The epidemic ran its course, the dead were reverently wrapped in their mats, weighted with rocks, and towed out to sea on a small raft, and there committed to the deep. The convalescents began to creep about the beach and show a languid interest in life.
Ha'o was among the first to get into the sunshine. While none were neglected, Blair and Jean and Nai had nursed him as though all their lives depended on his recovery. And indeed, to Blair's thinking, very much more than their simple lives depended on Ha'o. He looked on him as the corner-stone of the work on Kapaa'a, and his death would have been a terrible blow to them all.
As Jean had said, he had great hopes that this sharp trial might also turn to good. He tackled Ha'o the very first day he judged him well enough for discussion.
"This has been a terrible time, Ha'o, my friend. Have you any idea why it came upon you?"
"It was your new God sent it, I suppose," said Ha'o gloomily, with the air of a child giving an expected answer with mental reservations of his own.
"God permits such things. If men will do wrong they must suffer. That is how they learn to do right. If you want to bang your head against this rock, God won't stop you. But the recollection of what you suffer may stop you doing the same again."
"What wrong did we do? You killed the yellow men too."
"But we did not eat them. Not one of us has been ill. Not one of Ra'a's people has been ill. They also kept apart."
Ha'o looked sombrely out over the lagoon. He was thinking of his boy.
"Kenni," he said presently, "I know you do not like us to eat men; but our fathers did so, and their fathers, and never have we had this crawling death before."