whereon she had drifted? The pangs of thirst stupefied her faculties.
The moaning of the winds in the belt of palms just up the shore inspired
her heart with terror, and seemed to mock her misery.

Too weak to stand, she crawled up the little patch of soft sand to the
lagoon that glimmered in the hollows by the shore. She almost screamed
with delight as the life-giving crystal fluid crept between her cracked
lips, moistening her parched throat. It was fresh water. Dimly realising
that she was safe from the desolation of the trackless ocean, she crept
into the shadow of the bamboo thickets and, quite exhausted, fell
asleep.

There she lay, alone beneath the infinite skies. The great world, with
its cities and histories, did not exist so far as she was concerned.

Awakening with the gilding of the eastern horizon, she gazed around and
at once realised her awful position. Terror seized her. She lifted her
face and screamed, then listened. No answer came; only the weird screech
of the frightened parrots that had rested, on their migrating flight, in
the trees over her head. They rose in glittering flocks and hovered a
long time just over the isle ere they once more settled down.

With the rising of the kind sun her terror decreased. But the horror of
the loneliness on that silent world still remained. All that she had
suffered (only a part of which my pen can attempt to tell) had destroyed
her natural pluck. She was as weak as a child.

So great was her grief, and so vividly was the scene burnt in her brain
as she stared about her, that she told us how the tiny waves came up the
shore to her feet singing a song of tender fellowship.

Then how she ran about the isle calling aloud, in the hope that some
human being might exist in that loneliest spot in creation.

But when only the echoes of her own voice answered her despairing cries,
the awful desolation overwhelmed her, and she rushed back with terrified
eyes to the singing shore waves, and huddled near their presence, just
as a child might run from danger back to the security of its little
comrades.

The day passed with renewed tropical vigour. The sun seemed to hiss as
its molten mass of splendour dropped splash into the sea.

The sea-birds muttered. The migrating cockatoos sat on the topmost
branches of the four solitary bread-fruit trees. They looked like big
yellow and crimson blossoms that had whistling, chuckling beaks as they
all started off on their flight across the trackless seas. Waylao saw
them fade like a group of distant caravans on the silent desert blue of
the sky-line—leaving her alone in the vast Pacific.

Night came with its terror of darkness and the immutable stars. The
girl’s mind, like that of a child, flew back to the nearest bonds of her
existence.

“Mother! Mother! Father!” she wailed, staring first at the stars across
the sea, then behind her, with fright.

Strange pangs commenced to convulse her being. The critical moment of
her sorrow had arrived. The pangs of our first mother, Eve. But she was
alone—not even the devil to comfort her.

In the first instincts of approaching motherhood she looked behind her;
the terror of the gloom had vanished. She turned and crept into the
harbouring thicket of bamboos and tall ferns beneath the plumed palms.

In that silent, loneliest spot on earth she huddled, couched and
trembling. She forgot her desolation. The torturing memory of the past
vanished. A feeling of fierce joy thrilled her. She began to feel the
helpless, tender companionship of the unborn.

Wild delirium, intense longing, half anguish, half joy came to her
memory as she remembered the man who had brought the pangs of hell upon
her.

A gleam of cruel reality crept into her brain: she remembered the truth.

Struggling to her feet, she screamed: “Abduh! Abduh! I curse you! I
curse you and your Mohammed! I curse him!”

She clutched the figure of the Virgin that was at her breast and cried:
“O Mary! Mother! O Christ, I have forsaken you!”

In the anguish of her soul’s remorse she crossed herself and fell on her
knees. She called the name of Father O’Leary, he who had taught her from
childhood.

“Father, Father, I had doubted you, and all the beauty of my childhood’s
dreams.”

As Waylao reached this point in her terrible narrative the old priest
looked into the half-blind eyes of the girl, and touched her brow with
his lips. I saw his hot tears fall on to her face, and half fancied that
we stood before the dead who had inherited heaven, so beautiful was the
look in the stricken eyes of the girl as the old priest blessed her.
Outside the homestead mission-room the stars were shining, and the seas
were beating over the barrier reefs. Still the lips of her who was as
one dead spoke on.

The white sea moon crept over the silent sea. Its reflected light bathed
with silver the palms of that solitary isle. Only a breath of wind came
up the shore and stirred the dark-fingered leaves as at last Waylao
slept.

The sleeping girl’s bosom moved to the sad music of mortality’s soothing
kindness: two small hands were pressing vigorously and a tiny mouth was
toiling away for all it was worth at those soft, warm wells of
nourishing sorrow.

Dawn struck the east. The day broadened. Waylao lifted her baby up in
her arms. It blinked at the light of its first mortal day—and wailed.

Did she, in the ecstasy of a mother’s first inquisitiveness, peer
closely at the small face of that little stranger, the stranger who had
come as the natural guest of her sorrow—and sin?

She looked fiercely at it as it wailed as though it pleaded forgiveness
for that which was not its fault.

A mad desire to live came to her. She rushed down to the shore. Nothing
but the blue encircling sky-lines met her hopeless gaze. Her only chance
of being rescued was by some schooner being blown out of its course by
the terrific typhoons that sometimes swept those hot, unruffled seas.
She found a large cave by the shore, not far from the small promontory.
Near its gloomy entrance stood a belt of screw-pines and a clump of
coco-palms. By the time sunset had once more blazed the western seas she
had piled up a barrier of hard coral and rock at the cavern’s low
doorway. For in there the wind rushed from the sea, gave a hollow moan
and ran out again.

At the far end of this cavern the wretched girl made a soft couch of
fern-moss and ti-leaves. It was on this bed that she crept with her
child to sleep.

All night long the waves ran up the shores, tossed their wild arms and
wailed by the entrance, in wonder that the silence of the old cavern,
whereat they had knocked and knocked for ages, should be broken by the
wail of a human child.

In imagination Father O’Leary and I saw that cave, and distinctly heard
that pitiful wail. We saw the stricken girl mother creep like a wraith
beneath the stars of that solitary island world of the trackless
Pacific. We saw the tawny mass of ripe coco-nuts hanging as though from
the kind hands of Providence. They fell at her feet, so that she might
give the child nourishing milk, for grief and illness had stayed its
natural food.

Day by day the child sickened. One night the flocks of parrots and
strange birds—that none had ever named—suddenly rose in a screeching
drove above the palms of that lonely isle. Up, up they rose, fluttering
beneath the white South Sea moon. They had been disturbed from their
roosts by the agonised scream of the demented human being who had so
mysteriously arrived on their little world. It was Waylao’s screech that
had disturbed them. Humanity had come with its manifold woes and terrors
to their world, and so the very birds of the air groped and fluttered
blindly with fright up in the moonlit sky.

Waylao’s child lay on the moss at the end of the cavern, its face
resting on one small hand. It had turned waxen white. A wonderful
expression seemed to sleep on its face. Only the still, open eyes told
the girl of the indefinable something that had happened. She rushed to
the shore and dipped its warm body in the sea. The limpness of the limbs
and the head struck terror into her heart. She had never seen death like
that before. The wandering sea-gulls hovered, came near the shore
swiftly and silently, as though with curiosity, then they swerved
upward, up over the island’s palms, leaving her sitting alone with the
dead infant clutched to her breast.

The moon which flooded the ocean with brilliant light as it gazed on
that tragic drama, that scene of the lonely seas, had also shone upon
the dark-walled shadow cities of the far, far north-west, the remote
wilds of advanced civilisation. It shone on the huddled masses of
humanity on the streets of London, New York and Paris—lines and lines of
serried dark walls and dirty, ghostly windows. Its beams had streamed
into the dim hollows of how many thousands of dungeons wherein slept the
huddled forms of breathing humanity, and upon the enchanted castles of
happiness, on happy faces of men, women and laughing maidens. And still
it shone down on that silent isle set in a silent sea, where one frail
girl looked down on a dead child’s face.

But on that night Providence sent other strange beings out of those seas
of mystery.

As Waylao sat motionless, paralysed with loneliness and pain, staring
vacantly seaward, her heart leapt as she saw what looked like a phantom
ship on the dim horizon. She almost screamed with joy as the rigging of
that distant craft took definite form. The midnight breeze was hurrying
in with the incoming tide, the tide that hurried the small breakers up
the white beach.

Like one demented she ran about in her excitement, as nearer and nearer
crept the tiny craft.

Though it was still afar off, she held the dead child above her head and
screamed. Only the echoes of her own voice responded from the rocky
silence of her island world.

What was that strange-looking craft floating into that silent bay? As it
came into full view, it looked like some spectral hulk. Waylao stared.
She felt afraid. Was it some phantom derelict that was silently
approaching that unknown isle? The deck was nearly level with the sea,
and all awash with the waves. An old spanker swayed to and fro. The
tattered canvas sail still hung just over the broken deck-house, and the
jib flapped in the moonlight. But no one was at the helm.

As that strange derelict swerved with the tide, it heaved and came round
the edge of the promontory into full view. A gleam of moonlight streamed
through the palms, as it hugged the shore and fell slantwise across the
deck.

Waylao crept out on to the promontory, then stopped, petrified with
fright.

A terrible spectacle met her gaze, and the thought flew into her
demented mind that this was some ghostly craft with a crew of devils
aboard, who had come to take her dead child, and her, too, away to
purgatory.

No wonder she shrieked with horror.

Even in the security of that little mission-room the old priest and I
trembled and gasped at what we heard. No wonder Waylao’s scream broke
the terrible silence of that awful scene, and at the sound the crew of
huddled, ghostly shadows on the hulk’s deck moved.

Slowly one rose to its feet; then two more figures followed. The heads
seemed to waver as though the eyes sought the four points of the compass
with helpless indecision.

What were they? Devils or human beings? I will tell you. Those figures
lifted their heads and turned their faces to the shore. They heard by
instinct the direction of Waylao’s terrified call. They stared at her
with shining, bulged eyes; they tried to open their gaping, fleshless
mouths in ghastly efforts for speech. They were rotting, hideous
skeletons.

By the remnant of that hulk’s deck-house stood a tall native chief. He
and a beautiful native girl who clung to him alone looked human. They
both stared with fright, first at Waylao, and then across the silent
isle.

Waylao watched, paralysed with fear. Then from the deck arose two more
skeleton figures—revealing their hideous, noseless faces.

They lifted their heads as though with terrible effort. Their mouths
gave forth hollow moans as they slowly sank down again, out of sight,
among the wreckage of the deck.

One diseased, eaten face stared through the grating which had been fixed
up as an extemporised bulwark on the port side.

Waylao gave a terrified cry and turned to flee inland.

As she did so a hollow voice called out in a strange tongue:

“Aloha! Aloha! Wai! Wai! [water].”

The cry so resembled some distressed call of humanity that Waylao’s
fright was slightly subdued. She turned and swiftly glanced over her
shoulder, her heart beating with strange fear—a wild hope came that the
awful visitants might, after all, be friendly spirits in evil disguise.
She stared with terrified wonder. Three stricken forms stood on the
deck. In the dim light she saw them waving their skeleton hands; but
they were calling with beseeching voices, voices that thrilled Waylao’s
heart with joy, horror and hope.

She lifted the lifeless infant above her head again. In her delirium she
still thought that the direct cause of their visit was—her sorrow.

In response to her cry, a terrible form arose from the deck and stared
at her as she held the dead child. That figure from out of the mystery
of the silent seas lifted its hands and cried out:

“E ko mako Makua i-loko O ka Lani” (“Our Father which art in Heaven”).

Waylao heard that word Lani. She knew that it meant heaven. Her first
great fright vanished. “They are the dead from heaven,” she thought.

Suddenly the hulk crashed against the reefs by the shore, swerved round
and stopped still.

The stricken forms rose from the deck, lifted their skeleton faces and
for a moment stood terribly visible as they swayed helplessly by the
broken mast.

The moonlight brightened the tattered sails. It streamed down through
the branches of the surf palms that grew on the edge of the promontory.

Once again those gaping mouths moaned forth: “Wai! Wai!”

As the hulk swerved and listed towards the rocks, the handsome chief
leapt ashore, and the woman who had clung to him immediately followed.

For a moment that handsome stranger stood and gazed at Waylao like one
in a dream, as she looked up into his fevered, bright eyes.

Staring hurriedly around, he suddenly rushed forward and prostrated
himself at the edge of the lagoon. Placing his mouth into the crystal
liquid, he breathed like an animal, and drank, drank, drank! His
companion, the native girl, likewise prostrated herself and drank beside
him.

As Waylao watched, her fright subsided. They were human. For who but
mortals could be so maddened by thirst? Her heart was touched with
sorrow.

The chief rose to his feet, filled a large calabash with water and
returned to the derelict.

Waylao watched, with her heart in her mouth. The sorrow of others
overshadowed her own, as she saw the huddled, loathsome forms on that
hulk’s deck struggling for the water, their poor heads wobbling as they
sought with their blind eyes to locate the calabash.

The Hawaiian maid on the shore, standing by Waylao, forced a smile to
her lips, as she, too, watched. It was an unselfish attempt to reassure
her companion, to let her know whatever sight met her eyes was a sight
of deepest sorrow and nothing that could harm her.

When the chief returned to his comrade’s side, they both whispered
together and glanced at Waylao. Then the strange girl took the dead
child from the exile’s arms and laid it gently in the fern grass by the
lagoon. They spoke to Waylao in soft, musical speech. Seeing she did not
understand their language, they said:

“Wahine, you lone? No ones else belonga here?”

The Hawaiian girl clutched the chief’s arm with fright as they both
awaited Waylao’s reply. But when she answered, “I am quite alone, no one
else is on this island but me,” those silent listeners seemed endowed
with renewed life.

They gazed at each other with delight streaming from their eyes. The
chief lifted his hand to heaven and shouted some deep thanksgiving to
Lani. The intense misery of the woman’s eyes vanished. She turned to
Waylao, took her hand and pressed it impulsively. Suddenly she withdrew
it and gave a start of terror. For the chief had looked on the Hawaiian
girl and reminded her of the curse that lay upon them. But Waylao, who
had never thought to hear the music of human voices again, forgot her
own grief.

But who were they? What were those terrible figures huddled on the deck
of the hulk? Instinct told her that some terrible sorrow had drifted
across the sea, some sorrow that was tragically human. That stricken
crew had not come to hurt the girl. They would not wilfully harm a hair
of her head. They had drifted out of the hells of misery. They were the
stricken of the earth. They had escaped from the tomb where the buried
still have memories of lovers, husbands, wives and children—yes, the
tomb of God’s utterest pestilential misery, where the dead still curse,
still dream that they hear the laughter of other days moaning in the
wind-swept pines, on the shores of beetling, wave-washed crags.

They came from where the dead lay in their shrouds and could hear, with
envy, these toiling spades as their comrades were buried by
night—comrades, twice dead, released, at last, from their loathsome,
rotting corpse, life’s hideous, bloated face, gaping, fleshless mouth
and bulged, half-blind eyes.

O tragical truth! The handsome chief, the beautiful, clinging woman and
the stricken crew of the hulk were escapes—fugitives from the dreadful
lazaretto on Molokai, the leper isle.

The Hawaiian chief and his lover—for such they were, though stricken
with the scourge—had no sign as yet visible on their faces.

The sympathetic look that Waylao gave them, the pleasure she revealed at
their presence, touched their hearts. It was long, long ago since human
beings had welcomed _their_ presence.

The Hawaiian girl plucked some palm leaves and gently covered Waylao’s
dead child.

Then the Hawaiian chief and his tender comrade went back to the hulk and
proceeded to bring their leper comrades ashore. In a few moments they
both appeared by the hulk’s broken bulwarks and threw some planks that
made a gangway down to the wet sands, and began to carry their stricken
comrades, one by one, on a deck grating, down to the shore.

There were five all told. One was a flaxen-headed little boy of about
six years of age. As they laid the little form beneath the palms, the
child lifted its head and moaned.

Waylao, touched with intense pity, disobeyed the order of the chief,
went towards the figures of the stricken and attempted to soothe them.

She had no thought of the chances she took of catching the terrible
malady, but she gave a cry of horror at the sight that met her eyes.

It seemed impossible that such advanced dissolution should still live;
the fleshless, skull-like heads wobbled and lifted, the bulged,
glass-like eyes stared at her like hideous misery. The stricken beings
discerned the look of sympathy on Waylao’s face. The fleshless mouths
smiled. The girl half drew back, for the look in those eyes, the
movement of those lips resembled some grin of hate, rather than the
intense gratitude that they _yearned_ to express.

As Waylao watched, she heard splashes in the sea, and, looking in the
direction of the hulk, saw the Hawaiian chief in the act of throwing the
last body into the ocean depths. These were the bodies of the crew who
had died ere they reached the isles, and three corpses of those who had
drank too quickly of the water on deck, and so had died at once in
agony. It appeared that when the hulk sailed away from the leper isle
there were fourteen on board. After a week of drifting across the ocean
the number was reduced to nine. Another few days without water and
scorched by the blazing tropical sun had finished off three more, till
only five arrived ashore alive.

The chief had finished his terrible task on the hulk, and as Waylao
watched the dark spots bobbing about on the moonlit waters, she saw them
drifting round by the promontory’s edge, then, with the tide, go
seaward.

The Hawaiian girl clung tightly to her companion’s tall, handsome figure
and moaned. The reaction had set in.

“Aiola, Aiola!” he murmured in the tenderest way as he looked down into
her uplifted eyes. He was robed in the picturesque Hawaiian costume—a
broad-fringed lava-lava to his tawny knees, round his waist a tappa robe
swathed in a row of knots of ornamental design.

Aiola, for that was the girl’s name, looked with the deepest affection
up into his eyes, then kissed his tattooed, brown, shapely shoulders.

Waylao no longer attempted to shrink from the afflicted. She helped
gather soft mosses and leaves. The stricken lepers opened their terrible
eyes and regarded her with deep tenderness as she helped to make their
couches.

“No touch! No touch! Unclean! Unclean! Mai Pake! Mai Pake!”[6] they
moaned as she pushed their limp, helpless limbs into more comfortable
positions.

Footnote 6:

  Leprosy.

“Ora, loa, ia Jesu,” breathed one as she closed her eyelids and died—on
the shore.

Ere the night passed they had all died; only the Hawaiian chief and his
mistress lived.

As the dawn brightened the east they were still sitting huddled beneath
the screw-pines. As the sun streamed across the seas, Waylao, the chief
and the Hawaiian girl crept beneath the shade of the palms and slept.

So did sorrow in its most terrible form come across the seas to bring
balm and true comradeship to the friendless Waylao.

That same day the chief brought old sails and gratings ashore. Ere
sunset had faded he had fixed up the cavern’s hollow into two
compartments, one for himself and the other for Waylao and Aiola.

The beautiful Hawaiian girl sat by her lover’s side and sang songs to
him, looking up into his face all the while she sang—yes, in a way that
was like one sees in glorious pictures of tender romance, only it was
beautifully, terribly real.

The chief told Waylao how he had loved the maid since she was a little
child; how before she had reached womanhood the leprosy spot had
appeared on her body. Then came the terrible edict that condemned all
lepers to life exile on the Isle of Molokai. He told Waylao how he had
hidden the Hawaiian girl in a cave by the shores of his native isle. But
notwithstanding all his precautions they had discovered that he had a
lover hidden somewhere, a lover who had the dreaded leper spot, and was
striving to elude the clutch of the leper-hunters.

One night a terrified scream broke the silence of the shore caves, and
Aiola was taken away across the seas to the dread lazaretto. Then, to
the chief’s delight, he discovered the dread Mai Pake—the leper spot—on
his own body. He, too, was sent to the leper lazaretto, and so met Aiola
again.

They had clung to each other with the arms of love, but, still, the
loathsome sights, ever haunting their eyes, had made them yearn to
escape, anywhere, anywhere across the seas, from that living tomb.

Pointing to the hulk that lay high on the sands, for the tide had left
it dry, he said:

“That hulk was the means of our deliverance; it was washed ashore on the
Isle of Molokai through a hurricane. One night, under the cover of great
darkness, we did creep down to the shore. When we got on to the hulk and
stowed away in the dark hold, awaiting to push it into deep water as the
tide rose, we discovered that another lot of lepers had also stowed
away, ready for the outgoing tide. At first we were sorry, then we
became exceedingly glad, for it was only by their help that we were
enabled to push the hulk with bamboo rods into deep water.

“So did we drift away to sea. A great storm was blowing from the
north-west. The _matagia_ [gale] blew for five days. We all hid in the
hold, for we were frightened that some ship might sight the drifting
hulk and search and find us. But the great white God heard our prayers,
and so we were not discovered!”[7]

Footnote 7:

  It was a common thing in those days for travellers to find skeletons
  in the coast caves and the forests of the Hawaiian Isles, and in many
  of the surrounding isles of the North Pacific. Some, maybe, were the
  skeletons of shipwrecked white men and natives, or escapes from the
  convict settlements of Noumea. More often they were the remains of the
  stricken, who had fled from the leper-hunters, preferring to cast
  themselves adrift in a canoe or raft, and risk the terrors of the
  ocean to the dreadful exile to the lazaretto on Molokai. Often the
  fugitives were accompanied by a wife, husband, child or lover. And
  often those who shared their sorrows died by their own hand when the
  tragedy had ended in the death of the afflicted. It may be some will
  think that I have overdrawn the horrors of leprosy and its effects
  physically and mentally. I can assure my readers that, in my attempt
  to depict the scenes of leprosy and its consequences in those times, I
  am obliged to leave out a good deal. The full truth were too terrible
  to write about in a book that only touches on the matter so far as it
  concerns Waylao.

As the Father and I listened to the girl’s story, we marvelled with
astonishment, so evident was the intense interest the exiled girl had
taken in those stricken people, completely forgetting her own troubles.
The Father’s eyes were blind with tears, and so were mine.

Waylao came to love those Hawaiian exiled lepers. She also would kneel
beside the castaways and pray and sing with them.

Though they were both cursed with the plague, no spot had, as yet,
commenced to show its hideous presence on either of their faces.

The Hawaiian girl had contracted the malady years before her companion,
so the signs of the scourge were considerably advanced on her body; but
still her shoulders and breast were smooth and beautiful, and still the
Hawaiian chief, O Le Haiwa-oe, sang to the beauty of Aiola’s eyes. But
one day he noticed that those eyes he loved had begun to look dull and
shiny-looking. His heart beat as though it would burst, so deep was his
sorrow over what he knew was inevitable.

The leper girl’s swift instinct saw that look on her lover’s face. She
blushed deeply and trembled with fright at the thought of the hideous
rot, which at last had commenced to show itself on her features.

O Le Haiwa-oe looked at her and said: “Beloved, thou art as lovely as of
yore, ’twas the beauty of your eyes that made me gaze into them.”

But Aiola was not to be deceived.

As the days went on, Waylao resolved to stay in exile with those sad
fugitives.

So, without telling them, she went out to the dead screw-pine that stood
on the edge of the promontory, piled up the rocks one by one, then,
standing on them, took down the large bit of canvas sail, fastened there
as a signal of distress. She had only allowed it to be placed there
through the pleadings of the poor Hawaiians. They knew that the
inevitable hour was drawing near when life would be more than a living
death, for would they not see their own dissolution? They cared not for
the risk of a schooner sighting that signal. It would take Waylao away
to safety, but it would not take them. No; the Hawaiians had resolved to
go on a longer journey should their hiding-place be discovered. When O
Le Haiwa-oe saw Waylao take the signal down, his eyes filled with tears,
and in a moment he had run out to the edge of the promontory and placed
the canvas sail fluttering to the breeze.

At last a ship was sighted on the horizon. It was beating its lonely way
to the north-west. Waylao looked at it with longing eyes. Her heart went
out to the white sails that could so easily bear her homeward. She
dreamed that she heard the voices of the sailors on deck, and saw the
tenderness in their eyes as they carried her on board; then she turned
and looked at the stalwart Hawaiian leper chief, and the clinging maid.
They, too, were staring seaward, but their eyes were fevered-looking,
they were both silent with fear.

“Go and hide in the cave,” said Waylao. “If they should see the signal
and come, I will say there are no more here!”

For a moment both the stricken leper lovers looked at her with deep
gratitude. A look was in their eyes like the look in the eyes of hunted
animals, as they crept into the cave and hid.

When they had both crept away into the dark, they wondered why Waylao
had not wished them good-bye, for would she not be taken away on the
ship for ever? Aiola, at the thought, sobbed in her lover’s arms.

The schooner was now distinctly visible. Waylao saw the light of the
sunset gleaming on the flying sails. Though a tremendous longing
thrilled her heart, she crept out on the promontory. She thought of her
mother and father and the kind priest. But though her heart cried within
her, still she did not hesitate. Standing beneath the dead tree, she
piled the stones up as swiftly as possible, took down the distress
signal and waited till the schooner had passed before she replaced it.

Then she rushed back to the cave, and called softly:

“Aiola! O Le Zeno! Come, come! The ship has passed, and you are safe!”

The lepers came forth with a look of half-wild delight on their faces,
though still trembling, for life is sweet, however sad.

In a moment the Hawaiian chief glanced at the distress signal, “Aiola!”
he said, and the leper maid also looked. For a while the two stricken
Hawaiians gazed into each other’s eyes, their hearts too full to
speak—Waylao had in her hurry put the signal flag back upside down.

In a moment they had seen through the self-sacrifice of their little
comrade. Without saying a word, they looked into each other’s eyes, the
three of them, and then burst into tears—and far away, on the dim
horizon, the schooner’s sails faded like the wings of a grey sea-bird.

                              CHAPTER XXVI

The Weaving Hands of Fate in Mrs Matafa’s Knitted Shawl—Waylao tries
  to kill Herself—Snatched from Death—The Terrible Scourge—The Hulk
  disappears—The Compact of Death—The Lovers put off the Act Day by
  Day—A Ship comes in Sight—The Last Farewell of the Leper
  Lovers—The Last Sunset

AS the days went by, Waylao noticed a great change in her comrades’
manners. Their songs ceased, and they mostly sat whispering or praying
together. One day as she sat beneath the palms by the shore, dreaming of
the past, the Hawaiian chief came up to her and said: “Waylao, we are
sorely troubled. We know that but for us you might have been rescued,
and been taken back to your people.” Saying this, the chief looked
steadily at Waylao, who replied:

“But I do not wish to leave you. Should I be taken from this isle, and
know that you were left here alone, to die, I should never be happy
again.”

The Hawaiian maid, who had crept up whilst her lover was speaking, heard
all that Waylao said, and was deeply touched. But they both quickly
responded as though with one voice: “We must not allow you to sacrifice
your life for our sake; we are sure to die, then it will be _you_ who
will be left here alone.” Without saying another word, the chief went
out to the palm-tree that grew on the most distant point of the
promontory, climbed the highest tree and fixed old Mrs Matafa’s knitted
shawl on the topmost bough. There it waved, flying to the breeze of that
silent sea, the token of Mrs Matafa’s kindness, flapping violently as
its knitted folds called to the illimitable sky-lines for help.

Waylao was too wretched to resist the wishes of the lepers. She knew
that the terrors of death were upon the beautiful Hawaiian maid Aiola,
for only the night before she had heard the maid say, as she clung to
the chief: “We must die! We must die, O Le Haiwa-oe! Promise that I am
dead ere mine eyes are dull!” And the chief promised.

“Beloved,” he said, “your eyes are still beautiful.” But as he gazed his
heart was stricken with anguish. For the terrible sight was there before
his gaze: the maid’s eyes were bulged and shining like glass in
consequence of the terrible scourge.

They made Waylao sleep alone. “You will surely catch the leprosy if you
sleep near us,” they said. So as the wind blew through the coco-palms
all night, and the waves tossed up the shore, Waylao tossed sleeplessly.
She could hear the Hawaiian girl moaning through the night in her sleep:
“O my beloved, kill me! Kill me! My eyes! My eyes!”

Next day, when Waylao thought she was unobserved, she crept out to the
edge of the promontory. There was no wind. The sea was like a mighty
sheet of glass. Only one or two waves, at long intervals, crept in from
the swell, to break sparkling on the sun-lit sand.

In a few seconds she had tied a large bit of rock coral on to the string
that she held secretly in her hand. This string she tied again to her
waist, then, with a prayer on her lips, she dived noiselessly into the
deep, clear water—and disappeared in the depths.

The Hawaiian chief by the merest chance saw Waylao’s head disappear
beneath the calm surface. He rushed out to the promontory’s edge and
tried to locate the spot where the girl had sunk. As the ripples
widened, he peered below the glassy surface and distinctly saw Waylao’s
figure as it lay on the sandy bottom. Her uplifted face and swaying
limbs were as visible as though she were lying encased in a mirror. Even
the lump of coral that she had tied to her waist was visible; he saw her
dying efforts to dislodge the string from her body. In a moment he had
dived, clutched the girl and brought her to the surface—coral and all.
“Waylao, you would leave us alone to sorrow over your death. Have we not
sorrowed enough?”

So did he speak as Waylao opened her eyes and gazed into those of her
rescuer.

“Forgive me, I longed to die,” she cried, as Aiola, the Hawaiian girl,
opened her bodice to chafe her breast.

“Kilia!” (leprosy) cried the Hawaiian maid as she rubbed Waylao’s bosom
and the skin all peeled softly off on to her hand—Waylao had contracted
the plague, she too was a leper.

Instead of the Marquesan girl being worried over the discovery, she
looked into the eyes of her friends and smiled. For the thought came to
her that they were now true comrades in grief.

On the following night a terrible typhoon blew. The thundering seas
seemed to make some tremendous effort to wash the little isle into the
ocean depths. The bending pines and palms moaned so loudly that it kept
the castaways awake all night, as they sat by the cavern’s doorway
together. It was this night that the chief came to Waylao and said:

“O maid, though you have got kilia, you may live for many years, so,
should a sail come in sight, they must see the distress signal. You will
then be able to go away and see your people before you die.”

Waylao hung her head with grief, and as Aiola tried to soothe her, once
more the chief put up the signal, which he had taken down at Waylao’s
request.

“Cannot I stay and die with you, Aiola?” Waylao replied.

“No; because you know not our plans. We have decided to die together.
How can we die and know in our hearts that you will be left alone on
this isle?”

Saying this, the Hawaiian girl took Waylao’s hand, kissed it, and said:
“If you love us, do as we wish.”

Then the two castaway girls embraced each other, cried in each other’s
arms and slept no more that night.

In the morning the sea had calmed; the typhoon had blown itself out as
swiftly as it had blown itself in.

As the day broadened, and the golden streams of fire imparadised the
eastern horizon, the three castaways stood on the beach and stared: the
old hulk, that had been high and dry on the beach facing their cavern
home, had disappeared. The wild night seas had dislodged it from the
reef and washed it away. As they stared across the brightening waters
they saw the hulk adrift, far off. All day long they watched it. At
sunset it faded on the horizon to the south-west. As it died from their
sight their hearts became heavy. Though it was only an insensate hulk,
it somehow faded away like a dear old friend, something that was the
last link between them all and the world that they had left for ever.

A few days later the chief came to Aiola and said:

“The distress signal still flies on the highest point. Our friend will
be saved some day.” Saying this, he looked into the sad eyes of the
Hawaiian girl. She returned the gaze steadily: she knew what he meant,
but did not flinch.

The chief’s voice was hoarse and had the note of intense sorrow in it.
The leper girl stood up on tiptoe, kissed his shoulder, and said:

“Beloved, I know how your heart feels, but remember that ’tis my wish
that we go to the great Lani [Heaven] together.”

The chief answered not, but sat perfectly still and gazed upon the maid
who still revealed the wild beauty of her race. She peered back into her
lover’s eyes. Crimson flowers to please his eyes bedecked the tresses of
her wind-blown hair. The tropic breezes stirred the rich-hued masses as
they fell to her smooth breast in curling waves. The silken tappa blouse
was torn, and revealed the curves of her smooth shoulders, that were as
perfect and brown as a nightingale’s eggs.

“My beloved, kiss me,” whispered the maid as she looked up into his
eyes.

The chief did not answer. Perhaps he was thinking of the past, for he
had known Aiola since she was a little child. The eventide was fast
falling—yes, the hour when the girl would cling to him and pass away
into the shadows of the great Unknown.

[Illustration: HALF-CASTE SAMOAN CHIEF]

As sunset flooded the seas, and the shadows fell over the small island
world, he looked into Aiola’s eyes and said: “Come!”

For a moment the two Hawaiians stood side by side, and looked over their
shoulders at Waylao, who sat on the promontory’s edge, ignorant that the
terrible moment had arrived.

“Aiola, hesitate not, come into the cave,” said the chief. Then they
both crept into the cave, and kneeling side by side prayed, saying: “Ora
li Jesu” (the Lord’s Prayer). Then they peered into each other’s eyes as
though for the last time; and the brave Hawaiian maid said: “Strike!”

The chief held the blade aloft and gave one longing look into the eyes
of the girl that he loved. He could not strike. So they fell into each
other’s arms and kissed again—and put it off till the next night.

So did they each night prepare to die; and each night his heart failed
him. Then, alas! one day a sail appeared on the horizon.

Waylao was the first to see the white glimmer, sparkling like a
beautiful bird’s wing far to the north-west.

She tried to distract the chief’s attention. But it was no good: his
keen eyes discerned it.

Nearer and nearer came the sail. The Hawaiian chief undid the old
Samoan’s woman’s shawl and placed it on a tree a little more to the
south of the isle. Then they all watched. At first it seemed as though
the schooner was dipping away across the sea straight on its course.
Suddenly the sails, on fire with the light of the sunset, swerved, and
the golden and crimson fire touched the other side of the spread canvas,
that had been a dull grey, and they knew the schooner had sighted the
signal of distress and was beating its way towards the solitary isle.

“Hide me, I don’t want to go away from you, don’t leave me!” screamed
Waylao.

It was no good. The Hawaiian chief looked at her sternly but kindly.

And Waylao knew that she appealed in vain.

The Hawaiian turned his head away to hide his tears. Fate had given him
a task which he hated to perform.

Aiola, who stood watching the approaching schooner, called out in a
beseeching voice: “Waylao, let us die!”

As Waylao gazed at the girl, pleading so strangely for the hand of Death
to strike, her heart stood still. For Aiola had hidden herself for
several days. Why? Her eyes goggled and stared like bulged glass, and as
the Hawaiian chief turned and looked at her she hung her head for shame.
The shoulders that he had so often praised for their smooth, graceful
beauty were spotted and disfigured.

Waylao followed the chief, obediently, like a child, as he led her to
say the last good-bye.

The two girls embraced and sobbed in each other’s arms. Then they all
knelt together and prayed.

Nearer and nearer came the schooner.

The chief was the first to rise.

“Waylao, go down to the shore and wait till I call you.” Saying this, he
stooped and kissed Waylao on the brow, and murmured something in a
strange tongue.

Waylao went down to the shore, walking like one in dream.

The Hawaiian chief took hold of his beloved one by the arm, and led her
into the cavern.

Before they entered the silent place that was to be their tomb, they
both looked over their shoulders into the light of their last sunset.
Then they swiftly embraced; their lips met; they murmured “Aloha!” into
each other’s very souls.

The knife flashed silently, then the same blade flashed again and went
straight to the Hawaiian chief’s heart also.

Waylao, who stood on the shore watching the dipping bows of the schooner
that came towards the isle, suddenly recovered her senses.

“Aiola! Aiola! Come to me!” she screamed. In the terror of the silence
that answered her despairing cry she rushed up the shore into the
cavern. Once inside, she stood bathed in the light of the setting sun
streaming through that hollow doorway. The sight that met her eyes
transfixed her with horror.

Even the sailors on the schooner’s deck heard that terrified shriek.
Then she ran down to the shore and fell prostrate on to the sands.

Thus was Waylao saved from the sea and brought back to her native isle
to die.

Such was the terrible story Waylao told Father O’Leary in my presence. I
cannot describe the sorrow that shone in her eyes, as through the hours
we listened. I recall how the priest held her in his arms as though she
were his own erring daughter, and laid her trembling form on the mission
couch. Though we could hear the wild songs and oaths of the very crew
who had brought her on their ship from that leper isle, no one in the
world knew the truth of the secret that Father O’Leary and I guarded in
the mission-room.

For three days she lay there, in that little room that she had so often
dusted for the kind priest.

It was on the third day that she left us for ever, the victim of a
tragedy that had left her a dying wreck at seventeen years of age.

I was obliged to clear out of that mission-room when the priest murmured
prayers by the coffin. I felt too weak and sick at heart to watch that
Calvary of stricken hopes and aspirations—betrayed by the Judas of
hypocritical manhood.

I hated to see the world so beautiful outside, as she slept on. The
mano-bird was singing in the banyans, the sunset fired the seas, and
from far came the sounds of drums that were beating the stars in up in
the mountain villages.

It was now that the Father went on his knees by that silent form for the
last time. It all seemed unreal to me, as he took the image of the
Virgin, softly pulled back the folds of the shroud and laid it on the
dead girl’s bosom. In that moment we both noticed the livid leprosy
patch on the breast of the sleeping girl.

The Father quickly fastened the shroud folds together again. I believe
trouble would have come to him had he been known to conceal a leper.
Then he called softly—in they came, three hired men. They were
rough-looking, almost villainous types, but even they looked deeply on
that silent form ere they stooped and nailed the lid down—and hid her
face for ever from the sight of men.

That same night I sat in the forest quite alone, like one in a dream. I
think I must have slept beneath the silence of those giant bread-fruit
trees that moaned sorrowfully over me as the wind swept in from the dark
seas. Though I felt some strange fright at my heart, I felt glad as
Pauline crept out of the cloistered shadows.

“I’m pleased you’ve come at last,” I said as I commenced to play a
wondrous melody on my violin.

Her eyes seemed unearthly bright as she suddenly sprang into my arms. It
was so unexpected. She was as cold as death and trembling.

“I shall come again,” she said.

“Must you go?” I responded, nothing seeming strange near Tai-o-hae.

My voice sounded a long way off. As I spoke, the pale brow, the
beautiful mass of hair became shadowy, dim and visionary. Only the
transcendent gleam of the blue eyes stared through the dark of my dream.

I put forth my arms and endeavoured to grasp her, but she had vanished.
It was then that I knew ’twas but another mad dream of mine.

                                EPILOGUE

          Hark! o’er the wild shore reefs the seas are leaping,
          The clamouring white-armed waves come in and go;
          The wind along the waste, with voice unsleeping,
          Has that about its cry that all men know
          Who ghost-like from themselves steal far away
          To hearth-fires, dead sunset—of Yesterday!

OUT of the night the dawn came creeping over the ranges like a maiden
with her sandals dipped in light, the glory of the stars fading in her
hair as she stood on the brightening clouds of the eastern mountain
peaks of Nuka Hiva, and with her golden bugle of silence she blew
transcendent streaks of crimson along the grey horizon—to awaken the
day.

The sounds of the natives beating their drums aroused the echoes of the
hills.

“Wailo oooe! wailo ooooeeee!” called some nameless bird from the forest
shadows where now the last of the Marquesan race sleep by their beloved
seas.

The harbour was silent. Not an oath echoed from the grog shanty. The
traders and sailormen still slept. I could not sleep. As I stood by the
shore-sheds it seemed impossible that such tragedy should live in such
beautiful surroundings. I was not sorry that I had secured a berth on
the s.s. ——, a three-masted ship anchored out in the bay. She was due to
sail on the Saturday morning, so I still had three more days in Nuka
Hiva.

All the familiar faces had gone. News came in the Apia _Times_ that the
_Bell Bird_ schooner had gone down in a typhoon, lost with all hands off
Savaii Isle. The only evidence that the crew ever existed were several
small, dark spots sighted by a passing ship’s skipper, fading away on
the sky-line—the old peaked and oilskin caps of my old shellbacks
drifting away on the waste of waters, travelling N.N.W.

The Hebrew prophet might well have spoken of such a place as that wooden
grog bar of Tai-o-hae when he said: “One generation passeth away and
another cometh. Only the mountains abideth for ever.” Ah, Koheleth, your
wisdom was the wisdom of truth. The sun sets and rises again, the winds
blow eternally on appointed courses; the river flows to the sea; but
whither shall I go? And where is he who went away ten thousand years
ago?

Not only in the South Seas will you hear of the tragedy of Waylao. She
is at your door wailing—if you have eyes to see and ears to hear. She
walks the ghostly London streets by night, calling for her lost lover.
And one may pass her nameless grave wherever the dead are buried.

Perhaps my pages smack too much of sorrow; but I would say that even our
sorrows are too brief. Life itself is little more than this:

A man and a woman awoke in the hills of Time.

“How beautiful is the sun that I see,” said the man, after admiring the
beauty of the woman who had so mysteriously appeared before him. Still
the man stared at the sun, but so brief was his existence that, when he
turned to gaze once more on the glory of the woman beside him, she had
wrinkled up to a wraith of skin and bone.

“What is this terrible thing that has happened?” he said, as he wept to
see so terrible a change in that which he loved. “What have I done?” he
moaned.

Then the woman wept and said: “You too have altered since you turned
your face to the sun; it is wrinkled, and your cheeks look like the
cheeks of that big toad.”

Hearing this, the man rushed off into the forest and prayed to his
shadow in the lake, thinking it was Omnipotence!

Rushing back to see if his prayer had been answered, he saw a little
heap of dust: it was all that was left of the beautiful woman. He
shouted his hatred to the sky, then he fell prostrate and prayed
fervently, and then—he was struck deaf, dumb and blind; and only the sun
laughed over the hills again so that the flowers could blossom over
their dust.

So one will see that it is natural that sorrow as well as rum and wild
song should reign in Tai-o-hae.

When I went to say good-bye to the old priest, I was astonished to see
the change in him. But I must confess that I was more astonished when he
gazed steadily at me and said:

“My son, I have discovered the great secret. We are both nearer the
sorrow of Calvary and the joy of Paradise than I ever dreamed!”

Saying this, the old man took my hand, and said in his rich, musical
voice, that strangely thrilled me: “Come!”

In wonder I followed him beneath the palms.

As we passed down into the hollows, the sea-gulls swept swiftly away
from the surfaces of the hidden lagoons, their wild cries sounding like
the ghostly echoes of bugles.

The priest led me up the tiny track that led to the path by the
mountains, not far from the cross-roads that led to the calaboose of
Nuke Hiva. I began to wonder what on earth it could all mean, for the
old priest had a strange look on his face and was running his fingers
through his beads.

Suddenly he turned to me and said, in a cracked voice: “My son, lift
thine eyes, and breathe the hallowed name of Him who died for sinners.”

I made a mighty effort and obeyed. After I had looked up at the sky with
due decorum, he looked stealthily around him, and said in a tense
whisper: “My son, to think I have dwelt so near and never known.”

“Known what, Father?” I ejaculated, my heart full of wonder. (I noticed
that his eyes were unearthly bright.)

“My son,” he said, in a hushed voice, “it is here where our Lord Jesus
Christ died! I have discovered the remains of the old Cross!”

“No! Never!” I ejaculated, as he fell on his knees and lifted up a large
lump of grey coral stone. I admit that it looked like the remnant of
some tomb’s edifice. Under the influence of the Father’s earnest manner
I was thrilled with curious wonder as I stared at the lump of stone. My
belief at that moment was as firm as the rock that the priest still
held.

“’Tis the very stone, the cross that our Redeemer was crucified upon,”
said he, as he stared at me.

“How did it come here, all the way from Jerusalem?” I said, in a hushed
voice, as I gazed on the sacred relic.

“I know not, my son, but there it is. Canst thou not see it with thine
own eyes?”

“Assuredly I can, Father,” I murmured, as I looked at that old stone,
and thought how like an ordinary cross stone off a mortal’s grave it
seemed. True enough, the cemetery was close by, the spot where they
buried sad, home-sick men, women and children—and did _she_ not lie
there, the dead convict girl?

I took the Father’s hand and led him away. I called a native woman who
passed to take his other arm. He was old and tremulous, and I saw the
truth.

“So that’s the end of all your life’s self-sacrifice, your reward,” I
muttered to myself as we led the demented old man away.

That night the natives in the village hard by the mission-room could not
sleep, neither could I, as the Father lay calling out wild prayers to
the silent night, and strange names echoed in his room. That’s almost
the last I saw, or rather heard, of him.

My last visit in Tai-o-hae was to a place that anyone may go and see to
this very day. For the little track that lies north-west of the bay
leads suddenly upon a little plateau by Calaboose Hill. It is a lonely
spot, sheltered on one side by coco-palms and a few bread-fruit trees.
It is half fenced in by rough wooden railing. Across its hollows are
many piles of earth and stones. Old-time chiefs and missing white men
sleep there. Jungle grass and hibiscus blossoms almost hide the cross
where Waylao sleeps, and not so far away Pauline also lies at rest.

It was night when I last stood there—the winds seemed to strike the
giant bread-fruits with a frightened breath. Far away the ocean winds
were lifting the seas in their arms beneath the stars, till the ocean
looked like some mighty hissing cauldron of thwarted desires.

I could just hear faintly the echoes of wild song coming in from a ship
in the bay, and from the new generation of shellbacks in the grog
shanty.

It’s years since I packed up my traps and sailed away from Tai-o-hae. I
called in at Samoa and saw the Matafas. When I had told them the history
and end of Waylao and Tamafanga, they both laid their old heads on the
hut table and cried like two children.

No wonder I love heathens and hate the memory of Mr and Mrs Christian
Pink, of Suva township.

And what is the moral of the foregoing reminiscences and impressions?
The moral will be understood or ignored according to the temperament of
the reader. Some will sneer, and some will understand and feel as I have
felt. I’m sure to find good company among many; I’ve travelled the world
and met many of my own type. I’m common enough, thank God.

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,” said the poet. So is sorrow.
Nothing really dies; it’s all the same as it was long before, in some
new form being washed in again by the tide. The bird that sings to us
to-day sang to the reapers in the corn-fields of Assyria. I dare say
that I helped to build the Pyramids.

Is Grimes dead? No! He lives to-day, buckles on his armour, and with a
grim, brave look in his English eyes goes forth to battle, that the
helpless may live.

And Pauline? She still sings of England to exiled men, wherever Waylao
has wept for her race in the savage, ravished South.

I often hear their old songs as the winds and birds sing in the windy
poplars, in the green woods and English fields. I never go forth in the
summer nights but I can hear her shadow-feet pattering down the dusky
lanes beside me, and the sweetest songs of far-off romance echo in my
ears. Ah! could I catch the beauty of those songs, what a composer would
I be. But I can only write down the spindrift of those glorious strains.

I often sit dreaming far into the night. It is then that she comes back
from the shadows and kneels with me at the altar of my dreams—and sings
some far-off strain of my beautiful, dead Romance.

 ● Transcriber’s Notes:
    ○ Music files have been provided for the song presented on page 18,
      “On yonder high mountain.” If your browser supports it, clicking
      on the MP3 link will play the piano music; clicking on the MIDI
      link may open a program that can play MIDI files; and clicking on
      the Music XML link may download the MXL file to your computer. The
      music will probably not play in a device that uses ePub format or
      on a Kindle.
    ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
    ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
    ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
      when a predominant form was found in this book.
    ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).