Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  I hadn’t the heart to answer her back. I didn’t consider the captain of a whaling ship a conclusive authority on such a point of science; but I couldn’t bear to interfere with the poor girl’s touching belief in her dead father’s supreme wisdom; so I abstained humanely from adverse criticism. “And your uncle?” I asked after a brief interval.

  Kea seemed almost terrified at the question. “My uncle,” she said, in a shuffling way, “knows one thing well — that, according to the firm tradition of our ancestors, if the White Man’s Foot ever treads the inner floor of Pélé’s home, the White Man himself must foil a victim that day to the anger of the goddess. It may be true, or it may be false: but at any rate, that was what our fathers told us.”

  I laughed again. She was so absurdly and profoundly in earnest about it all. “In that case.” I said with a little bow, “I may as well make my will at once, and leave my property to my nearest relations, for it’s all up with me. I mean to explore the crater myself, and, I need hardly tell you, Frank will accompany me. We’ll call in some morning at the front door, and drop a card on this terrible Pélé. I hope the lady will have the politeness to be at home to receive visitors.”

  The girl shuddered. “Hush,” she cried, with a terrified face. “Don’t talk like that. Don’t talk any more about the matter at all. You don’t know what you’re saying. My uncle is coming. I wouldn’t for worlds he should overhear us. We don’t believe in Pélé any longer, of course. But I hope for all that you’ll never try to explore the crater.”

  At that very moment the old chief Kalaua, who had long been deeply immersed in talk with his friend at the stern, apparently discussing some serious subject, strolled up and joined us. He bowed once more as he approached, with the strange old savage Hawaiian politeness; for in courtesy of manner these Pacific Islanders could give points to most educated Englishmen. “I was thinking,” he said, withdrawing his cigar and addressing me, “that if you and your brother really want to make explorations in Mauna Loa you couldn’t do better than come up and stop at my house on the top of the mountain. It’s nearest the summit of any in the island, and it would be a convenient place for you always to start from on your exploring expeditions. You’d save the long ride up the slopes. May I venture to offer you the hospitality of a humble Hawaiian roof? It’s a nice warm house, European built — it was put up by my English brother-in-law, Kea’s father; and I think we could manage to make you as comfortable as anybody in Hawaii. Is it agreed? What say you?”

  “You would allow me to pay for our board and lodging, of course?” I answered interrogatively. “Otherwise I mustn’t trespass so far as that on your kind indulgence.”

  The old native drew himself up at once with offended dignity. “I’m a chief,” he replied with quiet emphasis. “The blood of the great Kamehameha the First flows in my veins. When I ask you to my house, I ask you as my guest. Don’t offend me, I beg of you, by offering me money!”

  I felt I had really hurt the old chief’s pride and wounded his feelings, so I hastened to apologize with the best expressions I could summon up, and to protest that I hadn’t the remotest intention of slighting in any way his generous offer. “In England,” I continued, “we are not accustomed to be received by perfect strangers in such a princely style of open-handed hospitality.”

  Kalaua bowed. “It is well,” he answered with stately dignity. “Come to my house, and you shall have all that my house affords freely. May we expect you to stop with us then? It will give myself and my niece the greatest pleasure in life, I assure you, to receive you.”

  Kea from behind framed her lips, to my surprise, into an emphatic “No.” I saw it and smiled. She uttered no sound, but the old man seemed instinctively to recognize the fact that she was making signs to me. He turned round, half-angrily, though with perfect composure, and said something to her in Hawaiian, which I did not then fully understand, though I had been studying the language hard, with dictionary and grammar, all the way out on my voyage from England. Kea looked frightened and held her tongue at once. The old chief glanced back at me for a decisive answer. In spite of Kea’s warning I thought the opportunity too good to be missed. “I shall be delighted,” I answered with my warmest manner. “I’m sure it’s most kind of you. How can I thank you enough? I had no idea you Hawaiians were so generously hospitable.”

  When I told Frank of it that young rascal remarked with a solemn grin, “Of course they’re hospitable! Why, didn’t they take in Captain Cook, and roast him and eat him, they were so very fond of him? I expect that’s what this sober old fellow of yours means to do with us. He’ll give a dinner-party in our honour when we get there, no doubt, and you and I will be the joints for the occasion. That’s the Pacific way of welcoming a stranger.”

  CHAPTER II.

  “When we reached Hilo, I went ashore in a boat through the dangerous surf, and before arranging to go up the mountain with my host and his niece, I called first on an English merchant in the little palm-girt town, to whom we had letters of introduction from friends in Liverpool.

  “Going to stop with Kalaua, eh?” the merchant said, as soon as we had named our particular business. “A very good house, too! You couldn’t do better. Quite close to the very mouth of the crater, and right in the track of the great red-hot lava streams. You’ll see Pélé kicking up a shindy there simply to perfection. Her majesty’s been getting precious uneasy of late — rumbling and growling I shouldn’t be surprised if you’re just in the nick of time for a first-rate eruption.”

  “And what sort of person is my host?” I asked curiously. “He seems a very stern, old-fashioned cannibal.”

  Our new acquaintance laughed. “You may well say that,” he answered smiling. “In the good old days — or the bad old days, whichever of the two you prefer to call them — you pays your money and you takes your choice — Kalaua, they say, was the hereditary priest of that grim goddess, Pélé. His house was built on the highest habitable point of the mountain where Pélé dwells, that he might be close at hand to appease the angry spirit of the great crater whenever she began to pour down lava over the banana-grounds and cocoanut plantations at the foot of the volcano. Many a fat pig, and many a basketful of prime taro that hard-looking old man has offered up in his time to Pélé — ay, and I dare say many a human victim, too, if we only knew it. But all that’s over long ago, thank goodness. He’s a Christian now, of course, like all the rest of them; a very respectable old fellow in his way, with a keen eye of his own to business, and a thorough comprehension of the state of the sugar market. He keeps a good house. You’ve fallen on your feet, I can tell you, for Hawaii, if you’ve got an invitation to stop for an indefinite time as a guest at Kalaua’s.”

  I was glad to hear we had happened by chance upon such comfortable quarters.

  We slept that night at a little Hawaiian inn at Hilo, where we dined most sumptuously off roast pig and baked plantains; and at six next morning, Kalaua himself wakened us up to start on our long ride up the great lone mountain.

  When we sallied forth, four sure-footed ponies stood saddled at the door, and Kalaua, Kea, Frank, and myself, mounting our careering steeds (only they didn’t career), began our ascent to the cloud-capped summit. Mauna Loa, that bald cone, is almost as high as any peak in the Alps, rising some 14,000 feet above sea level; but the ascent over the lava plains is gentle and gradual, and the top, in this warm and delicious climate, still remains far below the level of perpetual snow. Nevertheless it is a long and tedious ride, some thirty miles, from Hilo to the top; and our sure-footed little ponies clambered slowly on, planting their hoofs with the utmost deliberation on the treacherous surface of the rugged and honey-combed masses of lava. Frank and I were both quite tired out with their camel-like pace when we reached the summit. Kea and Kalaua, more accustomed to the ascent, were as fresh as daisies, and Kea, in particular, laughed and talked incessantly, though I fancied, she was ill at ease somehow, in spite of all her apparent merriment.

  At las
t, after crossing a wide expanse of broken blocks of black basalt, as big as the largest squares of freestone used in architecture, and then sliding and gliding over a hideous expanse of slippery, smooth lava, like ice for glassiness, we pulled up, wearied, at a house built close on the very summit, European or rather American, in its style and arrangements, but comfortable and even wealthy-looking in all its appointments. It was composed of solid volcanic stone, cut into large square masses, and round it ran a pleasant wooden verandah, with rocking-chairs temptingly displayed in a row under its broad canopy. An oleander blossomed profusely by the side, and tropical creepers of wonderful beauty festooned the posts and balconies with their hanging verdure and their trumpet-shaped flower-bells.

  “Come in,” Kea cried, leaping down with ease from her mountain pony, which a native boy seized at once and took away to the stables. “Come in, and make yourselves at home in our house. Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes.”

  “I should hope so,” Frank answered, with his free-and-easy manner; “for I’m free to confess I want my grub awfully after such a long ride. And then I shall go out and inspect this precious volcano we hear so much about.”

  Kalaua’s brow darkened somewhat, as if he didn’t like to hear Mauna Loa so cavalierly described, and he murmured a few words in Hawaiian to Kea, in which I could only catch the name of Pélé, repeated very earnestly several times over.

  The house was large, roomy, and well furnished, with bamboo chairs and neat native bedsteads; and the dinner, to which Frank at least did full justice, seemed to promise well for our future treatment under the old chief’s hospitable roof. Kalaua himself grew somewhat less grim, too, as the meal progressed. Nothing thaws the soul like dinner. He warmed by degrees, and told us several amusing stories of the old heathen days, delighting Frank’s heart by narrating, in glowing language, how, in his youth, he had charged, a naked warrior at the head of his naked troops, when Kamehameha the Second attacked the island. Frank was charmed to find himself so nearly face to face with aboriginal savagery. “And what did you do with the prisoners?” he asked inauspiciously.

  The old man smiled a grimly terrible smile. “The less said about the prisoners the better,” he answered at last, with some faint show of conventional reluctance. “Remember, we were heathens then, and knew no better. The English have come since and taught us our duty. We no longer fight; we are civilized now; we buy horses, and cultivate yam and bread-fruit and sugar-cane.” And he helped himself as he spoke to another piece of fresh ginger.

  I don’t think Frank quite saw what he meant; but I confess a shudder passed through my own frame as I realized exactly what the old chief was driving at. It was strange to stand so very close to the lowest barbarism known to humanity. They had eaten the prisoners.

  After dinner we strolled out, in the beautiful, clear, tropical evening, to the edge of the crater. Accustomed as I was to volcanoes everywhere, I never beheld a more grand or beautiful sight than that first glimpse of Mauna Loa in all its glory. We looked over the edge of the great ring of basalt, and saw below us, down three successive ledges of rock, seething and tossing, a vast and liquid sea of fire. Here and there the lava boiled and bubbled into huge, inflated, balloon-like crests; here and there it rose into monstrous black stacks and irregular chimneys, from whose fiery mouths belched forth great columns of red flame, interspersed with dark wreaths of smoke and sulphur. It was the wildest, noblest, and most awful volcano I had ever yet visited — and my acquaintance with the family was by no means superficial. Frank stood aghast with awe and wonder for a moment by my side. “Why, Vesuvius is nothing to it!” he cried, astonished, “and Etna’s just nowhere in the matter of craters! I say, Tom, how I should love to see it in a good tip-top blazing eruption!”

  As he spoke Kea, who had come out with us, clad from head to foot in her simple, long Hawaiian robe, gazed steadily over the brink, and looked down with a familiar glance into the gigantic crater. For a minute or two she kept her eyes fixed on a certain jagged peak or furnace of lava, round whose base the sea of liquid fire was surging and falling, like water in a saucepan on a kitchen stove. At last she broke out into sudden surprise, “Why, it’s rising!” she cried breathlessly. “It’s rising! It’s rising!”

  “How jolly!” Frank called out from a few yards down, where he had clambered to get a better view of the inner crater. “I hope that fellow in the town was right after all, and that we’re going to come in at the very right point for a regular good eruptive outburst!”

  Kea’s face grew pale with terror. “You are,” she answered, “I can see it rise. The bubbles are bursting; the steam’s crackling. It always does so before it begins to flow out upon the slopes of the mountain.”

  She was quite right. It was clearly rising. I was overjoyed. Nothing could have happened more neatly or opportunely for the interests of science. Our arrival at Mauna Loa seemed to prove, as it were, the signal for the mountain to burst out at once into full activity. We were in luck’s way. We had come on the very eve of an eruption.

  Kea ran down to fetch her uncle. The old man came up, and peered over cautiously into the depths of the crater. Then he called aloud in Hawaiian to his trembling niece. I couldn’t catch all the words he said, but I caught one sentence twice repeated, “Pélé ké loa,” and a single word that recurred over and over again in his frantic outbursts, “Areoi,” “Areoi.”

  I had brought my Hawaiian-English pocket dictionary with me from Hilo, and I turned up the words in their places one by one, to see if I could understand them. To my great surprise I found I had heard them quite aright; it’s so hard to catch any part of an unknown language when rapidly spoken between natives. “Pélé ké loa,” I discovered, meant in English, “Pélé is angry,” and “areoi” was defined by my book as “a stranger, a foreigner, especially a white man, a European or American.”

  We stood long on the brink of the crater and watched it rising slowly before our very eyes. Kea pointed out to us with demonstrative finger the various floors or ledges on the inner wall. “That first,” she said with an awestruck face, “is the Floor of the Strangers; as far as that everybody may go; it is as it were the mere threshold, or outer vestibule, of the volcano. The second, that you see further down below, in the dark glare, is the Floor of the Hawaiians; as far as that, by the rule of our fathers, only natives may dare to penetrate. If a white man’s foot ever treads that floor, our people used to say, Pélé will surely claim him for her victim. The third, that you can just distinguish down there in the bright light, where the fiery lava is this moment rising — that’s the Floor of Pélé: none but the priests of Pélé might venture in the old days to tread its precincts. If any other man or woman were to dream of descending upon it, in the twinkling of an eye, like a feather in the flame, our fathers said, Pélé would surely shrivel him to ashes.”

  “And you believe all that nonsense?” I cried incredulously.

  Kea turned towards me with a very grave face. “It isn’t nonsense,” she answered, in her most serious manner. “It’s perfectly true. As true as anything. Of course I don’t believe the superstition, but whoever falls into that third abyss is burnt to a cinder before aid can arrive, by the wrath of the volcano.”

  “I dare say,” I answered carelessly. “It looks quite hot enough to frizzle up anything. Whoever falls into an ordinary blast furnace (if it comes to that) is burnt to a cinder before aid can arrive, by the unconscious wrath of the molten metal.”

  “Don’t talk so!” Kea cried, with a terrified face. “You distress me. You frighten me.”

  The volcano meanwhile rose faster and faster. The gray evening began to close in. A deep red glow spread over the open mouth of the crater. The clouds above reflected and repeated the lurid light. Every moment the glare grew deeper and yet deeper. As night came on, it seemed to rain fire. I saw at once that we were in for a good thing. We had hit on the exact moment of a first-class eruption.

  A more awful or grander night than that I never r
emember. I’m a scientific man, and my business is to watch and report upon volcanoes; but that night, I confess, was every bit as hot as I care to have it. Anything hotter than that, indeed, would fry one like a herring. By nine o’clock, the mountain was in full glare; by ten, it was pouring out red fragments of stone and showers of ashes; by eleven, a stream of white glowing lava was pushing its way in one desolating flood down the ravines on the southern slope of the mountain. Before the final outburst, light curling wreaths of vapour ascended from fissures in the wall of the crater, and hung like a huge umbrella over the mountain top. The red glare, reflected from this strange cloud-like canopy, gave the whole scene for many miles around the appearance of being lighted up by giants at play with some vast and colossal Bengal fires. We looked on awestruck. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, a sound reached our ears, a terrific sound, as of ten thousand engines blowing off steam; and all at once a great body of gas was ejected into the air, in a blaze of light, while huge fragments of rock were hurled violently upward, only to fall again in fiery heat upon the naked slopes of the cone and shoulders. All night long we were positively bombarded with these aërial shells; they fell in thousands round us on every side, though fortunately none of them happened to touch either the house itself or any one of its inhabitants.

  Not a living soul remained upon the spot save Frank and myself, and Kea and her uncle. All the rest of the natives fled headlong down in wild panic and terror to the sea at Hilo.

  A man of science, however, like a soldier on the battle-field, must know how to take his life in his hand. I got out my pencil, my sketch-book and my colours, and, true to the orders of the Association in whose interest I was travelling, I endeavoured to reproduce, as well as I could, in a spirited sketch, the whole awful scene as it unfolded itself in vivid hues before us. Frank, who is certainly the most intrepid boy of my acquaintance, ably seconded me in my difficult task. Kea looked on at us in speechless amazement. “Aren’t you afraid?” she asked at last, in a hushed voice.