""John," he called again, taking a step nearer.
"He called timidly, and of all nightmares of horrors the most frightful was to hear timidity in Lyte Gregory"s voice.
""John, John, what does it mean?" he went on, still more timidly. "It"s a joke, isn"t it? John, here"s my hand. If I were a leper would I offer you my hand? Am I a leper, John?"
"He held out his hand, and what in high heaven or h.e.l.l did I care? He was my friend. I took his hand, though it cut me to the heart to see the way his face brightened.
""It was only a joke, Lyte," I said. "We fixed it up on you. But you"re right. It"s too serious. We won"t do it again."
"He did not laugh this time. He smiled, as a man awakened from a bad dream and still oppressed by the substance of the dream.
""All right, then," he said. "Don"t do it again, and I"ll stand for the drinks. But I may as well confess that you fellows had me going south for a moment. Look at the way I"ve been sweating."
"He sighed and wiped the sweat from his forehead as he started to step toward the bar.
""It is no joke," Kaluna said abruptly. I looked murder at him, and I felt murder, too. But I dared not speak or strike. That would have precipitated the catastrophe which I somehow had a mad hope of still averting.
""It is no joke," Kaluna repeated. "You are a leper, Lyte Gregory, and you"ve no right putting your hands on honest men"s flesh--on the clean flesh of honest men."
"Then Gregory flared up.
""The joke has gone far enough! Quit it! Quit it, I say, Kaluna, or I"ll give you a beating!"
""You undergo a bacteriological examination," Kaluna answered, "and then you can beat me--to death, if you want to. Why, man, look at yourself there in the gla.s.s. You can see it. Anybody can see it. You"re developing the lion face. See where the skin is darkened there over your eyes.
"Lyte peered and peered, and I saw his hands trembling.
""I can see nothing," he said finally, then turned on the _hapa-haole_.
"You have a black heart, Kaluna. And I am not ashamed to say that you have given me a scare that no man has a right to give another. I take you at your word. I am going to settle this thing now. I am going straight to Doc Strowbridge. And when I come back, watch out."
"He never looked at us, but started for the door.
""You wait here, John," he said, waving me back from accompanying him.
"We stood around like a group of ghosts.
""It is the truth," Kaluna said. "You could see it for yourselves."
"They looked at me, and I nodded. Harry Burnley lifted his gla.s.s to his lips, but lowered it untasted. He spilled half of it over the bar. His lips were trembling like a child that is about to cry. Ned Austin made a clatter in the ice-chest. He wasn"t looking for anything. I don"t think he knew what he was doing. n.o.body spoke. Harry Burnley"s lips were trembling harder than ever. Suddenly, with a most horrible, malignant expression he drove his fist into Kaluna"s face. He followed it up. We made no attempt to separate them. We didn"t care if he killed the half- caste. It was a terrible beating. We weren"t interested. I don"t even remember when Burnley ceased and let the poor devil crawl away. We were all too dazed.
"Doc Strowbridge told me about it afterward. He was working late over a report when Lyte came into his office. Lyte had already recovered his optimism, and came swinging in, a trifle angry with Kaluna to be sure, but very certain of himself. "What could I do?" Doc asked me. "I knew he had it. I had seen it coming on for months. I couldn"t answer him. I couldn"t say yes. I don"t mind telling you I broke down and cried. He pleaded for the bacteriological test. "Snip out a piece, Doc," he said, over and over. "Snip out a piece of skin and make the test.""
"The way Doc Strowbridge cried must have convinced Lyte. The _Claudine_ was leaving next morning for Honolulu. We caught him when he was going aboard. You see, he was headed for Honolulu to give himself up to the Board of Health. We could do nothing with him. He had sent too many to Molokai to hang back himself. We argued for j.a.pan. But he wouldn"t hear of it. "I"ve got to take my medicine, fellows," was all he would say, and he said it over and over. He was obsessed with the idea.
"He wound up all his affairs from the Receiving Station at Honolulu, and went down to Molokai. He didn"t get on well there. The resident physician wrote us that he was a shadow of his old self. You see he was grieving about his wife and the kids. He knew we were taking care of them, but it hurt him just the same. After six months or so I went down to Molokai. I sat on one side a plate-gla.s.s window, and he on the other.
We looked at each other through the gla.s.s and talked through what might be called a speaking tube. But it was hopeless. He had made up his mind to remain. Four mortal hours I argued. I was exhausted at the end. My steamer was whistling for me, too.
"But we couldn"t stand for it. Three months later we chartered the schooner _Halcyon_. She was an opium smuggler, and she sailed like a witch. Her master was a squarehead who would do anything for money, and we made a charter to China worth his while. He sailed from San Francisco, and a few days later we took out Landhouse"s sloop for a cruise. She was only a five-ton yacht, but we slammed her fifty miles to windward into the north-east trade. Seasick? I never suffered so in my life. Out of sight of land we picked up the _Halcyon_, and Burnley and I went aboard.
"We ran down to Molokai, arriving about eleven at night. The schooner hove to and we landed through the surf in a whale-boat at Kalawao--the place, you know, where Father Damien died. That squarehead was game.
With a couple of revolvers strapped on him he came right along. The three of us crossed the peninsula to Kalaupapa, something like two miles.
Just imagine hunting in the dead of night for a man in a settlement of over a thousand lepers. You see, if the alarm was given, it was all off with us. It was strange ground, and pitch dark. The leper"s dogs came out and bayed at us, and we stumbled around till we got lost.
"The squarehead solved it. He led the way into the first detached house.
We shut the door after us and struck a light. There were six lepers. We routed them up, and I talked in native. What I wanted was a _kokua_. A _kokua_ is, literally, a helper, a native who is clean that lives in the settlement and is paid by the Board of Health to nurse the lepers, dress their sores, and such things. We stayed in the house to keep track of the inmates, while the squarehead led one of them off to find a _kokua_.
He got him, and he brought him along at the point of his revolver. But the _kokua_ was all right. While the squarehead guarded the house, Burnley and I were guided by the _kokua_ to Lyte"s house. He was all alone.
""I thought you fellows would come," Lyte said. "Don"t touch me, John.
How"s Ned, and Charley, and all the crowd? Never mind, tell me afterward. I am ready to go now. I"ve had nine months of it. Where"s the boat?"
"We started back for the other house to pick up the squarehead. But the alarm had got out. Lights were showing in the houses, and doors were slamming. We had agreed that there was to be no shooting unless absolutely necessary, and when we were halted we went at it with our fists and the b.u.t.ts of our revolvers. I found myself tangled up with a big man. I couldn"t keep him off me, though twice I smashed him fairly in the face with my fist. He grappled with me, and we went down, rolling and scrambling and struggling for grips. He was getting away with me, when some one came running up with a lantern. Then I saw his face. How shall I describe the horror of it. It was not a face--only wasted or wasting features--a living ravage, noseless, lipless, with one ear swollen and distorted, hanging down to the shoulder. I was frantic. In a clinch he hugged me close to him until that ear flapped in my face.
Then I guess I went insane. It was too terrible. I began striking him with my revolver. How it happened I don"t know, but just as I was getting clear he fastened upon me with his teeth. The whole side of my hand was in that lipless mouth. Then I struck him with the revolver b.u.t.t squarely between the eyes, and his teeth relaxed."
Cudworth held his hand to me in the moonlight, and I could see the scars.
It looked as if it had been mangled by a dog.
"Weren"t you afraid?" I asked.
"I was. Seven years I waited. You know, it takes that long for the disease to incubate. Here in Kona I waited, and it did not come. But there was never a day of those seven years, and never a night, that I did not look out on . . . on all this . . . " His voice broke as he swept his eyes from the moon-bathed sea beneath to the snowy summits above. "I could not bear to think of losing it, of never again beholding Kona.
Seven years! I stayed clean. But that is why I am single. I was engaged. I could not dare to marry while I was in doubt. She did not understand. She went away to the States and married. I have never seen her since.
"Just at the moment I got clear of the leper policeman there was a rush and clatter of hoofs like a cavalry charge. It was the squarehead. He had been afraid of a rumpus and he had improved his time by making those blessed lepers he was guarding saddle up four horses. We were ready for him. Lyte had accounted for three _kokuas_, and between us we untangled Burnley from a couple more. The whole settlement was in an uproar by that time, and as we dashed away somebody opened upon us with a Winchester. It must have been Jack McVeigh, the superintendent of Molokai.
"That was a ride! Leper horses, leper saddles, leper bridles, pitch-black darkness, whistling bullets, and a road none of the best. And the squarehead"s horse was a mule, and he didn"t know how to ride, either. But we made the whaleboat, and as we shoved off through the surf we could hear the horses coming down the hill from Kalaupapa.
"You"re going to Shanghai. You look Lyte Gregory up. He is employed in a German firm there. Take him out to dinner. Open up wine. Give him everything of the best, but don"t let him pay for anything. Send the bill to me. His wife and the kids are in Honolulu, and he needs the money for them. I know. He sends most of his salary, and lives like an anchorite. And tell him about Kona. There"s where his heart is. Tell him all you can about Kona."
JACK LONDON BY HIMSELF
I was born in San Francisco in 1876. At fifteen I was a man among men, and if I had a spare nickel I spent it on beer instead of candy, because I thought it was more manly to buy beer. Now, when my years are nearly doubled, I am out on a hunt for the boyhood which I never had, and I am less serious than at any other time of my life. Guess I"ll find that boyhood! Almost the first things I realized were responsibilities. I have no recollection of being taught to read or write--I could do both at the age of five--but I know that my first school was in Alameda before I went out on a ranch with my folks and as a ranch boy worked hard from my eighth year.
The second school were I tried to pick up a little learning was an irregular hit or miss affair at San Mateo. Each cla.s.s sat in a separate desk, but there were days when we did not sit at all, for the master used to get drunk very often, and then one of the elder boys would thrash him.
To even things up, the master would then thrash the younger lads, so you can think what sort of school it was. There was no one belonging to me, or a.s.sociated with me in any way, who had literary tastes or ideas, the nearest I can make to it is that my great-grandfather was a circuit writer, a Welshman, known as "Priest" Jones in the backwoods, where his enthusiasm led him to scatter the Gospel.
One of my earliest and strongest impressions was of the ignorance of other people. I had read and absorbed Washington Irving"s "Alhambra"
before I was nine, but could never understand how it was that the other ranchers knew nothing about it. Later I concluded that this ignorance was peculiar to the country, and felt that those who lived in cities would not be so dense. One day a man from the city came to the ranch. He wore shiny shoes and a cloth coat, and I felt that here was a good chance for me to exchange thoughts with an enlightened mind. From the bricks of an old fallen chimney I had built an Alhambra of my own; towers, terraces, and all were complete, and chalk inscriptions marked the different sections. Here I led the city man and questioned him about "The Alhambra," but he was as ignorant as the man on the ranch, and then I consoled myself with the thought that there were only two clever people in the world--Washington Irving and myself.
My other reading-matter at that time consisted mainly of dime novels, borrowed from the hired men, and newspapers in which the servants gloated over the adventures of poor but virtuous shop-girls.
Through reading such stuff my mind was necessarily ridiculously conventional, but being very lonely I read everything that came my way, and was greatly impressed by Ouida"s story "Signa," which I devoured regularly for a couple of years. I never knew the finish until I grew up, for the closing chapters were missing from my copy, so I kept on dreaming with the hero, and, like him, unable to see Nemesis, at the end.
My work on the ranch at one time was to watch the bees, and as I sat under a tree from sunrise till late in the afternoon, waiting for the swarming, I had plenty of time to read and dream. Livermore Valley was very flat, and even the hills around were then to me devoid of interest, and the only incident to break in on my visions was when I gave the alarm of swarming, and the ranch folks rushed out with pots, pans, and buckets of water. I think the opening line of "Signa" was "It was only a little lad," yet he had dreams of becoming a great musician, and having all Europe at his feet. Well, I was only a little lad, too, but why could not I become what "Signa" dreamed of being?
Life on a Californian ranch was then to me the dullest possible existence, and every day I thought of going out beyond the sky-line to see the world. Even then there were whispers, promptings; my mind inclined to things beautiful, although my environment was unbeautiful.
The hills and valleys around were eyesores and aching pits, and I never loved them till I left them.