by Grant Allen
What on earth could it be? I raised myself on my arms and gazed all round. The crater of Mauna Loa was a queer place indeed for even the most enthusiastic sportsman to come shooting in. The only game he could expect to find in such a spot would be surely salamanders. But firing was without doubt going on in the crater, not indeed on the floor on which I myself lay, but strange to say, on the other and still deeper ledges below me. As I strained my ear to listen, I heard frequent reports of pistols, one after another, in all directions down the hollow of the crater.
Then, with a sudden flash of recollection it burst in upon my memory that Frank and I had heard similar reports the year before on the slopes of Hecla, just on the eve of a serious eruption, when we were engaged in investigating the volcanoes of Iceland.
In a second, the appalling and terrible truth came home to me in all its ghastly awfulness. The lava in the crater must be rising explosively!
I was never much frightened of a volcano before, but that moment, I confess, I felt distinctly nervous.
From where I lay, I couldn’t see over into the lake of liquid fire below, and my broken leg made it almost impossible for me to move or even to drag myself towards the steep edge, where I could gaze down into the abyss and make sure whether the lava was really rising. But such suspense was more than one could bear. With a supreme effort I raised myself a second time, very cautiously, upon my two hands and my left knee, and, trailing my right leg with difficulty behind me, I crawled or crept with unspeakable pain over yards of rough rock to the brink of the precipice.
An ineffable sight there met my eye. The black slaggy bottom of the huge crater, which generally reposed in tranquil peace like a calm sea, just broken here and there by fiery fissures, was now transformed into one bubbling mass of flame and vapour, all alive with a horrible livid glare, that lit up its seething and blazing billows with an awful distinctness. Loud, snorting puffs of steam burst thick and fast from the gaping fissures, and from many of the chinks great jets of molten material were willing out in huge floods, and rising gradually towards the Floor of Pélé, the third and last ledge immediately below me. If the eruption continued for two hours longer at its present rate, by half-past twelve, I felt fully convinced, the sea of lava would be wildly surging and roaring above the very spot whence I now surveyed it.
What was to be done? I lay and pondered.
Unless somebody came to my rescue meanwhile, I had only two hours more to live on earth; and then inch by inch I would be scorched to death, in unspeakable agony, before an advancing tide of liquid fire, by the most awful fate ever known to humanity!
It was ghastly; it was horrible: but I had to face it.
I peered over the edge, and watched with eager and tremulous awe the gradual approach of the devouring fire-flood. Slowly, slowly, foot by foot, and yard by yard, my inanimate enemy rose and rose, and rose again, by constant, cruel, crawling stages. Not always regularly, but in fluctuating billows. At times the molten sea leapt upward with a bound; at times it fell again, in a vast sink-hole, like some huge collapsing bubble of metal; but all the while, in spite of every apparent fluctuation, it mounted steadily in the long run up the black wall of rock, as the tide rises over a shelving beach, with its hideous gas jets hissing and groaning, and its angry flames drawing nearer and nearer each moment to devour me.
I lay there horror-stricken, and gazed idly down.
Nothing on earth that I myself could do would now avail me in any way to escape my destiny. I tried to turn and attempt the wall behind me. I might as well have tried to scale the naked side of a smooth and polished granite monument. The crag was like glass. There was nothing for it but to lie back in quiet and await my death as a brave man should await it. Science had had many martyrs before. I felt sure, as I lay there, that I too was to be numbered upon the increasing roll-call of its illustrious victims.
It is easy enough to fight and die; but to lie still and be slowly roasted to death — that, I take it, is quite a different matter.
Eleven o’clock went past on my watch. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty minutes. The fire had mounted half way up the side of the ledge on which I lay. I could feel its hot breath borne fiercely towards me. A jet of steam raised itself now and then to the level of my own floor. Ashes and cinders were falling freely around. The eruption was gathering strength as it went. It was dangerous any longer to lie so close to the broken edge. I must drag myself away, near the further precipice.
Frank would not return from town much before six, I felt sure. He always loitered when he got down to Hilo. Unless somebody came to relieve me soon I must surely be killed by slow torture.
I gazed all around me with a last despairing glance. As I did so, a cry of relief burst on a sudden from my parched throat. On the precipice above, leaning over the edge of the Floor of the Strangers, I saw distinctly a man’s face — a man’s face, a Hawaiian’s as I thought, peering down curiously into the depths of the crater.
If only I could attract that man’s attention I felt there might yet be some small chance for me.
CHAPTER V.
The man was looking the other way. I must somehow manage to make him turn round to me.
I raised myself on my knees, put my hands to my mouth, and shouted aloud at the top of my voice, with the utmost force of which my lungs were capable. You never know how hard you can shout, till you’ve had to shout for dear life through a storm at sea, or some other terrible natural convulsion.
Could I make myself heard, I wondered to myself, above the constant hiss and roar and din of that volcanic outburst?
Thank Heaven, yes! The man turned and heard me. I could see him start and look sharply in the direction where I lay on the ledge. By the movement of his face I felt sure he observed me. He saw me and jumped back. He recognized the deadly peril in which I lay. “Help! help!” I shouted with terrific energy. “Quick! quick! a rope! The fire is almost upon me!”
The man rose and stood close to the brink. I could see by his dress quite clearly now that he was a native Hawaiian. Awe and surprise were visible on his face. He understood and drank in the full horror of my situation. Surely, surely, he would make haste to help me!
To my utter horror he did nothing of the sort. He stood still as if rooted to the spot in superstitious fear, and gazed down on my face with his own like a statue’s. I never saw anything more stolid than his features, or the pose of his limbs. I flung up my arms appealingly for aid: I pointed with every gesture of pain and helplessness to my broken limb: I tried to express to him by natural pantomime the absolute necessity for immediate assistance. The native folded his arms in front and gazed placidly down with horrible unconcern in spite of my cries and shrieks and signs of agony. I knew now what it was to be a savage. He seemed utterly careless whether I lived or died. If I had been a worm or a scorpion or a venomous reptile he couldn’t more wholly and totally have disregarded my obvious suffering.
At last, with the same look of indifference, he turned on his heel slowly, without one sign of encouragement, and disappeared from my sight towards the lip of the crater.
Had he gone to seek aid on my behalf, I wondered? Had he gone to call other natives to his assistance, and to bring ropes and ladders to haul me up from that unearthly crater?
I could not say, but I hardly dared hope it.
And all the while those billows of molten lava in the lake below surged madly on, rising and rising, and ever rising, tossing the wild fire-spray upon their angry crests, and making ready their greedy jagged teeth of flame as if on purpose to close on me and devour me piecemeal.
The volcano seemed indeed to be really alive. I didn’t wonder the natives once saw in it a horrible, hungry, implacable goddess.
For ten minutes more I lay there still, half smothered by the sulphurous fumes of the rising gases, and whitened with a powdery shower of gray dust, waiting in agony for the inevitable end to arrive and stifle me. Then I looked up again, and saw to my surprise the native had come back to his form
er station. But not alone. Nor yet to save me. Three other Hawaiians, tall and shapely men, stood silent and moody by the first-comer’s side, and gazed down as he had done, unmoved and unhorrified, upon myself and the crater.
Above the roar and crackling of the unquenchable fire, my ear, quickened by the straits in which I lay, caught just once the sound of the words they were saying. I had learnt a fair amount of Hawaiian since my arrival, and I could tell that in their talk “the anger of Pélé,” “victim” and “stranger,” occurred frequently. Could it be that they meant deliberately to leave me there unaided to die? Were they afraid to meddle with the prisoners of the goddess?
Christianized and civilized as they were in name, I knew too well then how deeply the old heathen superstitions must still be ingrained in the very core and fibre of their inmost being, not to fear that this might really be their hideous intention. The worship of Pélé might be dead, indeed, as a direct religion, but the awe and terror of Pélé’s power I had long observed was as vivid and real in their hearts as ever. Even Kea herself, English as she was on her fathers side, half feared and propitiated that blood-thirsty goddess.
The four men drew slowly to the edge of the precipice. I couldn’t hear, but I could see by their actions they were consulting together very earnestly. The heat by this time was growing intensely painful. I lifted up my hands and clasped them as if in prayer. After all, they were human. I trusted they might still be inclined to help me.
To my unspeakable terror, alarm, and dismay, the men shook their heads grimly in concert. Then all four of them, bowing down as if in worship towards the mouth of the crater, with their hands spread open in solemn accord, seemed to salute and adore the goddess of the volcano. I knew what it meant. I understood their gestures. Converts by profession as I doubt not they were, in their secret souls they were votaries of Pélé!
At that sight, I flung myself down on my side and gave up all for lost for ever. I thought of those who were nearest and dearest to me at home, and who would never behold my face again. I must die where I lay, unaided and unpitied.
When Frank returned to Kalaua’s that night he would find no trace of me left on earth — not even a charred and blackened skeleton! The fire would have burnt me to fine gray ashes.
Presently, as I looked, a fifth man joined the group above — a man dressed as I had never before beheld any one. His head was covered with a huge shapeless mask, which seemed to me to represent a cruel grinning lace, with teeth and eyes of white mother-of-pearl, that glistened hideously in the ruddy glare of the fierce volcano. I had seen such a mask once in my life, I remembered well, before leaving England — in the ethnological room at the British Museum. That one, I knew, was made of rare Hawaiian red and yellow feathers, and was said to be used by the old heathen priests of cannibal days in offering up sacrifices to their blood-thirsty idols. The new-comer was further draped from head to foot in a long mantle of the same costly plumes, which concealed his limbs from view altogether. I don’t know how, but I felt sure by the very way he moved across the ledge that the man with the mask was none other than Kalaua!
He was a priest of Pélé, then, to this very day! In spite of his outer veneer of civilization, in spite of his pretended conversion to a gentler creed, he still believed at heart in the vindictive and cruel goddess of the crater.
The man in the mask, walking slowly as in a solemn dance, approached the edge of the beetling precipice. The other four men grouped themselves around in set attitudes, two and two on either side of him. Their looks were impressive. The priest lifted up his hands slowly. His action as he lifted them, graceful yet majestic, convinced me more than ever that it was really Kalaua, I recognized the old chief’s grim and stately statuesque air — the air as of a last surviving scion of the old man-eating Hawaiian nobility.
The priest stood still with his hands erect. The four others, in pairs on either side, bowed down their faces in awe to the ground. It was growing every moment more intolerably hot. I could scarcely watch them. The priest lifted up his voice aloud. I could catch not one word or syllable of what he said, but I was dimly aware in my intervals of pain that he was chanting some sort of measured savage litany. Every now and again he paused a moment, and then I could hear that his four companions answered him back in a solemn but loud response, in which I frequently fancied I caught the name of Pélé.
At that awful moment Kea’s words came back distinctly to my mind. “The second ledge that you see down below there, in the dark glow, is the Floor of the Hawaiians: as far as that, only natives may penetrate. If a white man’s foot ever treads that floor, Pélé will surely claim him for her victim. In the twinkling of an eye, like a feather in the flame, Pélé will shrivel him in her wrath to ashes.”
I knew then what was happening up above. The priest of Pélé had come forth to the crater in his sacrificial garb, attended by his acolytes, and was performing a sort of dedicator death-service over Pélé’s own chosen victim, before the flames rose up to embrace and devour me!
In spite of the heat, in spite of the pain, in spite of the bodily terror in which I lay and writhed, I remembered, too, what Kea had once told me — how in the old days when men sacrificed to Pélé they never burnt their offerings with earthly fire, but flung them whole, a living gift, into the cracks and fissures of the burning lava, that the goddess might consume her own victims for herself in her own unearthly subterranean furnaces!
It was an awful ceremony, yet surely an appropriate one.
The flames were rising nearer and nearer now. These cruel and hard-hearted men would do nothing to save me. I could see great jets of burning gas rise from time to time above the wall of the crater. I could hear the loud hiss and shiver of the unearthly steam. I could feel the hideous heat baking me slowly to death where I lay. I crossed my arms resignedly, and gave up all for lost. I would die at least at the post of honour, as an Englishman ought to die, without fear and without flinching. I only waited for the merciful flames to come and put me out of my lingering misery. It could not be long now I felt sure. The lava would soon flow fast all round me.
And above there, on the jagged edge of the precipice, the priest was still droning his terrible death-song, and the four tall men, bowed down to the ground almost, were still crying aloud in a strange monotone their hideous responses.
As the first few bubbles of boiling lava rose level at last with the top of the Floor of the Hawaiians, I caught the final words of their triumphant song. I knew what they meant; they were simple and easy. “Pélé has avenged herself on the WHITE MAN’S FOOT; the White Man’s Foot that trod her floor; we offer up the white man’s body in expiation to Pélé.”
CHAPTER VI.
While the ring of their heathen death-song still echoed in my ear, and the hiss and roar of the volcanic fires still boomed and resounded wildly around me, I was dimly conscious in an interval of heat that the lava-flood fell back for a few moments, and that a lull had intervened in that surging tide of fiery liquid. I was sorry for that. It would do nothing now but needlessly prolong my horrible torture. When once one has made up one’s mind to face death, in whatever form, the sooner one can get the wrench over the better. To be roasted alive is bad enough in all conscience; but to be roasted alive by intermittent stages is a thing to make even a soldier or a man of science shrink back appalled from the ghastly prospect.
In my agony, I looked up once more at the sheer precipice. As I looked, I saw yet another person had come down to join the group by the edge. My heart bounded with a faint throb of hope. It was Kea, Kea, pretty, gentle Kea.
“Surely,” I said to myself in my own soul, “Kea at least will not desert me. Kea will try her very best to save me.”
The light of the volcano lit up the faces of the men and the girl with a ruddy glow. I could see every movement of their muscles distinctly. Kea came down with clasped hands, and blanched lips, like one frantic with terror, and seemed to beg and implore the man in the mask to aid or assist her in some p
rojected undertaking. The man in the mask shook his head sternly. It was clear he was adamant. Kea redoubled her prayers and entreaties. The priest rejected her petition with his hands outspread, and turned once more as if in blind worship toward the mouth of the crater. I knew that Kea was begging hard for my life, and that Kalaua, sternly refusing her prayer, was devoting me as a victim to his unspeakable goddess.
There are moments that seem as long as years. This was one of them.
Presently, Kea seemed to ask some favour, some last favour. The stern old priest made answer slowly. I fancied he was relenting. She turned to the men, as if to ask a question. The men in return assented with a solemn movement of their awestruck bodies. Then Kea looked up at her uncle again imploringly. She spoke with fervour, I could see it was some sort of compact or bargain between them she was trying to negotiate. At last the man in the mask gave in. He nodded his head and folded his arms. He appeared to look on like a passive spectator. I imagined somehow, quickened as my senses were by the extremity of the moment, that he had entered into an agreement with her, not indeed to save me, but to abstain from active interference with Kea’s movements if she wished herself to assist me in any way.
I breathed more freely. As soon as their hasty conference was over, the girl drew near to the brink of the precipice. She raised her hands as if pulling at an invisible rope: then she made signs to me to wait patiently, if wait I could, for that help was going to arrive shortly. After that, she broke eagerly away with a gesture of sympathy, and ran off in hot haste towards the winding path that led from the floor to the summit of the crater.
I lay there some minutes more in an agony of suspense. Would she come back in time, or would the fiery flood burst up once more to the level where I lay before she had time to arrive with assistance?
