[Ill.u.s.tration: "WE RODE AT FULL SPEED IN BREATHLESS HASTE."]
On, on, we rode, in fear and trembling. The volcano now was all in full blast. Ashes and pumice stone kept falling around us. Smoke and steam obscured our way. But the dangers of nature frightened us little in comparison; what we dreaded most was the desperate onslaught of the enraged Hawaiians.
As we drew near the fort however I breathed again more freely. Not a sign of Kalaua was anywhere to be seen. We rode along, cautiously, under the overhanging rocks. No Hawaiian showed his grim black head above or below us. Then Kea, with a shriek, guessed in a moment exactly what had happened. "The lava has overwhelmed them!" she cried, clasping her hands together in girlish trepidation. "They are dead! They are dead! My uncle! My people! Pele will not be robbed of her victim at any rate. The lava has burst forth in one great flood and swallowed them."
And indeed, when we reached a turn in the bridle path, and looked up the ravine down whose rugged centre the other road descended tortuously, a terrible sight met our astonished eyes. The summit of the mountain was now one red and lurid ma.s.s of living fire. Through the gully along whose course Kalaua and his followers had plunged in the first darkness of the total eclipse to cut off our retreat, a vast river of red-hot lava was pouring onward resistlessly in huge fiery cataracts. We could see the fierce stream descending apace over ledges of rock like a flood of molten metal poured forth from the smelting-bowl; we could see it engulfing trees and shrubs and stumps and boulders in its plastic ma.s.s; we could see it overwhelming the whole green ravine with one desolating inundation of fire and ashes. "Quick, quick," I cried; "ride, ride for your lives. You may think volcanoes are nothing much to be frightened of; but, I tell you, a volcano in such a temper as that is not by any means a thing to be trifled with. She"s mad with rage. The stream"s coming down the valley straight for the fork; take at once to the ridge, and ride on for your lives. Ride, ride across country, anyhow, to the _Hornet_ at Hilo!"
"And me!" Kea cried, looking back at me appealingly, for she headed our little hasty procession. "What"s to become of me? Of me, who have brought it all by my sin upon you! Of me, for whose sake Pele is so angry! Of me, who roused her wrath by stealing away her victim! Leave me here to die! Kalaua is dead! My people are swallowed! I meant myself to die in their place, but you wouldn"t let me! Leave me here to perish! If you don"t leave me, Pele in her anger will pursue you on your way to the sea itself, to the foot of the mountain!"
"Ride on!" I answered. "Ride on to Hilo. Is this a time to make plans for the future? We"ll discuss all that, Kea, on the deck of the _Hornet_."
That evening, on board the British gunboat, lighted up by the terrific glare overhead, we had time to reflect what it all meant, and to feel ourselves free to think and speak again.
"What will you do now, Kea?" I asked the poor girl, as she sat there, trembling, in a small cabin chair, while the red flames still illumined for miles and miles the summit and flanks of Mauna Loa. "Do you wish to stop here in your own island?"
Kea looked up at me with a half terrified glance. "I wish," she said in a low voice, "to be as far away from Pele and Maloka as possible.....
Kalaua is dead. Pele has devoured him..... I will leave my husband on my wedding night. I will go home to my father"s people."
"That is best so," I answered quietly. "Hawaii is no place for such as you. I don"t think Maloka will ever miss you. We will go on the _Hornet_ away to Honolulu. There you can take pa.s.sage with Frank and me on the next steamer for San Francisco, on your way home to dear, peaceful England."
"Why," Frank exclaimed, with a look of immense surprise, "you don"t mean to say, Tom, you"re going to turn your back upon a volcano--and in actual eruption, too, into the bargain!"
"Bother volcanoes!" I answered testily. "One may have too much of a good thing. I don"t care if I never set eyes on another eruption as long as I live. So that"s flat for you."
"Nonsense!" Frank promptly replied with spirit, refusing to desert an old friend in a moment of vexation. "That"s all very well now, when you"re annoyed with Pele for misbehaving herself; but I"ll bet you sixpence, in spite of that, you"ll be off again before twelve months are over, exploring some other jolly crater in Sumatra or Teneriffe, or the Antarctic regions."
And sure enough, as I put the last finishing touches to these lines for press, the post brings me in a letter in an official envelope, "On Her Majesty"s Service," informing me that the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty have been graciously pleased to accept my suggested appointment for three years on a scientific mission to investigate the volcanic phenomena of Cotopaxi and other craters in the chain of the Andes. By the same post, I have also received a note from my sister, who is now stopping down at the Kentish rectory where Kea lives with her English relations, and who says, among sundry other pieces of domestic criticism, "What a dainty, charming, lovable girl your pretty little Hawaiian really is, Tom! So gentle and good-natured, and so sweetly pensive! I can hardly believe, myself, there"s anything of the cannibal Sandwich Islander in her! She"s as fair as I am, and quite as European in all her ideas and thoughts and sentiments. When she doesn"t talk nonsense about Pele, in fact, I almost forget she isn"t one of ourselves, she"s so perfectly English. But the rector says he can"t allow her to teach in the Sunday school till she"s quite got over that heathenish rubbish. By the way, I shouldn"t be surprised if she and her Cousin Hugh were some day to make a nice little match of it, if only Hugh can ever persuade her that it wouldn"t be bigamy, and that she isn"t already duly married to some ugly, mythical, humpbacked creature of the name of Maloka."