui, Sunday, July 14.
Two evenings gone, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Thurston, we boarded the Claudine, which though much larger than the Noeau, pitched violently in the head-sea of Kaiwi Channel, and took more than spray over the upper deck for’ard where were our staterooms.
A swarm of Japanese sailed steerage and outside on the lower deck, each bearing a matted bundle exactly like his neighbor’s. The women carried their possessions wrapped in gorgeously printed challies in which a stunning orange was most conspicuous among vivid blues and greens and intermediate purples. Early in the trip all were laid low in everything but clamor and from our deck we could see the poor things in every stage of disheartened deshabille, pretty matron and maiden alike careless of elaborate chignon falling awry, the men quite chivalrously trying to ease their women’s misery in the pauses of their own.
Kahului, our destination, on Maui, the “Valley Isle,” is on the northern shore of the isthmus connecting West Maui with the greater Haleakala section of this practically double island; but Mr. Thurston’s sea-going emotions had increased to such intensity that around midnight he crept to our latticed door and suggested we disembark at Lahaina, the first port, finish the night at the hotel, and in the morning drive around the Peninsula of West Maui to Wailuku.
Nothing loath to escape the roughest part of the passage, doubling the headland, we dressed and gathered our hand-luggage; and at half past one in the morning dropped over the Claudine’s swaying side. As we clung in the chubby, chopping boat, manned by natives with long oars, we could make out towering heights against the star-bright sky, and on either side heard the near breakers swish and hiss warningly upon the coral. And all about, near and far, burned the slanting flares of fishermen, the flames touching the inky tide water with elongated dancing sparkles. Voices floated after from the anchored steamer, and ghostly hoof-beats clattered faint but distinct from the invisible streets of the old, old town. As at Molokai, shadowy hands helped us upon the wharf—and the tender witchery of the night fled before the babble of hackmen, stamping of mosquito-bitten horses, a lost and yelping dachshund pup that insisted on being trod upon, and the huge red-headed hotel proprietor of an unornamental wooden hostelry, its uninviting entrance lighted with smoking kerosene lamps.