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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Island Nights' Entertainments**
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+by Robert Louis Stevenson   [Robert Louis Stevenson Series #7]
+
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+Island Nights' Entertainments
+
+by Robert Louis Stevenson
+
+September, 1995  [Etext #329]
+[Date last updated: April 13, 2006]
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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Island Nights' Entertainments**
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+Island Nights' Entertainments - Robert Louis Stevenson.
+1905 Edition.  Scanned and proofed by David Price
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
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+Island Nights' Entertainments - Robert Louis Stevenson.
+1905 Edition.  Scanned and proofed by David Price
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+Contents:
+    The Beach of Falesa
+        A south sea bridal
+        The Ban
+        The Missionary
+        Devil-work
+        Night in the bush
+    The Bottle Imp
+    The Isle of voices
+
+
+
+THE BEACH OF FALESA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. A SOUTH SEA BRIDAL.
+
+
+I SAW that island first when it was neither night nor morning.  The
+moon was to the west, setting, but still broad and bright.  To the
+east, and right amidships of the dawn, which was all pink, the
+daystar sparkled like a diamond.  The land breeze blew in our
+faces, and smelt strong of wild lime and vanilla: other things
+besides, but these were the most plain; and the chill of it set me
+sneezing.  I should say I had been for years on a low island near
+the line, living for the most part solitary among natives.  Here
+was a fresh experience: even the tongue would be quite strange to
+me; and the look of these woods and mountains, and the rare smell
+of them, renewed my blood.
+
+The captain blew out the binnacle lamp.
+
+"There!" said he, "there goes a bit of smoke, Mr. Wiltshire, behind
+the break of the reef.  That's Falesa, where your station is, the
+last village to the east; nobody lives to windward - I don't know
+why.  Take my glass, and you can make the houses out."
+
+I took the glass; and the shores leaped nearer, and I saw the
+tangle of the woods and the breach of the surf, and the brown roofs
+and the black insides of houses peeped among the trees.
+
+"Do you catch a bit of white there to the east'ard?" the captain
+continued.  "That's your house.  Coral built, stands high, verandah
+you could walk on three abreast; best station in the South Pacific.
+When old Adams saw it, he took and shook me by the hand.  'I've
+dropped into a soft thing here,' says he. - 'So you have,' says I,
+'and time too!'  Poor Johnny!  I never saw him again but the once,
+and then he had changed his tune - couldn't get on with the
+natives, or the whites, or something; and the next time we came
+round there he was dead and buried.  I took and put up a bit of a
+stick to him: 'John Adams, OBIT eighteen and sixty-eight.  Go thou
+and do likewise.'  I missed that man.  I never could see much harm
+in Johnny."
+
+"What did he die of?" I inquired.
+
+"Some kind of sickness," says the captain.  "It appears it took him
+sudden.  Seems he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain-Killer
+and Kennedy's Discovery.  No go: he was booked beyond Kennedy.
+Then he had tried to open a case of gin.  No go again: not strong
+enough.  Then he must have turned to and run out on the verandah,
+and capsized over the rail.  When they found him, the next day, he
+was clean crazy - carried on all the time about somebody watering
+his copra.  Poor John!"
+
+"Was it thought to be the island?" I asked.
+
+"Well, it was thought to be the island, or the trouble, or
+something," he replied.  "I never could hear but what it was a
+healthy place.  Our last man, Vigours, never turned a hair.  He
+left because of the beach - said he was afraid of Black Jack and
+Case and Whistling Jimmie, who was still alive at the time, but got
+drowned soon afterward when drunk.  As for old Captain Randall,
+he's been here any time since eighteen-forty, forty-five.  I never
+could see much harm in Billy, nor much change.  Seems as if he
+might live to be Old Kafoozleum.  No, I guess it's healthy."
+
+"There's a boat coming now," said I.  "She's right in the pass;
+looks to be a sixteen-foot whale; two white men in the stern
+sheets."
+
+"That's the boat that drowned Whistling Jimmie!" cried the Captain;
+"let's see the glass.  Yes, that's Case, sure enough, and the
+darkie.  They've got a gallows bad reputation, but you know what a
+place the beach is for talking.  My belief, that Whistling Jimmie
+was the worst of the trouble; and he's gone to glory, you see.
+What'll you bet they ain't after gin?  Lay you five to two they
+take six cases."
+
+When these two traders came aboard I was pleased with the looks of
+them at once, or, rather, with the looks of both, and the speech of
+one.  I was sick for white neighbours after my four years at the
+line, which I always counted years of prison; getting tabooed, and
+going down to the Speak House to see and get it taken off; buying
+gin and going on a break, and then repenting; sitting in the house
+at night with the lamp for company; or walking on the beach and
+wondering what kind of a fool to call myself for being where I was.
+There were no other whites upon my island, and when I sailed to the
+next, rough customers made the most of the society.  Now to see
+these two when they came aboard was a pleasure.  One was a negro,
+to be sure; but they were both rigged out smart in striped pyjamas
+and straw hats, and Case would have passed muster in a city.  He
+was yellow and smallish, had a hawk's nose to his face, pale eyes,
+and his beard trimmed with scissors.  No man knew his country,
+beyond he was of English speech; and it was clear he came of a good
+family and was splendidly educated.  He was accomplished too;
+played the accordion first-rate; and give him a piece of string or
+a cork or a pack of cards, and he could show you tricks equal to
+any professional.  He could speak, when he chose, fit for a
+drawing-room; and when he chose he could blaspheme worse than a
+Yankee boatswain, and talk smart to sicken a Kanaka.  The way he
+thought would pay best at the moment, that was Case's way, and it
+always seemed to come natural, and like as if he was born to it.
+He had the courage of a lion and the cunning of a rat; and if he's
+not in hell to-day, there's no such place.  I know but one good
+point to the man: that he was fond of his wife, and kind to her.
+She was a Samoa woman, and dyed her hair red, Samoa style; and when
+he came to die (as I have to tell of) they found one strange thing
+- that he had made a will, like a Christian, and the widow got the
+lot: all his, they said, and all Black Jack's, and the most of
+Billy Randall's in the bargain, for it was Case that kept the
+books.  So she went off home in the schooner MANU'A, and does the
+lady to this day in her own place.
+
+But of all this on that first morning I knew no more than a fly.
+Case used me like a gentleman and like a friend, made me welcome to
+Falesa, and put his services at my disposal, which was the more
+helpful from my ignorance of the native.  All the better part of
+the day we sat drinking better acquaintance in the cabin, and I
+never heard a man talk more to the point.  There was no smarter
+trader, and none dodgier, in the islands.  I thought Falesa seemed
+to be the right kind of a place; and the more I drank the lighter
+my heart.  Our last trader had fled the place at half an hour's
+notice, taking a chance passage in a labour ship from up west.  The
+captain, when he came, had found the station closed, the keys left
+with the native pastor, and a letter from the runaway, confessing
+he was fairly frightened of his life.  Since then the firm had not
+been represented, and of course there was no cargo.  The wind,
+besides, was fair, the captain hoped he could make his next island
+by dawn, with a good tide, and the business of landing my trade was
+gone about lively.  There was no call for me to fool with it, Case
+said; nobody would touch my things, everyone was honest in Falesa,
+only about chickens or an odd knife or an odd stick of tobacco; and
+the best I could do was to sit quiet till the vessel left, then
+come straight to his house, see old Captain Randall, the father of
+the beach, take pot-luck, and go home to sleep when it got dark.
+So it was high noon, and the schooner was under way before I set my
+foot on shore at Falesa.
+
+I had a glass or two on board; I was just off a long cruise, and
+the ground heaved under me like a ship's deck.  The world was like
+all new painted; my foot went along to music; Falesa might have
+been Fiddler's Green, if there is such a place, and more's the pity
+if there isn't!  It was good to foot the grass, to look aloft at
+the green mountains, to see the men with their green wreaths and
+the women in their bright dresses, red and blue.  On we went, in
+the strong sun and the cool shadow, liking both; and all the
+children in the town came trotting after with their shaven heads
+and their brown bodies, and raising a thin kind of a cheer in our
+wake, like crowing poultry.
+
+"By-the-bye," says Case, "we must get you a wife."
+
+"That's so," said I; "I had forgotten."
+
+There was a crowd of girls about us, and I pulled myself up and
+looked among them like a Bashaw.  They were all dressed out for the
+sake of the ship being in; and the women of Falesa are a handsome
+lot to see.  If they have a fault, they are a trifle broad in the
+beam; and I was just thinking so when Case touched me.
+
+"That's pretty," says he.
+
+I saw one coming on the other side alone.  She had been fishing;
+all she wore was a chemise, and it was wetted through.  She was
+young and very slender for an island maid, with a long face, a high
+forehead, and a shy, strange, blindish look, between a cat's and a
+baby's.
+
+"Who's she?" said I. "She'll do."
+
+"That's Uma," said Case, and he called her up and spoke to her in
+the native.  I didn't know what he said; but when he was in the
+midst she looked up at me quick and timid, like a child dodging a
+blow, then down again, and presently smiled.  She had a wide mouth,
+the lips and the chin cut like any statue's; and the smile came out
+for a moment and was gone.  Then she stood with her head bent, and
+heard Case to an end, spoke back in the pretty Polynesian voice,
+looking him full in the face, heard him again in answer, and then
+with an obeisance started off.  I had just a share of the bow, but
+never another shot of her eye, and there was no more word of
+smiling.
+
+"I guess it's all right," said Case.  "I guess you can have her.
+I'll make it square with the old lady.  You can have your pick of
+the lot for a plug of tobacco," he added, sneering.
+
+I suppose it was the smile stuck in my memory, for I spoke back
+sharp.  "She doesn't look that sort," I cried.
+
+"I don't know that she is," said Case.  "I believe she's as right
+as the mail.  Keeps to herself, don't go round with the gang, and
+that.  O no, don't you misunderstand me - Uma's on the square."  He
+spoke eager, I thought, and that surprised and pleased me.
+"Indeed," he went on, "I shouldn't make so sure of getting her,
+only she cottoned to the cut of your jib.  All you have to do is to
+keep dark and let me work the mother my own way; and I'll bring the
+girl round to the captain's for the marriage."
+
+I didn't care for the word marriage, and I said so.
+
+"Oh, there's nothing to hurt in the marriage," says he.  "Black
+Jack's the chaplain."
+
+By this time we had come in view of the house of these three white
+men; for a negro is counted a white man, and so is a Chinese! a
+strange idea, but common in the islands.  It was a board house with
+a strip of rickety verandah.  The store was to the front, with a
+counter, scales, and the poorest possible display of trade: a case
+or two of tinned meats; a barrel of hard bread; a few bolts of
+cotton stuff, not to be compared with mine; the only thing well
+represented being the contraband, firearms and liquor.  "If these
+are my only rivals," thinks I, "I should do well in Falesa."
+Indeed, there was only the one way they could touch me, and that
+was with the guns and drink.
+
+In the back room was old Captain Randall, squatting on the floor
+native fashion, fat and pale, naked to the waist, grey as a badger,
+and his eyes set with drink.  His body was covered with grey hair
+and crawled over by flies; one was in the corner of his eye - he
+never heeded; and the mosquitoes hummed about the man like bees.
+Any clean-minded man would have had the creature out at once and
+buried him; and to see him, and think he was seventy, and remember
+he had once commanded a ship, and come ashore in his smart togs,
+and talked big in bars and consulates, and sat in club verandahs,
+turned me sick and sober.
+
+He tried to get up when I came in, but that was hopeless; so he
+reached me a hand instead, and stumbled out some salutation.
+
+"Papa's (1) pretty full this morning," observed Case.  "We've had
+an epidemic here; and Captain Randall takes gin for a prophylactic
+- don't you, Papa?"
+
+"Never took such a thing in my life!" cried the captain
+indignantly.  "Take gin for my health's sake, Mr. Wha's-ever-your-
+name - 's a precautionary measure."
+
+"That's all right, Papa," said Case.  "But you'll have to brace up.
+There's going to be a marriage - Mr. Wiltshire here is going to get
+spliced."
+
+The old man asked to whom.
+
+"To Uma," said Case.
+
+"Uma!" cried the captain.  "Wha's he want Uma for?  's he come here
+for his health, anyway?  Wha' 'n hell's he want Uma for?"
+
+"Dry up, Papa," said Case.  "'Tain't you that's to marry her.  I
+guess you're not her godfather and godmother.  I guess Mr.
+Wiltshire's going to please himself."
+
+With that he made an excuse to me that he must move about the
+marriage, and left me alone with the poor wretch that was his
+partner and (to speak truth) his gull.  Trade and station belonged
+both to Randall; Case and the negro were parasites; they crawled
+and fed upon him like the flies, he none the wiser.  Indeed, I have
+no harm to say of Billy Randall beyond the fact that my gorge rose
+at him, and the time I now passed in his company was like a
+nightmare.
+
+The room was stifling hot and full of flies; for the house was
+dirty and low and small, and stood in a bad place, behind the
+village, in the borders of the bush, and sheltered from the trade.
+The three men's beds were on the floor, and a litter of pans and
+dishes.  There was no standing furniture; Randall, when he was
+violent, tearing it to laths.  There I sat and had a meal which was
+served us by Case's wife; and there I was entertained all day by
+that remains of man, his tongue stumbling among low old jokes and
+long old stories, and his own wheezy laughter always ready, so that
+he had no sense of my depression.  He was nipping gin all the
+while.  Sometimes he fell asleep, and awoke again, whimpering and
+shivering, and every now and again he would ask me why I wanted to
+marry Uma.  "My friend," I was telling myself all day, "you must
+not come to be an old gentleman like this."
+
+It might be four in the afternoon, perhaps, when the back door was
+thrust slowly open, and a strange old native woman crawled into the
+house almost on her belly.  She was swathed in black stuff to her
+heels; her hair was grey in swatches; her face was tattooed, which
+was not the practice in that island; her eyes big and bright and
+crazy.  These she fixed upon me with a rapt expression that I saw
+to be part acting.  She said no plain word, but smacked and mumbled
+with her lips, and hummed aloud, like a child over its Christmas
+pudding.  She came straight across the house, heading for me, and,
+as soon as she was alongside, caught up my hand and purred and
+crooned over it like a great cat.  From this she slipped into a
+kind of song.
+
+"Who the devil's this?" cried I, for the thing startled me.
+
+"It's Fa'avao," says Randall; and I saw he had hitched along the
+floor into the farthest corner.
+
+"You ain't afraid of her?" I cried.
+
+"Me 'fraid!" cried the captain.  "My dear friend, I defy her!  I
+don't let her put her foot in here, only I suppose 's different to-
+day, for the marriage.  's Uma's mother."
+
+"Well, suppose it is; what's she carrying on about?"  I asked, more
+irritated, perhaps more frightened, than I cared to show; and the
+captain told me she was making up a quantity of poetry in my praise
+because I was to marry Uma.  "All right, old lady," says I, with
+rather a failure of a laugh, "anything to oblige.  But when you're
+done with my hand, you might let me know."
+
+She did as though she understood; the song rose into a cry, and
+stopped; the woman crouched out of the house the same way that she
+came in, and must have plunged straight into the bush, for when I
+followed her to the door she had already vanished.
+
+"These are rum manners," said I.
+
+"'s a rum crowd," said the captain, and, to my surprise, he made
+the sign of the cross on his bare bosom.
+
+"Hillo!" says I, "are you a Papist?"
+
+He repudiated the idea with contempt.  "Hard-shell Baptis'," said
+he.  "But, my dear friend, the Papists got some good ideas too; and
+tha' 's one of 'em.  You take my advice, and whenever you come
+across Uma or Fa'avao or Vigours, or any of that crowd, you take a
+leaf out o' the priests, and do what I do.  Savvy?" says he,
+repeated the sign, and winked his dim eye at me.  "No, SIR!" he
+broke out again, "no Papists here!" and for a long time entertained
+me with his religious opinions.
+
+I must have been taken with Uma from the first, or I should
+certainly have fled from that house, and got into the clean air,
+and the clean sea, or some convenient river - though, it's true, I
+was committed to Case; and, besides, I could never have held my
+head up in that island if I had run from a girl upon my wedding-
+night.
+
+The sun was down, the sky all on fire, and the lamp had been some
+time lighted, when Case came back with Uma and the negro.  She was
+dressed and scented; her kilt was of fine tapa, looking richer in
+the folds than any silk; her bust, which was of the colour of dark
+honey, she wore bare only for some half a dozen necklaces of seeds
+and flowers; and behind her ears and in her hair she had the
+scarlet flowers of the hibiscus.  She showed the best bearing for a
+bride conceivable, serious and still; and I thought shame to stand
+up with her in that mean house and before that grinning negro.  I
+thought shame, I say; for the mountebank was dressed with a big
+paper collar, the book he made believe to read from was an odd
+volume of a novel, and the words of his service not fit to be set
+down.  My conscience smote me when we joined hands; and when she
+got her certificate I was tempted to throw up the bargain and
+confess.  Here is the document.  It was Case that wrote it,
+signatures and all, in a leaf out of the ledger:-
+
+
+This is to certify that Uma, daughter of Fa'avao of Falesa, Island
+of - , is illegally married to Mr. John Wiltshire for one week, and
+Mr. John Wiltshire is at liberty to send her to hell when he
+pleases.
+
+JOHN BLACKAMOAR.
+Chaplain to the hulks.
+
+Extracted from the Register
+by William T. Randall,
+Master Mariner.
+
+
+A nice paper to put in a girl's hand and see her hide away like
+gold.  A man might easily feel cheap for less.  But it was the
+practice in these parts, and (as I told myself) not the least the
+fault of us white men, but of the missionaries.  If they had let
+the natives be, I had never needed this deception, but taken all
+the wives I wished, and left them when I pleased, with a clear
+conscience.
+
+The more ashamed I was, the more hurry I was in to be gone; and our
+desires thus jumping together, I made the less remark of a change
+in the traders.  Case had been all eagerness to keep me; now, as
+though he had attained a purpose, he seemed all eagerness to have
+me go.  Uma, he said, could show me to my house, and the three bade
+us farewell indoors.
+
+The night was nearly come; the village smelt of trees and flowers
+and the sea and bread-fruit-cooking; there came a fine roll of sea
+from the reef, and from a distance, among the woods and houses,
+many pretty sounds of men and children.  It did me good to breathe
+free air; it did me good to be done with the captain and see,
+instead, the creature at my side.  I felt for all the world as
+though she were some girl at home in the Old Country, and,
+forgetting myself for the minute, took her hand to walk with.  Her
+fingers nestled into mine, I heard her breathe deep and quick, and
+all at once she caught my hand to her face and pressed it there.
+"You good!" she cried, and ran ahead of me, and stopped and looked
+back and smiled, and ran ahead of me again, thus guiding me through
+the edge of the bush, and by a quiet way to my own house.
+
+The truth is, Case had done the courting for me in style - told her
+I was mad to have her, and cared nothing for the consequence; and
+the poor soul, knowing that which I was still ignorant of, believed
+it, every word, and had her head nigh turned with vanity and
+gratitude.  Now, of all this I had no guess; I was one of those
+most opposed to any nonsense about native women, having seen so
+many whites eaten up by their wives' relatives, and made fools of
+in the bargain; and I told myself I must make a stand at once, and
+bring her to her bearings.  But she looked so quaint and pretty as
+she ran away and then awaited me, and the thing was done so like a
+child or a kind dog, that the best I could do was just to follow
+her whenever she went on, to listen for the fall of her bare feet,
+and to watch in the dusk for the shining of her body.  And there
+was another thought came in my head.  She played kitten with me now
+when we were alone; but in the house she had carried it the way a
+countess might, so proud and humble.  And what with her dress - for
+all there was so little of it, and that native enough - what with
+her fine tapa and fine scents, and her red flowers and seeds, that
+were quite as bright as jewels, only larger - it came over me she
+was a kind of countess really, dressed to hear great singers at a
+concert, and no even mate for a poor trader like myself.
+
+She was the first in the house; and while I was still without I saw
+a match flash and the lamplight kindle in the windows.  The station
+was a wonderful fine place, coral built, with quite a wide
+verandah, and the main room high and wide.  My chests and cases had
+been piled in, and made rather of a mess; and there, in the thick
+of the confusion, stood Uma by the table, awaiting me.  Her shadow
+went all the way up behind her into the hollow of the iron roof;
+she stood against it bright, the lamplight shining on her skin.  I
+stopped in the door, and she looked at me, not speaking, with eyes
+that were eager and yet daunted; then she touched herself on the
+bosom.
+
+"Me - your wifie," she said.  It had never taken me like that
+before; but the want of her took and shook all through me, like the
+wind in the luff of a sail.
+
+I could not speak if I had wanted; and if I could, I would not.  I
+was ashamed to be so much moved about a native, ashamed of the
+marriage too, and the certificate she had treasured in her kilt;
+and I turned aside and made believe to rummage among my cases.  The
+first thing I lighted on was a case of gin, the only one that I had
+brought; and, partly for the girl's sake, and partly for horror of
+the recollections of old Randall, took a sudden resolve.  I prized
+the lid off.  One by one I drew the bottles with a pocket
+corkscrew, and sent Uma out to pour the stuff from the verandah.
+
+She came back after the last, and looked at me puzzled like.
+
+"No good," said I, for I was now a little better master of my
+tongue.  "Man he drink, he no good."
+
+She agreed with this, but kept considering.  "Why you bring him?"
+she asked presently.  "Suppose you no want drink, you no bring him,
+I think."
+
+"That's all right," said I.  "One time I want drink too much; now
+no want.  You see, I no savvy I get one little wifie.  Suppose I
+drink gin, my little wifie he 'fraid."
+
+To speak to her kindly was about more than I was fit for; I had
+made my vow I would never let on to weakness with a native, and I
+had nothing for it but to stop.
+
+She stood looking gravely down at me where I sat by the open case.
+"I think you good man," she said.  And suddenly she had fallen
+before me on the floor.  "I belong you all-e-same pig!" she cried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE BAN.
+
+
+I CAME on the verandah just before the sun rose on the morrow.  My
+house was the last on the east; there was a cape of woods and
+cliffs behind that hid the sunrise.  To the west, a swift cold
+river ran down, and beyond was the green of the village, dotted
+with cocoa-palms and breadfruits and houses.  The shutters were
+some of them down and some open; I saw the mosquito bars still
+stretched, with shadows of people new-awakened sitting up inside;
+and all over the green others were stalking silent, wrapped in
+their many-coloured sleeping clothes like Bedouins in Bible
+pictures.  It was mortal still and solemn and chilly, and the light
+of the dawn on the lagoon was like the shining of a fire.
+
+But the thing that troubled me was nearer hand.  Some dozen young
+men and children made a piece of a half-circle, flanking my house:
+the river divided them, some were on the near side, some on the
+far, and one on a boulder in the midst; and they all sat silent,
+wrapped in their sheets, and stared at me and my house as straight
+as pointer dogs.  I thought it strange as I went out.  When I had
+bathed and come back again, and found them all there, and two or
+three more along with them, I thought it stranger still.  What
+could they see to gaze at in my house, I wondered, and went in.
+
+But the thought of these starers stuck in my mind, and presently I
+came out again.  The sun was now up, but it was still behind the
+cape of woods.  Say a quarter of an hour had come and gone.  The
+crowd was greatly increased, the far bank of the river was lined
+for quite a way - perhaps thirty grown folk, and of children twice
+as many, some standing, some squatted on the ground, and all
+staring at my house.  I have seen a house in a South Sea village
+thus surrounded, but then a trader was thrashing his wife inside,
+and she singing out.  Here was nothing: the stove was alight, the
+smoke going up in a Christian manner; all was shipshape and Bristol
+fashion.  To be sure, there was a stranger come, but they had a
+chance to see that stranger yesterday, and took it quiet enough.
+What ailed them now?  I leaned my arms on the rail and stared back.
+Devil a wink they had in them!  Now and then I could see the
+children chatter, but they spoke so low not even the hum of their
+speaking came my length.  The rest were like graven images: they
+stared at me, dumb and sorrowful, with their bright eyes; and it
+came upon me things would look not much different if I were on the
+platform of the gallows, and these good folk had come to see me
+hanged.
+
+I felt I was getting daunted, and began to be afraid I looked it,
+which would never do.  Up I stood, made believe to stretch myself,
+came down the verandah stair, and strolled towards the river.
+There went a short buzz from one to the other, like what you hear
+in theatres when the curtain goes up; and some of the nearest gave
+back the matter of a pace.  I saw a girl lay one hand on a young
+man and make a gesture upward with the other; at the same time she
+said something in the native with a gasping voice.  Three little
+boys sat beside my path, where, I must pass within three feet of
+them.  Wrapped in their sheets, with their shaved heads and bits of
+top-knots, and queer faces, they looked like figures on a chimney-
+piece.  Awhile they sat their ground, solemn as judges.  I came up
+hand over fist, doing my five knots, like a man that meant
+business; and I thought I saw a sort of a wink and gulp in the
+three faces.  Then one jumped up (he was the farthest off) and ran
+for his mammy.  The other two, trying to follow suit, got foul,
+came to ground together bawling, wriggled right out of their sheets
+mother-naked, and in a moment there were all three of them
+scampering for their lives and singing out like pigs.  The natives,
+who would never let a joke slip, even at a burial, laughed and let
+up, as short as a dog's bark.
+
+They say it scares a man to be alone.  No such thing.  What scares
+him in the dark or the high bush is that he can't make sure, and
+there might be an army at his elbow.  What scares him worst is to
+be right in the midst of a crowd, and have no guess of what they're
+driving at.  When that laugh stopped, I stopped too.  The boys had
+not yet made their offing, they were still on the full stretch
+going the one way, when I had already gone about ship and was
+sheering off the other.  Like a fool I had come out, doing my five
+knots; like a fool I went back again.  It must have been the
+funniest thing to see, and what knocked me silly, this time no one
+laughed; only one old woman gave a kind of pious moan, the way you
+have heard Dissenters in their chapels at the sermon.
+
+"I never saw such fools of Kanakas as your people here," I said
+once to Uma, glancing out of the window at the starers.
+
+"Savvy nothing," says Uma, with a kind of disgusted air that she
+was good at.
+
+And that was all the talk we had upon the matter, for I was put
+out, and Uma took the thing so much as a matter of course that I
+was fairly ashamed.
+
+All day, off and on, now fewer and now more, the fools sat about
+the west end of my house and across the river, waiting for the
+show, whatever that was - fire to come down from heaven, I suppose,
+and consume me, bones and baggage.  But by evening, like real
+islanders, they had wearied of the business, and got away, and had
+a dance instead in the big house of the village, where I heard them
+singing and clapping hands till, maybe, ten at night, and the next
+day it seemed they had forgotten I existed.  If fire had come down
+from heaven or the earth opened and swallowed me, there would have
+been nobody to see the sport or take the lesson, or whatever you
+like to call it.  But I was to find they hadn't forgot either, and
+kept an eye lifting for phenomena over my way.
+
+I was hard at it both these days getting my trade in order and
+taking stock of what Vigours had left.  This was a job that made me
+pretty sick, and kept me from thinking on much else.  Ben had taken
+stock the trip before - I knew I could trust Ben - but it was plain
+somebody had been making free in the meantime.  I found I was out
+by what might easily cover six months' salary and profit, and I
+could have kicked myself all round the village to have been such a
+blamed ass, sitting boozing with that Case instead of attending to
+my own affairs and taking stock.
+
+However, there's no use crying over spilt milk.  It was done now,
+and couldn't be undone.  All I could do was to get what was left of
+it, and my new stuff (my own choice) in order, to go round and get
+after the rats and cockroaches, and to fix up that store regular
+Sydney style.  A fine show I made of it; and the third morning when
+I had lit my pipe and stood in the door-way and looked in, and
+turned and looked far up the mountain and saw the cocoanuts waving
+and posted up the tons of copra, and over the village green and saw
+the island dandies and reckoned up the yards of print they wanted
+for their kilts and dresses, I felt as if I was in the right place
+to make a fortune, and go home again and start a public-house.
+There was I, sitting in that verandah, in as handsome a piece of
+scenery as you could find, a splendid sun, and a fine fresh healthy
+trade that stirred up a man's blood like sea-bathing; and the whole
+thing was clean gone from me, and I was dreaming England, which is,
+after all, a nasty, cold, muddy hole, with not enough light to see
+to read by; and dreaming the looks of my public, by a cant of a
+broad high-road like an avenue, and with the sign on a green tree.
+
+So much for the morning, but the day passed and the devil anyone
+looked near me, and from all I knew of natives in other islands I
+thought this strange.  People laughed a little at our firm and
+their fine stations, and at this station of Falesa in particular;
+all the copra in the district wouldn't pay for it (I had heard them
+say) in fifty years, which I supposed was an exaggeration.  But
+when the day went, and no business came at all, I began to get
+downhearted; and, about three in the afternoon, I went out for a
+stroll to cheer me up.  On the green I saw a white man coming with
+a cassock on, by which and by the face of him I knew he was a
+priest.  He was a good-natured old soul to look at, gone a little
+grizzled, and so dirty you could have written with him on a piece
+of paper.
+
+"Good day, sir," said I.
+
+He answered me eagerly in native.
+
+"Don't you speak any English?" said I.
+
+"French," says he.
+
+"Well," said I, "I'm sorry, but I can't do anything there."
+
+He tried me awhile in the French, and then again in native, which
+he seemed to think was the best chance.  I made out he was after
+more than passing the time of day with me, but had something to
+communicate, and I listened the harder.  I heard the names of Adams
+and Case and of Randall - Randall the oftenest - and the word
+"poison," or something like it, and a native word that he said very
+often.  I went home, repeating it to myself.
+
+"What does fussy-ocky mean?" I asked of Uma, for that was as near
+as I could come to it.
+
+"Make dead," said she.
+
+"The devil it does!" says I.  "Did ever you hear that Case had
+poisoned Johnnie Adams?"
+
+"Every man he savvy that," says Uma, scornful-like.  "Give him
+white sand - bad sand.  He got the bottle still.  Suppose he give
+you gin, you no take him."
+
+Now I had heard much the same sort of story in other islands, and
+the same white powder always to the front, which made me think the
+less of it.  For all that, I went over to Randall's place to see
+what I could pick up, and found Case on the doorstep, cleaning a
+gun.
+
+"Good shooting here?" says I.
+
+"A 1," says he.  "The bush is full of all kinds of birds.  I wish
+copra was as plenty," says he - I thought, slyly - "but there don't
+seem anything doing."
+
+I could see Black Jack in the store, serving a customer.
+
+"That looks like business, though," said I.
+
+"That's the first sale we've made in three weeks," said he.
+
+"You don't tell me?" says I.  "Three weeks?  Well, well."
+
+"If you don't believe me," he cries, a little hot, "you can go and
+look at the copra-house.  It's half empty to this blessed hour."
+
+"I shouldn't be much the better for that, you see," says I.  "For
+all I can tell, it might have been whole empty yesterday."
+
+"That's so," says he, with a bit of a laugh.
+
+"By-the-bye," I said, "what sort of a party is that priest?  Seems
+rather a friendly sort."
+
+At this Case laughed right out loud.  "Ah!" says he,  "I see what
+ails you now.  Galuchet's been at you." - FATHER GALOSHES was the
+name he went by most, but Case always gave it the French quirk,
+which was another reason we had for thinking him above the common.
+
+"Yes, I have seen him," I says.  "I made out he didn't think much
+of your Captain Randall."
+
+"That he don't!" says Case.  "It was the trouble about poor Adams.
+The last day, when he lay dying, there was young Buncombe round.
+Ever met Buncombe?"
+
+I told him no.
+
+"He's a cure, is Buncombe!" laughs Case.  "Well, Buncombe took it
+in his head that, as there was no other clergyman about, bar Kanaka
+pastors, we ought to call in Father Galuchet, and have the old man
+administered and take the sacrament.  It was all the same to me,
+you may suppose; but I said I thought Adams was the fellow to
+consult.  He was jawing away about watered copra and a sight of
+foolery.  'Look here,' I said, 'you're pretty sick.  Would you like
+to see Galoshes?'  He sat right up on his elbow.  'Get the priest,'
+says he, 'get the priest; don't let me die here like a dog!'  He
+spoke kind of fierce and eager, but sensible enough.  There was
+nothing to say against that, so we sent and asked Galuchet if he
+would come.  You bet he would.  He jumped in his dirty linen at the
+thought of it.  But we had reckoned without Papa.  He's a hard-
+shell Baptist, is Papa; no Papists need apply.  And he took and
+locked the door.  Buncombe told him he was bigoted, and I thought
+he would have had a fit.  'Bigoted!' he says.  'Me bigoted?  Have I
+lived to hear it from a jackanapes like you?'  And he made for
+Buncombe, and I had to hold them apart; and there was Adams in the
+middle, gone luny again, and carrying on about copra like a born
+fool.  It was good as the play, and I was about knocked out of time
+with laughing, when all of a sudden Adams sat up, clapped his hands
+to his chest, and went into the horrors.  He died hard, did John
+Adams," says Case, with a kind of a sudden sternness.
+
+"And what became of the priest?" I asked.
+
+"The priest?" says Case. "O!  he was hammering on the door outside,
+and crying on the natives to come and beat it in, and singing out
+it was a soul he wished to save, and that.  He was in a rare
+taking, was the priest.  But what would you have?  Johnny had
+slipped his cable; no more Johnny in the market; and the
+administration racket clean played out.  Next thing, word came to
+Randall the priest was praying upon Johnny's grave.  Papa was
+pretty full, and got a club, and lit out straight for the place,
+and there was Galoshes on his knees, and a lot of natives looking
+on.  You wouldn't think Papa cared - that much about anything,
+unless it was liquor; but he and the priest stuck to it two hours,
+slanging each other in native, and every time Galoshes tried to
+kneel down Papa went for him with the club.  There never were such
+larks in Falesa.  The end of it was that Captain Randall knocked
+over with some kind of a fit or stroke, and the priest got in his
+goods after all.  But he was the angriest priest you ever heard of,
+and complained to the chiefs about the outrage, as he called it.
+That was no account, for our chiefs are Protestant here; and,
+anyway, he had been making trouble about the drum for morning
+school, and they were glad to give him a wipe.  Now he swears old
+Randall gave Adams poison or something, and when the two meet they
+grin at each other like baboons."
+
+He told this story as natural as could be, and like a man that
+enjoyed the fun; though, now I come to think of it after so long,
+it seems rather a sickening yarn.  However, Case never set up to be
+soft, only to be square and hearty, and a man all round; and, to
+tell the truth, he puzzled me entirely.
+
+I went home and asked Uma if she were a Popey, which I had made out
+to be the native word for Catholics.
+
+"E LE AI!" says she.  She always used the native when she meant
+"no" more than usually strong, and, indeed, there's more of it.
+"No good Popey," she added.
+
+Then I asked her about Adams and the priest, and she told me much
+the same yarn in her own way.  So that I was left not much farther
+on, but inclined, upon the whole, to think the bottom of the matter
+was the row about the sacrament, and the poisoning only talk.
+
+The next day was a Sunday, when there was no business to be looked
+for.  Uma asked me in the morning if I was going to "pray"; I told
+her she bet not, and she stopped home herself with no more words.
+I thought this seemed unlike a native, and a native woman, and a
+woman that had new clothes to show off; however, it suited me to
+the ground, and I made the less of it.  The queer thing was that I
+came next door to going to church after all, a thing I'm little
+likely to forget.  I had turned out for a stroll, and heard the
+hymn tune up.  You know how it is.  If you hear folk singing, it
+seems to draw you; and pretty soon I found myself alongside the
+church.  It was a little long low place, coral built, rounded off
+at both ends like a whale-boat, a big native roof on the top of it,
+windows without sashes and doorways without doors.  I stuck my head
+into one of the windows, and the sight was so new to me - for
+things went quite different in the islands I was acquainted with -
+that I stayed and looked on.  The congregation sat on the floor on
+mats, the women on one side, the men on the other, all rigged out
+to kill - the women with dresses and trade hats, the men in white
+jackets and shirts.  The hymn was over; the pastor, a big buck
+Kanaka, was in the pulpit, preaching for his life; and by the way
+he wagged his hand, and worked his voice, and made his points, and
+seemed to argue with the folk, I made out he was a gun at the
+business.  Well, he looked up suddenly and caught my eye, and I
+give you my word he staggered in the pulpit; his eyes bulged out of
+his head, his hand rose and pointed at me like as if against his
+will, and the sermon stopped right there.
+
+It isn't a fine thing to say for yourself, but I ran away; and if
+the same kind of a shock was given me, I should run away again
+tomorrow.  To see that palavering Kanaka struck all of a heap at
+the mere sight of me gave me a feeling as if the bottom had dropped
+out of the world.  I went right home, and stayed there, and said
+nothing.  You might think I would tell Uma, but that was against my
+system.  You might have thought I would have gone over and
+consulted Case; but the truth was I was ashamed to speak of such a
+thing, I thought everyone would blurt out laughing in my face.  So
+I held my tongue, and thought all the more; and the more I thought,
+the less I liked the business.
+
+By Monday night I got it clearly in my head I must be tabooed.  A
+new store to stand open two days in a village and not a man or
+woman come to see the trade was past believing.
+
+"Uma," said I, "I think I'm tabooed."
+
+"I think so," said she.
+
+I thought awhile whether I should ask her more, but it's a bad idea
+to set natives up with any notion of consulting them, so I went to
+Case.  It was dark, and he was sitting alone, as he did mostly,
+smoking on the stairs.
+
+"Case," said I, "here's a queer thing.  I'm tabooed."
+
+"O, fudge!" says he; "'tain't the practice in these islands."
+
+"That may be, or it mayn't," said I.  "It's the practice where I
+was before.  You can bet I know what it's like; and I tell it you
+for a fact, I'm tabooed."
+
+"Well," said he, "what have you been doing?"
+
+"That's what I want to find out," said I.
+
+"O, you can't be," said he; "it ain't possible.  However, I'll tell
+you what I'll do.  Just to put your mind at rest, I'll go round and
+find out for sure.  Just you waltz in and talk to Papa."
+
+"Thank you," I said, "I'd rather stay right out here on the
+verandah.  Your house is so close."
+
+"I'll call Papa out here, then," says he.
+
+"My dear fellow," I says, "I wish you wouldn't.  The fact is, I
+don't take to Mr. Randall."
+
+Case laughed, took a lantern from the store, and set out into the
+village.  He was gone perhaps a quarter of an hour, and he looked
+mighty serious when he came back.
+
+"Well," said he, clapping down the lantern on the verandah steps,
+"I would never have believed it.  I don't know where the impudence
+of these Kanakas 'll go next; they seem to have lost all idea of
+respect for whites.  What we want is a man-of-war - a German, if we
+could - they know how to manage Kanakas."
+
+"I AM tabooed, then?" I cried.
+
+"Something of the sort," said he.  "It's the worst thing of the
+kind I've heard of yet.  But I'll stand by you, Wiltshire, man to
+man.  You come round here to-morrow about nine, and we'll have it
+out with the chiefs.  They're afraid of me, or they used to be; but
+their heads are so big by now, I don't know what to think.
+Understand me, Wiltshire; I don't count this your quarrel," he went
+on, with a great deal of resolution, "I count it all of our
+quarrel, I count it the White Man's Quarrel, and I'll stand to it
+through thick and thin, and there's my hand on it."
+
+"Have you found out what's the reason?" I asked.
+
+"Not yet," said Case.  "But we'll fix them down to-morrow."
+
+Altogether I was pretty well pleased with his attitude, and almost
+more the next day, when we met to go before the chiefs, to see him
+so stern and resolved.  The chiefs awaited us in one of their big
+oval houses, which was marked out to us from a long way off by the
+crowd about the eaves, a hundred strong if there was one - men,
+women, and children.  Many of the men were on their way to work and
+wore green wreaths, and it put me in thoughts of the 1st of May at
+home.  This crowd opened and buzzed about the pair of us as we went
+in, with a sudden angry animation.  Five chiefs were there; four
+mighty stately men, the fifth old and puckered.  They sat on mats
+in their white kilts and jackets; they had fans in their hands,
+like fine ladies; and two of the younger ones wore Catholic medals,
+which gave me matter of reflection.  Our place was set, and the
+mats laid for us over against these grandees, on the near side of
+the house; the midst was empty; the crowd, close at our backs,
+murmured and craned and jostled to look on, and the shadows of them
+tossed in front of us on the clean pebbles of the floor.  I was
+just a hair put out by the excitement of the commons, but the quiet
+civil appearance of the chiefs reassured me, all the more when
+their spokesman began and made a long speech in a low tone of
+voice, sometimes waving his hand towards Case, sometimes toward me,
+and sometimes knocking with his knuckles on the mat.  One thing was
+clear: there was no sign of anger in the chiefs.
+
+"What's he been saying?" I asked, when he had done.
+
+"O, just that they're glad to see you, and they understand by me
+you wish to make some kind of complaint, and you're to fire away,
+and they'll do the square thing."
+
+"It took a precious long time to say that," said I.
+
+"O, the rest was sawder and BONJOUR and that," said Case.  "You
+know what Kanakas are."
+
+"Well, they don't get much BONJOUR out of me," said I.  "You tell
+them who I am.  I'm a white man, and a British subject, and no end
+of a big chief at home; and I've come here to do them good, and
+bring them civilisation; and no sooner have I got my trade sorted
+out than they go and taboo me, and no one dare come near my place!
+Tell them I don't mean to fly in the face of anything legal; and if
+what they want's a present, I'll do what's fair.  I don't blame any
+man looking out for himself, tell them, for that's human nature;
+but if they think they're going to come any of their native ideas
+over me, they'll find themselves mistaken.  And tell them plain
+that I demand the reason of this treatment as a white man and a
+British subject."
+
+That was my speech.  I know how to deal with Kanakas: give them
+plain sense and fair dealing, and - I'll do them that much justice
+- they knuckle under every time.  They haven't any real government
+or any real law, that's what you've got to knock into their heads;
+and even if they had, it would be a good joke if it was to apply to
+a white man.  It would be a strange thing if we came all this way
+and couldn't do what we pleased.  The mere idea has always put my
+monkey up, and I rapped my speech out pretty big.  Then Case
+translated it - or made believe to, rather - and the first chief
+replied, and then a second, and a third, all in the same style,
+easy and genteel, but solemn underneath.  Once a question was put
+to Case, and he answered it, and all hands (both chiefs and
+commons) laughed out aloud, and looked at me.  Last of all, the
+puckered old fellow and the big young chief that spoke first
+started in to put Case through a kind of catechism.  Sometimes I
+made out that Case was trying to fence, and they stuck to him like
+hounds, and the sweat ran down his face, which was no very pleasant
+sight to me, and at some of his answers the crowd moaned and
+murmured, which was a worse hearing.  It's a cruel shame I knew no
+native, for (as I now believe) they were asking Case about my
+marriage, and he must have had a tough job of it to clear his feet.
+But leave Case alone; he had the brains to run a parliament.
+
+"Well, is that all?" I asked, when a pause came.
+
+"Come along," says he, mopping his face; "I'll tell you outside."
+
+"Do you mean they won't take the taboo off?"  I cried.
+
+"It's something queer," said he.  "I'll tell you outside.  Better
+come away."
+
+"I won't take it at their hands," cried I.  "I ain't that kind of a
+man.  You don't find me turn my back on a parcel of Kanakas."
+
+"You'd better," said Case.
+
+He looked at me with a signal in his eye; and the five chiefs
+looked at me civilly enough, but kind of pointed; and the people
+looked at me and craned and jostled.  I remembered the folks that
+watched my house, and how the pastor had jumped in his pulpit at
+the bare sight of me; and the whole business seemed so out of the
+way that I rose and followed Case.  The crowd opened again to let
+us through, but wider than before, the children on the skirts
+running and singing out, and as we two white men walked away they
+all stood and watched us.
+
+"And now," said I, "what is all this about?"
+
+"The truth is I can't rightly make it out myself.  They have a down
+on you," says Case.
+
+"Taboo a man because they have a down on him!" I cried.  "I never
+heard the like."
+
+"It's worse than that, you see," said Case.  "You ain't tabooed - I
+told you that couldn't be.  The people won't go near you,
+Wiltshire, and there's where it is."
+
+"They won't go near me?  What do you mean by that?  Why won't they
+go near me?" I cried.
+
+Case hesitated.  "Seems they're frightened," says he, in a low,
+voice.
+
+I stopped dead short.  "Frightened?" I repeated.  "Are you gone
+crazy, Case?  What are they frightened of?"
+
+"I wish I could make out," Case answered, shaking his head.
+"Appears like one of their tomfool superstitions.  That's what I
+don't cotton to," he said.  "It's like the business about Vigours."
+
+"I'd like to know what you mean by that, and I'll trouble you to
+tell me," says I.
+
+"Well, you know, Vigours lit out and left all standing," said he.
+"It was some superstition business - I never got the hang of it but
+it began to look bad before the end."
+
+"I've heard a different story about that," said I, "and I had
+better tell you so.  I heard he ran away because of you."
+
+"O! well, I suppose he was ashamed to tell the truth," says Case;
+"I guess he thought it silly.  And it's a fact that I packed him
+off.  'What would you do, old man?' says he.  'Get,' says I, 'and
+not think twice about it.'  I was the gladdest kind of man to see
+him clear away.  It ain't my notion to turn my back on a mate when
+he's in a tight place, but there was that much trouble in the
+village that I couldn't see where it might likely end.  I was a
+fool to be so much about with Vigours.  They cast it up to me to-
+day.  Didn't you hear Maea - that's the young chief, the big one -
+ripping out about 'Vika'?  That was him they were after.  They
+don't seem to forget it, somehow."
+
+"This is all very well," said I, "but it don't tell me what's
+wrong; it don't tell me what they're afraid of - what their idea
+is."
+
+"Well, I wish I knew," said Case.  "I can't say fairer than that."
+
+"You might have asked, I think," says I.
+
+"And so I did," says he.  "But you must have seen for yourself,
+unless you're blind, that the asking got the other way.  I'll go as
+far as I dare for another white man; but when I find I'm in the
+scrape myself, I think first of my own bacon.  The loss of me is
+I'm too good-natured.  And I'll take the freedom of telling you you
+show a queer kind of gratitude to a man who's got into all this
+mess along of your affairs."
+
+"There's a thing I am thinking of," said I.  "You were a fool to be
+so much about with Vigours.  One comfort, you haven't been much
+about with me.  I notice you've never been inside my house.  Own up
+now; you had word of this before?"
+
+"It's a fact I haven't been," said he.  "It was an oversight, and I
+am sorry for it, Wiltshire.  But about coming now, I'll be quite
+plain."
+
+"You mean you won't?" I asked.
+
+"Awfully sorry, old man, but that's the size of it," says Case.
+
+"In short, you're afraid?" says I.
+
+"In short, I'm afraid," says he.
+
+"And I'm still to be tabooed for nothing?" I asked
+
+"I tell you you're not tabooed," said he.  "The Kanakas won't go
+near you, that's all.  And who's to make 'em?  We traders have a
+lot of gall, I must say; we make these poor Kanakas take back their
+laws, and take up their taboos, and that, whenever it happens to
+suit us.  But you don't mean to say you expect a law obliging
+people to deal in your store whether they want to or not?  You
+don't mean to tell me you've got the gall for that?  And if you
+had, it would be a queer thing to propose to me.  I would just like
+to point out to you, Wiltshire, that I'm a trader myself."
+
+"I don't think I would talk of gall if I was you," said I.  "Here's
+about what it comes to, as well as I can make out: None of the
+people are to trade with me, and they're all to trade with you.
+You're to have the copra, and I'm to go to the devil and shake
+myself.  And I don't know any native, and you're the only man here
+worth mention that speaks English, and you have the gall to up and
+hint to me my life's in danger, and all you've got to tell me is
+you don't know why!"
+
+"Well, it IS all I have to tell you," said he.  "I don't know - I
+wish I did."
+
+"And so you turn your back and leave me to myself!  Is that the
+position?" says I.
+
+"If you like to put it nasty," says he.  "I don't put it so.  I say
+merely, 'I'm going to keep clear of you; or, if I don't, I'll get
+in danger for myself.' "
+
+"Well," says I, "you're a nice kind of a white man!"
+
+"O, I understand; you're riled," said he.  "I would be myself.  I
+can make excuses."
+
+"All right," I said, "go and make excuses somewhere else.  Here's
+my way, there's yours!"
+
+With that we parted, and I went straight home, in a hot temper, and
+found Uma trying on a lot of trade goods like a baby.
+
+"Here," I said, "you quit that foolery!  Here's a pretty mess to
+have made, as if I wasn't bothered enough anyway!  And I thought I
+told you to get dinner!"
+
+And then I believe I gave her a bit of the rough side of my tongue,
+as she deserved.  She stood up at once, like a sentry to his
+officer; for I must say she was always well brought up, and had a
+great respect for whites.
+
+"And now," says I, "you belong round here, you're bound to
+understand this.  What am I tabooed for, anyway?  Or, if I ain't
+tabooed, what makes the folks afraid of me?"
+
+She stood and looked at me with eyes like saucers.
+
+"You no savvy?" she gasps at last.
+
+"No," said I.  "How would you expect me to?  We don't have any such
+craziness where I come from."
+
+"Ese no tell you?" she asked again.
+
+(ESE was the name the natives had for Case; it may mean foreign, or
+extraordinary; or it might mean a mummy apple; but most like it was
+only his own name misheard and put in a Kanaka spelling.)
+
+"Not much," said I.
+
+"D-n Ese!" she cried.
+
+You might think it funny to hear this Kanaka girl come out with a
+big swear.  No such thing.  There was no swearing in her - no, nor
+anger; she was beyond anger, and meant the word simple and serious.
+She stood there straight as she said it.  I cannot justly say that
+I ever saw a woman look like that before or after, and it struck me
+mum.  Then she made a kind of an obeisance, but it was the proudest
+kind, and threw her hands out open.
+
+"I 'shamed," she said.  "I think you savvy.  Ese he tell me you
+savvy, he tell me you no mind, tell me you love me too much.  Taboo
+belong me," she said, touching herself on the bosom, as she had
+done upon our wedding-night.  "Now I go 'way, taboo he go 'way too.
+Then you get too much copra.  You like more better, I think.  TOFA,
+ALII," says she in the native - "Farewell, chief!"
+
+"Hold on!" I cried.  "Don't be in such a hurry."
+
+She looked at me sidelong with a smile.  "You see, you get copra,"
+she said, the same as you might offer candies to a child.
+
+"Uma," said I, "hear reason.  I didn't know, and that's a fact; and
+Case seems to have played it pretty mean upon the pair of us.  But
+I do know now, and I don't mind; I love you too much.  You no go
+'way, you no leave me, I too much sorry."
+
+"You no love, me," she cried, "you talk me bad words!"  And she
+threw herself in a corner of the floor, and began to cry.
+
+Well, I'm no scholar, but I wasn't born yesterday, and I thought
+the worst of that trouble was over.  However, there she lay - her
+back turned, her face to the wall - and shook with sobbing like a
+little child, so that her feet jumped with it.  It's strange how it
+hits a man when he's in love; for there's no use mincing things -
+Kanaka and all, I was in love with her, or just as good.  I tried
+to take her hand, but she would none of that.  "Uma," I said,
+"there's no sense in carrying on like this.  I want you stop here,
+I want my little wifie, I tell you true."
+
+"No tell me true," she sobbed.
+
+"All right," says I, "I'll wait till you're through with this."
+And I sat right down beside her on the floor, and set to smooth her
+hair with my hand.  At first she wriggled away when I touched her;
+then she seemed to notice me no more; then her sobs grew gradually
+less, and presently stopped; and the next thing I knew, she raised
+her face to mime.
+
+"You tell me true?  You like me stop?" she asked.
+
+"Uma," I said, "I would rather have you than all the copra in the
+South Seas," which was a very big expression, and the strangest
+thing was that I meant it.
+
+She threw her arms about me, sprang close up, and pressed her face
+to mine in the island way of kissing, so that I was all wetted with
+her tears, and my heart went out to her wholly.  I never had
+anything so near me as this little brown bit of a girl.  Many
+things went together, and all helped to turn my head.  She was
+pretty enough to eat; it seemed she was my only friend in that
+queer place; I was ashamed that I had spoken rough to her: and she
+was a woman, and my wife, and a kind of a baby besides that I was
+sorry for; and the salt of her tears was in my mouth.  And I forgot
+Case and the natives; and I forgot that I knew nothing of the
+story, or only remembered it to banish the remembrance; and I
+forgot that I was to get no copra, and so could make no livelihood;
+and I forgot my employers, and the strange kind of service I was
+doing them, when I preferred my fancy to their business; and I
+forgot even that Uma was no true wife of mine, but just a maid
+beguiled, and that in a pretty shabby style.  But that is to look
+too far on.  I will come to that part of it next.
+
+It was late before we thought of getting dinner.  The stove was
+out, and gone stone-cold; but we fired up after a while, and cooked
+each a dish, helping and hindering each other, and making a play of
+it like children.  I was so greedy of her nearness that I sat down
+to dinner with my lass upon my knee, made sure of her with one
+hand, and ate with the other.  Ay, and more than that.  She was the
+worst cook I suppose God made; the things she set her hand to it
+would have sickened an honest horse to eat of; yet I made my meal
+that day on Uma's cookery, and can never call to mind to have been
+better pleased.
+
+I didn't pretend to myself, and I didn't pretend to her.  I saw I
+was clean gone; and if she was to make a fool of me, she must.  And
+I suppose it was this that set her talking, for now she made sure
+that we were friends.  A lot she told me, sitting in my lap and
+eating my dish, as I ate hers, from foolery - a lot about herself
+and her mother and Case, all which would be very tedious, and fill
+sheets if I set it down in Beach de Mar, but which I must give a
+hint of in plain English, and one thing about myself which had a
+very big effect on my concerns, as you are soon to hear.
+
+It seems she was born in one of the Line Islands; had been only two
+or three years in these parts, where she had come with a white man,
+who was married to her mother and then died; and only the one year
+in Falesa.  Before that they had been a good deal on the move,
+trekking about after the white man, who was one of those rolling
+stones that keep going round after a soft job.  They talk about
+looking for gold at the end of a rainbow; but if a man wants an
+employment that'll last him till he dies, let him start out on the
+soft-job hunt.  There's meat and drink in it too, and beer and
+skittles, for you never hear of them starving, and rarely see them
+sober; and as for steady sport, cock-fighting isn't in the same
+county with it.  Anyway, this beachcomber carried the woman and her
+daughter all over the shop, but mostly to out-of-the-way islands,
+where there were no police, and he thought, perhaps, the soft job
+hung out.  I've my own view of this old party; but I was just as
+glad he had kept Uma clear of Apia and Papeete and these flash
+towns.  At last he struck Fale-alii on this island, got some trade
+- the Lord knows how! - muddled it all away in the usual style, and
+died worth next to nothing, bar a bit of land at Falesa that he had
+got for a bad debt, which was what put it in the minds of the
+mother and daughter to come there and live.  It seems Case
+encouraged them all he could, and helped to get their house built.
+He was very kind those days, and gave Uma trade, and there is no
+doubt he had his eye on her from the beginning.  However, they had
+scarce settled, when up turned a young man, a native, and wanted to
+marry her.  He was a small chief, and had some fine mats and old
+songs in his family, and was "very pretty," Uma said; and,
+altogether, it was an extra-ordinary match for a penniless girl and
+an out-islander.
+
+At the first word of this I got downright sick with jealousy.
+
+"And you mean to say you would have married him?" I cried.
+
+"IOE, yes," said she.  "I like too much!"
+
+"Well!" I said.  "And suppose I had come round after?"
+
+"I like you more better now," said she.  "But, suppose I marry
+Ioane, I one good wife.  I no common Kanaka.  Good girl!" says she.
+
+Well, I had to be pleased with that; but I promise you I didn't
+care about the business one little bit.  And I liked the end of
+that yarn no better than the beginning.  For it seems this proposal
+of marriage was the start of all the trouble.  It seems, before
+that, Uma and her mother had been looked down upon, of course, for
+kinless folk and out-islanders, but nothing to hurt; and, even when
+Ioane came forward, there was less trouble at first than might have
+been looked for.  And then, all of a sudden, about six months
+before my coming, Ioane backed out and left that part of the
+island, and from that day to this Uma and her mother had found
+themselves alone.  None called at their house, none spoke to them
+on the roads.  If they went to church, the other women drew their
+mats away and left them in a clear place by themselves.  It was a
+regular excommunication, like what you read of in the Middle Ages;
+and the cause or sense of it beyond guessing.  It was some TALA
+PEPELO, Uma said, some lie, some calumny; and all she knew of it
+was that the girls who had been jealous of her luck with Ioane used
+to twit her with his desertion, and cry out, when they met her
+alone in the woods, that she would never be married.  "They tell me
+no man he marry me.  He too much 'fraid," she said.
+
+The only soul that came about them after this desertion was Master
+Case.  Even he was chary of showing himself, and turned up mostly
+by night; and pretty soon he began to table his cards and make up
+to Uma.  I was still sore about Ioane, and when Case turned up in
+the same line of business I cut up downright rough.
+
+"Well," I said, sneering, "and I suppose you thought Case 'very
+pretty' and 'liked too much'?"
+
+"Now you talk silly," said she.  "White man, he come here, I marry
+him all-e-same Kanaka; very well then, he marry me all-e-same white
+woman.  Suppose he no marry, he go 'way, woman he stop.  All-e-same
+thief, empty hand, Tonga-heart - no can love!  Now you come marry
+me.  You big heart - you no 'shamed island-girl.  That thing I love
+you for too much.  I proud."
+
+I don't know that ever I felt sicker all the days of my life.  I
+laid down my fork, and I put away "the island-girl"; I didn't seem
+somehow to have any use for either, and I went and walked up and
+down in the house, and Uma followed me with her eyes, for she was
+troubled, and small wonder!  But troubled was no word for it with
+me.  I so wanted, and so feared, to make a clean breast of the
+sweep that I had been.
+
+And just then there came a sound of singing out of the sea; it
+sprang up suddenly clear and near, as the boat turned the headland,
+and Uma, running to the window, cried out it was "Misi" come upon
+his rounds.
+
+I thought it was a strange thing I should be glad to have a
+missionary; but, if it was strange, it was still true.
+
+"Uma," said I, "you stop here in this room, and don't budge a foot
+out of it till I come back."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE MISSIONARY.
+
+
+AS I came out on the verandah, the mission-boat was shooting for
+the mouth of the river.  She was a long whale-boat painted white; a
+bit of an awning astern; a native pastor crouched on the wedge of
+the poop, steering; some four-and-twenty paddles flashing and
+dipping, true to the boat-song; and the missionary under the
+awning, in his white clothes, reading in a book, and set him up!
+It was pretty to see and hear; there's no smarter sight in the
+islands than a missionary boat with a good crew and a good pipe to
+them; and I considered it for half a minute, with a bit of envy
+perhaps, and then strolled down towards the river.
+
+From the opposite side there was another man aiming for the same
+place, but he ran and got there first.  It was Case; doubtless his
+idea was to keep me apart from the missionary, who might serve me
+as interpreter; but my mind was upon other things.  I was thinking
+how he had jockeyed us about the marriage, and tried his hand on
+Uma before; and at the sight of him rage flew into my nostrils.
+
+"Get out of that, you low, swindling thief!"  I cried.
+
+"What's that you say?" says he.
+
+I gave him the word again, and rammed it down with a good oath.
+"And if ever I catch you within six fathoms of my house," I cried,
+"I'll clap a bullet in your measly carcase."
+
+"You must do as you like about your house," said he, "where I told
+you I have no thought of going; but this is a public place."
+
+"It's a place where I have private business," said I.  "I have no
+idea of a hound like you eavesdropping, and I give you notice to
+clear out."
+
+"I don't take it, though," says Case.
+
+"I'll show you, then," said I.
+
+"We'll have to see about that," said he.
+
+He was quick with his hands, but he had neither the height nor the
+weight, being a flimsy creature alongside a man like me, and,
+besides, I was blazing to that height of wrath that I could have
+bit into a chisel.  I gave him first the one and then the other, so
+that I could hear his head rattle and crack, and he went down
+straight.
+
+"Have you had enough?" cried I.  But he only looked up white and
+blank, and the blood spread upon his face like wine upon a napkin.
+"Have you had enough?" I cried again.  "Speak up, and don't lie
+malingering there, or I'll take my feet to you."
+
+He sat up at that, and held his head - by the look of him you could
+see it was spinning - and the blood poured on his pyjamas.
+
+"I've had enough for this time," says he, and he got up staggering,
+and went off by the way that he had come.
+
+The boat was close in; I saw the missionary had laid his book to
+one side, and I smiled to myself.  "He'll know I'm a man, anyway,"
+thinks I.
+
+This was the first time, in all my years in the Pacific, I had ever
+exchanged two words with any missionary, let alone asked one for a
+favour.  I didn't like the lot, no trader does; they look down upon
+us, and make no concealment; and, besides, they're partly
+Kanakaised, and suck up with natives instead of with other white
+men like themselves.  I had on a rig of clean striped pyjamas -
+for, of course, I had dressed decent to go before the chiefs; but
+when I saw the missionary step out of this boat in the regular
+uniform, white duck clothes, pith helmet, white shirt and tie, and
+yellow boots to his feet, I could have bunged stones at him.  As he
+came nearer, queering me pretty curious (because of the fight, I
+suppose), I saw he looked mortal sick, for the truth was he had a
+fever on, and had just had a chill in the boat.
+
+"Mr. Tarleton, I believe?" says I, for I had got his name.
+
+"And you, I suppose, are the new trader?" says he.
+
+"I want to tell you first that I don't hold with missions," I went
+on, "and that I think you and the likes of you do a sight of harm,
+filling up the natives with old wives' tales and bumptiousness."
+
+"You are perfectly entitled to your opinions," says he, looking a
+bit ugly, "but I have no call to hear them."
+
+"It so happens that you've got to hear them," I said.  "I'm no
+missionary, nor missionary lover; I'm no Kanaka, nor favourer of
+Kanakas - I'm just a trader; I'm just a common, low-down, God-
+damned white man and British subject, the sort you would like to
+wipe your boots on.  I hope that's plain!"
+
+"Yes, my man," said he.  "It's more plain than creditable.  When
+you are sober, you'll be sorry for this."
+
+He tried to pass on, but I stopped him with my hand.  The Kanakas
+were beginning to growl.  Guess they didn't like my tone, for I
+spoke to that man as free as I would to you.
+
+"Now,  you can't say I've deceived you," said I, "and I can go on.
+I want a service - I want two services, in fact; and, if you care
+to give me them, I'll perhaps take more stock in what you call your
+Christianity."
+
+He was silent for a moment.  Then he smiled.  "You are rather a
+strange sort of man," says he.
+
+"I'm the sort of man God made me," says I.  "I don't set up to be a
+gentleman," I said.
+
+"I am not quite so sure," said he.  "And what can I do for you, Mr.
+- ?"
+
+"Wiltshire," I says, "though I'm mostly called Welsher; but
+Wiltshire is the way it's spelt, if the people on the beach could
+only get their tongues about it.  And what do I want?  Well, I'll
+tell you the first thing.  I'm what you call a sinner - what I call
+a sweep - and I want you to help me make it up to a person I've
+deceived."
+
+He turned and spoke to his crew in the native.  "And now I am at
+your service," said he, "but only for the time my crew are dining.
+I must be much farther down the coast before night.  I was delayed
+at Papa-Malulu till this morning, and I have an engagement in Fale-
+alii to-morrow night."
+
+I led the way to my house in silence, and rather pleased with
+myself for the way I had managed the talk, for I like a man to keep
+his self-respect.
+
+"I was sorry to see you fighting," says he.
+
+"O, that's part of the yarn I want to tell you," I said.  "That's
+service number two.  After you've heard it you'll let me know
+whether you're sorry or not."
+
+We walked right in through the store, and I was surprised to find
+Uma had cleared away the dinner things.  This was so unlike her
+ways that I saw she had done it out of gratitude, and liked her the
+better.  She and Mr. Tarleton called each other by name, and he was
+very civil to her seemingly.  But I thought little of that; they
+can always find civility for a Kanaka, it's us white men they lord
+it over.  Besides, I didn't want much Tarleton just them.  I was
+going to do my pitch.
+
+"Uma," said I, "give us your marriage certificate."  She looked put
+out.  "Come," said I, "you can trust me.  Hand it up."
+
+She had it about her person, as usual; I believe she thought it was
+a pass to heaven, and if she died without having it handy she would
+go to hell.  I couldn't see where she put it the first time, I
+couldn't see now where she took it from; it seemed to jump into her
+hand like that Blavatsky business in the papers.  But it's the same
+way with all island women, and I guess they're taught it when
+young.
+
+"Now," said I, with the certificate in my hand, "I was married to
+this girl by Black Jack the negro.  The certificate was wrote by
+Case, and it's a dandy piece of literature, I promise you.  Since
+then I've found that there's a kind of cry in the place against
+this wife of mine, and so long as I keep her I cannot trade.  Now,
+what would any man do in my place, if he was a man?" I said.  "The
+first thing he would do is this, I guess."  And I took and tore up
+the certificate and bunged the pieces on the floor.
+
+"AUE!" (2) cried Uma, and began to clap her hands; but I caught one
+of them in mine.
+
+"And the second thing that he would do," said I, "if he was what I
+would call a man and you would call a man, Mr. Tarleton, is to
+bring the girl right before you or any other missionary, and to up
+and say: 'I was wrong married to this wife of mine, but I think a
+heap of her, and now I want to be married to her right.'  Fire
+away, Mr. Tarleton.  And I guess you'd better do it in native;
+it'll please the old lady," I said, giving her the proper name of a
+man's wife upon the spot.
+
+So we had in two of the crew for to witness, and were spliced in
+our own house; and the parson prayed a good bit, I must say - but
+not so long as some - and shook hands with the pair of us.
+
+"Mr. Wiltshire," he says, when he had made out the lines and packed
+off the witnesses, "I have to thank you for a very lively pleasure.
+I have rarely performed the marriage ceremony with more grateful
+emotions."
+
+That was what you would call talking.  He was going on, besides,
+with more of it, and I was ready for as much taffy as he had in
+stock, for I felt good.  But Uma had been taken up with something
+half through the marriage, and cut straight in.
+
+"How your hand he get hurt?" she asked.
+
+"You ask Case's head, old lady," says I.
+
+She jumped with joy, and sang out.
+
+"You haven't made much of a Christian of this one," says I to Mr.
+Tarleton.
+
+"We didn't think her one of our worst," says he, "when she was at
+Fale-alii; and if Uma bears malice I shall be tempted to fancy she
+has good cause."
+
+"Well, there we are at service number two," said I.  "I want to
+tell you our yarn, and see if you can let a little daylight in."
+
+"Is it long?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I cried; "it's a goodish bit of a yarn!"
+
+"Well, I'll give you all the time I can spare," says he, looking at
+his watch.  "But I must tell you fairly, I haven't eaten since five
+this morning, and, unless you can let me have something I am not
+likely to eat again before seven or eight to-night."
+
+"By God, we'll give you dinner!" I cried.
+
+I was a little caught up at my swearing, just when all was going
+straight; and so was the missionary, I suppose, but he made believe
+to look out of the window, and thanked us.
+
+So we ran him up a bit of a meal.  I was bound to let the old lady
+have a hand in it, to show off, so I deputised her to brew the tea.
+I don't think I ever met such tea as she turned out.  But that was
+not the worst, for she got round with the salt-box, which she
+considered an extra European touch, and turned my stew into sea-
+water.  Altogether, Mr. Tarleton had a devil of a dinner of it; but
+he had plenty entertainment by the way, for all the while that we
+were cooking, and afterwards, when he was making believe to eat, I
+kept posting him up on Master Case and the beach of Falesa, and he
+putting questions that showed he was following close.
+
+"Well," said he at last, "I am afraid you have a dangerous enemy.
+This man Case is very clever and seems really wicked.  I must tell
+you I have had my eye on him for nearly a year, and have rather had
+the worst of our encounters.  About the time when the last
+representative of your firm ran so suddenly away, I had a letter
+from Namu, the native pastor, begging me to come to Falesa at my
+earliest convenience, as his flock were all 'adopting Catholic
+practices.'  I had great confidence in Namu; I fear it only shows
+how easily we are deceived.  No one could hear him preach and not
+be persuaded he was a man of extraordinary parts.  All our
+islanders easily acquire a kind of eloquence, and can roll out and
+illustrate, with a great deal of vigour and fancy, second-hand
+sermons; but Namu's sermons are his own, and I cannot deny that I
+have found them means of grace.  Moreover, he has a keen curiosity
+in secular things, does not fear work, is clever at carpentering,
+and has made himself so much respected among the neighbouring
+pastors that we call him, in a jest which is half serious, the
+Bishop of the East.  In short, I was proud of the man; all the more
+puzzled by his letter, and took an occasion to come this way.  The
+morning before my arrival, Vigours had been sent on board the LION,
+and Namu was perfectly at his ease, apparently ashamed of his
+letter, and quite unwilling to explain it.  This, of course, I
+could not allow, and he ended by confessing that he had been much
+concerned to find his people using the sign of the cross, but since
+he had learned the explanation his mind was satisfied.  For Vigours
+had the Evil Eye, a common thing in a country of Europe called
+Italy, where men were often struck dead by that kind of devil, and
+it appeared the sign of the cross was a charm against its power.
+
+"'And I explain it, Misi,' said Namu, 'in this way: The country in
+Europe is a Popey country, and the devil of the Evil Eye may be a
+Catholic devil, or, at least, used to Catholic ways.  So then I
+reasoned thus: if this sign of the cross were used in a Popey
+manner it would be sinful, but when it is used only to protect men
+from a devil, which is a thing harmless in itself, the sign too
+must be, as a bottle is neither good nor bad, harmless.  For the
+sign is neither good nor bad.  But if the bottle be full of gin,
+the gin is bad; and if the sign be made in idolatry bad, so is the
+idolatry.'  And, very like a native pastor, he had a text apposite
+about the casting out of devils.
+
+"'And who has been telling you about the Evil Eye?' I asked.
+
+"He admitted it was Case.  Now, I am afraid you will think me very
+narrow, Mr. Wiltshire, but I must tell you I was displeased, and
+cannot think a trader at all a good man to advise or have an
+influence upon my pastors.  And, besides, there had been some
+flying talk in the country of old Adams and his being poisoned, to
+which I had paid no great heed; but it came back to me at the
+moment.
+
+"'And is this Case a man of a sanctified life?' I asked.
+
+"He admitted he was not; for, though he did not drink, he was
+profligate with women, and had no religion.
+
+" 'Then,' said I, 'I think the less you have to do with him the
+better.'
+
+"But it is not easy to have the last word with a man like Namu.  He
+was ready in a moment with an illustration.  'Misi,' said he, 'you
+have told me there were wise men, not pastors, not even holy, who
+knew many things useful to be taught - about trees for instance,
+and beasts, and to print books, and about the stones that are
+burned to make knives of.  Such men teach you in your college, and
+you learn from them, but take care not to learn to be unholy.
+Misi, Case is my college.'
+
+"I knew not what to say.  Mr. Vigours had evidently been driven out
+of Falesa by the machinations of Case and with something not very
+unlike the collusion of my pastor.  I called to mind it was Namu
+who had reassured me about Adams and traced the rumour to the ill-
+will of the priest.  And I saw I must inform myself more thoroughly
+from an impartial source.  There is an old rascal of a chief here,
+Faiaso, whom I dare say you saw to-day at the council; he has been
+all his life turbulent and sly, a great fomenter of rebellions, and
+a thorn in the side of the mission and the island.  For all that he
+is very shrewd, and, except in politics or about his own
+misdemeanours, a teller of the truth.  I went to his house, told
+him what I had heard, and besought him to be frank.  I do not think
+I had ever a more painful interview.  Perhaps you will understand
+me, Mr. Wiltshire, if I tell you that I am perfectly serious in
+these old wives' tales with which you reproached me, and as anxious
+to do well for these islands as you can be to please and to protect
+your pretty wife.  And you are to remember that I thought Namu a
+paragon, and was proud of the man as one of the first ripe fruits
+of the mission.  And now I was informed that he had fallen in a
+sort of dependence upon Case.  The beginning of it was not corrupt;
+it began, doubtless, in fear and respect, produced by trickery and
+pretence; but I was shocked to find that another element had been
+lately added, that Namu helped himself in the store, and was
+believed to be deep in Case's debt.  Whatever the trader said, that
+Namu believed with trembling.  He was not alone in this; many in
+the village lived in a similar subjection; but Namu's case was the
+most influential, it was through Namu Case had wrought most evil;
+and with a certain following among the chiefs, and the pastor in
+his pocket, the man was as good as master of the village.  You know
+something of Vigours and Adams, but perhaps you have never heard of
+old Underhill, Adams' predecessor.  He was a quiet, mild old
+fellow, I remember, and we were told he had died suddenly: white
+men die very suddenly in Falesa.  The truth, as I now heard it,
+made my blood run cold.  It seems he was struck with a general
+palsy, all of him dead but one eye, which he continually winked.
+Word was started that the helpless old man was now a devil, and
+this vile fellow Case worked upon the natives' fears, which he
+professed to share, and pretended he durst not go into the house
+alone.  At last a grave was dug, and the living body buried at the
+far end of the village.  Namu, my pastor, whom I had helped to
+educate, offered up a prayer at the hateful scene.
+
+"I felt myself in a very difficult position.  Perhaps it was my
+duty to have denounced Namu and had him deposed.  Perhaps I think
+so now, but at the time it seemed less clear.  He had a great
+influence, it might prove greater than mine.  The natives are prone
+to superstition; perhaps by stirring them up I might but ingrain
+and spread these dangerous fancies.  And Namu besides, apart from
+this novel and accursed influence, was a good pastor, an able man,
+and spiritually minded.  Where should I look for a better?  How was
+I to find as good?  At that moment, with Namu's failure fresh in my
+view, the work of my life appeared a mockery; hope was dead in me.
+I would rather repair such tools as I had than go abroad in quest
+of others that must certainly prove worse; and a scandal is, at the
+best, a thing to be avoided when humanly possible.  Right or wrong,
+then, I determined on a quiet course.  All that night I denounced
+and reasoned with the erring pastor, twitted him with his ignorance
+and want of faith, twitted him with his wretched attitude, making
+clean the outside of the cup and platter, callously helping at a
+murder, childishly flying in excitement about a few childish,
+unnecessary, and inconvenient gestures; and long before day I had
+him on his knees and bathed in the tears of what seemed a genuine
+repentance.  On Sunday I took the pulpit in the morning, and
+preached from First Kings, nineteenth, on the fire, the earthquake,
+and the voice, distinguishing the true spiritual power, and
+referring with such plainness as I dared to recent events in
+Falesa.  The effect produced was great, and it was much increased
+when Namu rose in his turn and confessed that he had been wanting
+in faith and conduct, and was convinced of sin.  So far, then, all
+was well; but there was one unfortunate circumstance.  It was
+nearing the time of our 'May' in the island, when the native
+contributions to the missions are received; it fell in my duty to
+make a notification on the subject, and this gave my enemy his
+chance, by which he was not slow to profit.
+
+"News of the whole proceedings must have been carried to Case as
+soon as church was over, and the same afternoon he made an occasion
+to meet me in the midst of the village.  He came up with so much
+intentness and animosity that I felt it would be damaging to avoid
+him.
+
+"'So,' says he, in native, 'here is the holy man.  He has been
+preaching against me, but that was not in his heart.  He has been
+preaching upon the love of God; but that was not in his heart, it
+was between his teeth.  Will you know what was in his heart?' -
+cries he.  'I will show it you!'  And, making a snatch at my head,
+he made believe to pluck out a dollar, and held it in the air.
+
+"There went that rumour through the crowd with which Polynesians
+receive a prodigy.  As for myself, I stood amazed.  The thing was a
+common conjuring trick which I have seen performed at home a score
+of times; but how was I to convince the villagers of that?  I
+wished I had learned legerdemain instead of Hebrew, that I might
+have paid the fellow out with his own coin.  But there I was; I
+could not stand there silent, and the best I could find to say was
+weak.
+
+"'I will trouble you not to lay hands on me again,' said I.
+
+"'I have no such thought,' said he, 'nor will I deprive you of your
+dollar.  Here it is,' he said, and flung it at my feet.  I am told
+it lay where it fell three days."
+
+"I must say it was well played," said I.
+
+"O! he is clever," said Mr. Tarleton, "and you can now see for
+yourself how dangerous.  He was a party to the horrid death of the
+paralytic; he is accused of poisoning Adams; he drove Vigours out
+of the place by lies that might have led to murder; and there is no
+question but he has now made up his mind to rid himself of you.
+How he means to try we have no guess; only be sure, it's something
+new.  There is no end to his readiness and invention."
+
+"He gives himself a sight of trouble," says I.  "And after all,
+what for?"
+
+"Why, how many tons of copra may they make in this district?" asked
+the missionary.
+
+"I daresay as much as sixty tons," says I.
+
+"And what is the profit to the local trader?" he asked.
+
+"You may call it, three pounds," said I.
+
+"Then you can reckon for yourself how much he does it for," said
+Mr. Tarleton.  "But the more important thing is to defeat him.  It
+is clear he spread some report against Uma, in order to isolate and
+have his wicked will of her.  Failing of that, and seeing a new
+rival come upon the scene, he used her in a different way.  Now,
+the first point to find out is about Namu.  Uma, when people began
+to leave you and your mother alone, what did Namu do?"
+
+"Stop away all-e-same," says Uma.
+
+"I fear the dog has returned to his vomit," said Mr. Tarleton.
+"And now what am I to do for you?  I will speak to Namu, I will
+warn him he is observed; it will be strange if he allow anything to
+go on amiss when he is put upon his guard.  At the same time, this
+precaution may fail, and then you must turn elsewhere.  You have
+two people at hand to whom you might apply.  There is, first of
+all, the priest, who might protect you by the Catholic interest;
+they are a wretchedly small body, but they count two chiefs.  And
+then there is old Faiaso.  Ah! if it had been some years ago you
+would have needed no one else; but his influence is much reduced,
+it has gone into Maea's hands, and Maea, I fear, is one of Case's
+jackals.  In fine, if the worst comes to the worst, you must send
+up or come yourself to Fale-alii, and, though I am not due at this
+end of the island for a month, I will just see what can be done."
+
+So Mr. Tarleton said farewell; and half an hour later the crew were
+singing and the paddles flashing in the missionary-boat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. DEVIL-WORK.
+
+
+NEAR a month went by without much doing.  The same night of our
+marriage Galoshes called round, and made himself mighty civil, and
+got into a habit of dropping in about dark and smoking his pipe
+with the family.  He could talk to Uma, of course, and started to
+teach me native and French at the same time.  He was a kind old
+buffer, though the dirtiest you would wish to see, and he muddled
+me up with foreign languages worse than the tower of Babel.
+
+That was one employment we had, and it made me feel less lonesome;
+but there was no profit in the thing, for though the priest came
+and sat and yarned, none of his folks could be enticed into my
+store; and if it hadn't been for the other occupation I struck out,
+there wouldn't have been a pound of copra in the house.  This was
+the idea: Fa'avao (Uma's mother) had a score of bearing trees.  Of
+course we could get no labour, being all as good as tabooed, and
+the two women and I turned to and made copra with our own hands.
+It was copra to make your mouth water when it was done - I never
+understood how much the natives cheated me till I had made that
+four hundred pounds of my own hand - and it weighed so light I felt
+inclined to take and water it myself.
+
+When we were at the job a good many Kanakas used to put in the best
+of the day looking on, and once that nigger turned up.  He stood
+back with the natives and laughed and did the big don and the funny
+dog, till I began to get riled.
+
+"Here, you nigger!" says I.
+
+"I don't address myself to you, Sah," says the nigger.  "Only speak
+to gen'le'um."
+
+"I know," says I, "but it happens I was addressing myself to you,
+Mr. Black Jack.  And all I want to know is just this: did you see
+Case's figurehead about a week ago?"
+
+"No, Sah," says he.
+
+"That's all right, then," says I; "for I'll show you the own
+brother to it, only black, in the inside of about two minutes."
+
+And I began to walk towards him, quite slow, and my hands down;
+only there was trouble in my eye, if anybody took the pains to
+look.
+
+"You're a low, obstropulous fellow, Sah," says he.
+
+"You bet!" says I.
+
+By that time he thought I was about as near as convenient, and lit
+out so it would have done your heart good to see him travel.  And
+that was all I saw of that precious gang until what I am about to
+tell you.
+
+It was one of my chief employments these days to go pot-hunting in
+the woods, which I found (as Case had told me) very rich in game.
+I have spoken of the cape which shut up the village and my station
+from the east.  A path went about the end of it, and led into the
+next bay.  A strong wind blew here daily, and as the line of the
+barrier reef stopped at the end of the cape, a heavy surf ran on
+the shores of the bay.  A little cliffy hill cut the valley in two
+parts, and stood close on the beach; and at high water the sea
+broke right on the face of it, so that all passage was stopped.
+Woody mountains hemmed the place all round; the barrier to the east
+was particularly steep and leafy, the lower parts of it, along the
+sea, falling in sheer black cliffs streaked with cinnabar; the
+upper part lumpy with the tops of the great trees.  Some of the
+trees were bright green, and some red, and the sand of the beach as
+black as your shoes.  Many birds hovered round the bay, some of
+them snow-white; and the flying-fox (or vampire) flew there in
+broad daylight, gnashing its teeth.
+
+For a long while I came as far as this shooting, and went no
+farther.  There was no sign of any path beyond, and the cocoa-palms
+in the front of the foot of the valley were the last this way.  For
+the whole "eye" of the island, as natives call the windward end,
+lay desert.  From Falesa round about to Papa-malulu, there was
+neither house, nor man, nor planted fruit-tree; and the reef being
+mostly absent, and the shores bluff, the sea beat direct among
+crags, and there was scarce a landing-place.
+
+I should tell you that after I began to go in the woods, although
+no one offered to come near my store, I found people willing enough
+to pass the time of day with me where nobody could see them; and as
+I had begun to pick up native, and most of them had a word or two
+of English, I began to hold little odds and ends of conversation,
+not to much purpose to be sure, but they took off the worst of the
+feeling, for it's a miserable thing to be made a leper of.
+
+It chanced one day towards the end of the month, that I was sitting
+in this bay in the edge of the bush, looking east, with a Kanaka.
+I had given him a fill of tobacco, and we were making out to talk
+as best we could; indeed, he had more English than most.
+
+I asked him if there was no road going eastward.
+
+"One time one road," said he.  "Now he dead."
+
+"Nobody he go there?" I asked.
+
+"No good," said he.  "Too much devil he stop there."
+
+"Oho!" says I, "got-um plenty devil, that bush?"
+
+"Man devil, woman devil; too much devil," said my friend.  "Stop
+there all-e-time.  Man he go there, no come back."
+
+I thought if this fellow was so well posted on devils and spoke of
+them so free, which is not common, I had better fish for a little
+information about myself and Uma.
+
+"You think me one devil?" I asked.
+
+"No think devil," said he soothingly.  "Think all-e-same fool."
+
+"Uma, she devil?" I asked again.
+
+"No, no; no devil.  Devil stop bush," said the young man.
+
+I was looking in front of me across the bay, and I saw the hanging
+front of the woods pushed suddenly open, and Case, with a gun in
+his hand, step forth into the sunshine on the black beach.  He was
+got up in light pyjamas, near white, his gun sparkled, he looked
+mighty conspicuous; and the land-crabs scuttled from all round him
+to their holes.
+
+"Hullo, my friend!" says I, "you no talk all-e-same true.  Ese he
+go, he come back."
+
+"Ese no all-e-same; Ese TIAPOLO," says my friend; and, with a
+"Good-bye," slunk off among the trees.
+
+I watched Case all round the beach, where the tide was low; and let
+him pass me on the homeward way to Falesa.  He was in deep thought,
+and the birds seemed to know it, trotting quite near him on the
+sand, or wheeling and calling in his ears.  When he passed me I
+could see by the working of his lips that he was talking to
+himself, and what pleased me mightily, he had still my trade mark
+on his brow, I tell you the plain truth: I had a mind to give him a
+gunful in his ugly mug, but I thought better of it.
+
+All this time, and all the time I was following home, I kept
+repeating that native word, which I remembered by "Polly, put the
+kettle on and make us all some tea," tea-a-pollo.
+
+"Uma," says I, when I got back, "what does TIAPOLO mean?"
+
+"Devil," says she.
+
+"I thought AITU was the word for that," I said.
+
+"AITU 'nother kind of devil," said she; "stop bush, eat Kanaka.
+Tiapolo big chief devil, stop home; all-e-same Christian devil."
+
+"Well then," said I, "I'm no farther forward.  How can Case be
+Tiapolo?"
+
+"No all-e-same," said she.  "Ese belong Tiapolo; Tiapolo too much
+like; Ese all-e-same his son.  Suppose Ese he wish something,
+Tiapolo he make him."
+
+"That's mighty convenient for Ese," says I.  "And what kind of
+things does he make for him?"
+
+Well, out came a rigmarole of all sorts of stories, many of which
+(like the dollar he took from Mr. Tarleton's head) were plain
+enough to me, but others I could make nothing of; and the thing
+that most surprised the Kanakas was what surprised me least -
+namely, that he would go in the desert among all the AITUS.  Some
+of the boldest, however, had accompanied him, and had heard him
+speak with the dead and give them orders, and, safe in his
+protection, had returned unscathed.  Some said he had a church
+there, where he worshipped Tiapolo, and Tiapolo appeared to him;
+others swore that there was no sorcery at all, that he performed
+his miracles by the power of prayer, and the church was no church,
+but a prison, in which he had confined a dangerous AITU.  Namu had
+been in the bush with him once, and returned glorifying God for
+these wonders.  Altogether, I began to have a glimmer of the man's
+position, and the means by which he had acquired it, and, though I
+saw he was a tough nut to crack, I was noways cast down.
+
+"Very well," said I, "I'll have a look at Master Case's place of
+worship myself, and we'll see about the glorifying."
+
+At this Uma fell in a terrible taking; if I went in the high bush I
+should never return; none could go there but by the protection of
+Tiapolo.
+
+"I'll chance it on God's," said I.  "I'm a good sort of a fellow,
+Uma, as fellows go, and I guess God'll con me through."
+
+She was silent for a while.  "I think," said she, mighty solemn -
+and then, presently - "Victoreea, he big chief?"
+
+"You bet!" said I.
+
+"He like you too much?" she asked again.
+
+I told her, with a grin, I believed the old lady was rather partial
+to me.
+
+"All right," said she.  "Victoreea he big chief, like you too much.
+No can help you here in Falesa; no can do - too far off.  Maea he
+small chief - stop here.  Suppose he like you - make you all right.
+All-e-same God and Tiapolo.  God he big chief - got too much work.
+Tiapolo he small chief - he like too much make-see, work very
+hard."
+
+"I'll have to hand you over to Mr. Tarleton," said I.  "Your
+theology's out of its bearings, Uma."
+
+However, we stuck to this business all the evening, and, with the
+stories she told me of the desert and its dangers, she came near
+frightening herself into a fit.  I don't remember half a quarter of
+them, of course, for I paid little heed; but two come back to me
+kind of clear.
+
+About six miles up the coast there is a sheltered cove they call
+FANGA-ANAANA -  "the haven full of caves."  I've seen it from the
+sea myself, as near as I could get my boys to venture in; and it's
+a little strip of yellow sand.  Black cliffs overhang it, full of
+the black mouths of caves; great trees overhang the cliffs, and
+dangle-down lianas; and in one place, about the middle, a big brook
+pours over in a cascade.  Well, there was a boat going by here,
+with six young men of Falesa, "all very pretty," Uma said, which
+was the loss of them.  It blew strong, there was a heavy head sea,
+and by the time they opened Fanga-anaana, and saw the white cascade
+and the shady beach, they were all tired and thirsty, and their
+water had run out.  One proposed to land and get a drink, and,
+being reckless fellows, they were all of the same mind except the
+youngest.  Lotu was his name; he was a very good young gentleman,
+and very wise; and he held out that they were crazy, telling them
+the place was given over to spirits and devils and the dead, and
+there were no living folk nearer than six miles the one way, and
+maybe twelve the other.  But they laughed at his words, and, being
+five to one, pulled in, beached the boat, and landed.  It was a
+wonderful pleasant place, Lotu said, and the water excellent.  They
+walked round the beach, but could see nowhere any way to mount the
+cliffs, which made them easier in their mind; and at last they sat
+down to make a meal on the food they had brought with them.  They
+were scarce set, when there came out of the mouth of one of the
+black caves six of the most beautiful ladies ever seen: they had
+flowers in their hair, and the most beautiful breasts, and
+necklaces of scarlet seeds; and began to jest with these young
+gentlemen, and the young gentlemen to jest back with them, all but
+Lotu.  As for Lotu, he saw there could be no living woman in such a
+place, and ran, and flung himself in the bottom of the boat, and
+covered his face, and prayed.  All the time the business lasted
+Lotu made one clean break of prayer, and that was all he knew of
+it, until his friends came back, and made him sit up, and they put
+to sea again out of the bay, which was now quite desert, and no
+word of the six ladies.  But, what frightened Lotu most, not one of
+the five remembered anything of what had passed, but they were all
+like drunken men, and sang and laughed in the boat, and skylarked.
+The wind freshened and came squally, and the sea rose extraordinary
+high; it was such weather as any man in the islands would have
+turned his back to and fled home to Falesa; but these five were
+like crazy folk, and cracked on all sail and drove their boat into
+the seas.  Lotu went to the bailing; none of the others thought to
+help him, but sang and skylarked and carried on, and spoke singular
+things beyond a man's comprehension, and laughed out loud when they
+said them.  So the rest of the day Lotu bailed for his life in the
+bottom of the boat, and was all drenched with sweat and cold sea-
+water; and none heeded him.  Against all expectation, they came
+safe in a dreadful tempest to Papa-malulu, where the palms were
+singing out, and the cocoa-nuts flying like cannon-balls about the
+village green; and the same night the five young gentlemen
+sickened, and spoke never a reasonable word until they died.
+
+"And do you mean to tell me you can swallow a yarn like that?" I
+asked.
+
+She told me the thing was well known, and with handsome young men
+alone it was even common; but this was the only case where five had
+been slain the same day and in a company by the love of the women-
+devils; and it had made a great stir in the island, and she would
+be crazy if she doubted.
+
+"Well, anyway," says I, "you needn't be frightened about me.  I've
+no use for the women-devils.  You're all the women I want, and all
+the devil too, old lady."
+
+To this she answered there were other sorts, and she had seen one
+with her own eyes.  She had gone one day alone to the next bay,
+and, perhaps, got too near the margin of the bad place.  The boughs
+of the high bush overshadowed her from the cant of the hill, but
+she herself was outside on a flat place, very stony and growing
+full of young mummy-apples four and five feet high.  It was a dark
+day in the rainy season, and now there came squalls that tore off
+the leaves and sent them flying, and now it was all still as in a
+house.  It was in one of these still times that a whole gang of
+birds and flying foxes came pegging out of the bush like creatures
+frightened.  Presently after she heard a rustle nearer hand, and
+saw, coming out of the margin of the trees, among the mummy-apples,
+the appearance of a lean grey old boar.  It seemed to think as it
+came, like a person; and all of a sudden, as she looked at it
+coming, she was aware it was no boar but a thing that was a man
+with a man's thoughts.  At that she ran, and the pig after her, and
+as the pig ran it holla'd aloud, so that the place rang with it.
+
+"I wish I had been there with my gun," said I.  "I guess that pig
+would have holla'd so as to surprise himself."
+
+But she told me a gun was of no use with the like of these, which
+were the spirits of the dead.
+
+Well, this kind of talk put in the evening, which was the best of
+it; but of course it didn't change my notion, and the next day,
+with my gun and a good knife, I set off upon a voyage of discovery.
+I made, as near as I could, for the place where I had seen Case
+come out; for if it was true he had some kind of establishment in
+the bush I reckoned I should find a path.  The beginning of the
+desert was marked off by a wall, to call it so, for it was more of
+a long mound of stones.  They say it reaches right across the
+island, but how they know it is another question, for I doubt if
+anyone has made the journey in a hundred years, the natives
+sticking chiefly to the sea and their little colonies along the
+coast, and that part being mortal high and steep and full of
+cliffs.  Up to the west side of the wall, the ground has been
+cleared, and there are cocoa palms and mummy-apples and guavas, and
+lots of sensitive plants.  Just across, the bush begins outright;
+high bush at that, trees going up like the masts of ships, and
+ropes of liana hanging down like a ship's rigging, and nasty
+orchids growing in the forks like funguses.  The ground where there
+was no underwood looked to be a heap of boulders.  I saw many green
+pigeons which I might have shot, only I was there with a different
+idea.  A number of butterflies flopped up and down along the ground
+like dead leaves; sometimes I would hear a bird calling, sometimes
+the wind overhead, and always the sea along the coast.
+
+But the queerness of the place it's more difficult to tell of,
+unless to one who has been alone in the high bush himself.  The
+brightest kind of a day it is always dim down there.  A man can see
+to the end of nothing; whichever way he looks the wood shuts up,
+one bough folding with another like the fingers of your hand; and
+whenever he listens he hears always something new - men talking,
+children laughing, the strokes of an axe a far way ahead of him,
+and sometimes a sort of a quick, stealthy scurry near at hand that
+makes him jump and look to his weapons.  It's all very well for him
+to tell himself that he's alone, bar trees and birds; he can't make
+out to believe it; whichever way he turns the whole place seems to
+be alive and looking on.  Don't think it was Uma's yarns that put
+me out; I don't value native talk a fourpenny-piece; it's a thing
+that's natural in the bush, and that's the end of it.
+
+As I got near the top of the hill, for the ground of the wood goes
+up in this place steep as a ladder, the wind began to sound
+straight on, and the leaves to toss and switch open and let in the
+sun.  This suited me better; it was the same noise all the time,
+and nothing to startle.  Well, I had got to a place where there was
+an underwood of what they call wild cocoanut - mighty pretty with
+its scarlet fruit - when there came a sound of singing in the wind
+that I thought I had never heard the like of.  It was all very fine
+to tell myself it was the branches; I knew better.  It was all very
+fine to tell myself it was a bird; I knew never a bird that sang
+like that.  It rose and swelled, and died away and swelled again;
+and now I thought it was like someone weeping, only prettier; and
+now I thought it was like harps; and there was one thing I made sure
+of, it was a sight too sweet to be wholesome in a place like that.
+You may laugh if you like; but I declare I called to mind the six
+young ladies that came, with their scarlet necklaces, out of the cave
+at Fanga-anaana, and wondered if they sang like that.  We laugh at
+the natives and their superstitions; but see how many traders take
+them up, splendidly educated white men, that have been book-keepers
+(some of them) and clerks in the old country.  It's my belief a
+superstition grows up in a place like the different kind of weeds;
+and as I stood there and listened to that wailing I twittered in
+my shoes.
+
+You may call me a coward to be frightened; I thought myself brave
+enough to go on ahead.  But I went mighty carefully, with my gun
+cocked, spying all about me like a hunter, fully expecting to see a
+handsome young woman sitting somewhere in the bush, and fully
+determined (if I did) to try her with a charge of duck-shot.  And
+sure enough, I had not gone far when I met with a queer thing.  The
+wind came on the top of the wood in a strong puff, the leaves in
+front of me burst open, and I saw for a second something hanging in
+a tree.  It was gone in a wink, the puff blowing by and the leaves
+closing.  I tell you the truth: I had made up my mind to see an
+AITU; and if the thing had looked like a pig or a woman, it
+wouldn't have given me the same turn.  The trouble was that it
+seemed kind of square, and the idea of a square thing that was
+alive and sang knocked me sick and silly.  I must have stood quite
+a while; and I made pretty certain it was right out of the same
+tree that the singing came.  Then I began to come to myself a bit.
+
+"Well," says I, "if this is really so, if this is a place where
+there are square things that sing, I'm gone up anyway.  Let's have
+my fun for my money."
+
+But I thought I might as well take the off chance of a prayer being
+any good; so I plumped on my knees and prayed out loud; and all the
+time I was praying the strange sounds came out of the tree, and
+went up and down, and changed, for all the world like music, only
+you could see it wasn't human - there was nothing there that you
+could whistle.
+
+As soon as I had made an end in proper style, I laid down my gun,
+stuck my knife between my teeth, walked right up to that tree, and
+began to climb.  I tell you my heart was like ice.  But presently,
+as I went up, I caught another glimpse of the thing, and that
+relieved me, for I thought it seemed like a box; and when I had got
+right up to it I near fell out of the tree with laughing.
+
+A box it was, sure enough, and a candle-box at that, with the brand
+upon the side of it; and it had banjo strings stretched so as to
+sound when the wind blew.  I believe they call the thing a Tyrolean
+(3) harp, whatever that may mean.
+
+"Well, Mr. Case," said I, "you've frightened me once, but I defy
+you to frighten me again," I says, and slipped down the tree, and
+set out again to find my enemy's head office, which I guessed would
+not be far away.
+
+The undergrowth was thick in this part; I couldn't see before my
+nose, and must burst my way through by main force and ply the knife
+as I went, slicing the cords of the lianas and slashing down whole
+trees at a blow.  I call them trees for the bigness, but in truth
+they were just big weeds, and sappy to cut through like carrot.
+From all this crowd and kind of vegetation, I was just thinking to
+myself, the place might have once been cleared, when I came on my
+nose over a pile of stones, and saw in a moment it was some kind of
+a work of man.  The Lord knows when it was made or when deserted,
+for this part of the island has lain undisturbed since long before
+the whites came.  A few steps beyond I hit into the path I had been
+always looking for.  It was narrow, but well beaten, and I saw that
+Case had plenty of disciples.  It seems, indeed, it was a piece of
+fashionable boldness to venture up here with the trader, and a
+young man scarce reckoned himself grown till he had got his breech
+tattooed, for one thing, and seen Case's devils for another.  This
+is mighty like Kanakas; but, if you look at it another way, it's
+mighty like white folks too.
+
+A bit along the path I was brought to a clear stand, and had to rub
+my eyes.  There was a wall in front of me, the path passing it by a
+gap; it was tumbledown and plainly very old, but built of big
+stones very well laid; and there is no native alive to-day upon
+that island that could dream of such a piece of building.  Along
+all the top of it was a line of queer figures, idols or scarecrows,
+or what not.  They had carved and painted faces ugly to view, their
+eyes and teeth were of shell, their hair and their bright clothes
+blew in the wind, and some of them worked with the tugging.  There
+are islands up west where they make these kind of figures till to-
+day; but if ever they were made in this island, the practice and
+the very recollection of it are now long forgotten.  And the
+singular thing was that all these bogies were as fresh as toys out
+of a shop.
+
+Then it came in my mind that Case had let out to me the first day
+that he was a good forger of island curiosities, a thing by which
+so many traders turn an honest penny.  And with that I saw the
+whole business, and how this display served the man a double
+purpose: first of all, to season his curiosities, and then to
+frighten those that came to visit him.
+
+But I should tell you (what made the thing more curious) that all
+the time the Tyrolean harps were harping round me in the trees, and
+even while I looked, a green-and-yellow bird (that, I suppose, was
+building) began to tear the hair off the head of one of the
+figures.
+
+A little farther on I found the best curiosity of the museum.  The
+first I saw of it was a longish mound of earth with a twist to it.
+Digging off the earth with my hands, I found underneath tarpaulin
+stretched on boards, so that this was plainly the roof of a cellar.
+It stood right on the top of the hill, and the entrance was on the
+far side, between two rocks, like the entrance to a cave.  I went
+as far in as the bend, and, looking round the corner, saw a shining
+face.  It was big and ugly, like a pantomime mask, and the
+brightness of it waxed and dwindled, and at times it smoked.
+
+"Oho!" says I, "luminous paint!"
+
+And I must say I rather admired the man's ingenuity.  With a box of
+tools and a few mighty simple contrivances he had made out to have
+a devil of a temple.  Any poor Kanaka brought up here in the dark,
+with the harps whining all round him, and shown that smoking face
+in the bottom of a hole, would make no kind of doubt but he had
+seen and heard enough devils for a lifetime.  It's easy to find out
+what Kanakas think.  Just go back to yourself any way round from
+ten to fifteen years old, and there's an average Kanaka.  There are
+some pious, just as there are pious boys; and the most of them,
+like the boys again, are middling honest and yet think it rather
+larks to steal, and are easy scared and rather like to be so.  I
+remember a boy I was at school with at home who played the Case
+business.  He didn't know anything, that boy; he couldn't do
+anything; he had no luminous paint and no Tyrolean harps; he just
+boldly said he was a sorcerer, and frightened us out of our boots,
+and we loved it.  And then it came in my mind how the master had
+once flogged that boy, and the surprise we were all in to see the
+sorcerer catch it and burn like anybody else.  Thinks I to myself,
+"I must find some way of fixing it so for Master Case."  And the
+next moment I had my idea.
+
+I went back by the path, which, when once you had found it, was
+quite plain and easy walking; and when I stepped out on the black
+sands, who should I see but Master Case himself.  I cocked my gun
+and held it handy, and we marched up and passed without a word,
+each keeping the tail of his eye on the other; and no sooner had we
+passed than we each wheeled round like fellows drilling, and stood
+face to face.  We had each taken the same notion in his head, you
+see, that the other fellow might give him the load of his gun in
+the stern.
+
+"You've shot nothing," says Case.
+
+"I'm not on the shoot to-day," said I.
+
+"Well, the devil go with you for me," says he.
+
+"The same to you," says I.
+
+But we stuck just the way we were; no fear of either of us moving.
+
+Case laughed.  "We can't stop here all day, though," said he.
+
+"Don't let me detain you," says I.
+
+He laughed again.  "Look here, Wiltshire, do you think me a fool?"
+he asked.
+
+"More of a knave, if you want to know," says I.
+
+"Well, do you think it would better me to shoot you here, on this
+open beach?" said he.  "Because I don't.  Folks come fishing every
+day.  There may be a score of them up the valley now, making copra;
+there might be half a dozen on the hill behind you, after pigeons;
+they might be watching us this minute, and I shouldn't wonder.  I
+give you my word I don't want to shoot you.  Why should I?  You
+don't hinder me any.  You haven't got one pound of copra but what
+you made with your own hands, like a negro slave.  You're
+vegetating - that's what I call it - and I don't care where you
+vegetate, nor yet how long.  Give me your word you don't mean to
+shoot me, and I'll give you a lead and walk away."
+
+"Well," said I, "You're frank and pleasant, ain't you?  And I'll be
+the same.  I don't mean to shoot you to-day.  Why should I?  This
+business is beginning; it ain't done yet, Mr. Case.  I've given you
+one turn already; I can see the marks of my knuckles on your head
+to this blooming hour, and I've more cooking for you.  I'm not a
+paralee, like Underhill.  My name ain't Adams, and it ain't
+Vigours; and I mean to show you that you've met your match."
+
+"This is a silly way to talk," said he.  "This is not the talk to
+make me move on with."
+
+"All right," said I, "stay where you are.  I ain't in any hurry,
+and you know it.  I can put in a day on this beach and never mind.
+I ain't got any copra to bother with.  I ain't got any luminous
+paint to see to."
+
+I was sorry I said that last, but it whipped out before I knew.  I
+could see it took the wind out of his sails, and he stood and
+stared at me with his brow drawn up.  Then I suppose he made up his
+mind he must get to the bottom of this.
+
+"I take you at your word," says he, and turned his back, and walked
+right into the devil's bush.
+
+I let him go, of course, for I had passed my word.  But I watched
+him as long as he was in sight, and after he was gone lit out for
+cover as lively as you would want to see, and went the rest of the
+way home under the bush, for I didn't trust him sixpence-worth.
+One thing I saw, I had been ass enough to give him warning, and
+that which I meant to do I must do at once.
+
+You would think I had had about enough excitement for one morning,
+but there was another turn waiting me.  As soon as I got far enough
+round the cape to see my house I made out there were strangers
+there; a little farther, and no doubt about it.  There was a couple
+of armed sentinels squatting at my door.  I could only suppose the
+trouble about Uma must have come to a head, and the station been
+seized.  For aught I could think, Uma was taken up already, and
+these armed men were waiting to do the like with me.
+
+However, as I came nearer, which I did at top speed, I saw there
+was a third native sitting on the verandah like a guest, and Uma
+was talking with him like a hostess.  Nearer still I made out it
+was the big young chief, Maea, and that he was smiling away and
+smoking.  And what was he smoking?  None of your European
+cigarettes fit for a cat, not even the genuine big, knock-me-down
+native article that a fellow can really put in the time with if his
+pipe is broke - but a cigar, and one of my Mexicans at that, that I
+could swear to.  At sight of this my heart started beating, and I
+took a wild hope in my head that the trouble was over, and Maea had
+come round.
+
+Uma pointed me out to him as I came up, and he met me at the head
+of my own stairs like a thorough gentleman.
+
+"Vilivili," said he, which was the best they could make of my name,
+"I pleased."
+
+There is no doubt when an island chief wants to be civil he can do
+it.  I saw the way things were from the word go.  There was no call
+for Uma to say to me: "He no 'fraid Ese now, come bring copra."  I
+tell you I shook hands with that Kanaka like as if he was the best
+white man in Europe.
+
+The fact was, Case and he had got after the same girl; or Maea
+suspected it, and concluded to make hay of the trader on the
+chance.  He had dressed himself up, got a couple of his retainers
+cleaned and armed to kind of make the thing more public, and, just
+waiting till Case was clear of the village, came round to put the
+whole of his business my way.  He was rich as well as powerful.  I
+suppose that man was worth fifty thousand nuts per annum.  I gave
+him the price of the beach and a quarter cent better, and as for
+credit, I would have advanced him the inside of the store and the
+fittings besides, I was so pleased to see him.  I must say he
+bought like a gentleman: rice and tins and biscuits enough for a
+week's feast, and stuffs by the bolt.  He was agreeable besides; he
+had plenty fun to him; and we cracked jests together, mostly
+through the interpreter, because he had mighty little English, and
+my native was still off colour.  One thing I made out: he could
+never really have thought much harm of Uma; he could never have
+been really frightened, and must just have made believe from
+dodginess, and because he thought Case had a strong pull in the
+village and could help him on.
+
+This set me thinking that both he and I were in a tightish place.
+What he had done was to fly in the face of the whole village, and
+the thing might cost him his authority.  More than that, after my
+talk with Case on the beach, I thought it might very well cost me
+my life.  Case had as good as said he would pot me if ever I got
+any copra; he would come home to find the best business in the
+village had changed hands; and the best thing I thought I could do
+was to get in first with the potting.
+
+"See here, Uma," says I, "tell him I'm sorry I made him wait, but I
+was up looking at Case's Tiapolo store in the bush."
+
+"He want savvy if you no 'fraid?" translated Uma.
+
+I laughed out.  "Not much!" says I.  "Tell him the place is a
+blooming toy-shop!  Tell him in England we give these things to the
+kids to play with."
+
+"He want savvy if you hear devil sing?" she asked next.
+
+"Look here," I said, "I can't do it now because I've got no banjo-
+strings in stock; but the next time the ship comes round I'll have
+one of these same contraptions right here in my verandah, and he
+can see for himself how much devil there is to it.  Tell him, as
+soon as I can get the strings I'll make one for his picaninnies.
+The name of the concern is a Tyrolean harp; and you can tell him
+the name means in English that nobody but dam-fools give a cent for
+it."
+
+This time he was so pleased he had to try his English again.  "You
+talk true?" says he.
+
+"Rather!" said I.  "Talk all-e-same Bible.  Bring out a Bible here,
+Uma, if you've got such a thing, and I'll kiss it.  Or, I'll tell
+you what's better still," says I, taking a header, "ask him if he's
+afraid to go up there himself by day."
+
+It appeared he wasn't; he could venture as far as that by day and
+in company.
+
+"That's the ticket, then!" said I.  "Tell him the man's a fraud and
+the place foolishness, and if he'll go up there to-morrow he'll see
+all that's left of it.  But tell him this, Uma, and mind he
+understands it: If he gets talking, it's bound to come to Case, and
+I'm a dead man!  I'm playing his game, tell him, and if he says one
+word my blood will be at his door and be the damnation of him here
+and after."
+
+She told him, and he shook hands with me up to the hilt, and, says
+he: "No talk.  Go up to-morrow.  You my friend?"
+
+"No sir," says I, "no such foolishness.  I've come here to trade,
+tell him, and not to make friends.  But, as to Case, I'll send that
+man to glory!"
+
+So off Maea went, pretty well pleased, as I could see.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. NIGHT IN THE BUSH.
+
+
+WELL, I was committed now; Tiapolo had to be smashed up before next
+day, and my hands were pretty full, not only with preparations, but
+with argument.  My  house was like a mechanics' debating society:
+Uma was so made up that I shouldn't go into the bush by night, or
+that, if I did, I was never to come back again.  You know her style
+of arguing: you've had a specimen about Queen Victoria and the
+devil; and I leave you to fancy if I was tired of it before dark.
+
+At last I had a good idea.  What was the use of casting my pearls
+before her?  I thought; some of her own chopped hay would be
+likelier to do the business.
+
+"I'll tell you what, then," said I.  "You fish out your Bible, and
+I'll take that up along with me.  That'll make me right."
+
+She swore a Bible was no use.
+
+"That's just your Kanaka ignorance," said I.  "Bring the Bible
+out."
+
+She brought it, and I turned to the title-page, where I thought
+there would likely be some English, and so there was.  "There!"
+said I.  "Look at that!  'LONDON: PRINTED FOR THE BRITISH AND
+FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY, BLACKFRIARS,' and the date, which I can't
+read, owing to its being in these X's.  There's no devil in hell
+can look near the Bible Society, Blackfriars.  Why, you silly!"  I
+said, "how do you suppose we get along with our own AITUS at home?
+All Bible Society!"
+
+"I think you no got any," said she.  "White man, he tell me you no
+got."
+
+"Sounds likely, don't it?" I asked.  "Why would these islands all
+be chock full of them and none in Europe?"
+
+"Well, you no got breadfruit," said she.
+
+I could have torn my hair.  "Now look here, old lady," said I, "you
+dry up, for I'm tired of you.  I'll take the Bible, which'll put me
+as straight as the mail, and that's the last word I've got to say."
+
+The night fell extraordinary dark, clouds coming up with sundown
+and overspreading all; not a star showed; there was only an end of
+a moon, and that not due before the small hours.  Round the
+village, what with the lights and the fires in the open houses, and
+the torches of many fishers moving on the reef, it kept as gay as
+an illumination; but the sea and the mountains and woods were all
+clean gone.  I suppose it might be eight o'clock when I took the
+road, laden like a donkey.  First there was that Bible, a book as
+big as your head, which I had let myself in for by my own
+tomfoolery.  Then there was my gun, and knife, and lantern, and
+patent matches, all necessary.  And then there was the real plant
+of the affair in hand, a mortal weight of gunpowder, a pair of
+dynamite fishing-bombs, and two or three pieces of slow match that
+I had hauled out of the tin cases and spliced together the best way
+I could; for the match was only trade stuff, and a man would be
+crazy that trusted it.  Altogether, you see, I had the materials of
+a pretty good blow-up!  Expense was nothing to me; I wanted that
+thing done right.
+
+As long as I was in the open, and had the lamp in my house to steer
+by, I did well.  But when I got to the path, it fell so dark I
+could make no headway, walking into trees and swearing there, like
+a man looking for the matches in his bed-room.  I knew it was risky
+to light up, for my lantern would be visible all the way to the
+point of the cape, and as no one went there after dark, it would be
+talked about, and come to Case's ears.  But what was I to do?  I
+had either to give the business over and lose caste with Maea, or
+light up, take my chance, and get through the thing the smartest I
+was able.
+
+As long as I was on the path I walked hard, but when I came to the
+black beach I had to run.  For the tide was now nearly flowed; and
+to get through with my powder dry between the surf and the steep
+hill, took all the quickness I possessed.  As it was, even, the
+wash caught me to the knees, and I came near falling on a stone.
+All this time the hurry I was in, and the free air and smell of the
+sea, kept my spirits lively; but when I was once in the bush and
+began to climb the path I took it easier.  The fearsomeness of the
+wood had been a good bit rubbed off for me by Master Case's banjo-
+strings and graven images, yet I thought it was a dreary walk, and
+guessed, when the disciples went up there, they must be badly
+scared.  The light of the lantern, striking among all these trunks
+and forked branches and twisted rope-ends of lianas, made the whole
+place, or all that you could see of it, a kind of a puzzle of
+turning shadows.  They came to meet you, solid and quick like
+giants, and then span off and vanished; they hove up over your head
+like clubs, and flew away into the night like birds.  The floor of
+the bush glimmered with dead wood, the way the match-box used to
+shine after you had struck a lucifer.  Big, cold drops fell on me
+from the branches overhead like sweat.  There was no wind to
+mention; only a little icy breath of a land-breeze that stirred
+nothing; and the harps were silent.
+
+The first landfall I made was when I got through the bush of wild
+cocoanuts, and came in view of the bogies on the wall.  Mighty
+queer they looked by the shining of the lantern, with their painted
+faces and shell eyes, and their clothes and their hair hanging.
+One after another I pulled them all up and piled them in a bundle
+on the cellar roof, so as they might go to glory with the rest.
+Then I chose a place behind one of the big stones at the entrance,
+buried my powder and the two shells, and arranged my match along
+the passage.  And then I had a look at the smoking head, just for
+good-bye.  It was doing fine.
+
+"Cheer up," says I. "You're booked."
+
+It was my first idea to light up and be getting homeward; for the
+darkness and the glimmer of the dead wood and the shadows of the
+lantern made me lonely.  But I knew where one of the harps hung; it
+seemed a pity it shouldn't go with the rest; and at the same time I
+couldn't help letting on to myself that I was mortal tired of my
+employment, and would like best to be at home and have the door
+shut.  I stepped out of the cellar and argued it fore and back.
+There was a sound of the sea far down below me on the coast; nearer
+hand not a leaf stirred; I might have been the only living creature
+this side of Cape Horn.  Well, as I stood there thinking, it seemed
+the bush woke and became full of little noises.  Little noises they
+were, and nothing to hurt - a bit of a crackle, a bit of a rush -
+but the breath jumped right out of me and my throat went as dry as
+a biscuit.  It wasn't Case I was afraid of, which would have been
+common-sense; I never thought of Case; what took me, as sharp as
+the colic, was the old wives' tales, the devil-women and the man-
+pigs.  It was the toss of a penny whether I should run: but I got a
+purchase on myself, and stepped out, and held up the lantern (like
+a fool) and looked all round.
+
+In the direction of the village and the path there was nothing to
+be seen; but when I turned inland it's a wonder to me I didn't
+drop.  There, coming right up out of the desert and the bad bush -
+there, sure enough, was a devil-woman, just as the way I had
+figured she would look.  I saw the light shine on her bare arms and
+her bright eyes, and there went out of me a yell so big that I
+thought it was my death.
+
+"Ah!  No sing out!" says the devil-woman, in a kind of a high
+whisper.  "Why you talk big voice?  Put out light!  Ese he come."
+
+"My God Almighty, Uma, is that you?" says I.
+
+"IOE," (4) says she.  I come quick.  Ese here soon."
+
+"You come alone?" I asked.  "You no 'fraid?"
+
+"Ah, too much 'fraid!" she whispered, clutching me.  "I think die."
+
+"Well," says I, with a kind of a weak grin, "I'm not the one to
+laugh at you, Mrs. Wiltshire, for I'm about the worst scared man in
+the South Pacific myself."
+
+She told me in two words what brought her.  I was scarce gone, it
+seems, when Fa'avao came in, and the old woman had met Black Jack
+running as hard as he was fit from our house to Case's.  Uma
+neither spoke nor stopped, but lit right out to come and warn me.
+She was so close at my heels that the lantern was her guide across
+the beach, and afterwards, by the glimmer of it in the trees, she
+got her line up hill.  It was only when I had got to the top or was
+in the cellar that she wandered Lord knows where! and lost a sight
+of precious time, afraid to call out lest Case was at the heels of
+her, and falling in the bush, so that she was all knocked and
+bruised.  That must have been when she got too far to the
+southward, and how she came to take me in the flank at last and
+frighten me beyond what I've got the words to tell of.
+
+Well, anything was better than a devil-woman, but I thought her
+yarn serious enough.  Black Jack had no call to be about my house,
+unless he was set there to watch; and it looked to me as if my
+tomfool word about the paint, and perhaps some chatter of Maea's,
+had got us all in a clove hitch.  One thing was clear: Uma and I
+were here for the night; we daren't try to go home before day, and
+even then it would be safer to strike round up the mountain and
+come in by the back of the village, or we might walk into an
+ambuscade.  It was plain, too, that the mine should be sprung
+immediately, or Case might be in time to stop it.
+
+I marched into the tunnel, Uma keeping tight hold of me, opened my
+lantern and lit the match.  The first length of it burned like a
+spill of paper, and I stood stupid, watching it burn, and thinking
+we were going aloft with Tiapolo, which was none of my views.  The
+second took to a better rate, though faster than I cared about; and
+at that I got my wits again, hauled Uma clear of the passage, blew
+out and dropped the lantern, and the pair of us groped our way into
+the bush until I thought it might be safe, and lay down together by
+a tree.
+
+"Old lady," I said, "I won't forget this night.  You're a trump,
+and that's what's wrong with you."
+
+She humped herself close up to me.  She had run out the way she
+was, with nothing on her but her kilt; and she was all wet with the
+dews and the sea on the black beach, and shook straight on with
+cold and the terror of the dark and the devils.
+
+"Too much 'fraid," was all she said.
+
+The far side of Case's hill goes down near as steep as a precipice
+into the next valley.  We were on the very edge of it, and I could
+see the dead wood shine and hear the sea sound far below.  I didn't
+care about the position, which left me no retreat, but I was afraid
+to change.  Then I saw I had made a worse mistake about the
+lantern, which I should have left lighted, so that I could have had
+a crack at Case when he stepped into the shine of it.  And even if
+I hadn't had the wit to do that, it seemed a senseless thing to
+leave the good lantern to blow up with the graven images.  The
+thing belonged to me, after all, and was worth money, and might
+come in handy.  If I could have trusted the match, I might have run
+in still and rescued it.  But who was going to trust the match?
+You know what trade is.  The stuff was good enough for Kanakas to
+go fishing with, where they've got to look lively anyway, and the
+most they risk is only to have their hand blown off.  But for
+anyone that wanted to fool around a blow-up like mine that match
+was rubbish.
+
+Altogether the best I could do was to lie still, see my shot-gun
+handy, and wait for the explosion.  But it was a solemn kind of a
+business.  The blackness of the night was like solid; the only
+thing you could see was the nasty bogy glimmer of the dead wood,
+and that showed you nothing but itself; and as for sounds, I
+stretched my ears till I thought I could have heard the match burn
+in the tunnel, and that bush was as silent as a coffin.  Now and
+then there was a bit of a crack; but whether it was near or far,
+whether it was Case stubbing his toes within a few yards of me, or
+a tree breaking miles away, I knew no more than the babe unborn.
+
+And then, all of a sudden, Vesuvius went off.  It was a long time
+coming; but when it came (though I say it that shouldn't) no man
+could ask to see a better.  At first it was just a son of a gun of
+a row, and a spout of fire, and the wood lighted up so that you
+could see to read.  And then the trouble began.  Uma and I were
+half buried under a wagonful of earth, and glad it was no worse,
+for one of the rocks at the entrance of the tunnel was fired clean
+into the air, fell within a couple of fathoms of where we lay, and
+bounded over the edge of the hill, and went pounding down into the
+next valley.  I saw I had rather undercalculated our distance, or
+over-done the dynamite and powder, which you please.
+
+And presently I saw I had made another slip.  The noise of the
+thing began to die off, shaking the island; the dazzle was over;
+and yet the night didn't come back the way I expected.  For the
+whole wood was scattered with red coals and brands from the
+explosion; they were all round me on the flat; some had fallen
+below in the valley, and some stuck and flared in the tree-tops.  I
+had no fear of fire, for these forests are too wet to kindle.  But
+the trouble was that the place was all lit up-not very bright, but
+good enough to get a shot by; and the way the coals were scattered,
+it was just as likely Case might have the advantage as myself.  I
+looked all round for his white face, you may be sure; but there was
+not a sign of him.  As for Uma, the life seemed to have been
+knocked right out of her by the bang and blaze of it.
+
+There was one bad point in my game.  One of the blessed graven
+images had come down all afire, hair and clothes and body, not four
+yards away from me.  I cast a mighty noticing glance all round;
+there was still no Case, and I made up my mind I must get rid of
+that burning stick before he came, or I should be shot there like a
+dog.
+
+It was my first idea to have crawled, and then I thought speed was
+the main thing, and stood half up to make a rush.  The same moment
+from somewhere between me and the sea there came a flash and a
+report, and a rifle bullet screeched in my ear.  I swung straight
+round and up with my gun, but the brute had a Winchester, and
+before I could as much as see him his second shot knocked me over
+like a nine-pin.  I seemed to fly in the air, then came down by the
+run and lay half a minute, silly; and then I found my hands empty,
+and my gun had flown over my head as I fell.  It makes a man mighty
+wide awake to be in the kind of box that I was in.  I scarcely knew
+where I was hurt, or whether I was hurt or not, but turned right
+over on my face to crawl after my weapon.  Unless you have tried to
+get about with a smashed leg you don't know what pain is, and I let
+out a howl like a bullock's.
+
+This was the unluckiest noise that ever I made in my life.  Up to
+then Uma had stuck to her tree like a sensible woman, knowing she
+would be only in the way; but as soon as she heard me sing out, she
+ran forward.  The Winchester cracked again, and down she went.
+
+I had sat up, leg and all, to stop her; but when I saw her tumble I
+clapped down again where I was, lay still, and felt the handle of
+my knife.  I had been scurried and put out before.  No more of that
+for me.  He had knocked over my girl, I had got to fix him for it;
+and I lay there and gritted my teeth, and footed up the chances.
+My leg was broke, my gun was gone.  Case had still ten shots in his
+Winchester.  It looked a kind of hopeless business.  But I never
+despaired nor thought upon despairing: that man had got to go.
+
+For a goodish bit not one of us let on.  Then I heard Case begin to
+move nearer in the bush, but mighty careful.  The image had burned
+out; there were only a few coals left here and there, and the wood
+was main dark, but had a kind of a low glow in it like a fire on
+its last legs.  It was by this that I made out Case's head looking
+at me over a big tuft of ferns, and at the same time the brute saw
+me and shouldered his Winchester.  I lay quite still, and as good
+as looked into the barrel: it was my last chance, but I thought my
+heart would have come right out of its bearings.  Then he fired.
+Lucky for me it was no shot-gun, for the bullet struck within an
+inch of me and knocked the dirt in my eyes.
+
+Just you try and see if you can lie quiet, and let a man take a
+sitting shot at you and miss you by a hair.  But I did, and lucky
+too.  A while Case stood with the Winchester at the port-arms; then
+he gave a little laugh to himself, and stepped round the ferns.
+
+"Laugh!" thought I.  "If you had the wit of a louse you would be
+praying!"
+
+I was all as taut as a ship's hawser or the spring of a watch, and
+as soon as he came within reach of me I had him by the ankle,
+plucked the feet right out from under him, laid him out, and was
+upon the top of him, broken leg and all, before he breathed.  His
+Winchester had gone the same road as my shot-gun; it was nothing to
+me - I defied him now.  I'm a pretty strong man anyway, but I never
+knew what strength was till I got hold of Case.  He was knocked out
+of time by the rattle he came down with, and threw up his hands
+together, more like a frightened woman, so that I caught both of
+them with my left.  This wakened him up, and he fastened his teeth
+in my forearm like a weasel.  Much I cared.  My leg gave me all the
+pain I had any use for, and I drew my knife and got it in the
+place.
+
+"Now," said I, "I've got you; and you're gone up, and a good job
+too!  Do you feel the point of that?  That's for Underhill!  And
+there's for Adams!  And now here's for Uma, and that's going to
+knock your blooming soul right out of you!"
+
+With that I gave him the cold steel for all I was worth.  His body
+kicked under me like a spring sofa; he gave a dreadful kind of a
+long moan, and lay still.
+
+"I wonder if you're dead?  I hope so!" I thought, for my head was
+swimming.  But I wasn't going to take chances; I had his own
+example too close before me for that; and I tried to draw the knife
+out to give it him again.  The blood came over my hands, I
+remember, hot as tea; and with that I fainted clean away, and fell
+with my head on the man's mouth.
+
+When I came to myself it was pitch dark; the cinders had burned
+out; there was nothing to be seen but the shine of the dead wood,
+and I couldn't remember where I was nor why I was in such pain nor
+what I was all wetted with.  Then it came back, and the first thing
+I attended to was to give him the knife again a half-a-dozen times
+up to the handle.  I believe he was dead already, but it did him no
+harm and did me good.
+
+"I bet you're dead now," I said, and then I called to Uma.
+
+Nothing answered, and I made a move to go and grope for her, fouled
+my broken leg, and fainted again.
+
+When I came to myself the second time the clouds had all cleared
+away, except a few that sailed there, white as cotton.  The moon
+was up - a tropic moon.  The moon at home turns a wood black, but
+even this old butt-end of a one showed up that forest, as green as
+by day.  The night birds - or, rather, they're a kind of early
+morning bird - sang out with their long, falling notes like
+nightingales.  And I could see the dead man, that I was still half
+resting on, looking right up into the sky with his open eyes, no
+paler than when he was alive; and a little way off Uma tumbled on
+her side.  I got over to her the best way I was able, and when I
+got there she was broad awake, and crying and sobbing to herself
+with no more noise than an insect.  It appears she was afraid to
+cry out loud, because of the AITUS.  Altogether she was not much
+hurt, but scared beyond belief; she had come to her senses a long
+while ago, cried out to me, heard nothing in reply, made out we
+were both dead, and had lain there ever since, afraid to budge a
+finger.  The ball had ploughed up her shoulder, and she had lost a
+main quantity of blood; but I soon had that tied up the way it
+ought to be with the tail of my shirt and a scarf I had on, got her
+head on my sound knee and my back against a trunk, and settled down
+to wait for morning.  Uma was for neither use nor ornament, and
+could only clutch hold of me and shake and cry.  I don't suppose
+there was ever anybody worse scared, and, to do her justice, she
+had had a lively night of it.  As for me, I was in a good bit of
+pain and fever, but not so bad when I sat still; and every time I
+looked over to Case I could have sung and whistled.  Talk about
+meat and drink!  To see that man lying there dead as a herring
+filled me full.
+
+The night birds stopped after a while; and then the light began to
+change, the east came orange, the whole wood began to whirr with
+singing like a musical box, and there was the broad day.
+
+I didn't expect Maea for a long while yet; and, indeed, I thought
+there was an off-chance he might go back on the whole idea and not
+come at all.  I was the better pleased when, about an hour after
+daylight, I heard sticks smashing and a lot of Kanakas laughing,
+and singing out to keep their courage up.  Uma sat up quite brisk
+at the first word of it; and presently we saw a party come
+stringing out of the path, Maea in front, and behind him a white
+man in a pith helmet.  It was Mr. Tarleton, who had turned up late
+last night in Falesa, having left his boat and walked the last
+stage with a lantern.
+
+They buried Case upon the field of glory, right in the hole where
+he had kept the smoking head.  I waited till the thing was done;
+and Mr. Tarleton prayed, which I thought tomfoolery, but I'm bound
+to say he gave a pretty sick view of the dear departed's prospects,
+and seemed to have his own ideas of hell.  I had it out with him
+afterwards, told him he had scamped his duty, and what he had ought
+to have done was to up like a man and tell the Kanakas plainly Case
+was damned, and a good riddance; but I never could get him to see
+it my way.  Then they made me a litter of poles and carried me down
+to the station.  Mr. Tarleton set my leg, and made a regular
+missionary splice of it, so that I limp to this day.  That done, he
+took down my evidence, and Uma's, and Maea's, wrote it all out
+fine, and had us sign it; and then he got the chiefs and marched
+over to Papa Randall's to seize Case's papers.
+
+All they found was a bit of a diary, kept for a good many years,
+and all about the price of copra, and chickens being stolen, and
+that; and the books of the business and the will I told you of in
+the beginning, by both of which the whole thing (stock, lock, and
+barrel) appeared to belong to the Samoa woman.  It was I that
+bought her out at a mighty reasonable figure, for she was in a
+hurry to get home.  As for Randall and the black, they had to
+tramp; got into some kind of a station on the Papa-malulu side; did
+very bad business, for the truth is neither of the pair was fit for
+it, and lived mostly on fish, which was the means of Randall's
+death.  It seems there was a nice shoal in one day, and papa went
+after them with the dynamite; either the match burned too fast, or
+papa was full, or both, but the shell went off (in the usual way)
+before he threw it, and where was papa's hand?  Well, there's
+nothing to hurt in that; the islands up north are all full of one-
+handed men, like the parties in the "Arabian Nights"; but either
+Randall was too old, or he drank too much, and the short and the
+long of it was that he died.  Pretty soon after, the nigger was
+turned out of the island for stealing from white men, and went off
+to the west, where he found men of his own colour, in case he liked
+that, and the men of his own colour took and ate him at some kind
+of a corroborree, and I'm sure I hope he was to their fancy!
+
+So there was I, left alone in my glory at Falesa; and when the
+schooner came round I filled her up, and gave her a deck-cargo half
+as high as the house.  I must say Mr. Tarleton did the right thing
+by us; but he took a meanish kind of a revenge.
+
+"Now, Mr. Wiltshire," said he, "I've put you all square with
+everybody here.  It wasn't difficult to do, Case being gone; but I
+have done it, and given my pledge besides that you will deal fairly
+with the natives.  I must ask you to keep my word."
+
+Well, so I did.  I used to be bothered about my balances, but I
+reasoned it out this way: We all have queerish balances; and the
+natives all know it, and water their copra in a proportion so that
+it's fair all round; but the truth is, it did use to bother me,
+and, though I did well in Falesa, I was half glad when the firm
+moved me on to another station, where I was under no kind of a
+pledge and could look my balances in the face.
+
+As for the old lady, you know her as well as I do.  She's only the
+one fault.  If you don't keep your eye lifting she would give away
+the roof off the station.  Well, it seems it's natural in Kanakas.
+She's turned a powerful big woman now, and could throw a London
+bobby over her shoulder.  But that's natural in Kanakas too, and
+there's no manner of doubt that she's an A 1 wife.
+
+Mr. Tarleton's gone home, his trick being over.  He was the best
+missionary I ever struck, and now, it seems, he's parsonising down
+Somerset way.  Well, that's best for him; he'll have no Kanakas
+there to get luny over.
+
+My public-house?  Not a bit of it, nor ever likely.  I'm stuck
+here, I fancy.  I don't like to leave the kids, you see: and -
+there's no use talking - they're better here than what they would
+be in a white man's country, though Ben took the eldest up to
+Auckland, where he's being schooled with the best.  But what
+bothers me is the girls.  They're only half-castes, of course; I
+know that as well as you do, and there's nobody thinks less of
+half-castes than I do; but they're mine, and about all I've got.  I
+can't reconcile my mind to their taking up with Kanakas, and I'd
+like to know where I'm to find the whites?
+
+
+
+
+THE BOTTLE IMP.
+
+
+Note. - Any student of that very unliterary product, the English
+drama of the early part of the century, will here recognise the
+name and the root idea of a piece once rendered popular by the
+redoubtable O. Smith.  The root idea is there and identical, and
+yet I hope I have made it a new thing.  And the fact that the tale
+has been designed and written for a Polynesian audience may lend it
+some extraneous interest nearer home. - R. L. S.
+
+
+THERE was a man of the Island of Hawaii, whom I shall call Keawe;
+for the truth is, he still lives, and his name must be kept secret;
+but the place of his birth was not far from Honaunau, where the
+bones of Keawe the Great lie hidden in a cave.  This man was poor,
+brave, and active; he could read and write like a schoolmaster; he
+was a first-rate mariner besides, sailed for some time in the
+island steamers, and steered a whaleboat on the Hamakua coast.  At
+length it came in Keawe's mind to have a sight of the great world
+and foreign cities, and he shipped on a vessel bound to San
+Francisco.
+
+This is a fine town, with a fine harbour, and rich people
+uncountable; and, in particular, there is one hill which is covered
+with palaces.  Upon this hill Keawe was one day taking a walk with
+his pocket full of money, viewing the great houses upon either hand
+with pleasure, "What fine houses these are!" he was thinking, "and
+how happy must those people be who dwell in them, and take no care
+for the morrow!"  The thought was in his mind when he came abreast
+of a house that was smaller than some others, but all finished and
+beautified like a toy; the steps of that house shone like silver,
+and the borders of the garden bloomed like garlands, and the
+windows were bright like diamond; and Keawe stopped and wondered at
+the excellence of all he saw.  So stopping, he was aware of a man
+that looked forth upon him through a window so clear that Keawe
+could see him as you see a fish in a pool upon the reef.  The man
+was elderly, with a bald head and a black beard; and his face was
+heavy with sorrow, and he bitterly sighed.  And the truth of it is,
+that as Keawe looked in upon the man, and the man looked out upon
+Keawe, each envied the other.
+
+All of a sudden, the man smiled and nodded, and beckoned Keawe to
+enter, and met him at the door of the house.
+
+"This is a fine house of mine," said the man, and bitterly sighed.
+"Would you not care to view the chambers?"
+
+So he led Keawe all over it, from the cellar to the roof, and there
+was nothing there that was not perfect of its kind, and Keawe was
+astonished.
+
+"Truly," said Keawe, "this is a beautiful house; if I lived in the
+like of it, I should be laughing all day long.  How comes it, then,
+that you should be sighing?"
+
+"There is no reason," said the man, "why you should not have a
+house in all points similar to this, and finer, if you wish.  You
+have some money, I suppose?"
+
+"I have fifty dollars," said Keawe; "but a house like this will
+cost more than fifty dollars."
+
+The man made a computation.  "I am sorry you have no more," said
+he, "for it may raise you trouble in the future; but it shall be
+yours at fifty dollars."
+
+"The house?" asked Keawe.
+
+"No, not the house," replied the man; "but the bottle.  For, I must
+tell you, although I appear to you so rich and fortunate, all my
+fortune, and this house itself and its garden, came out of a bottle
+not much bigger than a pint.  This is it."
+
+And he opened a lockfast place, and took out a round-bellied bottle
+with a long neck; the glass of it was white like milk, with
+changing rainbow colours in the grain.  Withinsides something
+obscurely moved, like a shadow and a fire.
+
+"This is the bottle," said the man; and, when Keawe laughed, "You
+do not believe me?" he added.  "Try, then, for yourself.  See if
+you can break it."
+
+So Keawe took the bottle up and dashed it on the floor till he was
+weary; but it jumped on the floor like a child's ball, and was not
+injured.
+
+"This is a strange thing," said Keawe.  "For by the touch of it, as
+well as by the look, the bottle should be of glass."
+
+"Of glass it is," replied the man, sighing more heavily than ever;
+"but the glass of it was tempered in the flames of hell.  An imp
+lives in it, and that is the shadow we behold there moving: or so I
+suppose.  If any man buy this bottle the imp is at his command; all
+that he desires - love, fame, money, houses like this house, ay, or
+a city like this city - all are his at the word uttered.  Napoleon
+had this bottle, and by it he grew to be the king of the world; but
+he sold it at the last, and fell.  Captain Cook had this bottle,
+and by it he found his way to so many islands; but he, too, sold
+it, and was slain upon Hawaii.  For, once it is sold, the power
+goes and the protection; and unless a man remain content with what
+he has, ill will befall him."
+
+"And yet you talk of selling it yourself?"  Keawe said.
+
+"I have all I wish, and I am growing elderly," replied the man.
+"There is one thing the imp cannot do - he cannot prolong life;
+and, it would not be fair to conceal from you, there is a drawback
+to the bottle; for if a man die before he sells it, he must burn in
+hell forever."
+
+"To be sure, that is a drawback and no mistake," cried Keawe.  "I
+would not meddle with the thing.  I can do without a house, thank
+God; but there is one thing I could not be doing with one particle,
+and that is to be damned."
+
+"Dear me, you must not run away with things," returned the man.
+"All you have to do is to use the power of the imp in moderation,
+and then sell it to someone else, as I do to you, and finish your
+life in comfort."
+
+"Well, I observe two things," said Keawe.  "All the time you keep
+sighing like a maid in love, that is one; and, for the other, you
+sell this bottle very cheap."
+
+"I have told you already why I sigh," said the man.  "It is because
+I fear my health is breaking up; and, as you said yourself, to die
+and go to the devil is a pity for anyone.  As for why I sell so
+cheap, I must explain to you there is a peculiarity about the
+bottle.  Long ago, when the devil brought it first upon earth, it
+was extremely expensive, and was sold first of all to Prester John
+for many millions of dollars; but it cannot be sold at all, unless
+sold at a loss.  If you sell it for as much as you paid for it,
+back it comes to you again like a homing pigeon.  It follows that
+the price has kept falling in these centuries, and the bottle is
+now remarkably cheap.  I bought it myself from one of my great
+neighbours on this hill, and the price I paid was only ninety
+dollars.  I could sell it for as high as eighty-nine dollars and
+ninety-nine cents, but not a penny dearer, or back the thing must
+come to me.  Now, about this there are two bothers.  First, when
+you offer a bottle so singular for eighty odd dollars, people
+suppose you to be jesting.  And second - but there is no hurry
+about that - and I need not go into it.  Only remember it must be
+coined money that you sell it for."
+
+"How am I to know that this is all true?" asked Keawe.
+
+"Some of it you can try at once," replied the man.  "Give me your
+fifty dollars, take the bottle, and wish your fifty dollars back
+into your pocket.  If that does not happen, I pledge you my honour
+I will cry off the bargain and restore your money."
+
+"You are not deceiving me?" said Keawe.
+
+The man bound himself with a great oath.
+
+"Well, I will risk that much," said Keawe, "for that can do no
+harm."  And he paid over his money to the man, and the man handed
+him the bottle.
+
+"Imp of the bottle," said Keawe, "I want my fifty dollars back."
+And sure enough he had scarce said the word before his pocket was
+as heavy as ever.
+
+"To be sure this is a wonderful bottle," said Keawe.
+
+"And now good-morning to you, my fine fellow, and the devil go with
+you for me!" said the man.
+
+"Hold on," said Keawe, "I don't want any more of this fun.  Here,
+take your bottle back."
+
+"You have bought it for less than I paid for it," replied the man,
+rubbing his hands.  "It is yours now; and, for my part, I am only
+concerned to see the back of you."  And with that he rang for his
+Chinese servant, and had Keawe shown out of the house.
+
+Now, when Keawe was in the street, with the bottle under his arm,
+he began to think.  "If all is true about this bottle, I may have
+made a losing bargain," thinks he.  "But perhaps the man was only
+fooling me."  The first thing he did was to count his money; the
+sum was exact - forty-nine dollars American money, and one Chili
+piece.  "That looks like the truth," said Keawe.  "Now I will try
+another part."
+
+The streets in that part of the city were as clean as a ship's
+decks, and though it was noon, there were no passengers.  Keawe set
+the bottle in the gutter and walked away.  Twice he looked back,
+and there was the milky, round-bellied bottle where he left it.  A
+third time he looked back, and turned a corner; but he had scarce
+done so, when something knocked upon his elbow, and behold! it was
+the long neck sticking up; and as for the round belly, it was
+jammed into the pocket of his pilot-coat.
+
+"And that looks like the truth," said Keawe.
+
+The next thing he did was to buy a cork-screw in a shop, and go
+apart into a secret place in the fields.  And there he tried to
+draw the cork, but as often as he put the screw in, out it came
+again, and the cork as whole as ever.
+
+"This is some new sort of cork," said Keawe, and all at once he
+began to shake and sweat, for he was afraid of that bottle.
+
+On his way back to the port-side, he saw a shop where a man sold
+shells and clubs from the wild islands, old heathen deities, old
+coined money, pictures from China and Japan, and all manner of
+things that sailors bring in their sea-chests.  And here he had an
+idea.  So he went in and offered the bottle for a hundred dollars.
+The man of the shop laughed at him at the first, and offered him
+five; but, indeed, it was a curious bottle - such glass was never
+blown in any human glassworks, so prettily the colours shone under
+the milky white, and so strangely the shadow hovered in the midst;
+so, after he had disputed awhile after the manner of his kind, the
+shop-man gave Keawe sixty silver dollars for the thing, and set it
+on a shelf in the midst of his window.
+
+"Now," said Keawe, "I have sold that for sixty which I bought for
+fifty - or, to say truth, a little less, because one of my dollars
+was from Chili.  Now I shall know the truth upon another point."
+
+So he went back on board his ship, and, when he opened his chest,
+there was the bottle, and had come more quickly than himself.  Now
+Keawe had a mate on board whose name was Lopaka.
+
+"What ails you?" said Lopaka, "that you stare in your chest?"
+
+They were alone in the ship's forecastle, and Keawe bound him to
+secrecy, and told all.
+
+"This is a very strange affair," said Lopaka; "and I fear you will
+be in trouble about this bottle.  But there is one point very clear
+- that you are sure of the trouble, and you had better have the
+profit in the bargain.  Make up your mind what you want with it;
+give the order, and if it is done as you desire, I will buy the
+bottle myself; for I have an idea of my own to get a schooner, and
+go trading through the islands."
+
+"That is not my idea," said Keawe; "but to have a beautiful house
+and garden on the Kona Coast, where I was born, the sun shining in
+at the door, flowers in the garden, glass in the windows, pictures
+on the walls, and toys and fine carpets on the tables, for all the
+world like the house I was in this day - only a storey higher, and
+with balconies all about like the King's palace; and to live there
+without care and make merry with my friends and relatives."
+
+"Well," said Lopaka, "let us carry it back with us to Hawaii; and
+if all comes true, as you suppose, I will buy the bottle, as I
+said, and ask a schooner."
+
+Upon that they were agreed, and it was not long before the ship
+returned to Honolulu, carrying Keawe and Lopaka, and the bottle.
+They were scarce come ashore when they met a friend upon the beach,
+who began at once to condole with Keawe.
+
+"I do not know what I am to be condoled about," said Keawe.
+
+"Is it possible you have not heard," said the friend, "your uncle -
+that good old man - is dead, and your cousin - that beautiful boy -
+was drowned at sea?"
+
+Keawe was filled with sorrow, and, beginning to weep and to lament,
+he forgot about the bottle.  But Lopaka was thinking to himself,
+and presently, when Keawe's grief was a little abated, "I have been
+thinking," said Lopaka.  "Had not your uncle lands in Hawaii, in
+the district of Kau?"
+
+"No," said Keawe, "not in Kau; they are on the mountain-side - a
+little way south of Hookena."
+
+"These lands will now be yours?" asked Lopaka.
+
+"And so they will," says Keawe, and began again to lament for his
+relatives.
+
+"No," said Lopaka, "do not lament at present.  I have a thought in
+my mind.  How if this should be the doing of the bottle?  For here
+is the place ready for your house."
+
+"If this be so," cried Keawe, "it is a very ill way to serve me by
+killing my relatives.  But it may be, indeed; for it was in just
+such a station that I saw the house with my mind's eye."
+
+"The house, however, is not yet built," said Lopaka.
+
+"No, nor like to be!" said Keawe; "for though my uncle has some
+coffee and ava and bananas, it will not be more than will keep me
+in comfort; and the rest of that land is the black lava."
+
+"Let us go to the lawyer," said Lopaka; "I have still this idea in
+my mind."
+
+Now, when they came to the lawyer's, it appeared Keawe's uncle had
+grown monstrous rich in the last days, and there was a fund of
+money.
+
+"And here is the money for the house!" cried Lopaka.
+
+"If you are thinking of a new house," said the lawyer, "here is the
+card of a new architect, of whom they tell me great things."
+
+"Better and better!" cried Lopaka.  "Here is all made plain for us.
+Let us continue to obey orders."
+
+So they went to the architect, and he had drawings of houses on his
+table.
+
+"You want something out of the way," said the architect.  "How do
+you like this?" and he handed a drawing to Keawe.
+
+Now, when Keawe set eyes on the drawing, he cried out aloud, for it
+was the picture of his thought exactly drawn.
+
+"I am in for this house," thought he.  "Little as I like the way it
+comes to me, I am in for it now, and I may as well take the good
+along with the evil."
+
+So he told the architect all that he wished, and how he would have
+that house furnished, and about the pictures on the wall and the
+knick-knacks on the tables; and he asked the man plainly for how
+much he would undertake the whole affair.
+
+The architect put many questions, and took his pen and made a
+computation; and when he had done he named the very sum that Keawe
+had inherited.
+
+Lopaka and Keawe looked at one another and nodded.
+
+"It is quite clear," thought Keawe, "that I am to have this house,
+whether or no.  It comes from the devil, and I fear I will get
+little good by that; and of one thing I am sure, I will make no
+more wishes as long as I have this bottle.  But with the house I am
+saddled, and I may as well take the good along with the evil."
+
+So he made his terms with the architect, and they signed a paper;
+and Keawe and Lopaka took ship again and sailed to Australia; for
+it was concluded between them they should not interfere at all, but
+leave the architect and the bottle imp to build and to adorn that
+house at their own pleasure.
+
+The voyage was a good voyage, only all the time Keawe was holding
+in his breath, for he had sworn he would utter no more wishes, and
+take no more favours from the devil.  The time was up when they got
+back.  The architect told them that the house was ready, and Keawe
+and Lopaka took a passage in the HALL, and went down Kona way to
+view the house, and see if all had been done fitly according to the
+thought that was in Keawe's mind.
+
+Now the house stood on the mountain side, visible to ships.  Above,
+the forest ran up into the clouds of rain; below, the black lava
+fell in cliffs, where the kings of old lay buried.  A garden
+bloomed about that house with every hue of flowers; and there was
+an orchard of papaia on the one hand and an orchard of breadfruit
+on the other, and right in front, toward the sea, a ship's mast had
+been rigged up and bore a flag.  As for the house, it was three
+storeys high, with great chambers and broad balconies on each.  The
+windows were of glass, so excellent that it was as clear as water
+and as bright as day.  All manner of furniture adorned the
+chambers.  Pictures hung upon the wall in golden frames: pictures
+of ships, and men fighting, and of the most beautiful women, and of
+singular places; nowhere in the world are there pictures of so
+bright a colour as those Keawe found hanging in his house.  As for
+the knick-knacks, they were extraordinary fine; chiming clocks and
+musical boxes, little men with nodding heads, books filled with
+pictures, weapons of price from all quarters of the world, and the
+most elegant puzzles to entertain the leisure of a solitary man.
+And as no one would care to live in such chambers, only to walk
+through and view them, the balconies were made so broad that a
+whole town might have lived upon them in delight; and Keawe knew
+not which to prefer, whether the back porch, where you got the land
+breeze, and looked upon the orchards and the flowers, or the front
+balcony, where you could drink the wind of the sea, and look down
+the steep wall of the mountain and see the HALL going by once a
+week or so between Hookena and the hills of Pele, or the schooners
+plying up the coast for wood and ava and bananas.
+
+When they had viewed all, Keawe and Lopaka sat on the porch.
+
+"Well," asked Lopaka, "is it all as you designed?"
+
+"Words cannot utter it," said Keawe.  "It is better than I dreamed,
+and I am sick with satisfaction."
+
+"There is but one thing to consider," said Lopaka; "all this may be
+quite natural, and the bottle imp have nothing whatever to say to
+it.  If I were to buy the bottle, and got no schooner after all, I
+should have put my hand in the fire for nothing.  I gave you my
+word, I know; but yet I think you would not grudge me one more
+proof."
+
+"I have sworn I would take no more favours," said Keawe.  "I have
+gone already deep enough."
+
+"This is no favour I am thinking of," replied Lopaka.  "It is only
+to see the imp himself.  There is nothing to be gained by that, and
+so nothing to be ashamed of; and yet, if I once saw him, I should
+be sure of the whole matter.  So indulge me so far, and let me see
+the imp; and, after that, here is the money in my hand, and I will
+buy it."
+
+"There is only one thing I am afraid of," said Keawe.  "The imp may
+be very ugly to view; and if you once set eyes upon him you might
+be very undesirous of the bottle."
+
+"I am a man of my word," said Lopaka.  "And here is the money
+betwixt us."
+
+"Very well," replied Keawe.  "I have a curiosity myself.  So come,
+let us have one look at you, Mr. Imp."
+
+Now as soon as that was said, the imp looked out of the bottle, and
+in again, swift as a lizard; and there sat Keawe and Lopaka turned
+to stone.  The night had quite come, before either found a thought
+to say or voice to say it with; and then Lopaka pushed the money
+over and took the bottle.
+
+"I am a man of my word," said he, "and had need to be so, or I
+would not touch this bottle with my foot.  Well, I shall get my
+schooner and a dollar or two for my pocket; and then I will be rid
+of this devil as fast as I can.  For to tell you the plain truth,
+the look of him has cast me down."
+
+"Lopaka," said Keawe, "do not you think any worse of me than you
+can help; I know it is night, and the roads bad, and the pass by
+the tombs an ill place to go by so late, but I declare since I have
+seen that little face, I cannot eat or sleep or pray till it is
+gone from me.  I will give you a lantern and a basket to put the
+bottle in, and any picture or fine thing in all my house that takes
+your fancy; - and be gone at once, and go sleep at Hookena with
+Nahinu."
+
+"Keawe," said Lopaka, "many a man would take this ill; above all,
+when I am doing you a turn so friendly, as to keep my word and buy
+the bottle; and for that matter, the night and the dark, and the
+way by the tombs, must be all tenfold more dangerous to a man with
+such a sin upon his conscience, and such a bottle under his arm.
+But for my part, I am so extremely terrified myself, I have not the
+heart to blame you.  Here I go then; and I pray God you may be
+happy in your house, and I fortunate with my schooner, and both get
+to heaven in the end in spite of the devil and his bottle."
+
+So Lopaka went down the mountain; and Keawe stood in his front
+balcony, and listened to the clink of the horse's shoes, and
+watched the lantern go shining down the path, and along the cliff
+of caves where the old dead are buried; and all the time he
+trembled and clasped his hands, and prayed for his friend, and gave
+glory to God that he himself was escaped out of that trouble.
+
+But the next day came very brightly, and that new house of his was
+so delightful to behold that he forgot his terrors.  One day
+followed another, and Keawe dwelt there in perpetual joy.  He had
+his place on the back porch; it was there he ate and lived, and
+read the stories in the Honolulu newspapers; but when anyone came
+by they would go in and view the chambers and the pictures.  And
+the fame of the house went far and wide; it was called KA-HALE NUI
+- the Great House - in all Kona; and sometimes the Bright House,
+for Keawe kept a Chinaman, who was all day dusting and furbishing;
+and the glass, and the gilt, and the fine stuffs, and the pictures,
+shone as bright as the morning.  As for Keawe himself, he could not
+walk in the chambers without singing, his heart was so enlarged;
+and when ships sailed by upon the sea, he would fly his colours on
+the mast.
+
+So time went by, until one day Keawe went upon a visit as far as
+Kailua to certain of his friends.  There he was well feasted; and
+left as soon as he could the next morning, and rode hard, for he
+was impatient to behold his beautiful house; and, besides, the
+night then coming on was the night in which the dead of old days go
+abroad in the sides of Kona; and having already meddled with the
+devil, he was the more chary of meeting with the dead.  A little
+beyond Honaunau, looking far ahead, he was aware of a woman bathing
+in the edge of the sea; and she seemed a well-grown girl, but he
+thought no more of it.  Then he saw her white shift flutter as she
+put it on, and then her red holoku; and by the time he came abreast
+of her she was done with her toilet, and had come up from the sea,
+and stood by the track-side in her red holoku, and she was all
+freshened with the bath, and her eyes shone and were kind.  Now
+Keawe no sooner beheld her than he drew rein.
+
+"I thought I knew everyone in this country," said he.  "How comes
+it that I do not know you?"
+
+"I am Kokua, daughter of Kiano," said the girl, "and I have just
+returned from Oahu.  Who are you?"
+
+"I will tell you who I am in a little," said Keawe, dismounting
+from his horse, "but not now.  For I have a thought in my mind, and
+if you knew who I was, you might have heard of me, and would not
+give me a true answer.  But tell me, first of all, one thing: Are
+you married?"
+
+At this Kokua laughed out aloud.  "It is you who ask questions,"
+she said.  "Are you married yourself?"
+
+"Indeed, Kokua, I am not," replied Keawe, "and never thought to be
+until this hour.  But here is the plain truth.  I have met you here
+at the roadside, and I saw your eyes, which are like the stars, and
+my heart went to you as swift as a bird.  And so now, if you want
+none of me, say so, and I will go on to my own place; but if you
+think me no worse than any other young man, say so, too, and I will
+turn aside to your father's for the night, and to-morrow I will
+talk with the good man."
+
+Kokua said never a word, but she looked at the sea and laughed.
+
+"Kokua," said Keawe, "if you say nothing, I will take that for the
+good answer; so let us be stepping to your father's door."
+
+She went on ahead of him, still without speech; only sometimes she
+glanced back and glanced away again, and she kept the strings of
+her hat in her mouth.
+
+Now, when they had come to the door, Kiano came out on his
+verandah, and cried out and welcomed Keawe by name.  At that the
+girl looked over, for the fame of the great house had come to her
+ears; and, to be sure, it was a great temptation.  All that evening
+they were very merry together; and the girl was as bold as brass
+under the eyes of her parents, and made a mock of Keawe, for she
+had a quick wit.  The next day he had a word with Kiano, and found
+the girl alone.
+
+"Kokua," said he, "you made a mock of me all the evening; and it is
+still time to bid me go.  I would not tell you who I was, because I
+have so fine a house, and I feared you would think too much of that
+house and too little of the man that loves you.  Now you know all,
+and if you wish to have seen the last of me, say so at once."
+
+"No," said Kokua; but this time she did not laugh, nor did Keawe
+ask for more.
+
+This was the wooing of Keawe; things had gone quickly; but so an
+arrow goes, and the ball of a rifle swifter still, and yet both may
+strike the target.  Things had gone fast, but they had gone far
+also, and the thought of Keawe rang in the maiden's head; she heard
+his voice in the breach of the surf upon the lava, and for this
+young man that she had seen but twice she would have left father
+and mother and her native islands.  As for Keawe himself, his horse
+flew up the path of the mountain under the cliff of tombs, and the
+sound of the hoofs, and the sound of Keawe singing to himself for
+pleasure, echoed in the caverns of the dead.  He came to the Bright
+House, and still he was singing.  He sat and ate in the broad
+balcony, and the Chinaman wondered at his master, to hear how he
+sang between the mouthfuls.  The sun went down into the sea, and
+the night came; and Keawe walked the balconies by lamplight, high
+on the mountains, and the voice of his singing startled men on
+ships.
+
+"Here am I now upon my high place," he said to himself.  "Life may
+be no better; this is the mountain top; and all shelves about me
+toward the worse.  For the first time I will light up the chambers,
+and bathe in my fine bath with the hot water and the cold, and
+sleep alone in the bed of my bridal chamber."
+
+So the Chinaman had word, and he must rise from sleep and light the
+furnaces; and as he wrought below, beside the boilers, he heard his
+master singing and rejoicing above him in the lighted chambers.
+When the water began to be hot the Chinaman cried to his master;
+and Keawe went into the bathroom; and the Chinaman heard him sing
+as he filled the marble basin; and heard him sing, and the singing
+broken, as he undressed; until of a sudden, the song ceased.  The
+Chinaman listened, and listened; he called up the house to Keawe to
+ask if all were well, and Keawe answered him "Yes," and bade him go
+to bed; but there was no more singing in the Bright House; and all
+night long, the Chinaman heard his master's feet go round and round
+the balconies without repose.
+
+Now the truth of it was this: as Keawe undressed for his bath, he
+spied upon his flesh a patch like a patch of lichen on a rock, and
+it was then that he stopped singing.  For he knew the likeness of
+that patch, and knew that he was fallen in the Chinese Evil. (5)
+
+Now, it is a sad thing for any man to fall into this sickness.  And
+it would be a sad thing for anyone to leave a house so beautiful
+and so commodious, and depart from all his friends to the north
+coast of Molokai between the mighty cliff and the sea-breakers.
+But what was that to the case of the man Keawe, he who had met his
+love but yesterday, and won her but that morning, and now saw all
+his hopes break, in a moment, like a piece of glass?
+
+Awhile he sat upon the edge of the bath; then sprang, with a cry,
+and ran outside; and to and fro, to and fro, along the balcony,
+like one despairing.
+
+"Very willingly could I leave Hawaii, the home of my fathers,"
+Keawe was thinking.  "Very lightly could I leave my house, the
+high-placed, the many-windowed, here upon the mountains.  Very
+bravely could I go to Molokai, to Kalaupapa by the cliffs, to live
+with the smitten and to sleep there, far from my fathers.  But what
+wrong have I done, what sin lies upon my soul, that I should have
+encountered Kokua coming cool from the sea-water in the evening?
+Kokua, the soul ensnarer!  Kokua, the light of my life!  Her may I
+never wed, her may I look upon no longer, her may I no more handle
+with my loving hand; and it is for this, it is for you, O Kokua!
+that I pour my lamentations!"
+
+Now you are to observe what sort of a man Keawe was, for he might
+have dwelt there in the Bright House for years, and no one been the
+wiser of his sickness; but he reckoned nothing of that, if he must
+lose Kokua.  And again, he might have wed Kokua even as he was; and
+so many would have done, because they have the souls of pigs; but
+Keawe loved the maid manfully, and he would do her no hurt and
+bring her in no danger.
+
+A little beyond the midst of the night, there came in his mind the
+recollection of that bottle.  He went round to the back porch, and
+called to memory the day when the devil had looked forth; and at
+the thought ice ran in his veins.
+
+"A dreadful thing is the bottle," thought Keawe, "and dreadful is
+the imp, and it is a dreadful thing to risk the flames of hell.
+But what other hope have I to cure my sickness or to wed Kokua?
+What!" he thought, "would I beard the devil once, only to get me a
+house, and not face him again to win Kokua?"
+
+Thereupon he called to mind it was the next day the HALL went by on
+her return to Honolulu.  "There must I go first," he thought, "and
+see Lopaka.  For the best hope that I have now is to find that same
+bottle I was so pleased to be rid of."
+
+Never a wink could he sleep; the food stuck in his throat; but he
+sent a letter to Kiano, and about the time when the steamer would
+be coming, rode down beside the cliff of the tombs.  It rained; his
+horse went heavily; he looked up at the black mouths of the caves,
+and he envied the dead that slept there and were done with trouble;
+and called to mind how he had galloped by the day before, and was
+astonished.  So he came down to Hookena, and there was all the
+country gathered for the steamer as usual.  In the shed before the
+store they sat and jested and passed the news; but there was no
+matter of speech in Keawe's bosom, and he sat in their midst and
+looked without on the rain falling on the houses, and the surf
+beating among the rocks, and the sighs arose in his throat.
+
+"Keawe of the Bright House is out of spirits," said one to another.
+Indeed, and so he was, and little wonder.
+
+Then the HALL came, and the whaleboat carried him on board.  The
+after-part of the ship was full of Haoles (6) who had been to visit
+the volcano, as their custom is; and the midst was crowded with
+Kanakas, and the forepart with wild bulls from Hilo and horses from
+Kau; but Keawe sat apart from all in his sorrow, and watched for
+the house of Kiano.  There it sat, low upon the shore in the black
+rocks, and shaded by the cocoa palms, and there by the door was a
+red holoku, no greater than a fly, and going to and fro with a
+fly's busyness.  "Ah, queen of my heart," he cried, "I'll venture
+my dear soul to win you!"
+
+Soon after, darkness fell, and the cabins were lit up, and the
+Haoles sat and played at the cards and drank whiskey as their
+custom is; but Keawe walked the deck all night; and all the next
+day, as they steamed under the lee of Maui or of Molokai, he was
+still pacing to and fro like a wild animal in a menagerie.
+
+Towards evening they passed Diamond Head, and came to the pier of
+Honolulu.  Keawe stepped out among the crowd and began to ask for
+Lopaka.  It seemed he had become the owner of a schooner - none
+better in the islands - and was gone upon an adventure as far as
+Pola-Pola or Kahiki; so there was no help to be looked for from
+Lopaka.  Keawe called to mind a friend of his, a lawyer in the town
+(I must not tell his name), and inquired of him.  They said he was
+grown suddenly rich, and had a fine new house upon Waikiki shore;
+and this put a thought in Keawe's head, and he called a hack and
+drove to the lawyer's house.
+
+The house was all brand new, and the trees in the garden no greater
+than walking-sticks, and the lawyer, when he came, had the air of a
+man well pleased.
+
+"What can I do to serve you?" said the lawyer.
+
+"You are a friend of Lopaka's," replied Keawe, "and Lopaka
+purchased from me a certain piece of goods that I thought you might
+enable me to trace."
+
+The lawyer's face became very dark.  "I do not profess to
+misunderstand you, Mr. Keawe," said he, "though this is an ugly
+business to be stirring in.  You may be sure I know nothing, but
+yet I have a guess, and if you would apply in a certain quarter I
+think you might have news."
+
+And he named the name of a man, which, again, I had better not
+repeat.  So it was for days, and Keawe went from one to another,
+finding everywhere new clothes and carriages, and fine new houses
+and men everywhere in great contentment, although, to be sure, when
+he hinted at his business their faces would cloud over.
+
+"No doubt I am upon the track," thought Keawe.  "These new clothes
+and carriages are all the gifts of the little imp, and these glad
+faces are the faces of men who have taken their profit and got rid
+of the accursed thing in safety.  When I see pale cheeks and hear
+sighing, I shall know that I am near the bottle."
+
+So it befell at last that he was recommended to a Haole in
+Beritania Street.  When he came to the door, about the hour of the
+evening meal, there were the usual marks of the new house, and the
+young garden, and the electric light shining in the windows; but
+when the owner came, a shock of hope and fear ran through Keawe;
+for here was a young man, white as a corpse, and black about the
+eyes, the hair shedding from his head, and such a look in his
+countenance as a man may have when he is waiting for the gallows.
+
+"Here it is, to be sure," thought Keawe, and so with this man he
+noways veiled his errand.  "I am come to buy the bottle," said he.
+
+At the word, the young Haole of Beritania Street reeled against the
+wall.
+
+"The bottle!" he gasped.  "To buy the bottle!"  Then he seemed to
+choke, and seizing Keawe by the arm carried him into a room and
+poured out wine in two glasses.
+
+"Here is my respects," said Keawe, who had been much about with
+Haoles in his time.  "Yes," he added, "I am come to buy the bottle.
+What is the price by now?"
+
+At that word the young man let his glass slip through his fingers,
+and looked upon Keawe like a ghost.
+
+"The price," says he; "the price!  You do not know the price?"
+
+"It is for that I am asking you," returned Keawe.  "But why are you
+so much concerned?  Is there anything wrong about the price?"
+
+"It has dropped a great deal in value since your time, Mr. Keawe,"
+said the young man stammering.
+
+"Well, well, I shall have the less to pay for it," says Keawe.
+"How much did it cost you?"
+
+The young man was as white as a sheet.  "Two cents," said he.
+
+"What?" cried Keawe, "two cents?  Why, then, you can only sell it
+for one.  And he who buys it - "  The words died upon Keawe's
+tongue; he who bought it could never sell it again, the bottle and
+the bottle imp must abide with him until he died, and when he died
+must carry him to the red end of hell.
+
+The young man of Beritania Street fell upon his knees.  "For God's
+sake buy it!" he cried.  "You can have all my fortune in the
+bargain.  I was mad when I bought it at that price.  I had
+embezzled money at my store; I was lost else; I must have gone to
+jail."
+
+"Poor creature," said Keawe, "you would risk your soul upon so
+desperate an adventure, and to avoid the proper punishment of your
+own disgrace; and you think I could hesitate with love in front of
+me.  Give me the bottle, and the change which I make sure you have
+all ready.  Here is a five-cent piece."
+
+It was as Keawe supposed; the young man had the change ready in a
+drawer; the bottle changed hands, and Keawe's fingers were no
+sooner clasped upon the stalk than he had breathed his wish to be a
+clean man.  And, sure enough, when he got home to his room, and
+stripped himself before a glass, his flesh was whole like an
+infant's.  And here was the strange thing: he had no sooner seen
+this miracle, than his mind was changed within him, and he cared
+naught for the Chinese Evil, and little enough for Kokua; and had
+but the one thought, that here he was bound to the bottle imp for
+time and for eternity, and had no better hope but to be a cinder
+for ever in the flames of hell.  Away ahead of him he saw them
+blaze with his mind's eye, and his soul shrank, and darkness fell
+upon the light.
+
+When Keawe came to himself a little, he was aware it was the night
+when the band played at the hotel.  Thither he went, because he
+feared to be alone; and there, among happy faces, walked to and
+fro, and heard the tunes go up and down, and saw Berger beat the
+measure, and all the while he heard the flames crackle, and saw the
+red fire burning in the bottomless pit.  Of a sudden the band
+played HIKI-AO-AO; that was a song that he had sung with Kokua, and
+at the strain courage returned to him.
+
+"It is done now," he thought, "and once more let me take the good
+along with the evil."
+
+So it befell that he returned to Hawaii by the first steamer, and
+as soon as it could be managed he was wedded to Kokua, and carried
+her up the mountain side to the Bright House.
+
+Now it was so with these two, that when they were together, Keawe's
+heart was stilled; but so soon as he was alone he fell into a
+brooding horror, and heard the flames crackle, and saw the red fire
+burn in the bottomless pit.  The girl, indeed, had come to him
+wholly; her heart leapt in her side at sight of him, her hand clung
+to his; and she was so fashioned from the hair upon her head to the
+nails upon her toes that none could see her without joy.  She was
+pleasant in her nature.  She had the good word always.  Full of
+song she was, and went to and fro in the Bright House, the
+brightest thing in its three storeys, carolling like the birds.
+And Keawe beheld and heard her with delight, and then must shrink
+upon one side, and weep and groan to think upon the price that he
+had paid for her; and then he must dry his eyes, and wash his face,
+and go and sit with her on the broad balconies, joining in her
+songs, and, with a sick spirit, answering her smiles.
+
+There came a day when her feet began to be heavy and her songs more
+rare; and now it was not Keawe only that would weep apart, but each
+would sunder from the other and sit in opposite balconies with the
+whole width of the Bright House betwixt.  Keawe was so sunk in his
+despair, he scarce observed the change, and was only glad he had
+more hours to sit alone and brood upon his destiny, and was not so
+frequently condemned to pull a smiling face on a sick heart.  But
+one day, coming softly through the house, he heard the sound of a
+child sobbing, and there was Kokua rolling her face upon the
+balcony floor, and weeping like the lost.
+
+"You do well to weep in this house, Kokua," he said.  "And yet I
+would give the head off my body that you (at least) might have been
+happy."
+
+"Happy!" she cried.  "Keawe, when you lived alone in your Bright
+House, you were the word of the island for a happy man; laughter
+and song were in your mouth, and your face was as bright as the
+sunrise.  Then you wedded poor Kokua; and the good God knows what
+is amiss in her - but from that day you have not smiled.  Oh!" she
+cried, "what ails me?  I thought I was pretty, and I knew I loved
+him.  What ails me that I throw this cloud upon my husband?"
+
+"Poor Kokua," said Keawe.  He sat down by her side, and sought to
+take her hand; but that she plucked away.  "Poor Kokua," he said,
+again.  "My poor child - my pretty.  And I had thought all this
+while to spare you!  Well, you shall know all.  Then, at least, you
+will pity poor Keawe; then you will understand how much he loved
+you in the past - that he dared hell for your possession - and how
+much he loves you still (the poor condemned one), that he can yet
+call up a smile when he beholds you."
+
+With that, he told her all, even from the beginning.
+
+"You have done this for me?" she cried "Ah, well, then what do I
+care!" - and she clasped and wept upon him.
+
+"Ah, child!" said Keawe, "and yet, when I consider of the fire of
+hell, I care a good deal!"
+
+"Never tell me," said she; "no man can be lost because he loved
+Kokua, and no other fault.  I tell you, Keawe, I shall save you
+with these hands, or perish in your company.  What! you loved me,
+and gave your soul, and you think I will not die to save you in
+return?"
+
+"Ah, my dear! you might die a hundred times, and what difference
+would that make?" he cried, "except to leave me lonely till the
+time comes of my damnation?"
+
+"You know nothing," said she.  "I was educated in a school in
+Honolulu; I am no common girl.  And I tell you, I shall save my
+lover.  What is this you say about a cent?  But all the world is
+not American.  In England they have a piece they call a farthing,
+which is about half a cent.  Ah! sorrow!" she cried, "that makes it
+scarcely better, for the buyer must be lost, and we shall find none
+so brave as my Keawe!  But, then, there is France; they have a
+small coin there which they call a centime, and these go five to
+the cent or there-about.  We could not do better.  Come, Keawe, let
+us go to the French islands; let us go to Tahiti, as fast as ships
+can bear us.  There we have four centimes, three centimes, two
+centimes, one centime; four possible sales to come and go on; and
+two of us to push the bargain.  Come, my Keawe! kiss me, and banish
+care.  Kokua will defend you."
+
+"Gift of God!" he cried.  "I cannot think that God will punish me
+for desiring aught so good!  Be it as you will, then; take me where
+you please: I put my life and my salvation in your hands."
+
+Early the next day Kokua was about her preparations.  She took
+Keawe's chest that he went with sailoring; and first she put the
+bottle in a corner; and then packed it with the richest of their
+clothes and the bravest of the knick-knacks in the house.  "For,"
+said she, "we must seem to be rich folks, or who will believe in
+the bottle?"  All the time of her preparation she was as gay as a
+bird; only when she looked upon Keawe, the tears would spring in
+her eye, and she must run and kiss him.  As for Keawe, a weight was
+off his soul; now that he had his secret shared, and some hope in
+front of him, he seemed like a new man, his feet went lightly on
+the earth, and his breath was good to him again.  Yet was terror
+still at his elbow; and ever and again, as the wind blows out a
+taper, hope died in him, and he saw the flames toss and the red
+fire burn in hell.
+
+It was given out in the country they were gone pleasuring to the
+States, which was thought a strange thing, and yet not so strange
+as the truth, if any could have guessed it.  So they went to
+Honolulu in the HALL, and thence in the UMATILLA to San Francisco
+with a crowd of Haoles, and at San Francisco took their passage by
+the mail brigantine, the TROPIC BIRD, for Papeete, the chief place
+of the French in the south islands.  Thither they came, after a
+pleasant voyage, on a fair day of the Trade Wind, and saw the reef
+with the surf breaking, and Motuiti with its palms, and the
+schooner riding within-side, and the white houses of the town low
+down along the shore among green trees, and overhead the mountains
+and the clouds of Tahiti, the wise island.
+
+It was judged the most wise to hire a house, which they did
+accordingly, opposite the British Consul's, to make a great parade
+of money, and themselves conspicuous with carriages and horses.
+This it was very easy to do, so long as they had the bottle in
+their possession; for Kokua was more bold than Keawe, and, whenever
+she had a mind, called on the imp for twenty or a hundred dollars.
+At this rate they soon grew to be remarked in the town; and the
+strangers from Hawaii, their riding and their driving, the fine
+holokus and the rich lace of Kokua, became the matter of much talk.
+
+They got on well after the first with the Tahitian language, which
+is indeed like to the Hawaiian, with a change of certain letters;
+and as soon as they had any freedom of speech, began to push the
+bottle.  You are to consider it was not an easy subject to
+introduce; it was not easy to persuade people you were in earnest,
+when you offered to sell them for four centimes the spring of
+health and riches inexhaustible.  It was necessary besides to
+explain the dangers of the bottle; and either people disbelieved
+the whole thing and laughed, or they thought the more of the darker
+part, became overcast with gravity, and drew away from Keawe and
+Kokua, as from persons who had dealings with the devil.  So far
+from gaining ground, these two began to find they were avoided in
+the town; the children ran away from them screaming, a thing
+intolerable to Kokua; Catholics crossed themselves as they went by;
+and all persons began with one accord to disengage themselves from
+their advances.
+
+Depression fell upon their spirits.  They would sit at night in
+their new house, after a day's weariness, and not exchange one
+word, or the silence would be broken by Kokua bursting suddenly
+into sobs.  Sometimes they would pray together; sometimes they
+would have the bottle out upon the floor, and sit all evening
+watching how the shadow hovered in the midst.  At such times they
+would be afraid to go to rest.  It was long ere slumber came to
+them, and, if either dozed off, it would be to wake and find the
+other silently weeping in the dark, or, perhaps, to wake alone, the
+other having fled from the house and the neighbourhood of that
+bottle, to pace under the bananas in the little garden, or to
+wander on the beach by moonlight.
+
+One night it was so when Kokua awoke.  Keawe was gone.  She felt in
+the bed and his place was cold.  Then fear fell upon her, and she
+sat up in bed.  A little moonshine filtered through the shutters.
+The room was bright, and she could spy the bottle on the floor.
+Outside it blew high, the great trees of the avenue cried aloud,
+and the fallen leaves rattled in the verandah.  In the midst of
+this Kokua was aware of another sound; whether of a beast or of a
+man she could scarce tell, but it was as sad as death, and cut her
+to the soul.  Softly she arose, set the door ajar, and looked forth
+into the moonlit yard.  There, under the bananas, lay Keawe, his
+mouth in the dust, and as he lay he moaned.
+
+It was Kokua's first thought to run forward and console him; her
+second potently withheld her.  Keawe had borne himself before his
+wife like a brave man; it became her little in the hour of weakness
+to intrude upon his shame.  With the thought she drew back into the
+house.
+
+"Heaven!" she thought, "how careless have I been - how weak!  It is
+he, not I, that stands in this eternal peril; it was he, not I,
+that took the curse upon his soul.  It is for my sake, and for the
+love of a creature of so little worth and such poor help, that he
+now beholds so close to him the flames of hell - ay, and smells the
+smoke of it, lying without there in the wind and moonlight.  Am I
+so dull of spirit that never till now I have surmised my duty, or
+have I seen it before and turned aside?  But now, at least, I take
+up my soul in both the hands of my affection; now I say farewell to
+the white steps of heaven and the waiting faces of my friends.  A
+love for a love, and let mine be equalled with Keawe's!  A soul for
+a soul, and be it mine to perish!"
+
+She was a deft woman with her hands, and was soon apparelled.  She
+took in her hands the change - the precious centimes they kept ever
+at their side; for this coin is little used, and they had made
+provision at a Government office.  When she was forth in the avenue
+clouds came on the wind, and the moon was blackened.  The town
+slept, and she knew not whither to turn till she heard one coughing
+in the shadow of the trees.
+
+"Old man," said Kokua, "what do you here abroad in the cold night?"
+
+The old man could scarce express himself for coughing, but she made
+out that he was old and poor, and a stranger in the island.
+
+"Will you do me a service?" said Kokua.  "As one stranger to
+another, and as an old man to a young woman, will you help a
+daughter of Hawaii?"
+
+"Ah," said the old man.  "So you are the witch from the eight
+islands, and even my old soul you seek to entangle.  But I have
+heard of you, and defy your wickedness."
+
+"Sit down here," said Kokua, "and let me tell you a tale."  And she
+told him the story of Keawe from the beginning to the end.
+
+"And now," said she, "I am his wife, whom he bought with his soul's
+welfare.  And what should I do?  If I went to him myself and
+offered to buy it, he would refuse.  But if you go, he will sell it
+eagerly; I will await you here; you will buy it for four centimes,
+and I will buy it again for three.  And the Lord strengthen a poor
+girl!"
+
+"If you meant falsely," said the old man, "I think God would strike
+you dead."
+
+"He would!" cried Kokua.  "Be sure he would.  I could not be so
+treacherous - God would not suffer it."
+
+"Give me the four centimes and await me here," said the old man.
+
+Now, when Kokua stood alone in the street, her spirit died.  The
+wind roared in the trees, and it seemed to her the rushing of the
+flames of hell; the shadows tossed in the light of the street lamp,
+and they seemed to her the snatching hands of evil ones.  If she
+had had the strength, she must have run away, and if she had had
+the breath she must have screamed aloud; but, in truth, she could
+do neither, and stood and trembled in the avenue, like an
+affrighted child.
+
+Then she saw the old man returning, and he had the bottle in his
+hand.
+
+"I have done your bidding," said he.  "I left your husband weeping
+like a child; to-night he will sleep easy."  And he held the bottle
+forth.
+
+"Before you give it me," Kokua panted, "take the good with the evil
+- ask to be delivered from your cough."
+
+"I am an old man," replied the other, "and too near the gate of the
+grave to take a favour from the devil.  But what is this?  Why do
+you not take the bottle?  Do you hesitate?"
+
+"Not hesitate!" cried Kokua.  "I am only weak.  Give me a moment.
+It is my hand resists, my flesh shrinks back from the accursed
+thing.  One moment only!"
+
+The old man looked upon Kokua kindly.  "Poor child!" said he, "you
+fear; your soul misgives you.  Well, let me keep it.  I am old, and
+can never more be happy in this world, and as for the next - "
+
+"Give it me!" gasped Kokua.  "There is your money.  Do you think I
+am so base as that?  Give me the bottle."
+
+"God bless you, child," said the old man.
+
+Kokua concealed the bottle under her holoku, said farewell to the
+old man, and walked off along the avenue, she cared not whither.
+For all roads were now the same to her, and led equally to hell.
+Sometimes she walked, and sometimes ran; sometimes she screamed out
+loud in the night, and sometimes lay by the wayside in the dust and
+wept.  All that she had heard of hell came back to her; she saw the
+flames blaze, and she smelt the smoke, and her flesh withered on
+the coals.
+
+Near day she came to her mind again, and returned to the house.  It
+was even as the old man said - Keawe slumbered like a child.  Kokua
+stood and gazed upon his face.
+
+"Now, my husband," said she, "it is your turn to sleep.  When you
+wake it will be your turn to sing and laugh.  But for poor Kokua,
+alas! that meant no evil - for poor Kokua no more sleep, no more
+singing, no more delight, whether in earth or heaven."
+
+With that she lay down in the bed by his side, and her misery was
+so extreme that she fell in a deep slumber instantly.
+
+Late in the morning her husband woke her and gave her the good
+news.  It seemed he was silly with delight, for he paid no heed to
+her distress, ill though she dissembled it.  The words stuck in her
+mouth, it mattered not; Keawe did the speaking.  She ate not a
+bite, but who was to observe it? for Keawe cleared the dish.  Kokua
+saw and heard him, like some strange thing in a dream; there were
+times when she forgot or doubted, and put her hands to her brow; to
+know herself doomed and hear her husband babble, seemed so
+monstrous.
+
+All the while Keawe was eating and talking, and planning the time
+of their return, and thanking her for saving him, and fondling her,
+and calling her the true helper after all.  He laughed at the old
+man that was fool enough to buy that bottle.
+
+"A worthy old man he seemed," Keawe said.  "But no one can judge by
+appearances.  For why did the old reprobate require the bottle?"
+
+"My husband," said Kokua, humbly, "his purpose may have been good."
+
+Keawe laughed like an angry man.
+
+"Fiddle-de-dee!" cried Keawe.  "An old rogue, I tell you; and an
+old ass to boot.  For the bottle was hard enough to sell at four
+centimes; and at three it will be quite impossible.  The margin is
+not broad enough, the thing begins to smell of scorching - brrr!"
+said he, and shuddered.  "It is true I bought it myself at a cent,
+when I knew not there were smaller coins.  I was a fool for my
+pains; there will never be found another: and whoever has that
+bottle now will carry it to the pit."
+
+"O my husband!" said Kokua.  "Is it not a terrible thing to save
+oneself by the eternal ruin of another?  It seems to me I could not
+laugh.  I would be humbled.  I would be filled with melancholy.  I
+would pray for the poor holder."
+
+Then Keawe, because he felt the truth of what she said, grew the
+more angry.  "Heighty-teighty!" cried he.  "You may be filled with
+melancholy if you please.  It is not the mind of a good wife.  If
+you thought at all of me, you would sit shamed."
+
+Thereupon he went out, and Kokua was alone.
+
+What chance had she to sell that bottle at two centimes?  None, she
+perceived.  And if she had any, here was her husband hurrying her
+away to a country where there was nothing lower than a cent.  And
+here - on the morrow of her sacrifice - was her husband leaving her
+and blaming her.
+
+She would not even try to profit by what time she had, but sat in
+the house, and now had the bottle out and viewed it with
+unutterable fear, and now, with loathing, hid it out of sight.
+
+By-and-by, Keawe came back, and would have her take a drive.
+
+"My husband, I am ill," she said.  "I am out of heart.  Excuse me,
+I can take no pleasure."
+
+Then was Keawe more wroth than ever.  With her, because he thought
+she was brooding over the case of the old man; and with himself,
+because he thought she was right, and was ashamed to be so happy.
+
+"This is your truth," cried he, "and this your affection!  Your
+husband is just saved from eternal ruin, which he encountered for
+the love of you - and you can take no pleasure!  Kokua, you have a
+disloyal heart."
+
+He went forth again furious, and wandered in the town all day.  He
+met friends, and drank with them; they hired a carriage and drove
+into the country, and there drank again.  All the time Keawe was
+ill at ease, because he was taking this pastime while his wife was
+sad, and because he knew in his heart that she was more right than
+he; and the knowledge made him drink the deeper.
+
+Now there was an old brutal Haole drinking with him, one that had
+been a boatswain of a whaler, a runaway, a digger in gold mines, a
+convict in prisons.  He had a low mind and a foul mouth; he loved
+to drink and to see others drunken; and he pressed the glass upon
+Keawe.  Soon there was no more money in the company.
+
+"Here, you!" says the boatswain, "you are rich, you have been
+always saying.  You have a bottle or some foolishness."
+
+"Yes," says Keawe, "I am rich; I will go back and get some money
+from my wife, who keeps it."
+
+"That's a bad idea, mate," said the boatswain.  "Never you trust a
+petticoat with dollars.  They're all as false as water; you keep an
+eye on her."
+
+Now, this word struck in Keawe's mind; for he was muddled with what
+he had been drinking.
+
+"I should not wonder but she was false, indeed," thought he.  "Why
+else should she be so cast down at my release?  But I will show her
+I am not the man to be fooled.  I will catch her in the act."
+
+Accordingly, when they were back in town, Keawe bade the boatswain
+wait for him at the corner, by the old calaboose, and went forward
+up the avenue alone to the door of his house.  The night had come
+again; there was a light within, but never a sound; and Keawe crept
+about the corner, opened the back door softly, and looked in.
+
+There was Kokua on the floor, the lamp at her side; before her was
+a milk-white bottle, with a round belly and a long neck; and as she
+viewed it, Kokua wrung her hands.
+
+A long time Keawe stood and looked in the doorway.  At first he was
+struck stupid; and then fear fell upon him that the bargain had
+been made amiss, and the bottle had come back to him as it came at
+San Francisco; and at that his knees were loosened, and the fumes
+of the wine departed from his head like mists off a river in the
+morning.  And then he had another thought; and it was a strange
+one, that made his cheeks to burn.
+
+"I must make sure of this," thought he.
+
+So he closed the door, and went softly round the corner again, and
+then came noisily in, as though he were but now returned.  And, lo!
+by the time he opened the front door no bottle was to be seen; and
+Kokua sat in a chair and started up like one awakened out of sleep.
+
+"I have been drinking all day and making merry," said Keawe.  "I
+have been with good companions, and now I only come back for money,
+and return to drink and carouse with them again."
+
+Both his face and voice were as stern as judgment, but Kokua was
+too troubled to observe.
+
+"You do well to use your own, my husband," said she, and her words
+trembled.
+
+"O, I do well in all things," said Keawe, and he went straight to
+the chest and took out money.  But he looked besides in the corner
+where they kept the bottle, and there was no bottle there.
+
+At that the chest heaved upon the floor like a sea-billow, and the
+house span about him like a wreath of smoke, for he saw he was lost
+now, and there was no escape.  "It is what I feared," he thought.
+"It is she who has bought it."
+
+And then he came to himself a little and rose up; but the sweat
+streamed on his face as thick as the rain and as cold as the well-
+water.
+
+"Kokua," said he, "I said to you to-day what ill became me.  Now I
+return to carouse with my jolly companions," and at that he laughed
+a little quietly.  "I will take more pleasure in the cup if you
+forgive me."
+
+She clasped his knees in a moment; she kissed his knees with
+flowing tears.
+
+"O," she cried, "I asked but a kind word!"
+
+"Let us never one think hardly of the other," said Keawe, and was
+gone out of the house.
+
+Now, the money that Keawe had taken was only some of that store of
+centime pieces they had laid in at their arrival.  It was very sure
+he had no mind to be drinking.  His wife had given her soul for
+him, now he must give his for hers; no other thought was in the
+world with him.
+
+At the corner, by the old calaboose, there was the boatswain
+waiting.
+
+"My wife has the bottle," said Keawe, "and, unless you help me to
+recover it, there can be no more money and no more liquor to-
+night."
+
+"You do not mean to say you are serious about that bottle?" cried
+the boatswain.
+
+"There is the lamp," said Keawe.  "Do I look as if I was jesting?"
+
+"That is so," said the boatswain.  "You look as serious as a
+ghost."
+
+"Well, then," said Keawe, "here are two centimes; you must go to my
+wife in the house, and offer her these for the bottle, which (if I
+am not much mistaken) she will give you instantly.  Bring it to me
+here, and I will buy it back from you for one; for that is the law
+with this bottle, that it still must be sold for a less sum.  But
+whatever you do, never breathe a word to her that you have come
+from me."
+
+"Mate, I wonder are you making a fool of me?" asked the boatswain.
+
+"It will do you no harm if I am," returned Keawe.
+
+"That is so, mate," said the boatswain.
+
+"And if you doubt me," added Keawe, "you can try.  As soon as you
+are clear of the house, wish to have your pocket full of money, or
+a bottle of the best rum, or what you please, and you will see the
+virtue of the thing."
+
+"Very well, Kanaka," says the boatswain.  "I will try; but if you
+are having your fun out of me, I will take my fun out of you with a
+belaying pin."
+
+So the whaler-man went off up the avenue; and Keawe stood and
+waited.  It was near the same spot where Kokua had waited the night
+before; but Keawe was more resolved, and never faltered in his
+purpose; only his soul was bitter with despair.
+
+It seemed a long time he had to wait before he heard a voice
+singing in the darkness of the avenue.  He knew the voice to be the
+boatswain's; but it was strange how drunken it appeared upon a
+sudden.
+
+Next, the man himself came stumbling into the light of the lamp.
+He had the devil's bottle buttoned in his coat; another bottle was
+in his hand; and even as he came in view he raised it to his mouth
+and drank.
+
+"You have it," said Keawe.  "I see that."
+
+"Hands off!" cried the boatswain, jumping back.  "Take a step near
+me, and I'll smash your mouth.  You thought you could make a cat's-
+paw of me, did you?"
+
+"What do you mean?" cried Keawe.
+
+"Mean?" cried the boatswain.  "This is a pretty good bottle, this
+is; that's what I mean.  How I got it for two centimes I can't make
+out; but I'm sure you shan't have it for one."
+
+"You mean you won't sell?" gasped Keawe.
+
+"No, SIR!" cried the boatswain.  "But I'll give you a drink of the
+rum, if you like."
+
+"I tell you," said Keawe, "the man who has that bottle goes to
+hell."
+
+"I reckon I'm going anyway," returned the sailor; "and this
+bottle's the best thing to go with I've struck yet.  No, sir!" he
+cried again, "this is my bottle now, and you can go and fish for
+another."
+
+"Can this be true?" Keawe cried.  "For your own sake, I beseech
+you, sell it me!"
+
+"I don't value any of your talk," replied the boatswain.  "You
+thought I was a flat; now you see I'm not; and there's an end.  If
+you won't have a swallow of the rum, I'll have one myself.  Here's
+your health, and good-night to you!"
+
+So off he went down the avenue towards town, and there goes the
+bottle out of the story.
+
+But Keawe ran to Kokua light as the wind; and great was their joy
+that night; and great, since then, has been the peace of all their
+days in the Bright House.
+
+
+
+
+THE ISLE OF VOICES.
+
+
+KEOLA was married with Lehua, daughter of Kalamake, the wise man of
+Molokai, and he kept his dwelling with the father of his wife.
+There was no man more cunning than that prophet; he read the stars,
+he could divine by the bodies of the dead, and by the means of evil
+creatures: he could go alone into the highest parts of the
+mountain, into the region of the hobgoblins, and there he would lay
+snares to entrap the spirits of the ancient.
+
+For this reason no man was more consulted in all the Kingdom of
+Hawaii.  Prudent people bought, and sold, and married, and laid out
+their lives by his counsels; and the King had him twice to Kona to
+seek the treasures of Kamehameha.  Neither was any man more feared:
+of his enemies, some had dwindled in sickness by the virtue of his
+incantations, and some had been spirited away, the life and the
+clay both, so that folk looked in vain for so much as a bone of
+their bodies.  It was rumoured that he had the art or the gift of
+the old heroes.  Men had seen him at night upon the mountains,
+stepping from one cliff to the next; they had seen him walking in
+the high forest, and his head and shoulders were above the trees.
+
+This Kalamake was a strange man to see.  He was come of the best
+blood in Molokai and Maui, of a pure descent; and yet he was more
+white to look upon than any foreigner: his hair the colour of dry
+grass, and his eyes red and very blind, so that "Blind as Kalamake,
+that can see across to-morrow," was a byword in the islands.
+
+Of all these doings of his father-in-law, Keola knew a little by
+the common repute, a little more he suspected, and the rest he
+ignored.  But there was one thing troubled him.  Kalamake was a man
+that spared for nothing, whether to eat or to drink, or to wear;
+and for all he paid in bright new dollars.  "Bright as Kalamake's
+dollars," was another saying in the Eight Isles.  Yet he neither
+sold, nor planted, nor took hire - only now and then from his
+sorceries - and there was no source conceivable for so much silver
+coin.
+
+It chanced one day Keola's wife was gone upon a visit to
+Kaunakakai, on the lee side of the island, and the men were forth
+at the sea-fishing.  But Keola was an idle dog, and he lay in the
+verandah and watched the surf beat on the shore and the birds fly
+about the cliff.  It was a chief thought with him always - the
+thought of the bright dollars.  When he lay down to bed he would be
+wondering why they were so many, and when he woke at morn he would
+be wondering why they were all new; and the thing was never absent
+from his mind.  But this day of all days he made sure in his heart
+of some discovery.  For it seems he had observed the place where
+Kalamake kept his treasure, which was a lock-fast desk against the
+parlour wall, under the print of Kamehameha the Fifth, and a
+photograph of Queen Victoria with her crown; and it seems again
+that, no later than the night before, he found occasion to look in,
+and behold! the bag lay there empty.  And this was the day of the
+steamer; he could see her smoke off Kalaupapa; and she must soon
+arrive with a month's goods, tinned salmon and gin, and all manner
+of rare luxuries for Kalamake.
+
+"Now if he can pay for his goods to-day," Keola thought, "I shall
+know for certain that the man is a warlock, and the dollars come
+out of the Devil's pocket."
+
+While he was so thinking, there was his father-in-law behind him,
+looking vexed.
+
+"Is that the steamer?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said Keola.  "She has but to call at Pelekunu, and then she
+will be here."
+
+"There is no help for it then," returned Kalamake, "and I must take
+you in my confidence, Keola, for the lack of anyone better.  Come
+here within the house."
+
+So they stepped together into the parlour, which was a very fine
+room, papered and hung with prints, and furnished with a rocking-
+chair, and a table and a sofa in the European style.  There was a
+shelf of books besides, and a family Bible in the midst of the
+table, and the lock-fast writing desk against the wall; so that
+anyone could see it was the house of a man of substance.
+
+Kalamake made Keola close the shutters of the windows, while he
+himself locked all the doors and set open the lid of the desk.
+From this he brought forth a pair of necklaces hung with charms and
+shells, a bundle of dried herbs, and the dried leaves of trees, and
+a green branch of palm.
+
+"What I am about," said he, "is a thing beyond wonder.  The men of
+old were wise; they wrought marvels, and this among the rest; but
+that was at night, in the dark, under the fit stars and in the
+desert.  The same will I do here in my own house and under the
+plain eye of day."
+
+So saying, he put the bible under the cushion of the sofa so that
+it was all covered, brought out from the same place a mat of a
+wonderfully fine texture, and heaped the herbs and leaves on sand
+in a tin pan.  And then he and Keola put on the necklaces and took
+their stand upon the opposite corners of the mat.
+
+"The time comes," said the warlock; "be not afraid."
+
+With that he set flame to the herbs, and began to mutter and wave
+the branch of palm.  At first the light was dim because of the
+closed shutters; but the herbs caught strongly afire, and the
+flames beat upon Keola, and the room glowed with the burning; and
+next the smoke rose and made his head swim and his eyes darken, and
+the sound of Kalamake muttering ran in his ears.  And suddenly, to
+the mat on which they were standing came a snatch or twitch, that
+seemed to be more swift than lightning.  In the same wink the room
+was gone and the house, the breath all beaten from Keola's body.
+Volumes of light rolled upon his eyes and head, and he found
+himself transported to a beach of the sea under a strong sun, with
+a great surf roaring: he and the warlock standing there on the same
+mat, speechless, gasping and grasping at one another, and passing
+their hands before their eyes.
+
+"What was this?" cried Keola, who came to himself the first,
+because he was the younger.  "The pang of it was like death."
+
+"It matters not," panted Kalamake.  "It is now done."
+
+"And, in the name of God, where are we?" cried Keola.
+
+"That is not the question," replied the sorcerer.  "Being here, we
+have matter in our hands, and that we must attend to.  Go, while I
+recover my breath, into the borders of the wood, and bring me the
+leaves of such and such a herb, and such and such a tree, which you
+will find to grow there plentifully - three handfuls of each.  And
+be speedy.  We must be home again before the steamer comes; it
+would seem strange if we had disappeared."  And he sat on the sand
+and panted.
+
+Keola went up the beach, which was of shining sand and coral,
+strewn with singular shells; and he thought in his heart -
+
+"How do I not know this beach?  I will come here again and gather
+shells."
+
+In front of him was a line of palms against the sky; not like the
+palms of the Eight Islands, but tall and fresh and beautiful, and
+hanging out withered fans like gold among the green, and he thought
+in his heart -
+
+"It is strange I should not have found this grove.  I will come
+here again, when it is warm, to sleep."  And he thought, "How warm
+it has grown suddenly!"  For it was winter in Hawaii, and the day
+had been chill.  And he thought also, "Where are the grey
+mountains?  And where is the high cliff with the hanging forest and
+the wheeling birds?"  And the more he considered, the less he might
+conceive in what quarter of the islands he was fallen.
+
+In the border of the grove, where it met the beach, the herb was
+growing, but the tree further back.  Now, as Keola went toward the
+tree, he was aware of a young woman who had nothing on her body but
+a belt of leaves.
+
+"Well!" thought Keola, "they are not very particular about their
+dress in this part of the country."  And he paused, supposing she
+would observe him and escape; and seeing that she still looked
+before her, stood and hummed aloud.  Up she leaped at the sound.
+Her face was ashen; she looked this way and that, and her mouth
+gaped with the terror of her soul.  But it was a strange thing that
+her eyes did not rest upon Keola.
+
+"Good day," said he.  "You need not be so frightened; I will not
+eat you."  And he had scarce opened his mouth before the young
+woman fled into the bush.
+
+"These are strange manners," thought Keola.  And, not thinking what
+he did, ran after her.
+
+As she ran, the girl kept crying in some speech that was not
+practised in Hawaii, yet some of the words were the same, and he
+knew she kept calling and warning others.  And presently he saw
+more people running - men, women and children, one with another,
+all running and crying like people at a fire.  And with that he
+began to grow afraid himself, and returned to Kalamake bringing the
+leaves.  Him he told what he had seen.
+
+"You must pay no heed," said Kalamake.  "All this is like a dream
+and shadows.  All will disappear and be forgotten."
+
+"It seemed none saw me," said Keola.
+
+"And none did," replied the sorcerer.  "We walk here in the broad
+sun invisible by reason of these charms.  Yet they hear us; and
+therefore it is well to speak softly, as I do."
+
+With that he made a circle round the mat with stones, and in the
+midst he set the leaves.
+
+"It will be your part," said he, "to keep the leaves alight, and
+feed the fire slowly.  While they blaze (which is but for a little
+moment) I must do my errand; and before the ashes blacken, the same
+power that brought us carries us away.  Be ready now with the
+match; and do you call me in good time lest the flames burn out and
+I be left."
+
+As soon as the leaves caught, the sorcerer leaped like a deer out
+of the circle, and began to race along the beach like a hound that
+has been bathing.  As he ran, he kept stooping to snatch shells;
+and it seemed to Keola that they glittered as he took them.  The
+leaves blazed with a clear flame that consumed them swiftly; and
+presently Keola had but a handful left, and the sorcerer was far
+off, running and stopping.
+
+"Back!" cried Keola.  "Back!  The leaves are near done."
+
+At that Kalamake turned, and if he had run before, now he flew.
+But fast as he ran, the leaves burned faster.  The flame was ready
+to expire when, with a great leap, he bounded on the mat.  The wind
+of his leaping blew it out; and with that the beach was gone, and
+the sun and the sea, and they stood once more in the dimness of the
+shuttered parlour, and were once more shaken and blinded; and on
+the mat betwixt them lay a pile of shining dollars.  Keola ran to
+the shutters; and there was the steamer tossing in the swell close
+in.
+
+The same night Kalamake took his son-in-law apart, and gave him
+five dollars in his hand.
+
+"Keola," said he, "if you are a wise man (which I am doubtful of)
+you will think you slept this afternoon on the verandah, and
+dreamed as you were sleeping.  I am a man of few words, and I have
+for my helpers people of short memories."
+
+Never a word more said Kalamake, nor referred again to that affair.
+But it ran all the while in Keola's head - if he were lazy before,
+he would now do nothing.
+
+"Why should I work," thought he, "when I have a father-in-law who
+makes dollars of sea-shells?"
+
+Presently his share was spent.  He spent it all upon fine clothes.
+And then he was sorry:
+
+"For," thought he, "I had done better to have bought a concertina,
+with which I might have entertained myself all day long."  And then
+he began to grow vexed with Kalamake.
+
+"This man has the soul of a dog," thought he.  "He can gather
+dollars when he pleases on the beach, and he leaves me to pine for
+a concertina!  Let him beware: I am no child, I am as cunning as
+he, and hold his secret."  With that he spoke to his wife Lehua,
+and complained of her father's manners.
+
+"I would let my father be," said Lehua.  "He is a dangerous man to
+cross."
+
+"I care that for him!" cried Keola; and snapped his fingers.  "I
+have him by the nose.  I can make him do what I please."  And he
+told Lehua the story.
+
+But she shook her head.
+
+"You may do what you like," said she; "but as sure as you thwart my
+father, you will be no more heard of.  Think of this person, and
+that person; think of Hua, who was a noble of the House of
+Representatives, and went to Honolulu every year; and not a bone or
+a hair of him was found.  Remember Kamau, and how he wasted to a
+thread, so that his wife lifted him with one hand.  Keola, you are
+a baby in my father's hands; he will take you with his thumb and
+finger and eat you like a shrimp."
+
+Now Keola was truly afraid of Kalamake, but he was vain too; and
+these words of his wife's incensed him.
+
+"Very well," said he, "if that is what you think of me, I will show
+how much you are deceived."  And he went straight to where his
+father-in-law was sitting in the parlour.
+
+"Kalamake," said he, "I want a concertina."
+
+"Do you, indeed?" said Kalamake.
+
+"Yes," said he, "and I may as well tell you plainly, I mean to have
+it.  A man who picks up dollars on the beach can certainly afford a
+concertina."
+
+"I had no idea you had so much spirit," replied the sorcerer.  "I
+thought you were a timid, useless lad, and I cannot describe how
+much pleased I am to find I was mistaken.  Now I begin to think I
+may have found an assistant and successor in my difficult business.
+A concertina?  You shall have the best in Honolulu.  And to-night,
+as soon as it is dark, you and I will go and find the money."
+
+"Shall we return to the beach?" asked Keola.
+
+"No, no!" replied Kalamake; "you must begin to learn more of my
+secrets.  Last time I taught you to pick shells; this time I shall
+teach you to catch fish.  Are you strong enough to launch Pili's
+boat?"
+
+"I think I am," returned Keola.  "But why should we not take your
+own, which is afloat already?"
+
+"I have a reason which you will understand thoroughly before to-
+morrow," said Kalamake.  "Pili's boat is the better suited for my
+purpose.  So, if you please, let us meet there as soon as it is
+dark; and in the meanwhile, let us keep our own counsel, for there
+is no cause to let the family into our business."
+
+Honey is not more sweet than was the voice of Kalamake, and Keola
+could scarce contain his satisfaction.
+
+"I might have had my concertina weeks ago," thought he, "and there
+is nothing needed in this world but a little courage."
+
+Presently after he spied Lehua weeping, and was half in a mind to
+tell her all was well.
+
+"But no," thinks he; "I shall wait till I can show her the
+concertina; we shall see what the chit will do then.  Perhaps she
+will understand in the future that her husband is a man of some
+intelligence."
+
+As soon as it was dark father and son-in-law launched Pili's boat
+and set the sail.  There was a great sea, and it blew strong from
+the leeward; but the boat was swift and light and dry, and skimmed
+the waves.  The wizard had a lantern, which he lit and held with
+his finger through the ring; and the two sat in the stern and
+smoked cigars, of which Kalamake had always a provision, and spoke
+like friends of magic and the great sums of money which they could
+make by its exercise, and what they should buy first, and what
+second; and Kalamake talked like a father.
+
+Presently he looked all about, and above him at the stars, and back
+at the island, which was already three parts sunk under the sea,
+and he seemed to consider ripely his position.
+
+"Look!" says he, "there is Molokai already far behind us, and Maui
+like a cloud; and by the bearing of these three stars I know I am
+come where I desire.  This part of the sea is called the Sea of the
+Dead.  It is in this place extraordinarily deep, and the floor is
+all covered with the bones of men, and in the holes of this part
+gods and goblins keep their habitation.  The flow of the sea is to
+the north, stronger than a shark can swim, and any man who shall
+here be thrown out of a ship it bears away like a wild horse into
+the uttermost ocean.  Presently he is spent and goes down, and his
+bones are scattered with the rest, and the gods devour his spirit."
+
+Fear came on Keola at the words, and he looked, and by the light of
+the stars and the lantern, the warlock seemed to change.
+
+"What ails you?" cried Keola, quick and sharp.
+
+"It is not I who am ailing," said the wizard; "but there is one
+here very sick."
+
+With that he changed his grasp upon the lantern, and, behold I as
+he drew his finger from the ring, the finger stuck and the ring was
+burst, and his hand was grown to be of the bigness of three.
+
+At that sight Keola screamed and covered his face.
+
+But Kalamake held up the lantern.  "Look rather at my face!" said
+he - and his head was huge as a barrel; and still he grew and grew
+as a cloud grows on a mountain, and Keola sat before him screaming,
+and the boat raced on the great seas.
+
+"And now," said the wizard, "what do you think about that
+concertina? and are you sure you would not rather have a flute?
+No?" says he; "that is well, for I do not like my family to be
+changeable of purpose.  But I begin to think I had better get out
+of this paltry boat, for my bulk swells to a very unusual degree,
+and if we are not the more careful, she will presently be swamped."
+
+With that he threw his legs over the side.  Even as he did so, the
+greatness of the man grew thirty-fold and forty-fold as swift as
+sight or thinking, so that he stood in the deep seas to the
+armpits, and his head and shoulders rose like a high isle, and the
+swell beat and burst upon his bosom, as it beats and breaks against
+a cliff.  The boat ran still to the north, but he reached out his
+hand, and took the gunwale by the finger and thumb, and broke the
+side like a biscuit, and Keola was spilled into the sea.  And the
+pieces of the boat the sorcerer crushed in the hollow of his hand
+and flung miles away into the night.
+
+"Excuse me taking the lantern," said he; "for I have a long wade
+before me, and the land is far, and the bottom of the sea uneven,
+and I feel the bones under my toes."
+
+And he turned and went off walking with great strides; and as often
+as Keola sank in the trough he could see him no longer; but as
+often as he was heaved upon the crest, there he was striding and
+dwindling, and he held the lamp high over his head, and the waves
+broke white about him as he went.
+
+Since first the islands were fished out of the sea, there was never
+a man so terrified as this Keola.  He swam indeed, but he swam as
+puppies swim when they are cast in to drown, and knew not
+wherefore.  He could but think of the hugeness of the swelling of
+the warlock, of that face which was great as a mountain, of those
+shoulders that were broad as an isle, and of the seas that beat on
+them in vain.  He thought, too, of the concertina, and shame took
+hold upon him; and of the dead men's bones, and fear shook him.
+
+Of a sudden he was aware of something dark against the stars that
+tossed, and a light below, and a brightness of the cloven sea; and
+he heard speech of men.  He cried out aloud and a voice answered;
+and in a twinkling the bows of a ship hung above him on a wave like
+a thing balanced, and swooped down.  He caught with his two hands
+in the chains of her, and the next moment was buried in the rushing
+seas, and the next hauled on board by seamen.
+
+They gave him gin and biscuit and dry clothes, and asked him how he
+came where they found him, and whether the light which they had
+seen was the lighthouse, Lae o Ka Laau.  But Keola knew white men
+are like children and only believe their own stories; so about
+himself he told them what he pleased, and as for the light (which
+was Kalamake's lantern) he vowed he had seen none.
+
+This ship was a schooner bound for Honolulu, and then to trade in
+the low islands; and by a very good chance for Keola she had lost a
+man off the bowsprit in a squall.  It was no use talking.  Keola
+durst not stay in the Eight Islands.  Word goes so quickly, and all
+men are so fond to talk and carry news, that if he hid in the north
+end of Kauai or in the south end of Kau, the wizard would have wind
+of it before a month, and he must perish.  So he did what seemed
+the most prudent, and shipped sailor in the place of the man who
+had been drowned.
+
+In some ways the ship was a good place.  The food was
+extraordinarily rich and plenty, with biscuits and salt beef every
+day, and pea-soup and puddings made of flour and suet twice a week,
+so that Keola grew fat.  The captain also was a good man, and the
+crew no worse than other whites.  The trouble was the mate, who was
+the most difficult man to please Keola had ever met with, and beat
+and cursed him daily, both for what he did and what he did not.
+The blows that he dealt were very sore, for he was strong; and the
+words he used were very unpalatable, for Keola was come of a good
+family and accustomed to respect.  And what was the worst of all,
+whenever Keola found a chance to sleep, there was the mate awake
+and stirring him up with a rope's end.  Keola saw it would never
+do; and he made up his mind to run away.
+
+They were about a month out from Honolulu when they made the land.
+It was a fine starry night, the sea was smooth as well as the sky
+fair; it blew a steady trade; and there was the island on their
+weather bow, a ribbon of palm trees lying flat along the sea.  The
+captain and the mate looked at it with the night glass, and named
+the name of it, and talked of it, beside the wheel where Keola was
+steering.  It seemed it was an isle where no traders came.  By the
+captain's way, it was an isle besides where no man dwelt; but the
+mate thought otherwise.
+
+"I don't give a cent for the directory," said he, "I've been past
+here one night in the schooner EUGENIE; it was just such a night as
+this; they were fishing with torches, and the beach was thick with
+lights like a town."
+
+"Well, well," says the captain, "its steep-to, that's the great
+point; and there ain't any outlying dangers by the chart, so we'll
+just hug the lee side of it.  Keep her romping full, don't I tell
+you!" he cried to Keola, who was listening so hard that he forgot
+to steer.
+
+And the mate cursed him, and swore that Kanaka was for no use in
+the world, and if he got started after him with a belaying pin, it
+would be a cold day for Keola.
+
+And so the captain and mate lay down on the house together, and
+Keola was left to himself.
+
+"This island will do very well for me," he thought; "if no traders
+deal there, the mate will never come.  And as for Kalamake, it is
+not possible he can ever get as far as this."
+
+With that he kept edging the schooner nearer in.  He had to do this
+quietly, for it was the trouble with these white men, and above all
+with the mate, that you could never be sure of them; they would all
+be sleeping sound, or else pretending, and if a sail shook, they
+would jump to their feet and fall on you with a rope's end.  So
+Keola edged her up little by little, and kept all drawing.  And
+presently the land was close on board, and the sound of the sea on
+the sides of it grew loud.
+
+With that, the mate sat up suddenly upon the house.
+
+"What are you doing?" he roars.  "You'll have the ship ashore!"
+
+And he made one bound for Keola, and Keola made another clean over
+the rail and plump into the starry sea.  When he came up again, the
+schooner had payed off on her true course, and the mate stood by
+the wheel himself, and Keola heard him cursing.  The sea was smooth
+under the lee of the island; it was warm besides, and Keola had his
+sailor's knife, so he had no fear of sharks.  A little way before
+him the trees stopped; there was a break in the line of the land
+like the mouth of a harbour; and the tide, which was then flowing,
+took him up and carried him through.  One minute he was without,
+and the next within: had floated there in a wide shallow water,
+bright with ten thousand stars, and all about him was the ring of
+the land, with its string of palm trees.  And he was amazed,
+because this was a kind of island he had never heard of.
+
+The time of Keola in that place was in two periods - the period
+when he was alone, and the period when he was there with the tribe.
+At first he sought everywhere and found no man; only some houses
+standing in a hamlet, and the marks of fires.  But the ashes of the
+fires were cold and the rains had washed them away; and the winds
+had blown, and some of the huts were overthrown.  It was here he
+took his dwelling, and he made a fire drill, and a shell hook, and
+fished and cooked his fish, and climbed after green cocoanuts, the
+juice of which he drank, for in all the isle there was no water.
+The days were long to him, and the nights terrifying.  He made a
+lamp of cocoa-shell, and drew the oil of the ripe nuts, and made a
+wick of fibre; and when evening came he closed up his hut, and lit
+his lamp, and lay and trembled till morning.  Many a time he
+thought in his heart he would have been better in the bottom of the
+sea, his bones rolling there with the others.
+
+All this while he kept by the inside of the island, for the huts
+were on the shore of the lagoon, and it was there the palms grew
+best, and the lagoon itself abounded with good fish.  And to the
+outer slide he went once only, and he looked but the once at the
+beach of the ocean, and came away shaking.  For the look of it,
+with its bright sand, and strewn shells, and strong sun and surf,
+went sore against his inclination.
+
+"It cannot be," he thought, "and yet it is very like.  And how do I
+know?  These white men, although they pretend to know where they
+are sailing, must take their chance like other people.  So that
+after all we may have sailed in a circle, and I may be quite near
+to Molokai, and this may be the very beach where my father-in-law
+gathers his dollars."
+
+So after that he was prudent, and kept to the land side.
+
+It was perhaps a month later, when the people of the place arrived
+- the fill of six great boats.  They were a fine race of men, and
+spoke a tongue that sounded very different from the tongue of
+Hawaii, but so many of the words were the same that it was not
+difficult to understand.  The men besides were very courteous, and
+the women very towardly; and they made Keola welcome, and built him
+a house, and gave him a wife; and what surprised him the most, he
+was never sent to work with the young men.
+
+And now Keola had three periods.  First he had a period of being
+very sad, and then he had a period when he was pretty merry.  Last
+of all came the third, when he was the most terrified man in the
+four oceans.
+
+The cause of the first period was the girl he had to wife.  He was
+in doubt about the island, and he might have been in doubt about
+the speech, of which he had heard so little when he came there with
+the wizard on the mat.  But about his wife there was no mistake
+conceivable, for she was the same girl that ran from him crying in
+the wood.  So he had sailed all this way, and might as well have
+stayed in Molokai; and had left home and wife and all his friends
+for no other cause but to escape his enemy, and the place he had
+come to was that wizard's hunting ground, and the shore where he
+walked invisible.  It was at this period when he kept the most
+close to the lagoon side, and as far as he dared, abode in the
+cover of his hut.
+
+The cause of the second period was talk he heard from his wife and
+the chief islanders.  Keola himself said little.  He was never so
+sure of his new friends, for he judged they were too civil to be
+wholesome, and since he had grown better acquainted with his
+father-in-law the man had grown more cautious.  So he told them
+nothing of himself, but only his name and descent, and that he came
+from the Eight Islands, and what fine islands they were; and about
+the king's palace in Honolulu, and how he was a chief friend of the
+king and the missionaries.  But he put many questions and learned
+much.  The island where he was was called the Isle of Voices; it
+belonged to the tribe, but they made their home upon another, three
+hours' sail to the southward.  There they lived and had their
+permanent houses, and it was a rich island, where were eggs and
+chickens and pigs, and ships came trading with rum and tobacco.  It
+was there the schooner had gone after Keola deserted; there, too,
+the mate had died, like the fool of a white man as he was.  It
+seems, when the ship came, it was the beginning of the sickly
+season in that isle, when the fish of the lagoon are poisonous, and
+all who eat of them swell up and die.  The mate was told of it; he
+saw the boats preparing, because in that season the people leave
+that island and sail to the Isle of Voices; but he was a fool of a
+white man, who would believe no stories but his own, and he caught
+one of these fish, cooked it and ate it, and swelled up and died,
+which was good news to Keola.  As for the Isle of Voices, it lay
+solitary the most part of the year; only now and then a boat's crew
+came for copra, and in the bad season, when the fish at the main
+isle were poisonous, the tribe dwelt there in a body.  It had its
+name from a marvel, for it seemed the seaside of it was all beset
+with invisible devils; day and night you heard them talking one
+with another in strange tongues; day and night little fires blazed
+up and were extinguished on the beach; and what was the cause of
+these doings no man might conceive.  Keola asked them if it were
+the same in their own island where they stayed, and they told him
+no, not there; nor yet in any other of some hundred isles that lay
+all about them in that sea; but it was a thing peculiar to the Isle
+of Voices.  They told him also that these fires and voices were
+ever on the seaside and in the seaward fringes of the wood, and a
+man might dwell by the lagoon two thousand years (if he could live
+so long) and never be any way troubled; and even on the seaside the
+devils did no harm if let alone.  Only once a chief had cast a
+spear at one of the voices, and the same night he fell out of a
+cocoanut palm and was killed.
+
+Keola thought a good bit with himself.  He saw he would be all
+right when the tribe returned to the main island, and right enough
+where he was, if he kept by the lagoon, yet he had a mind to make
+things righter if he could.  So he told the high chief he had once
+been in an isle that was pestered the same way, and the folk had
+found a means to cure that trouble.
+
+"There was a tree growing in the bush there," says he, "and it
+seems these devils came to get the leaves of it.  So the people of
+the isle cut down the tree wherever it was found, and the devils
+came no more."
+
+They asked what kind of tree this was, and he showed them the tree
+of which Kalamake burned the leaves.  They found it hard to
+believe, yet the idea tickled them.  Night after night the old men
+debated it in their councils, but the high chief (though he was a
+brave man) was afraid of the matter, and reminded them daily of the
+chief who cast a spear against the voices and was killed, and the
+thought of that brought all to a stand again.
+
+Though he could not yet bring about the destruction of the trees,
+Keola was well enough pleased, and began to look about him and take
+pleasure in his days; and, among other things, he was the kinder to
+his wife, so that the girl began to love him greatly.  One day he
+came to the hut, and she lay on the ground lamenting.
+
+"Why," said Keola, "what is wrong with you now?"
+
+She declared it was nothing.
+
+The same night she woke him.  The lamp burned very low, but he saw
+by her face she was in sorrow.
+
+"Keola," she said, "put your ear to my mouth that I may whisper,
+for no one must hear us.  Two days before the boats begin to be got
+ready, go you to the sea-side of the isle and lie in a thicket.  We
+shall choose that place before-hand, you and I; and hide food; and
+every night I shall come near by there singing.  So when a night
+comes and you do not hear me, you shall know we are clean gone out
+of the island, and you may come forth again in safety."
+
+The soul of Keola died within him.
+
+"What is this?" he cried.  "I cannot live among devils.  I will not
+be left behind upon this isle.  I am dying to leave it."
+
+"You will never leave it alive, my poor Keola," said the girl; "for
+to tell you the truth, my people are eaters of men; but this they
+keep secret.  And the reason they will kill you before we leave is
+because in our island ships come, and Donat-Kimaran comes and talks
+for the French, and there is a white trader there in a house with a
+verandah, and a catechist.  Oh, that is a fine place indeed!  The
+trader has barrels filled with flour, and a French warship once
+came in the lagoon and gave everybody wine and biscuit.  Ah, my
+poor Keola, I wish I could take you there, for great is my love to
+you, and it is the finest place in the seas except Papeete."
+
+So now Keola was the most terrified man in the four oceans.  He had
+heard tell of eaters of men in the south islands, and the thing had
+always been a fear to him; and here it was knocking at his door.
+He had heard besides, by travellers, of their practices, and how
+when they are in a mind to eat a man, they cherish and fondle him
+like a mother with a favourite baby.  And he saw this must be his
+own case; and that was why he had been housed, and fed, and wived,
+and liberated from all work; and why the old men and the chiefs
+discoursed with him like a person of weight.  So he lay on his bed
+and railed upon his destiny; and the flesh curdled on his bones.
+
+The next day the people of the tribe were very civil, as their way
+was.  They were elegant speakers, and they made beautiful poetry,
+and jested at meals, so that a missionary must have died laughing.
+It was little enough Keola cared for their fine ways; all he saw
+was the white teeth shining in their mouths, and his gorge rose at
+the sight; and when they were done eating, he went and lay in the
+bush like a dead man.
+
+The next day it was the same, and then his wife followed him.
+
+"Keola," she said, "if you do not eat, I tell you plainly you will
+be killed and cooked to-morrow.  Some of the old chiefs are
+murmuring already.  They think you are fallen sick and must lose
+flesh."
+
+With that Keola got to his feet, and anger burned in him.
+
+"It is little I care one way or the other," said he.  "I am between
+the devil and the deep sea.  Since die I must, let me die the
+quickest way; and since I must be eaten at the best of it, let me
+rather be eaten by hobgoblins than by men.  Farewell," said he, and
+he left her standing, and walked to the sea-side of that island.
+
+It was all bare in the strong sun; there was no sign of man, only
+the beach was trodden, and all about him as he went, the voices
+talked and whispered, and the little fires sprang up and burned
+down.  All tongues of the earth were spoken there; the French, the
+Dutch, the Russian, the Tamil, the Chinese.  Whatever land knew
+sorcery, there were some of its people whispering in Keola's ear.
+That beach was thick as a cried fair, yet no man seen; and as he
+walked he saw the shells vanish before him, and no man to pick them
+up.  I think the devil would have been afraid to be alone in such a
+company; but Keola was past fear and courted death.  When the fires
+sprang up, he charged for them like a bull.  Bodiless voices called
+to and fro; unseen hands poured sand upon the flames; and they were
+gone from the beach before he reached them.
+
+"It is plain Kalamake is not here," he thought, "or I must have
+been killed long since."
+
+With that he sat him down in the margin of the wood, for he was
+tired, and put his chin upon his hands.  The business before his
+eyes continued: the beach babbled with voices, and the fires sprang
+up and sank, and the shells vanished and were renewed again even
+while he looked.
+
+"It was a by-day when I was here before," he thought, "for it was
+nothing to this."
+
+And his head was dizzy with the thought of these millions and
+millions of dollars, and all these hundreds and hundreds of persons
+culling them upon the beach and flying in the air higher and
+swifter than eagles.
+
+"And to think how they have fooled me with their talk of mints,"
+says he, "and that money was made there, when it is clear that all
+the new coin in all the world is gathered on these sands!  But I
+will know better the next time!" said he.
+
+And at last, he knew not very well how or when, sleep feel on
+Keola, and he forgot the island and all his sorrows.
+
+Early the next day, before the sun was yet up, a bustle woke him.
+He awoke in fear, for he thought the tribe had caught him napping:
+but it was no such matter.  Only, on the beach in front of him, the
+bodiless voices called and shouted one upon another, and it seemed
+they all passed and swept beside him up the coast of the island.
+
+"What is afoot now?" thinks Keola.  And it was plain to him it was
+something beyond ordinary, for the fires were not lighted nor the
+shells taken, but the bodiless voices kept posting up the beach,
+and hailing and dying away; and others following, and by the sound
+of them these wizards should be angry.
+
+"It is not me they are angry at," thought Keola, "for they pass me
+close."
+
+As when hounds go by, or horses in a race, or city folk coursing to
+a fire, and all men join and follow after, so it was now with
+Keola; and he knew not what he did, nor why he did it, but there,
+lo and behold! he was running with the voices.
+
+So he turned one point of the island, and this brought him in view
+of a second; and there he remembered the wizard trees to have been
+growing by the score together in a wood.  From this point there
+went up a hubbub of men crying not to be described; and by the
+sound of them, those that he ran with shaped their course for the
+same quarter.  A little nearer, and there began to mingle with the
+outcry the crash of many axes.  And at this a thought came at last
+into his mind that the high chief had consented; that the men of
+the tribe had set-to cutting down these trees; that word had gone
+about the isle from sorcerer to sorcerer, and these were all now
+assembling to defend their trees.  Desire of strange things swept
+him on.  He posted with the voices, crossed the beach, and came
+into the borders of the wood, and stood astonished.  One tree had
+fallen, others were part hewed away.  There was the tribe
+clustered.  They were back to back, and bodies lay, and blood
+flowed among their feet.  The hue of fear was on all their faces;
+their voices went up to heaven shrill as a weasel's cry.
+
+Have you seen a child when he is all alone and has a wooden sword,
+and fights, leaping and hewing with the empty air?  Even so the
+man-eaters huddled back to back, and heaved up their axes, and laid
+on, and screamed as they laid on, and behold! no man to contend
+with them! only here and there Keola saw an axe swinging over
+against them without hands; and time and again a man of the tribe
+would fall before it, clove in twain or burst asunder, and his soul
+sped howling.
+
+For awhile Keola looked upon this prodigy like one that dreams, and
+then fear took him by the midst as sharp as death, that he should
+behold such doings.  Even in that same flash the high chief of the
+clan espied him standing, and pointed and called out his name.
+Thereat the whole tribe saw him also, and their eyes flashed, and
+their teeth clashed.
+
+"I am too long here," thought Keola, and ran further out of the
+wood and down the beach, not caring whither.
+
+"Keola!" said, a voice close by upon the empty sand.
+
+"Lehua! is that you?" he cried, and gasped, and looked in vain for
+her; but by the eyesight he was stark alone.
+
+"I saw you pass before," the voice answered: "but you would not
+hear me.  Quick! get the leaves and the herbs, and let us free."
+
+"You are there with the mat?" he asked.
+
+"Here, at your side;" said she.  And he felt her arms about him.
+"Quick! the leaves and the herbs, before my father can get back!"
+
+So Keola ran for his life, and fetched the wizard fuel; and Lehua
+guided him back, and set his feet upon the mat, and made the fire.
+All the time of its burning, the sound of the battle towered out of
+the wood; the wizards and the man-eaters hard at fight; the
+wizards, the viewless ones, roaring out aloud like bulls upon a
+mountain, and the men of the tribe replying shrill and savage out
+of the terror of their souls.  And all the time of the burning,
+Keola stood there and listened, and shook, and watched how the
+unseen hands of Lehua poured the leaves.  She poured them fast, and
+the flame burned high, and scorched Keola's hands; and she speeded
+and blew the burning with her breath.  The last leaf was eaten, the
+flame fell, and the shock followed, and there were Keola and Lehua
+in the room at home.
+
+Now, when Keola could see his wife at last he was mighty pleased,
+and he was mighty pleased to be home again in Molokai and sit down
+beside a bowl of poi - for they make no poi on board ships, and
+there was none in the Isle of Voices - and he was out of the body
+with pleasure to be clean escaped out of the hands of the eaters of
+men.  But there was another matter not so clear, and Lehua and
+Keola talked of it all night and were troubled.  There was Kalamake
+left upon the isle.  If, by the blessing of God, he could but stick
+there, all were well; but should he escape and return to Molokai,
+it would be an ill day for his daughter and her husband.  They
+spoke of his gift of swelling, and whether he could wade that
+distance in the seas.  But Keola knew by this time where that
+island was - and that is to say, in the Low or Dangerous
+Archipelago.  So they fetched the atlas and looked upon the
+distance in the map, and by what they could make of it, it seemed a
+far way for an old gentleman to walk.  Still, it would not do to
+make too sure of a warlock like Kalamake, and they determined at
+last to take counsel of a white missionary.
+
+So the first one that came by, Keola told him everything.  And the
+missionary was very sharp on him for taking the second wife in the
+low island; but for all the rest, he vowed he could make neither
+head nor tail of it.
+
+"However," says he, "if you think this money of your father's ill
+gotten, my advice to you would be, give some of it to the lepers
+and some to the missionary fund.  And as for this extraordinary
+rigmarole, you cannot do better than keep it to yourselves."
+
+But he warned the police at Honolulu that, by all he could make
+out, Kalamake and Keola had been coining false money, and it would
+not be amiss to watch them.
+
+Keola and Lehua took his advice, and gave many dollars to the
+lepers and the fund.  And no doubt the advice must have been good,
+for from that day to this, Kalamake has never more been heard of.
+But whether he was slain in the battle by the trees, or whether he
+is still kicking his heels upon the Isle of Voices, who shall say?
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+(1) Please pronounce PAPPA throughout.
+(2) Alas!
+(3) Aeolian
+(4) Yes.
+(5) Leprosy.
+(6) Whites.
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg eText Island Nights' Entertainments
+
+
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