Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  “Yes,” I answered boldly, telling the plain truth, “if you will allow me to say so, I’m very much afraid indeed. But I’m a man of science; I’ve got to do it; and I shall do it still till the lava comes down and drives us away bodily. And you? Aren’t you afraid, too, of the stones and ashes?”

  “No,” she replied, though her tone belied her. “The eruptions never hurt my uncle nor me. You see, he’s been accustomed to them from his childhood upward. In the old days, he was taught to think he was under Pélé’s protection.”

  Frank looked up, imperturbable as ever. “For my part,” he said, tossing the curls from his forehead, “I’m not a man of science, like Tom, you know; and I’m not under the protection of a heathen goddess, like you and your uncle, Kea; but I call it the grandest set of fireworks I ever saw in all my life — beats the Crystal Palace hollow — and I wouldn’t have missed it for fifty pounds, I can tell you.”

  As for Kalaua, he stood sombre, alone, with folded arms and tight-pressed lips, looking down unmoved into the depths of the crater.

  CHAPTER III.

  All night long we remained outside on the platform of the summit, watching and sketching that terrific convulsion. The mountain poured forth endless floods of lava. Heaven and earth were lighted up with its awful glow. Kalaua stood by us still, erect and grim, like one conscious that the fiery hail and the red-hot boulders had no terrors for him, and could not harm him. Kea, pale and tremulous, yet too brave at heart to flinch ever so, crouched by his side, too awestruck to speak in mute expectation. Frank alone seemed undisturbed by the appalling commotion going on around him. Boy enough to feel nothing of the terror of the moment, he was simply excited by the grandeur and magnificence of that wonderful pyrotechnic display. “It’s the jolliest sight I ever saw, Tom,” he exclaimed with delight more than once during the evening. “Why, to live here would be almost as good as to have a season-ticket all the year round for all the fêtes and gala-days in England!”

  By morning however the eruption slackened; the internal fires had worn themselves out. “Pélé has grown tired of kicking up such a rumpus,” Frank remarked cheerfully; and as he himself was tired of watching her, too, he proposed we should go in and rest ourselves a little after our arduous labours. Indeed, the lava was now almost ceasing to flow, and the bombardment of pumice-stone and fiery cinders had intermitted a little. We returned to the house, and flung ourselves down on our beds in the clothes we wore, too fatigued after our long and sleepless watch to trouble ourselves with the needless bother of undressing. When you’ve sat up all night observing an eruption, you don’t much care about such luxuries of an advanced civilization as nightshirts. Before we retired however Kea brought us in a big bowl of fresh taro-paste, and on this simple food we made a most excellent and substantial breakfast. In ten minutes we were snoring so hard on our bamboo beds that I don’t believe even another eruption would have roused us up, if it had thundered at our doors with one of its monstrous subterranean boulders.

  It was five in the evening before we woke again. Frank stretched himself with a yawn. “I don’t know how you feel, Tom,” he cried as he jumped out of bed, “but I feel as if that extinct instrument, the rack, had been invented over again for my special benefit. There’s not a bone in my body that isn’t aching.”

  “What does that matter,” I answered, “if science is satisfied? I’ve got the very finest sketch of a first-class eruption that ever was taken since seismology became a separate study.”

  “Bother seismology!” Frank exclaimed with a snort. “What a jolly long word for such a simple thing! As if one couldn’t say straight out, earthquakes. For my part, what I want satisfied isn’t science at all, but an internal yearning for some breakfast or some supper, whichever you choose to call it.”

  The supper was soon upon the board (for by this time the native servants had returned), and as soon as it was finished, we sallied forth, all four together, to inspect the changes wrought in the mountain by last night’s events. The effects of the eruption were indeed prodigious. Great streams of fresh lava still lay dull and half-hot along the fertile valleys of the mountain side; and the ground about the house was strewn thick and deep with a white coat of powdery ashes. “This is splendid!” I said. “I shall have my work cut out for me now for several weeks. Nobody had ever a better chance afforded him of observing in detail the effects of a great volcanic effort.”

  Kalaua glanced grimly across at me as I spoke. “I wonder,” he murmured, with a sort of sphinx-like sardonic smile, “you have escaped so safe to observe and report upon them.”

  “Ah, you see, chief,” Frank answered carelessly, “he was under your protection. Pélé wouldn’t hurt us, you know, as we were guests of a friend of hers. That was awfully nice of her. She’s a perfect lady, as volcanoes go. I call her a most polite and obliging goddess.”

  Kalaua turned away with a half angry look. It was clear that, converted or unconverted, he considered the terrible deity of his fathers no proper subject for light chaff or jesting.

  We spent the next six weeks pleasantly enough in the old man’s house, observing and making notes upon the curious facts connected with the crater and its recent outbreak. I will not narrate my results here at full for fear of boring you — the more so, as I have already devoted two large volumes to the subject in the British Association Reports, Manchester Meeting. It will be enough for the present to mention that Frank and I thoroughly explored the whole top of the crater, as far as the first floor, which Kea had described to us as the Floor of the Strangers. We measured and mapped it out in every direction with theodolite and chain, and we made numerous interesting, and, I venture to add, important observations upon the most disputed points in the phenomena of eruptions. We knew our way about the Floor of the Strangers, in fact, as well as we knew our way down from our own home at Hampstead Heath to Charing Cross Station. Kalaua and Kea were surprised to find how accurately we had learnt the whole geography of the district; and Kalaua in particular seemed far from pleased at our perfect familiarity with the mountain and its ways, though he was much too polite ever to say so openly, holding his peace on the matter, at least to our faces, with true antique Hawaiian courtesy. For bland courtesy of demeanour, commend me to a cannibal.

  One morning however about six weeks after our first arrival, I had occasion to send Frank by himself down to Hilo, on one of the sure-footed little mountain ponies, to fetch up some ropes and other articles we needed for our exploration from the stores in the town; and I said good-bye to him just outside the house, where Kalaua was seated, smoking a cigarette, and wrapped up as usual in his own stern and sombre reveries.

  “Good-bye, old fellow,”’ Frank cried in farewell, as he mounted his horse and cantered gaily off. “Mind you take care of yourself while I’m away. Give the crater a wide berth. Don’t try to go exploring any further without me!”

  “All right,” I shouted back. “I won’t get into mischief. Trust me for saving my own skin. I shall just potter about a bit to amuse myself alone on the outer edge of the Floor of the Strangers.”

  “What do you want the rope for?” Kalaua asked moodily, looking up from his cigarette as Frank rode away. “Better not go trusting yourself with any rope too far in the crater of Mauna Loa.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I answered, with a short little laugh. “I want the rope to let myself down to the lower levels.”

  “What, the Floor of the Hawaiians?” the old chief cried with flashing eyes.

  “Well, yes,” I answered; “that first, of course, and then, after that, the Floor of Pélé.”

  If I had dropped a bomb-shell right in front of his house, the stern old chief could not have looked that moment more appalled and horrified. “Young man,” he cried, rising hastily to his feet and standing like a messenger of fate before me, “I warn you not to trifle with the burning mountain. Tread the Floor of the Strangers as much as you like, but the lower ledges of the crater are very dangerous. You’re my guest, and I
advise you. For unskilled feet to approach those levels is almost certain death. In the dark old days when we were all heathen, we used to say in our folly that the wrath of Pélé would burn you up like a leaf if you ventured to touch them. We no longer say that: we know better now. But we still say to all who would tamper with them that the mouth of the crater is most treacherous and perilous.”

  “Oh,” I answered lightly, turning on my heel, “don’t trouble for me. I’m accustomed to volcanoes. I don’t object I think no more of them than a sailor thinks of chapters of a storm at sea. Let them boil and seethe as much as they like. They’re nothing after all, when a fellow’s used to them.”

  The old man answered me never a word. He rose, and with a gesture of solemn dissent wrapped his native cloak severely round him; then he walked in grim and gloomy silence back by himself into his own chamber.

  As for me, I strolled off quietly, sketch-book in hand, up to the broken brink of the great crater. I had nothing in particular to do that morning, having in fact by this time quite exhausted the first ledge or Floor of the Strangers: and I could accomplish no work, now I had finished there, till Frank returned from town with the rope to lower us down to the Floor of the Hawaiians, the next ledge that I thought of mapping. So I sat myself down on a jagged peak of hardened cinders, cemented together by molten volcanic matter, and began in a lazy, idle, half-sleepy kind of way to sketch a distant point of the interior crater.

  I had sat there listlessly, sketching and musing, for about twenty minutes, when I saw a sight I can never resist. A beautiful butterfly, of a species quite new to me, attracted my attention on the side of the crater-wall over which my legs were carelessly dangling. Now, though I am by trade (saving your presence) a seismologist and vulcanologist — no offence meant by those awesome words — I’ve always had a sneaking kindness in an underhand way for other departments of natural science, especially zoology; and a new butterfly, with a red spot on its tail, is a severe temptation that my utmost philosophy can never induce me to disregard under any circumstances. There are some scientific men, I know, who seem to think science ought to be made as dull and as dry and as fusty as possible: for my own part, I never could take that eminently correct and respectable view: I like my science as amusing as I can get it, with a considerable spice of adventure thrown in; and I prefer specimen-hunting among the Pacific Islands to name-hunting among the prodigiously learned and stupid memoirs of the British Museum. Between ourselves, too (but I wouldn’t like this to reach the ears of the Royal Society), I regard a man as much more useful to science when engaged in catching birds or insects in the Malay Archipelago or the African mountains than when inventing names for them out of his own head in a fusty, dusty, musty room in the museum at South Kensington. Have the kindness to keep this dark however if you ever go to a British Association Meeting: for if it reached the ears of the Committee, they might think me an unfit person to entrust with any further volcanic investigations.

  Well, my butterfly was resting, poised like a statue, on a pretty flowering plant that grew out of a cranny in the sheer wall of rock, a yard or two below the precise point where I was then sitting. Said I to myself, with an eager dart forward, “I shall nab that specimen;” and laying aside my pencil and drawing-pad at once, I proceeded forthwith, at the top of my speed, incontinently to nab him.

  It was with great difficulty however that I clambered down the side of the crag, for the lava just there was porous and bubbly. It crumbled and broke like thin ice under my feet; and wherever I thought I had just secured myself a firm foothold it gave way after a moment, bit by bit, with the force of my pressure. Nevertheless I managed somehow, to my great delight, to reach the plant that sprouted from the cranny without at all disturbing my friend the butterfly, who, engrossed on his dinner, was hardly expecting an attack from the rear; and clapping my hand upon him before he could say Jack Robinson, I popped him, triumphant, into my pocket collecting case. Then, with a light heart, and the proud consciousness of a duty performed, I turned once more to climb up the cliff again.

  But that, I found, was by no means so easy a matter as descending. I had got down partly by the mean and illegitimate device of letting my feet slide; to get back I must somehow secure a firm and certain foothold in the loose lava. To my surprise and horror there was none to be found. The soft and creamy pumice-stone seemed nowhere to afford a single solid point of support. I struggled in vain to recover my balance; at last, to my dismay, I stumbled and fell — fell, as I feared, towards the Floor of the Hawaiians, that yawned a full hundred and twenty feet of sheer depth in the crater below me. With a wild lunge I clutched for support at the plant in the cranny. It broke short in my hand, and my one chance gone, I rolled down rapidly to the very bottom. I didn’t exactly tumble down the entire sheer height in a single fall; if I had I shouldn’t be here to tell you. I broke the force of the descent somewhat by digging my hands and feet with frantic efforts into the loose wall of rotten lava. But before I could realize precisely what was happening I lost my head. The world reeled round me; my eyes closed. Next moment I was aware of a horrid thud, and a fierce blow against some hard surface. I knew then just where I had landed. I had fallen or rolled by stages the whole way down the crag, and was lying on my side on the Floor of the Hawaiians!

  CHAPTER IV.

  My first thought, as I lay half-stunned and almost unconscious upon that naked bed of hard black rock, was that at any rate I had caught and fairly boxed my butterfly. My second, a much less agreeable one to encounter, was that I had certainly broken my leg in my full to the bottom.

  I was conscious, in fact, of a dull but very deep-seated pain in my right thigh. I tried to move it. The agony was intense. It threw me back into my momentary faint again. For a minute or two I could hardly realize my position. Then it slowly came home to me by gradual stages that I was lying helpless, with a broken leg, unseen and unattended, on the Floor of the Hawaiians, a hundred and twenty feet down the gap of the crater.

  Would anybody come to help me? I wondered. That was more than doubtful. As a rule, the whole day passed on those lonely heights without anybody approaching the mouth of the volcano, let alone climbing down by the zig-zag path into the floor above me. Kalaua’s household were the sole frequenters of that solitary spot. However, Frank would at least be back from Hilo by six o’clock, or thereabouts, and then he would be sure to come up and look for me, when he missed me from my accustomed place on the verandah. I took out my watch, in order to see how long I might have to lie there in frightful pain, waiting for my brother’s return to save me. We had learnt early rising with a vengeance since we came to the islands — breakfast at Kalaua’s was at six sharp — to my horror, I found it was even now only half-past seven!

  More than ten weary, dreary hours to watch and wait, with my broken leg, in that dismal crater!

  It was an unpleasant outlook. I gazed around and tried to take in the situation.

  Above me, a steep black wall of granite rose sheer and straight towards the open heaven. Below me, I could hear, though I could not see, the lake of liquid fire hissing and bubbling with horrible noises in its eternal cauldron. Around, the floor was composed of solid dark green obsidian, as hard and transparent and sharp as bottle-glass. I must lie as best I could, on my uneasy bed, and brave it out for ten hours somehow.

  Fortunately, I soon discovered that as long as I lay quite still, the pain of my leg was comparatively trifling. It was only when I moved or stirred restlessly that it hurt me much, and then, the agony was enough to drive one frantic. I laid down my watch, to mark the time, on the rock in front of me. Happily, being a good naval chronometer, it had not been injured in the shock of my fall. I had nothing to do now but to count the hours till Frank could come up and relieve me at last from my awkward and even dangerous situation.

  Ten hours is a very long time, with a broken leg, in the crater of Mauna Loa.

  The floor of the ledge, I observed, as I gazed around, was covered with long string
s of dark thread-like lava — as thin and delicate as a spun-glass tissue. These strings are a well-known product of the volcanic action of Mauna Loa, and the natives call them “Pélé’s hair.” They look upon them as the veritable tresses of the goddess. Having nothing else to do, I picked some up and examined it closely. No wonder the superstitious old Hawaiians took it in their time for the actual combings of their dread goddess’s hair! I never in my life saw anything so exactly resembling human locks, at a first rough glance: and I was not surprised that even Kea herself should regard it as a token of the presence of that mysterious being who dwelt, as she still half believed, all alone among the eternal fires of the great crater.

  Eight o’clock, nine o’clock, ten o’clock, passed, and I began by that time to get most unfeignedly weary of my enforced imprisonment. It was impossible to lie in one position all the time; and whenever I turned, or even moved, my leg gave me the most excruciating jerks of pain and agony. I was heartily sick now of the crater and all that belonged to it. What on earth, I thought, made me ever take to such a trade as vulcanology? I said to myself more than once in my despair that henceforth I’d give up volcanoes for ever, and go in for some safe and honest trade — like a light-house-man’s or an inspector of mines — for a livelihood.

  About half-past ten however, as I lay half dozing with fatigue and pain, an incident occurred which broke the monotony of the situation: my attention was suddenly and vividly aroused by a noise that sounded like the report of a pistol.