Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (458 page)

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 EightIslands.  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 EightIslands, 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.