“Here it comes! Listen to it! It’s coming! Hear it! Feel it!”
It was a milder shock, and was followed by a still lighter one, accompanied by a distant rumbling and grinding in this last living island of the group.
Of course, our first thought following upon the immediate excitement of the shake was of the volcanoes. Would Kilauea, which had this long time dwindled to a breath of smoke, awake? A telephone to Hilo brought no report of activity. Our first attempts to use the wire were ludicrous failures, for every Mongolian and Portuguese of the thousands on Hawaii was yapping and jabbering after his manner, and the effect was as of a rising and falling murmur of incommunicable human woe, broken here and there by a sharper or more individual note of trouble. A white man’s speech carried faintly in the unseen Babel.
Louisson’s to Hilo, September 6.
In the perfumed cool of morning we bade farewell to the hospitable bachelors, and descended once more from the knees of Mauna Kea to its feet upon the cliffs. The world was a-sparkle from glinting mountain brow above purple forest and cloud-ring, down the undulating lap of rustling cane, to the dimpling sea that ruffled its edges against the bold coast. Trees, heavy with overnight rain, shook their sun-opals upon us from leaf and branch, and little rills tinkled across the road. The air was filled with bird-songs, and in our hearts there was also something singing for gladness.
Thus far, in our junketing, we have relied for the most part upon saddle horses and railroad trains, or private conveyances of one sort or another. Long stretches endured in public vehicles have never tempted. But to-day’s journeying, in the middle seat of three, luggage strapped on behind the four-in-hand stage, was a unique experience, and an excellent chance to observe the labor element. For we traveled in company with members of its various branches—Hawaiian, Portuguese, Japanese, and many another breed.
The overcrowding was ludicrous. At some stop on the way, a bevy of Japanese would swarm into the stage without first a “look-see” to find if it was already full, literally piling themselves upon us. Jack, determinedly extricating them and holding firmly to his seat, would say with laughing eyes and smiling-set lips, while he thrust his big shoulders this way and that: “I like to look at them, but they’d camp on us if we’d let them!”
The only compromise we made with the overreaching coolie tide was to take into our seat a sad little Porto Rican cripple, a mere child with aged and painwrought face, whom the passengers, of whatsoever nationality, shunned because of the bad repute of his blood in the Islands; and also a sunny small daughter of Portugal, glorious-eyed and bashfully friendly. When presented with a big round dollar, she answered maturely, to his query as to how she would squander it, a laconic:
“School shoes.”
Shades of striped candy! How did her mother accomplish it? Now, the shrinking Porto Rican lad hobbled straight into a fruit store at the next halt, reappeared laden with red-cheeked imported apples, and with transfigured face of gratitude, held up his treasure for us to share. Jack, with moist eyes, bit his lip. So much for one Porto Rican in Hawaii. One would like to know his mother, too.