i couldn't walk with my broken leg. my gentle preserver took me up in her arms with tender care, and lifted me, strong man as i am, bodily from the ground as if i had been a week-old baby. it was partly her powerful hawaiian limbs and sinews that did it no doubt, but still more, i believe, that wonderful nervous energy with which nature supplies even the weakest of our kind when they stand face to face at last in some painful crisis with a great emergency.
she carried me slowly up the zig-zag path, and over the lip of the crater to kalaua's house. then she laid me down to rest upon a bamboo bed, and went out to fetch me food and water.
what happened next i hardly knew, for once on the bed, i fainted immediately with pain and exhaustion.
when i next felt conscious, it was well on in the night. i found myself stretched at full length on the bed, with frank leaning over me in brotherly affection, and an american doctor, hastily summoned from hilo, endeavouring to restore me by all the means in his power.
at the foot stood kalaua, no longer grim and severe as formerly, but, much to my surprise, the very picture of intelligent and friendly sympathy.
"how did you get here so soon?" i asked the doctor, when i was first able to converse with him rationally. "you must have hurried up very fast from hilo."
"i did," he answered, going on with his work uninterruptedly. "your friend kalaua fetched me up.
"he happened to be here when that brave girl rescued you from the crater, and he rode down on one of his little mountain ponies in the quickest time i ever remember to have known made between hilo and the summit. he was extremely anxious i should get back quickly to see you at once, and we cantered up on the return journey as i never before cantered in the whole course of my life. i've nearly broken my own bones, i can tell you, in my haste and anxiety to set yours right for you."
"that's very good of you," i answered gratefully.
"oh! you needn't thank me for it," he replied, with a laugh. "it was all our good friend kalaua's doing. he wouldn't even allow me to draw rein for a moment till i halted at last beside his own verandah."
i gazed at kalaua in the blankest astonishment. could it really be he who had stood so stolidly by in the feather mask and devoted my head with awful rites to the nether gods while i lay helpless on the floor of the hawaiians? my confidence in his identity began distinctly to waver. after all, i hadn't seen the features of that grim heathen priest while i lay at the bottom. perhaps i was mistaken. he was kea's uncle. for kea's sake, i ardently hoped so.
"she carried me slowly up the zig-zag path."
they set my leg that very night, and frank and kalaua in turns sat up to nurse me. i can hardly say which of the two was kinder or tenderer. kalaua watched me, indeed, as a woman watches by her son's bedside. he was ready with drink, or food, or medicine, whenever i wanted it. his wakeful eyelids never closed for a moment. no mother could have tended her own child more patiently.
"is the volcano still at work, frank?" i asked once, in a painless interval. i could never forget, even on a sick bed, that i was by trade a man of science.
"no, my dear old fellow," frank answered affectionately. "the volcano, finding you were no longer in a fit condition to observe it, has politely retired to the deepest recesses of its own home till you're in a proper state to continue your investigations. the moment you were safely out of the hole, kea tells me, it sank back like a calm sea to its usual level."
"pélé is satisfied," the old man muttered to himself in hawaiian from the bottom of the bed, not thinking i understood him. "she has given up her claim to the victim who offered himself of his own accord upon her living altar."
it was not till next morning that i saw kea again. the poor girl was pale and evidently troubled. she received all my expressions of gratitude with a distracted air, and she hardly appeared at times to be quite conscious of what was passing around her. but she was gentle and considerate and kind as ever—even more kind, i fancied, than we had yet known her.
for the next week, frank, kalaua, and kea in turn each bore their fair share in nursing and watching me. i wondered to myself, after all that had happened, that i wasn't afraid of stopping any longer under the old chief's roof; yet now that it was all over, my staying there for the time seemed somehow quite natural. indeed, it would have been impossible to carry me further along the rugged road that led down the mountain, with my leg in splints, and my general health in a most enfeebled condition. and i wasn't in the least afraid, either that kalaua would cut my throat in his own house, or otherwise offer me personal violence. nothing could possibly exceed his personal kindness to me now: and i felt as safe in the old chief's hands as i did in his niece's, or in my own brother's.
my conversations with the american doctor too reassured me greatly in this curious matter. a day or two later, i told him the whole strange and romantic story, in far fuller detail than i have told it here (for all the incidents were then fresh in my memory), and he listened with the air of a man to whom such marvellous recitals of savage superstition were hardly anything out of the common.
"i shouldn't be surprised if it really was kalaua," he said to me confidentially, when i had finished my narrative. "the fact is, the old man has always been more or less suspected of persistent pélé worship. beliefs like that don't die out in a single generation. but you needn't be afraid on that account that he'll do you any bodily harm now. pélé cares nothing for unwilling victims. she takes those only who go to her willingly. you fell in of yourself, and therefore kalaua wouldn't pull you out. to have done so would have been to incur the severest wrath of pélé. but now that you've once got safe out again, every good old-fashioned heathen hawaiian will hold to it as a cardinal article of faith, that you're absolutely inviolable. the goddess had you once in her power, and of her own free will she has let you go again. if she liked, she might have eaten you, but she let you go. that shows you are one for whom she has a special concern and regard. the moment you got up in safety to the brink once more, the lava fell back. to kalaua, that would be a certain sign and token that pélé relinquished all claim upon your body. she may take some other victim, unawares, in your stead: but you yourself, the hawaiians believe, are henceforth and for ever next door to invulnerable. you are taboo to pélé.
"well, i've been very nearly dipped in styx," i answered, smiling, "so i ought to be inviolable. but you don't think, then, i run any risk by remaining under this roof till my leg gets well again?"
"quite the contrary," the doctor replied with perfect confidence. "i should think you would nowhere be treated with greater care, consideration, and courtesy than here at kalaua's. whatever it may have been a very few days ago, these people regard you now as pélé's favourite. if you were to ask politely for a white elephant, they'd import one for you direct, i verily believe, by the first mail steamer in from burmah."
"that's lucky," i said, "though after what i saw in the crater the other day, i confess i feel a little nervous at times about our personal safety."
as the doctor was just taking his leave, he turned and said to me in a very serious tone, "if i were you, do you know, mr. hesselgrave, i think i wouldn't say anything at all in public while you remain in hawaii about the scene in the crater."
"no?" i said interrogatively.
"no," he answered. "you see, it's impossible to prove anything. after all, when one looks the thing squarely in the face, what did you really see and feel sure of? why, just five natives looking down at you in the crater, on the very eve of a serious outbreak of the volcano. well, nobody's bound to risk his life to rescue a stranger from the jaws of an eruption. as to the mask, the less said about that the better. people won't believe you: they'll say it's impossible. i believe you, because i understand hawaiians down to the very ground: i know how skin-deep their civilization goes: but folks who don't, will think you're romancing. besides, kalaua wouldn't like it, of course. it's bad form to be a heathen in hawaii. whatever the natives may be in their own hearts, in their outer lives they prefer to be considered civilized christians. there's nothing riles your true-born hawaiian like a public imputation of cannibalism or heathendom."
"all right," i answered. "you may depend upon my discretion," for kea's sake indeed i should have been sorry to bring disgrace upon her stern old uncle, however richly the old chief might have merited it. i was profoundly grateful to her for her gallant rescue; it would have been an ill reward indeed to repay her kindness by betraying the terrible secret of her family.
