AFTER Sestrina’s experience with Lupo by the lagoon, everything went along quietly for a week, during which time she and Hawahee busied themselves by making their dwellings as comfortable as possible. Sestrina gathered stiff grasses for the thatching of their kitchen roof, which Hawahee was building so that they could have their meals in each other’s company. It was only through Sestrina’s insistent appeals that Hawahee agreed to this arrangement. Though Hawahee had discovered, to his great joy, that the small leper patch on his arm had dried and seemed to be healing, he still feared the girl’s close presence, and demanded her not to touch him. Sestrina, happy in his society, worked feverishly to help him improve their rough homes. She found that the work distracted her thoughts from those longings and memories which often came and filled her heart with anguish when she dwelt upon them. Hawahee, too, did his best to comfort her. He often sang weird, beautiful Hawaiian melodies to her and played on a bamboo flute which he had fashioned as they sat in the shade of the lovely breadfruit that grew on the valley’s side, just by their dwelling. Sestrina’s heart went out to him as he piped away or sang in the shadows. At other times he would tell her wonderful legends connected with the lore of his native isle. Sestrina’s eyes would open wide, as, with his eyes bright with the light of belief, he told her of the splendour and wonders of Atua, Kuahilo, Tangalora, and PelÉ, the gods and goddesses of his childhood’s creed. Sestrina discovered that he was a native of Lahaina, and had been a chief of the village where he dwelt till he had become converted to Christianity.

“And do you not believe in the God of my creed?” said Sestrina, as she thought of his devotion to the little ivory idol and his continuous prayers to his heathen deities.

“I believe in all the gods of the heavens, wahine,” he had replied. And then he had told the Haytian girl how he had once been a teacher in the mission-rooms at Kailo, a fact which explained why Hawahee spoke a mixture of pidgin and biblical English. “I play on flute, nice hymns once,” he said; then he took his cleverly improvised flute from the folds of his tappa-robe and played many melodies that were familiar to Sestrina. He had already constructed a flute for Sestrina, making it out of a slender bamboo stem, placing a broad blade of stiff grass in the mouthpiece for a reed. “Thou hast a perfect ear, wahine,” he had said when Sestrina astonished him by her perfect rendering of one of his pagan melodies. Indeed, it was wonderful the headway Sestrina made with her flute-playing as she sat alone under the breadfruits and practised so as to distract her thoughts. Hawahee’s delight was unbounded to find that Sestrina liked his heathen melodies. He had looked sideways at the girl with a kind, yet artful, glance, and had said: “Thou playest well, and ’tis well for thee to pray to the great White God, but better still to turn thy head away and give praise unto the glory of Atua, PelÉ and Kuahilo—eh?”

Withal, Hawahee was a noble-souled, clean-minded man, and, like many of his type, possessed the great virtue of truly believing all that he professed to believe. Hawahee possessed the deep instincts of a pagan fanatic combined with the pagan’s poetic sympathy with the beauties of nature. No leaf dropped, no flower danced in the sunlight, no bird sang, but Hawahee’s visualising imagination saw or heard it as some symbol of human joy or sorrow, some natural living representation of the thousand and one fancies that haunted his mind. Consequently nature was, to him, some mysterious pageant of the deep thoughts of his gods blossoming in multitudinous hues, or winging the sky as birds, or singing happily and sometimes moaning angrily in the starlit, solemn big-trunked breadfruit trees.

As Sestrina sat listening by night to his fascinating, poetic speech that sparkled with spontaneous similes, she came under the influence of his poetic, deeply-religious personality. This influence was a blessing in disguise, for that too helped her forget the anguish and despair that came when she thought of Royal Clensy of the great world, of her father, Claircine and all she had left behind in the world that was fast becoming a misty past to her sorrowing mind.

As the days passed Hawahee would sit by Sestrina with a troubled expression on his face. “Like me, he sorrows over the memories of the past,” thought Sestrina as she sat opposite him, watching him moodily toil over the beautiful basket-weaving which he was so proficient in. Then the castaway girl’s handsome comrade would rise, and saying, “Wahine, I will go and scan the seas for a sail,” would walk across the valley to see his leper comrades.

And why did Hawahee seek his stricken brothers? It was for the special purpose of remonstrating with them, chiding them for their evil desires.

“Thou hast deserted thy goddess PelÉ, and Atua of Langi,” he would say as he stood before the stricken men while they sat huddled by their wattle hut by the moaning, everlasting seas.

Lupo, Rohana, Steno and the two blind men would hang their heads in shame and ask forgiveness.

“Ora loa Jesu,” sighed Rohana as he knelt in prayer before Hawahee, asking the Christian God to help him fight against his sinful desires.

“’Tis well that you pray,” said Hawahee sternly, as he reminded them how they had broken their sacred oaths. For they, too, had embraced Christianity when first afflicted with the scourge, and at the same time had secretly sworn to be faithful to the goddess PelÉ and the god Kuahilo, and so banish all desires of the flesh.

“’Tis te rom (rum) that did fire our bodies and the meats from the wreck,” murmured Lupo.

Then Steno had sighed in a melancholy voice in this wise:

“But beautiful is she who dwelleth near our sorrow, she hath eyes and beauty that must have been made by the great White God when He first sighed the stars and made the soft whiteness of the sea-dawns.”

“Surely her mouth was made from the rosy flush of the first sunrise that startled the great dark on the deep seas,” murmured Rohana as Steno’s words fired his soul with bright thoughts over Sestrina’s beauty.

“And when she passed by us, O Hawahee, chief of Lahaina, we could scent the odours of the first flowers on the mountain-side, made when the White God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and formed trees, and birds to wing the blue Langi,” said the two blind lepers as they mumbled and sighed and moved their sightless heads thither and thither as they imagined Sestrina’s loveliness and longed-for sight.

Then Lupo, who had nursed jealousy in his breast that Hawahee should claim the girl’s companionship, hung his head and promised Hawahee never to attempt to approach Sestrina again. And Lupo meant what he said. But, alas! for the weakness of mortals, once more the lepers fell before the compelling strength of their desires. Hawahee did not know they still possessed two barrels of rum, which they had hidden in the caves just by their dwelling.

And so Sestrina, two nights after the lepers had given their promise not to approach her, was suddenly awakened again. Some one had thrown a stone; she sat up and trembled in her fright; then some more pebbles were thrown. She heard them go “tap, tap!” on the wooden walls of her homestead.

“What can it be? Surely not Hawahee?” she thought, as she sprang from her couch and ran towards the door. Pushing the old sail-cloth curtain aside, she peered out into the night. The moon was high over the sea, sending its silver radiance on the shore palms as the dark-fingered leaves softly stirred to the warm breeze. “It must have been the fall of a coco-nut,” she thought as she turned round and gazed up at the tall coco-palm that sheltered her humble roof. Then she stared into the shadows, and again looked seaward, where the tumbling silvered waves seemed beating silently as they curled over the shore reefs. “Aue! Aue!” she cried, as in her fright she dodged back—“pat, pat!” two more pebbles had been thrown! With difficulty she suppressed the instinctive feminine desire to scream for help—three figures had crept out of the bamboo thicket, across the hollow, right opposite her door! Sestrina stood like some beautiful chiselled statue with flying hair as she saw the dark figures commence to crawl down the small slope, making straight for her dwelling. For a moment the girl felt strangely calm. “It is the lepers—and they want me!” she murmured, as in a flash she realised the truth. As the figures passed by the huge prickly-backed cacti—that resembled sleeping monsters breathing in moonlight—she distinctly recognised Rohana, Steno and Lupo, and knew that the two hesitating forms that crept behind were the blind lepers. Lupo was the foremost; she saw his burning eyes stare at her through the moonlit gloom. Just behind Rohana crawled Steno, and he, with the two blind lepers, was lifting skeleton-like arms as though in terrible appeal as they each stayed a moment on the slope. Sestrina stood perfectly still by her door as the soft night wind touched her hair and sent it in ripples over her face and shoulders. As Rohana lifted his head up to stare over Lupo’s shoulder, he rolled his bulging, nearly blind eyes to locate Sestrina. He could hear his comrades whispering about the girl’s loveliness. The sounds of their whispering voices brought Sestrina to her senses. Running a few steps forward, she cried:

“Stop!”

On seeing the girl’s determined attitude, as she stood with one hand uplifted, Lupo, Rohana and Steno ceased to move. Then they lifted their hands in appeal and at the same time whispered as loud as they dared—for they knew that Hawahee slept near—impassioned words over her beauty.

“Are you hungry, brothers?” whispered Sestrina, as she leaned forward, caught a few words and fancied the lepers appealed for food.

The lepers made no reply. Then Rohana rose to his feet, and, looking over Lupo’s shoulder, said, in his own tongue, words which, translated, would be as follows:

“O wahine, give us but one touch from thy lips, one embrace, and we will never come again, but will take our sorrowing hearts in prayer to the great White God of yours, and thank Him and thee also for thy divine mercy towards hungry, sorrowing, yet sinful men.”

Though Sestrina did not understand, there was that light in their eyes which spoke louder than words. A great fear clutched at her heart. She turned to rush back into her homestead. In one bound Lupo had reached her side, his comrades just behind him. The leper had clasped her in his arms and was endeavouring to press hot kisses on her shoulders and face. Rohana, who stood just by and had noticed the soft whiteness of her arms, fell down on his knees, and in the delirium of the terrible passion that maddened his better self, began to wail out words of appeal and love for her ears.

Sestrina’s frightened scream echoed over the silent hills of the isle. Even the roosting parrots rose in a fluttering, shrieking shower and flapped and muttered in the moonlit sky at being disturbed by humanity in the sylvan peace of their tropic world.

Hawahee, who had awakened with a start at hearing the girl’s cry, jumped from his bed-mat. Rushing towards Sestrina’s hut, he found her struggling in Lupo’s grasp as Rohana stood by and Steno and the two blind lepers groped in their madness to touch the girl’s flesh. In a moment Hawahee had knocked Lupo and Rohana down. Then he seized hold of Sestrina and carried her fainting form into her chamber.

“Thank PelÉ, Kuahilo, and the great White God that I was in time,” he murmured, as Sestrina opened her eyes and said:

“Do not hurt them. They tried to kiss me; they have gone mad!”

Next day Hawahee went over to the lepers’ dwelling. Gazing upon the stricken men with flashing eyes, he said, “Betrayers of innocence! Faithless to the gods and to thine own souls, PelÉ, Kuahilo and Atua of Langi will leave your bodies everlastingly in the dust.”

Saying such things as these to the lepers, they hung their heads in shame. And though Hawahee’s wrath was righteous and came from the depths of his noble soul, he, too, was a man and so secretly felt a deep compassion for his weaker fellows. But still keeping up an appearance of anger, he ordered the lepers to pack up at once and go away, and make another dwelling for themselves on the other side of the isle. Then he straightway went into the hollows next to where they slept, and seeing the half-empty barrel of rum, turned it upside down and let the hot fluid run away into the sands.

“Loa, va naki” (go at once from here), he said.

The stricken men at once began to pack their belongings—a few old clothes and trinkets saved from the wreck—and were soon prepared to depart.

“Wahine, Sestra!” called Hawahee. As Sestrina, who had stood close by in the shade of the bamboos, appeared, the erring men dropped their eyes, and the blind ones wailed.

“Come thou too,” said Hawahee as he looked at the girl.

In a moment Sestrina followed the men as they started off with their belongings. When they all arrived at the other side of the isle, they found a large hollow by the shore, close to the palm-sheltered lagoons.

“This spot is even better than the place which you have left,” said Hawahee.

On the slopes around stood coco-palms and flamboyant trees, the ground being exquisitely carpeted with clusters of hibiscus and other rich patterns of tropical flowers that were shaded by the beautiful pulus (tree ferns).

When the banished lepers had placed their humble chattels in the large cavern, Hawahee and Sestrina did their best to make them as comfortable as possible. Then the handsome Hawaiian looked sternly upon the abject men, and warned them never to come to the other side of the isle. “Should you do so, you come to die,” he said, and the note in his voice sounded ominous. Then he promised to come on the morrow and bring the few chattels which they had been obliged to leave behind. “Brothers, my love, notwithstanding your sins, is true and deep for you,” he said, and saying this, he put forth his hand and muttered: “Ora loi Jesu, aloah, O gods of Langi!” and on hearing these words, the lepers, like obedient children, followed him down to the shore. Falling on their trembling knees in the soft sands, they did as Hawahee bade—fervently prayed to Kuahilo, Atua and the goddess PelÉ, their faces turned towards the sunset, which was the fiery portal of PelÉ’s dwelling.

Sestrina, who stood a little way off, under the palms up the shore, heard the pathetic mumblings as they prayed in their native language, appealing to the gods, asking help so that they might conquer their sinful desires. She saw them lift their fleshless hands and stricken faces as they helped guide the hands of their blind comrades, as each turned towards the light of the seaward sunset.

Sestrina felt sorry as she saw that sight; she turned her eyes away from the shore and wept.