Summer Cruising in the South Seas Part 13

My heart warmed toward poor, disconsolate Deborah in that moment, and I forgave her all, which was the most Christian act I ever yet performed.

As we rode down the lane, I caught a glimpse of the low mound in the orchard, and I buried my little barbarians under my great-coat, so as to spare them a fresh sorrow, while I thought how, spring after spring, that small grave would be covered with drifts of pale apple-blossoms, and in the long winters it would be hidden under the paler drifts of snow,--when it should be strewn with sea-sh.e.l.ls, and laid away under a cactus-hedge, in a dense and fragrant shade; and I gathered my little ones closer to me, and said in my soul: "O, if the August Public could only know them as I know them, it would doubt us less, and love us more!

The Zebra is gone, indeed, but my babes are here, fresh souls in perfect bodies, like rare-ripe fruits, untouched as yet, with the nap and the dew upon them." The stars sparkled and flashed in the cloudless sky, as we hurried over the crisp ground,--a little, bereaved, benighted company of South-Sea strollers, who ask your charity, and give their best in return for it.

I have told you of my South-Sea show. You may yet have an opportunity of judging how you like it, provided my baby heathens don't insist upon turning into angels before their time, after the manner of the lamented Zebra. In the meantime, the dread of this not improbable curbing of my high career is but one of the sorrows of a South-Sea showman.

THE HOUSE OF THE SUN.

My Hawaiian oracle, Kahele, having posed himself in compact and chubby grace, awaited his golden opportunity, which was not long a-coming. I sat on the steps of L----'s verandah, and yawned frightfully, because life was growing tedious, and I did not know exactly what to do next.

L----'s house was set in the nicest kind of climate, at the foot of a great mountain, just at that alt.i.tude where the hot air stopped dancing, though it was never cool enough to shut a door, or to think of wearing a hat for any other purpose than to keep the sun out of one's eyes.

L----'s veranda ran out into vacancy as blank as cloudless sky and shadowless sea could make it; in fact, all that the eye found to rest upon was the low hill jutting off from one corner of the house beyond a jasmine in blossom; and under the hill a flat-sailed schooner rocking in a calm. I think there was nothing else down the slope of the mountain but tangled yellow gra.s.s, that grew brown and scant as it crept into the torrid zone, a thousand feet below us, and there it had not the courage to come out of the earth at all; so the picture ended in a blazing beach, with warm waves sliding up and down it, backed by blue-watery and blue-airy s.p.a.ce for thousands and thousands of miles.

Why should not a fellow yawn over the situation? especially as L---- was busy and could not talk much, and L----'s books were as old as the hills and a good deal drier.

Having yawned, I turned toward Kahele, and gnashed my teeth. The little rascal looked knowing; his hour had come. He fired off in broken English, and the effect was something like this:--

"Suppose we sleep in House of the Sun,--we make plenty good sceneries?"

"And where is that?" quoth I.

Kahele's little lump of a nose was jerked up toward the great mountain at the back of L----'s house. "Haleakala!"[A] cried he, triumphantly, for he saw he had resurrected my interest in life, and he felt that he had a thing or two worth showing, a glimpse of which might content me with this world, dull as I found it just then. "Haleakala--the House of the Sun--up before us," said Kahele.

[A] Haleakala, an extinct crater in the Sandwich Islands, supposed to be the largest in the world.

"And to get into the Sun's House?"

"Make a good climb up, and go in from the top!"

Ha! to creep up the roof and drop in at the skylight: this were indeed a royal adventure. "How long would it take?"

Kahele waxed eloquent. That night we should sleep a little up on the slope of the mountain, lodging with the _haolis_ (foreigners) among the first clouds; in the morning we should surprise the sun in the turrets of his temple; then down--down--down into the crater, that had been strewed with ashes for a thousand years. After that, out on the other side, toward the sea, where the trade-winds blew, and the country was fresh and fruitful. The youngster sweated with enthusiasm while he strove to make me comprehend the full extent of the delights pertaining to this journey; and, as he finished, he made a rapid flank movement toward the animals, staked a few rods away.

It was not necessary that I should consent to undertake this expedition.

He was eager to go, and he would see that I enjoyed myself when I went; but go I must, now that he had made up my mind for me. I confess, I was as wax in that climate. Yet, why not take this promising and uncommon tour? The charm of travel is to break new paths. I ceased to yawn any further over life. Kahele went to the beasts, and began saddling them.

L----'s hospitality culminated in a bottle of cold, black coffee, and a hamper of delicious sandwiches, such as Mrs. L---- excels in. I had nothing to do but to go. It did look like a conspiracy; but, as I never had the moral courage to fight against anything of that sort, I got into the saddle and went.

Turning for a moment toward the brute's tail, overcome with conflicting emotions, I said,--

"Adieu, dear L----, thou picture of boisterous industry! Adieu, Mrs.

L----, whose light is hid under the bushel of thy lord; but, as it warms him, it is all right, I suppose, and thy reward shall come to thee some day, I trust! By-by, mult.i.tudes of little L----s, tumbling recklessly in the back-yard, crowned with youth and robust health and plenty of flaxen curls! Away, Kahele! for it is toward evening, and the clouds are skating along the roof of the House of the Sun. Sit not upon the order of your going, but strike spurs at once,--and away!"

It was thus that I revived myself. The prospect of fresh adventure intoxicated me. I do not believe I could have been bought off after that enlivening farewell. The air of the islands was charged with electricity. I bristled all over with new life. I wanted to stand up in my saddle and fly.

It seemed the boy had engaged a special guide for the crater,--one accustomed to feeling his way through the bleak hollow, where any unpractised feet must have surely gone astray. Kahele offered him a tempting bonus to head our little caravan at once, though it goes sorely against the Hawaiian grain to make up a mind inside of three days.

Kahele managed the financial department, whenever he had the opportunity, with a liberality worthy of a purse ten times as weighty as mine; but as he afterward a.s.sured me, that guide was a fine man, and a friend of his whom it was a pleasure and a privilege to serve.

Of course, it was all right, since I couldn't help myself; and we three pulled up the long slopes of Haleakala, while the clouds multiplied, as the sun sank, and the evening grew awfully still. Somewhere up among the low-hanging mist there was a house full of _haolis_, and there we proposed to spend the night. We were looking for this shelter with all our six eyes, while we rode slowly onward, having scarcely uttered a syllable for the last half-hour. You know there are some impressive sorts of solitude, that seal up a fellow's lips; he can only look about him in quiet wonderment, tempered with a fearless and refres.h.i.+ng trust in that Providence who has enjoined silence. Well, this was one of those times; and right in the midst of it Kahele sighted a smoke-wreath in the distance. To me it looked very like a cloud, and I ventured to declare it such; but the youngster frowned me down, and appealed to the special guide for further testimony. The guide declined to commit himself in the matter of smoke or mist, as he ever did on all succeeding occasions, being a wise guide, who knew his own fallibility. It was smoke!--a thin, blue ribbon of it, uncoiling itself from among the branches of the overhanging trees, floating up and up and tying itself into double-bow knots, and then trying to untie itself, but peris.h.i.+ng in the attempt.

In the edge of the grove we saw the little white cottage of the _haolis_; and, not far away, a camp fire, with bright, red flames dancing around a kettle, swung under three stakes with their three heads together. Tall figures were moving about the camp, looking almost like ghosts, in the uncertain glow of the fire; and towards these lights and shadows we jogged with satisfaction, scenting supper from afar.

"Halloo!" said we, with voices that did not sound very loud up in that thin atmosphere.

"Halloo!" said they, with the deepest unconcern, as though they had been through the whole range of human experience, and there was positively nothing left for them to get excited over.

Some of their animals whinnied in a fas.h.i.+on that drew a response from ours. A dog barked savagely until he was spoken to, and then was obliged to content himself with an occasional whine. Some animal--a sheep, perhaps--rose up in the trail before us, and plunged into bush, sending our beasts back on their haunches with fright. A field-cricket lifted up its voice and sang; and then a hundred joined him; and then ten thousand times ten thousand swelled the chorus, till the mountains were alive with singing crickets.

"Halloo, stranger! Come in and stop a bit, won't you?" This was our welcome from the chief of the camp, who came a step or two forward, as soon as we had ridden within range of the camp fire.

And we went in unto them, and ate of their bread, and drank of their coffee, and slept in their blankets,--or tried to sleep,--and had a mighty good time generally.

The mountaineers proved to be a company of California miners, who had somehow drifted over the sea, and, once on that side, they naturally enough went into the mountains to cut wood, break trails, and make themselves useful in a rough, out-of-door fas.h.i.+on. They had for companions and a.s.sistants a few natives, who, no doubt, did the best they could, though the Californians expressed considerable contempt for the "lazy devils, who were fit for nothing but to fiddle on a jew's-harp."

We ate of a thin, hot cake, baked in a frying-pan over that camp fire; gnawed a boiled bone fished out of the kettle swung under the three sticks; drank big bowls of coffee, sweetened with coa.r.s.e brown sugar and guiltless of milk; and sat on the floor all the while, with our legs crossed, like so many Turks and tailors. We went to our blankets as soon as the camp fire had smothered itself in ashes, though meanwhile Jack, chief of the camp, gathered himself to windward of the flames, with his hips on his heels and his chin on his knees, smoking a stubby pipe, and talking of flush times in California. He was one of those men who could and would part with his last quarter, relying upon Nature for his bed and board. He said to me, "If you can rough it, hang on a while,--what's to drive you off?" I could rough it: the fire was out, the night chilly; so we turned in under blue blankets with a fuzz on them like moss, and, having puffed out the candle,--that lived long enough to avenge its death in a houseful of villainous smoke,--we turned over two or three times apiece, and, one after another, fell asleep. At the farther side of the house lay the natives, as thick as sheep in a pen, one of them a glossy black fellow, as sleek as a eunuch, born in the West Indies, but whose sands of life had been scattered on various sh.o.r.es. This sooty fellow tw.a.n.ged a quaint instrument of native workmans.h.i.+p, and tw.a.n.ged with uncommon skill. His art was the life of that savage community at the other end of the house. Again and again, during the night, I awoke and heard the tinkle of his primitive harp, mingled with the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of delight wrung from the hearts of his dusky and sleepless listeners.

Once only was that midnight festival interrupted. We all awoke suddenly and simultaneously, though we scarcely knew why; then the dog began to mouth horribly. My blanket-fellows--beds we had none--knew there was mischief brewing, and rushed out with their guns cooked. Presently the dog came in from the brush, complaining bitterly, and one of the miners shot at a rag fluttering among the bushes. In the morning we found a horse gone, and a couple of bullet-holes in a s.h.i.+rt spread out to dry.

As soon as the excitement was over, we returned to the blankets and the floor. The eunuch tuned his harp anew, and, after a long while, dawn looked in at the uncurtained window, with a pale, grey face, freckled with stars.

Kahele saw it as soon as I did, and was up betimes. I fancy he slept little or none that night, for he was fond of music, and especially fond of such music as had made the last few hours more or less hideous.

Everybody rose with the break of day, and there was something to eat long before sunrise, after which our caravan, with new vigour, headed for the summit.

Wonderful clouds swept by us; sometimes we were lost for a moment in their icy depths. I could scarcely see the tall ears of my mule when we rode into those opaque billows of vapour that swept noiselessly along the awful heights we were scaling. It was a momentary but severe bereavement, the loss of those ears and the head that went with them, because I cared not to ride saddles that seemed to be floating in the air. What was Prince Firouz Schah to me, or what was I to the Princess of Bengal, that I should do this thing!

There are pleasanter sensations than that of going to heaven on horseback; and we wondered if we should ever reach the point where we could begin to descend again to our natural level, and talk to people infinitely below us just then. Ten thousand perpendicular feet in the air; our breath short; our animals weak in the knees; the ocean rising about us like a wall of sapphire, on the top of which the sky rested like a cover,--we felt as though we were shut in an exhausted receiver, the victims of some scientific experiment for the delectation of the angels. We were at the very top of the earth. There was nothing on our side of it nearer to Saturn than the crown of our heads. It was deuced solemn, and a trifle embarra.s.sing. It was as though we were personally responsible for the planet during the second we happened to be uppermost in the universe. I felt unequal to the occasion in that thin, relaxing atmosphere. The special guide, I knew, would s.h.i.+rk this august invest.i.ture, as he s.h.i.+rked everything else, save only the watchful care of my collapsing _porte-monnaie_. Kahele, perhaps, would represent us to the best of his ability,--which was not much beyond an amazing capacity for food and sleep, coupled with cheek for at least two of his size.

There is danger in delay, saith the copybook; and while we crept slowly onward toward the rim of the crater, the sun rose, and we forgot all else save his glory. We had reached the mouth of the chasm. Below us yawned a gulf whose farther walls seemed the outlines of some distant island, within whose depths a sea of cloud was satisfied to ebb and flow, whose billows broke noiselessly at the base of the sombre walls among whose battlements we clung like insects. I wonder that we were not dragged into that awful sea, for strange and sudden gusts of wind swept past us, coming from various quarters, and rus.h.i.+ng like heralds to the four corners of the heavens. We were far above the currents that girdle the lower earth, and seemed in a measure cut off from the life that was past. We lived and breathed in cloud-land. All our pictures were of vapour; our surroundings changed continually. Forests laced with frost; silvery, silent seas; sh.o.r.es of agate and of pearl; blue, shadowy caverns; mountains of light, dissolving and rising again transfigured in glorious resurrection, the sun tinging them with infinite colour. A flood of radiance swept over the mysterious picture,--a deluge of blood-red glory that came and went like a blush; and then the mists faded and fled away, and gradually we saw the deep bed of the crater, blackened, scarred, distorted,--a desert of ashes and cinders shut in by sooty walls; no tinge of green, no suggestion of life, no sound to relieve the imposing silence of that literal death of Nature. We were about to enter the guest-chamber of the House of the Sun. If we had been spirited away to the enchanted cavern of some genii, we could not have been more bewildered. The cloud-world had come to an untimely end, and we were left alone among its blackened and charred ruins. That magician, the sun, hearing the approach of spies, had transformed his fairy palace into a bare and uninviting wilderness. But we were destined to explore it notwithstanding; and our next move was to dismount and drive our unwilling animals over into the abyss. The angle of our descent was too near the perpendicular to sound like truth, in print. I will not venture to give it; but I remember that our particular guide and his beast were under foot, while Kahele and his beast were overhead, and I and my beast, sandwiched between, managed to survive the double horror of being buried in the _debris_ that rained upon us from the tail-end of the caravan, and slaying the unfortunate leaders ahead with the mult.i.tude of rocks we sent thundering down the cliff. A moving avalanche of stones and dust gradually brought us to the bed of the crater, where we offered thanks in the midst of an ascending cloud of cinders, every soul of us panting with exhaustion, and oozing like a saturated sponge. The heat was terrific; shelter there was none; L----'s coffee was all that saved as from despair. Before us stretched miles and miles of lava, looking like scorched pie-crust; two thousand feet above us hung heavy ma.s.ses of baked masonry, unrelieved by any tinge of verdure. To the windward there was a gap in the walls, through which forked tongues of mist ran in, but curled up and over the ragged cliffs, as though the prospect were too uninviting to lure them farther. It behoved us to get on apace, for life in the deserted House of the Sun was, indeed, a burden, and moreover there was some danger of our being locked in. The wind might veer a little, in which case an ocean of mist would deluge the crater, shutting out light and heat, and bewildering the pilgrim so that escape were impossible. The loadstone bewitched the compa.s.s in that fixed sea, and there were no beacons and no sounding signals to steer by. Across the smooth, hard lava occasional traces of a trail were visible, like scratches upon gla.s.s. Close to the edges of this perilous path yawned chasms. Sometimes the narrow way led over a ridge between two sandy hollows, out of which it was almost impossible to return, if one false step should plunge you into its yielding vortex. There was a long pull toward afternoon, and a sweltering camp about three p.m., where we finished L----'s lunch, and were not half satisfied. Even the consoling weed barely sustained our faulting spirits, for we knew that the more tedious portion of the journey was yet to come.

The windward vestibule wound down toward the sea, a wild gorge through which the molten lava had poured its destructive flood. There it lay, a broad, uneven pa.s.s of dead, black coal,--clinkers, as ragged and sharp as broken gla.s.s,--threaded by one beaten track a few inches in breadth.

To lose this trail was to tear the hoofs from your suffering beasts in an hour or two, and to lacerate your own feet in half the time. Having refreshed ourselves on next to nothing, we pressed forward. Already the shadows were creeping into the House of the Sun, and as yet we had scarcely gained the mouth of the pa.s.s. As we rode out from the shelter of a bluff, a cold draught struck us like a wave of the sea. Down the bleak, winding chasm we saw clouds approaching, pale messengers that travel with the trade-wind and find lodgment in the House of the Sun.

They were hastening home betimes, and had surprised us in the pa.s.sage.

It was an unwelcome meeting. Our particular guide ventured to a.s.sume an expression of concern, and cautiously remarked that we were _palikia_,--that is, in trouble! For once he was equal to an emergency; he knew of a dry well close at hand; we could drop into it and pa.s.s the night, since it was impossible to feel our way out of the crater through clouds almost as dense as cotton. Had we matches? No. Had we dry sticks?

Yes, in the well, perhaps. Kahele could make fire without phosphorus, and we could keep warm till morning, and then escape from the crater as early as possible. After much groping about, in and out of clouds, we found the dusty well and dropped into it. Ferns--a few of them--grew about its sides; a dwarfed tree, rejoicing in four angular branches, as full of mossy elbows as possible, stood in the centre of our retreat, and at the roots of this miserable recluse the Kanakas contrived to grind out a flame by boring into a bit of decayed wood with a dry stick twirled rapidly between their palms. Dead leaves, dried moss, and a few twigs made a short-lived and feeble fire for us. Darkness had come upon the place. We watched the flaming daggers stab the air fitfully, and finally sheathe themselves for good. We filled our shallow cave with smoke that drove us into the mouth of it, from time to time, to keep from strangulation. We saw our wretched beasts shaking with cold; we saw the swift, belated clouds hurrying onward in ghostly procession; we could do nothing but shudder and return to our dismal bed. No cheerful cricket blew his shrill pipe, like a policeman's whistle; the sea sang not for us with its deep, resounding voice; the Hawaiian harp was hushed. A stone, loosened by some restless lizard, rattled down the cliff; a goat, complaining of the cold, bleated once or twice. The wind soughed; the dry branches of our withering tree sawed across each other: these were our comforters during that almost endless night.

Once the heavens were opened to us. Through the rent in the clouds we saw a great shoulder of the cliff above us, bathed in moonlight. A thousand grotesque shadows played over the face of it. Pictures came and went,--a palimpsest of mysteries. Gargoyles leered at us from under the threatening brows of the bluff; and a white spectre, s.h.i.+ning like a star, stood on the uppermost peak, voiceless and motionless,--some living creature lost in admiration of the moon. Then the sky fell on us, and we were routed to our solitary cave.

There is a solitude of the sea that swallows up hope; the despairing spirit hangs over a threatening abyss of death; yet above it and below it there are forms of life rejoicing in their natural element. But there is a solitude of the earth that is more awful; in it Death taunts you with his presence, yet delays to strike. At sea, one step, and the spirit is set at liberty,--the body is entombed for ever. But alas!

within the deserts of the earth no sepulchre awaits the ashes of him who has suffered, and nought but the winds or the foul-feeding vultures shall cleanse that bleaching skeleton where it lies.

We tried to sleep on our stony pillows. Kahele woke and found the guide and me dozing; later, the guide roused himself to the discovery that Kahele and I were wrapped in virtuous unconsciousness. Anon I sat up among the rocks, listened to the two natives breathing heavily, and heard the wind sighing over the yawning mouth of our cavern. I heard the beasts stamping among the clinkers, and covered my head again with the damp blanket, and besieged sleep. Then we all three started from our unrefres.h.i.+ng dreams, and lo! the clouds were rising and fleeing away, and a faint, rosy light over the summit-peaks looked like sunrise; so we rose and saddled the caravan, and searched about us for the lost trail.

Hour after hour we drew nearer to the mouth of the crater. Our progress was snail-like; each one of us struck out for himself, having lost confidence in the cunning of the other. From small elevations we took our reckoning, and he who got the farthest toward the sea lifted up his voice in triumph, and was speedily joined by the rest of the party.

At last we came upon the bluffs that overhang the green sh.o.r.es of the island. We were safely out of the Sun's Tabernacle, but not yet free to pa.s.s into the lowly vales of the earth. Again and again we rode to the edges of the cliffs, whose precipitous walls forbade our descent.

Sometimes we clung to the bare ribs of the mountain, where a single misstep might have sent us headlong into the hereafter. Frequently we rejoiced in a discovery that promised well; but anon a sheltered chasm unveiled its hideous depths, or an indigo-jungle laid hold of us and cut us off in that direction.

Below us lay the verdant slopes of Kaupo. From their dried-gra.s.s houses flocked the natives, looking like ants and their hills. They watched us for hours with amused interest. Now and then they called to us with faint and far-off voices,--suggestions that were lost to us, since they sounded like so many bird-notes floating in the wind. All day we saw the little village lying under us temptingly peaceful and lazy. Clouds still hung below us: some of them swept by, pouring copious drops, that drove our audience within doors for a few moments; but the rain was soon over, the sun shone brighter than over, the people returned to watch us, and the day waned. We surprised flock upon flock of goats in their rocky retreats; but they dispersed in all directions like quicksilver, and we pa.s.sed on. About dusk we got into the gra.s.sy land, and thanked G.o.d for deliverance.