Part 7
“Nay, I choose not,” cried Kekuaokalani. “Here stand I where Liholiho and Hewahewa, king and high-priest, should stand to defend the traditions to which I am pledged by my oath as _alii_. Lono will not forget the faithful, and if we die we die true to our ancestors and to the gods who made them kings.”
Kalaimoku withdrew with his company sadly and respectfully, and Kekuakoalani went within his house and, falling upon the breast of his wife, burst into tears.
O! beautiful was life surrounded with the love of Manono! Hard it were to die and go beneath the ground with such sunshine flooding the earth. But Kekuaokalani was right: “He could not choose.”
“Is there a choice for strong souls to be weak?” Though he die, he must be loyal to his faith in Lono. The night before, the _alae_ had uttered its shrill note of presaging ill outside the house. Manono was all disconsolate with so many auguries of ill about her, but her husband bravely used every endeavor to turn aside her fears, saying that forebodings of ill were only for those who did ill. Yet he felt in his heart that the gods perhaps intended to take their cause into their own hands, and that he might be only a sacrifice where he had hoped to be a deliverer.
Nevertheless, the next morning, when the army made itself ready for the march, Kekuaokalani had a countenance wherein was no trace of fear or foreboding. With cheerful shouts of encouragement to his eager followers, he trod the lava plains with as much alacrity as if starting to a feast, and close behind him, rather than with the other women in the rear, marched Manono, happier to stand on the field of blood beside her lover than to tarry behind in ignoble safety. There were priests of Lono, too, carrying the gods newly arrayed for the carnage. Perchance, yet once again, might the war god Kaili be seen flying above the contending hosts, a luminous streak of vapor, uttering aloud the war cries which had cleared the way to victory for Kamehameha. How the drunkard Liholiho would feel his blood freezing in his veins at such an apparition!
As they marched along they came to the spot where, twelve generations before, the mighty giant Maukaleoleo had appeared to the hero Umi and had given him strength above the lot of man to overcome his foes. Would that now that terrific figure might appear, plucking the cocoanuts from the tallest trees as he walked, or wading out to sea among the canoes!
But, alas! no marvels came to aid their faith. They must fight the battle of the gods alone to-day.
So at last they came to Kuamoo on the morning of December 19, 1819, a day forever memorable in the history of Hawaii as the day in which the forces of the old era were defeated by those of the new, both struggling in the dark and ignorant of the light which was so soon to come.
Kalaimoku was even yet anxious to avoid a battle with Kekuaokalani, who was his own sister’s son, and he sent a messenger with an affectionate entreaty for another interview. But, even though his own mother pleaded, together with his uncle, the dauntless heathen refused to listen to the messenger and compelled him to leap into the sea and swim with all his might to save his life.
The forces then took up their respective positions, Kalaimoku knowing that now only the grim arbitrament of battle could decide. Liholiho’s forces were strong in musketry and in the aid of foreigners, and their retreat was protected by the formidable squadron of double canoes which had been the pride of Kamehameha’s declining years. Kekuaokalani placed the priests of Lono with the images in the front of his line for a while, and then loud were the imprecations denounced upon the royal army. But, to be of more avail to-day, behind these was a splendid force of spearmen eager for the _lehua_, or first-slain victim. Behind all were the women, who followed the soldiers with calabashes of water and dried fish, to recruit the strength of the combatants when these were weary or athirst. But every woman was ready to fight and die with Kekuaokalani.
The attack was made by the rebel forces, who bore down upon the army of Liholiho with an impetus such as must have swept all before it, had it not been for the foreigners with their guns vomiting streams of fire upon their assailants. The company of musketeers kept up such a murderous fire upon the rebel center that, after a terrific and protracted struggle, this was driven back to the rising ground. Kekuaokalani, whose tall form was seen everywhere in the fray as he shouted orders to his spearmen, was wounded early in the battle, but fought on without knowing it, rallying his forces behind a stone wall about breast high, where there took place a struggle which for obstinacy and valour had no parallel in the annals of Hawaiian warfare. The double canoes commanded by the queen mother, Kaahumanu, raked the insurgent position with their guns, but two heroic figures seemed to stand out among the falling after every discharge, as if bearing charmed lives amid the rain of death. These were Kekuaokalani and his wife, Manono, who fought side by side, heedless of the heaped corpses around them. Weak with loss of blood from his previous wounds, Kekuaokalani more than once leaned fainting upon the arm of his wife, but he revived again and again to fight with a still more desperate valor. The temptation was sore when he beheld, through the battle smoke, his uncle Kalaimoku and his mother signalling him to ask for quarter; he set his teeth hard and fired again. Had it been Manono herself, he had most like done the same, though her breast had faced the bullets! No longer able to stand, he sat upon a fragment of lava and continued to load and fire his musket. No Kaili flew above the host as of old, no Lono came to lend supernatural aid to his faithful martyrs. Instead, the forces of Kalaimoku were advancing, and Kekuaokalani knew himself left to die, with life still sweet on his lips. The fated ball came at last, pierced his left breast, and, folding his face in his feather cloak, Kekuaokalani fell forward at the feet of Manono, and expired without a groan. Manono wept not, but awaited hopefully the messenger of death which should make them fellows again in the halls of Milu. On came the conquerors; in vain Kalaimoku and his sister cried to save her. Another bullet, unerring in its aim, pierced her temple and she fell upon the warm but lifeless body of her husband.
The insurgents made but little more resistance now that their leader had fallen. It was sunset and under the cover of the darkness any that could, escaped. Some surrendered or were captured by the royal troops, a few crept into caves and holes of the mountains, and, covering the entrance with pieces of lava, lay concealed till Liholiho had returned to Kailua.
Kalaimoku and his sister stood over the corpses of Kekuaokalani and Manono, and, gazing long upon the noble dead, exclaimed with tears:
“Truly, since the days of Keawe, no nobler Hawaiians have lost the light of the sun!”
Thus perished Lono’s last champions, faithful unto death.
Three months later the first Christian missionaries reached the group with the tidings so long desired. The first news which reached them from the shore was in the almost incredible words: “The idols of Hawaii are no more!”
May we not, while rejoicing in the new day which was thus brought to the land left by Liholiho bereft of law and religion, retain a tender heart for the youthful pair whose bodies sleep beneath the morning glory and the heaped-up stones on the shore of Kuamoo?
XI
KEOUA
_A Story of Kalawao_
The laws of men are merciful in intent, but they sometimes grind hard upon the innocent and the poor, at times through the necessary imperfection of all human efforts after the ideal, at times through the harsh administration of enactments good enough in themselves.
No laws have ever seemed so necessary in Hawaii as the laws enforcing the segregation of lepers; no laws just in themselves have ever been the cause of so much grief and pain. There have been times, moreover, when they were carried out neither wisely nor mercifully.
At such a time only could the following story have been possible--the story of a love which laws could not abrogate nor death itself annul.
* * * * *
Pauoa is a valley of almost perpetual rainbow, where the mists dance in the sunshine on the mountainside and the waters trickle down through thickets of ferns and scarlet creepers to the long lines of cocoanut palms which stand like sentinels along the beach from Diamond Head to Honolulu.
But its chief beauty to Keoua, returning with his net from fishing outside the coral reef, lay in the fact that he was homeward bent. There, a hundred yards further, was the grass hut, secluded behind a screen of banana trees, and rising apparently out of a glistening swamp of taro-patch made on a terrace of the mountainside. What joy to feel the embrace of his good _wahine_, Luka, and to have the crowing brown baby thrust into his arms to fondle! Was it not always worth while to be the long day away to know such a homecoming as this?
But to-night there was no welcome, and Keoua’s heart sank. In his haste he waded through the taro-patch, instead of skirting the enclosure as usual. The child was there, he heard its cry before he entered, but of wife there was no sign. The baby lay on the matted floor, feebly whining; the mother was gone, apparently not without struggle, for the matting at the door had been torn violently away, making the hut look like a desolate cave.
Keoua did not search the enclosure: he knew what had happened. The officers of the Board of Health had found his hut at last, and had taken away his wife, for--_she was a leper_. They had taken her away in the husband’s absence, for they knew that, had he been there, he would have fought to the death. His loaded gun still lay where he had left it in the corner of the hut. They had taken her by violence as it seemed, and callously left the helpless babe behind, for Hawaiian officials, even those with bowels of compassion, were not much given to thinking about babies. Some Chinese coolies working in the neighborhood corroborated the suggestions of his fear. Luka had been carried away to the _haole_ (white) doctors, and she would be taken to Molokai, and there be dead--dead to husband, child and friends.
Keoua was a crushed man when he took his helpless babe in his arms. It did not occur to him to give it away, as many of his friends would have done, or even to find a nurse for it. Somehow it reminded him that he once had a home. He did not go fishing now. For three or four days he tried to make the babe eat some _poi_, or even, so stupid or ignorant was the man, some hard taro, or a piece of banana, but, although it did not cry, it refused to eat, and one day towards evening its cries ceased forever. Then Keoua, more miserable and lonely than ever, wrapped the tiny corpse in fold upon fold of _kapa_ and took it to the Kawaiahao cemetery. Here, among the graves of so many of his fast-dying race, he found a little wooden hut and knocked at the door. An old white-haired Hawaiian, no other indeed than Keoua’s father, opened. He was living here on the very soil which was in time to be his grave, and to him Keoua handed the bundle without a word of explanation, even as to the absence of Luka. The two men uttered their “_auwe_” together, the young man in his youth and the old man in his age, over the body of the babe. Then, as the moon rose, silvering the cocoanut groves of Waikiki, Keoua stole back to his deserted hut, with the instinct of a beast wishing to hide its head in the earth.
* * * * *
Two days later the “_Likelike_” is on her way from Honolulu to Mani. What a dream that voyage is! For a while the empty craters of Leahi and Koko Head, fringed with breakers along the coral reef, stand out in glorious sunlight. Then suddenly--
“The sun’s rim dips, The stars rush out, At one stride comes the dark.”
Mattresses are spread on deck, the passengers stretch themselves for sleep, the air is heavy with the scent of the wreaths of flowers with which almost every voyager is bedecked; overhead the stars swing like lamps, or as though the whole vault of heaven, with its million eyes, were one lamp swaying in infinite space. Then, with a faint consciousness of something breaking in upon your dream, you feel an anchor drop and hear the splash of oars. You have not, however, reached your destination yet. This is some boat coming off from the shores of Molokai for stores for a lonely ranch in the mountains. If you rise, you may lean over the bulwarks and look through the mists upon a black mass of mountain wall which conceals the most loathsome scene the world affords--the great lazar house of Hawaii in Nature’s fairest garden, the saddest witness our earth possesses to the existence of the serpent’s trail.
Yes, it is not the chill night-mist which makes you shiver; for, although you know the leper settlement is not on this side of the island, at Kaunakakai, but on the other side over the _pali_ at Kalaupapa, you feel that no wall of mountain can shut out the thought of thirteen hundred fellow creatures suffering a living death in the land which God made so fair.
If you had been onboard the “_Likelike_” on the day of which I speak, you would have heard, almost coincident with the lifting of the anchor, a splash so indistinct that when some one shouted “Man overboard!” few believed the cry. Men lazily looked over the bulwarks, but saw nothing, for the moon was behind the mountain, and presently, with the comforting assurance that, if anybody had gone overboard, he was by this time food for sharks, lay back on their mattresses to continue their dreams and their voyage.
But a man _had_ gone overboard, a man whose heart was bent on crossing seas and mountains to his leper bride. Keoua swam ashore silently, fearing every second to see the white fin of a shark start up beside him in the water. Once he felt the cold, slimy sucker of a squid against his ankle, but he tore himself free, and, shooting on a high roller through a narrow break in the reef, lay at last, spent and breathless, but safe upon the beach.
Yet the worst was still before him. Kalaupapa could only be approached by crossing the mountain range, and the only path on the other side was down a _pali_ so steep that it made the head of the bravest climber dizzy to look upon it. However, there was no help for it, and in a few minutes, Keoua, recovering from the exhaustion consequent upon his swim, set off on the upward journey. This was comparatively easy, though it was still easier in the darkness to miss the path and get into those haunted gorges where of old the poison goddess had her grove. Long ropes of _ieie_, tough as wire cables, formed a ladder up the face of the mountain. By these, scarcely touching the ground, he toiled upwards through tangled growths which would otherwise have been impassable. When he reached the top, the sun was just rising from the clouds, and revealing one after another the majestic ridges of Haleakala and the rock-bound coasts of Maui and Lanai. Then the wind came sweeping up and threatened to dash the intruder backwards down the rocks. The trees swayed and bent, the foliage of the _kukui_ shivered with its ghostly sheen, the clouds swept away from the bay of Kalawao, and there, several thousand feet below, lay the white roofs and _lanais_ of as peaceful a settlement, to all appearances, as any upon which the sun has ever shone.
But if ever a place could be called a whited sepulchre it was this; not that Christian love and self-sacrifice had not cast an aureole of beauty about it which made it sacred, but because here was the realization of Milton’s terrible vision:
“A lazar house it seemed, wherein were laid Numbers of all diseased; all maladies Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic pangs, Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, And moonstruck madness, pining atrophy, Marasmus and wide-wasting pestilence, Dropsies and asthmas and joint-racking rheums. Dire was the tossing, deep the groans: Despair Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch; And over them triumphant Death his dart Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked, With vows, as their chief good and final hope.”
How could Nature sing so sweetly and smile so fair when the eyes rested upon a cancer so foul!
Keoua looked down as though he expected to see there the grass hut of Pauoa Valley with Luka and her baby at the door to greet him, but the place seemed deserted till, when half-way down, the sweet tinkle of a chapel bell roused him from a dream, and he supported himself by a clump of guava bushes to watch the dark-cassocked priests and white-hooded sisters passing from the House of Misery to the solace of the House of God. Such was the mood of Keoua that he could not feel any thrill in the thought of these brave men and sweet women thus living in grim company with death. He thought only of the curse the white man had brought to his race from the days of Cook, the discoverer, to the day when the fruits of ancient vice had burst forth in the heart of his own home. So it was with hard and bitter thoughts he hastened on his way, scarce knowing what he intended to do, perhaps carry Luka bodily away from the pest-house to the fastnesses of the mountains, where they might live like the free wild beasts and die in peace.
As he came near the hospital, however, there met him, sauntering forth, a man dressed in a cool suit of white linen, whose keen eye and earnest serious face proclaimed him the doctor.
He glanced at the wayfarer with something of surprise, seeing that he was endeavoring to avoid an encounter.
“_Aloha!_” he exclaimed, using the familiar Hawaiian greeting. The man made no response, but looked savagely on the ground.
“Hello, my man; what’s the matter?” For Keoua looked ghastly through his olive skin, and his steps tottered. But strength came to answer, fiercely:
“_Hele aku_--go away--curse you. Before time, _kanaka_ live here, no _pake mai_--(leprosy)--all _maikai loa_--very good. Then _haole_ man come, bring _pake mai_. Poor _kanaka_ die; make die all time. _Haole_ man thief steal kanaka’s _wahine_; _haole_ man kill _kanaka’s keiki_ (child). _Hele!_”
The doctor thought of all he might say, for it was eminently reasonable, all this segregation, and the kanaka had much cause to be grateful for what the government was doing for the lepers. But he knew logic was not what the poor wretch wanted, and while he hesitated the need of answering vanished, for there rose up from the hospital a strange sound, strange at least from such a place. It was the strain of a band of music, plaintive yet joyful--no dirge, but the voice of rejoicing. For in this lazar-house joy is not unknown, albeit it comes at an hour when others weep. A soul freed from pain, from pollution, and from the body of death, born into the light of Paradise--in such a case was it not fitting that cymbals should clash and trumpets sound?
“_Heaha kela?_” exclaimed Keoua; “what is that?”
“The good God has taken to rest the soul of a poor woman who was glad to go.”
“What was her name?” cried the Hawaiian, excitedly.
“Luka,” replied the doctor.
An ashy pallor spread over the man’s already bloodless face. It was plain to the doctor that Death had come even quicker than Love. Then there came a bitter cry, mingled with bitter laughter.
“_Akua maikai!_ Good God!... Ha, ha, ha, ha.... He bad God! He all same _haole_! Steal poor kanaka’s _wahine_.... _Auwe_ ... _auwe_.... Me curse Him!”
But the curse came not. A change as though an angel had whispered to him came swift as thought. He pressed his hands on his heart and murmured:
“Me no curse Him! Good God! He good God! Sweet wife, sweet _keiki_ ... I come. _E Christo e aloha mai._” Then he fell heavily to the ground.
An angel had indeed spoken to him--the kindest angel whom God had sent to Kalaupapa--the angel of Death.
The music played on, and celestial harmonies seemed to mingle with its strains. It was as though glad spirits met and welcomed one another in a land fairer even than Hawaii, a land, moreover, where the serpent’s blight may never come.
* * * * *
A double funeral took place in the leper cemetery that very afternoon, and those who were there said the priest must have been absent-minded, for at the close of the service he spread his hands over the grave and said:
“Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.