"Ah, there she blows," cried the first speaker pointing toward the east where a shaft of light had just shot from the dark sea through the gray clouds. We all turned and looked except the newly married couple. They gazed into each others eyes as was their custom.
"I am so cold, dearest," she murmured.
I supposed he furnished her with a share of his red blanket though I was not watching.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said the humorist, "the grand cyclorama of sunrise on Haleakala is about to open, and as a preliminary, I move to throw the poet over the brink as a propitiatory sacrifice to the God of the Sun, who appears to be shocked by our appearance; and besides the poet will attempt to describe this scene and he can't."
"Describe nothing," retorted the poet, "my teeth are chattering so my tongue can't." "Let's throw the guide over, that will propitiate us anyway."
But William, the guide, looked so calm and peaceful as he sat with his back against a rock smoking a short black pipe, that we decided not to disturb him.
Meanwhile the sun rose. He has done this so often that it has become a matter of course with him. But rarely has he risen surrounded with such pomp of circumstance and kingly glory. It might well have been his coronation morning, with clouds of heavy gorgeousness upon his shining shoulders, and the quick heralds of light sent to glorify the distant mountain heights and to awaken the dark and slumbering sea. We seemed to be moving in worlds unrealized as the light swept across the reach of clouds at our feet, broken as a sea of tumbled ice, while around the outer rim rose forms strange or fantastic, the clouds shaping themselves into huge animals or rounding into noble palaces or turning into lofty pinnacles, and on every one the sun had set a crown of flame. The light with glowing hands pulled slowly back the shadows from the crater until it stood clearly revealed in its silence and vastness. From West Maui to Molokai stretched a heavy causeway of cloud beneath which lay the sea dark and glowing like polished porphyry. The sun was above the cloud and the common light of day lay round us.
"Tis past, the visionary splendor fades," remarked the poet, but the remark was not original with him.
Our party now adjourned to the stone house on the summit known as Cruyealece and after drinking some hot coffee and warming ourselves around the open fire, the humorist and myself testified to our intention of taking William and walking down into the crater. They all said that we were decided idiots, and they would take their exercise out in watching us. The newly married couple said nothing, but looked as I have stated.
"I think that haole can't go down," remarked William, pointing to the humorist. "His legs too thin, they break."