CHAPTER XIII.
On the summit above, all unconscious of this ghastly and incredible tragedy taking place within a stone's throw of where they stood, I could see Frank and the men from the gunboat, busying themselves quietly with their eclipse arrangements, as if nothing more terrible than an ordinary volcanic outburst were proceeding anywhere in their immediate neighbourhood. The bright tropical moonlight revealed their forms and faces to me almost as clearly as the noonday sun: I could even distinguish the play of their features, and notice how Frank was laughing and talking, with his usual good-humoured boyish merriment, to the officers and sailors. The contrast was nothing short of appalling. On one side, those easy-going sea-faring men, with their finished instruments of modern science, calmly engaged in observing and noting down the face of our distant satellite: on the other side, that group of stern and sombre half-heathen Hawaiians, occupied in the horrible and cruel rites of an effete and proscribed barbaric religion. Never, I thought to myself, did civilization and savagery stand closer together, cheek by jowl: never did the two extremes of human thought and human sentiment come in nearer contact, all unconscious and heedless one of the other. For neither party could see round the corner of jagged rock that overhung and divided them; I alone, looking either way up and down the crater, could take in both groups at a single glance—the scientific observers and the wild heathen priests of that human sacrifice.
But how to attract the notice of the Englishmen! If only I could manage to catch Frank's face! If only I could fling up my arms and sign to him to come! But he would not look! It was terrible! It was agonizing!
Suddenly, an inspiration seized me unawares. The heliograph to the rescue! I might signal to him by the moonlight. One chance yet left! My mirror! My mirror!
I felt for it in my pocket with trembling fingers. One moment of hope. Then an abyss of despair. I had left it at home by the sofa at Kalaua's. That chance was fruitless.
To have made my way back for it would have been of little avail. I could not fail in that case to attract Kalaua's keen attention, as I hobbled painfully in the broad moonlight up the zig-zag path: and to attract attention under existing circumstances would probably mean all the sooner to hasten poor trembling Kea's impending fate. I must think of some other means of communicating with Frank. I must find some less obtrusive and dangerous way of calling the sailors and officers to our assistance.
How short a time still remained to us! I took out my watch and gazed at it hopelessly.
In another burst of inspiration, then, I saw my way clear. A mirror! A mirror! all ready to hand! I could signal still! I could call their attention!
My watch was a gold one—a naval chronometer: the inside of the case was burnished and bright. I held it up straight in the bright beams of the moon, and as Frank's face turned for a moment in the direction where I stood, or rather crouched under cover of the pinnacle, I flashed the light full in his eyes from the reflecting surface. Thank heaven! Thank heaven! he started and observed it. I signalled three rapid flashes for attention. Frank flashed me back, yes, from his own pocket mirror. My hands shook so that I could hardly hold the watch aright: but with tremulous fingers I managed somehow to spell out the words, "Come quick. Bring sailors. Steal cautiously round the dark corner. There's foul play on. Kalaua means to make Kea leap into the crater as a bride to Pélé's son at the moment of totality."
In a second, I saw that Frank and the officers had taken it all in in its full ghastliness, and that, if time enough remained, Kea might yet be saved from that awful death in the fiery abysses. Without one moment's delay their men seized the horses, and leaving one or two, officers alone to continue the observations, dashed wildly down the ravine, and into the gloom of the gully.