THINK of a sea and sky of such even and utter blueness, that any visible horizon is out of the question. In the midst of this pellucid sphere the smallest of propellers trailing two plumes of sea-foam, like the tail-feathers of a bird of paradise, and over it all a league of floating crape,—for so seem the heavy folds of smoke that hang above us.

Thus we pass out of our long hours of idleness in that grove of eight thousand cocoa-palms by the sea-shore,—the artist and I seeking to renew our dolce far niente in some new forest of palms by any shore whatever. Enough that it is sea-washed, and hath a voice and an eternal song.

Now turn to the stone-quarry darkened with the groups of the few faithful friends and many islanders. They are so ready to kill time in the simplest manner; why not in staring our awkward little steamer out of sight?

One glimpse of the white handkerchiefs, fluttering like a low flight of doves, and then with all the sublime resignation of the confessed lounger, we await the approach of twilight and the later hours that shall presently pass silver-footed over this tropic sea.

Four, P. M., and the roar of the reef lost to us voyagers. The sun an hour high. The steams of dinner appealing to us through the yawning hatches,—everything yawning in this latitude, animate and inanimate,—and the world as hot as Tophet. We lie upon our mattresses, brought out of the foul cabin into the sweet air, and pass the night half intoxicated with romance and cigarettes. The natives cover the deck of our little craft in lazy and laughing flocks. Some of them regard us tenderly; they are apt to love at sight, though Heaven knows there is little in our untrimmed exteriors to attract any one under the stars.

We hear, now and then, the sharp click of flint and steel, and after it see the flame, and close to the flame a dark face, grotesque it may be, like an antique water-spout with dust in its jaws. But some are beautiful, with glorious eyes that shine wonderfully in the excitement of lighting the pipe anew.

Voices arise at intervals from among the groups of younger voyagers. We hear the songs of our own land worded in oddly and rather prettily broken English. "Annie Laurie," "When the Cruel War is over," and other equally ambitious and proportionately popular ballads ring in good time and tune from the lips of the young bloods, but the girls seldom join to any advantage. How strange it all seems, and how we listen!

With the first and deepest purple of the dawn, the dim outlines of Molokai arise before us. It is an island of cliffs and caÑons, much haunted of the King, but usually out of the tourist's guide-book.

It is hinted one may turn back this modern page of island civilization, and with it the half-christianized and wholly bewildered natures of the uncomprehending natives, and here find all of the old superstitions in their original significance, the temples, and the shark-god, and the hula-hula girls, beside whose weird and maddening undulations your can-can dancers are mere jumping-jacks.

Listen for faint music of the wandering minstrels! No, we are too far out from shore: then it is the wrong end of the day for such festivals.

A brief siesta under the opening eyelids of the morn, and at sunrise we dip our colors abreast charming little Lahaina, drowsy and indolent, with its two or three long, long avenues overhung with a green roof of leaves, and its odd summer-houses and hammocks pitched close upon the white edge of the shore.

We wander up and down these shady paths an hour or two, eat of the fruits, luscious and plentiful, and drink of its liquors, vile and fortunately scarce, and get us hats plaited of the coarsest straw and of unbounded rim, making ourselves still more hideous, if indeed we have not already reached the acme of the unpicturesque.

Now for hours and hours we hug the shore, slowly progressing under the insufficient shadow of the palms, getting now and then glimpses of valleys folded inland, said to be lovely and mystical. Then there are mites of villages always half-grown and half-starved looking, and always close to the sea. These islanders are amphibious. The little bronze babies float like corks before they can walk half the length of a bamboo-mat.

Another night at sea, in the rough channel this time, and less enjoyable for the rather stiff breeze on our quarter, and some very sour-looking clouds overhead. All well by six, however, when we hear the Angelus rung from the low tower of a long coral church in another sea-wedded hamlet. Think of the great barn-like churches, once too small for the throngs that gathered about them, now full of echoes, and whose doors, if they still hang to their hinges, will soon swing only to the curious winds!

In and out by this strange land, marking all its curvatures with the fidelity of those shadow lines in the atlas, and so lingering on till the evening of the second day, when, just at sunset, we turn suddenly into the bay that saw the last of Captain Cook, and here swing at anchor in eight fathoms of liquid crystal over a floor of shining white coral, and clouds of waving sea-moss. From the deck behold the amphitheatre wherein was enacted the tragedy of "The Great Navigator, or the Vulnerable god." The story is brief and has its moral.

The approach of Captain Cook was mystical. For generations the islanders had been looking with calm eyes of faith for the promised return of a certain god. Where should they look but to the sea, whence came all mysteries and whither retreated the being they called divine?

So the white wings of the Resolution swept down upon the life-long quietude of Hawaii like a messenger from heaven, and the signal gun sent the first echoes to the startled mountains of the little kingdom.

They received this Jupiter, who carried his thunders with him and kindled fires in his mouth. He was the first smoker they had seen, though they are now his most devout apostles. Showing him all due reverence, he failed to regard their customs and traditions, which was surely ungodlike, and it rather weakened the faith of their sages.

A plot was devised to test the divinity of the presuming captain.

While engaged in conversation, one of the chiefs was to rush at Cook with a weapon; should he cry out or attempt to run, he was no god, for the gods are fearless; and if he was no god, he deserved death for his deception. But if a god, no harm could come of it, for the gods are immortal.

So they argued, and completed their plans. It came to pass in the consummation of them that Cook did run, and thereupon received a stab in the back. Being close by the shore he fell face downward in the water and died a half-bloody, half-watery, and wholly inglorious death. His companions escaped to the ship and peppered the villages by the harbor, till the inhabitants, half frantic, were driven into the hills.

Then they put to sea, leaving the body of their commander in the hands of the enemy, and with flag at half-mast were blown sullenly back to England, there to inaugurate the season of poems, dirges, and pageants in honor of the Great Navigator.

His bones were stripped of flesh, afterwards bound with kapa, the native cloth, and laid in one of the hundred natural cells that perforate the cliff in front of us, and under whose shadow we now float. Which of the hundred is the one so honored is quite uncertain. What does it matter, so long as the whole mountain is a catacomb of kings? No commoners are buried there. It was a kind and worthy impulse that could still venerate so far the mummy of an idol of such palpable clay as his.

Many of these singular caverns are almost inaccessible. One must climb down by ropes from the cliff above. Rude bars of wood are laid across the mouths of some of them. It is the old tabu never yet broken. But a few years back it was braving death to attempt to remove them. Cook's flesh was most likely burned. It was then a custom. But his heart was left untouched of the flames of this sacrifice. What a salamander the heart is that can withstand the fires of a judgment!

The story of this heart is the one shocking page in this history: some children discovered it afterward, and, thinking it the offal of an animal, devoured it. Whoever affirms that the "Sandwich-Islanders eat each other," has at least this ground for his affirmation. Natives of the South Sea Islands have been driven as far north as this in their frail canoes. They were cannibals, and no doubt were hungry, and may have eaten in their fashion, but it is said to have been an acquired taste, and was not at all popular in this region. Dramatic justice required some tragic sort of revenge, and this was surely equal to the emergency.

Our advance guard, in the shape of a month-earlier tourist, gave us the notes for doing this historical nook in the Pacific. A turned-down page, it is perhaps a little too dog-eared to be read over again, but we all like to compare notes. So we noted the items of the advance guard, and they read in this fashion:—

Until dark the native children have been playing about us in the sea, diving for very smooth "rials," and looking much as frogs must look to wandering lilliputians. The artist cares less for these wild and graceful creatures than one would suppose, for he confesses them equal in physical beauty to the Italian models. All sentiment seemed to have been dragged out of him by much travel. At night we sit together on the threshold of our grass house, and not twenty feet from the rock—under water only at high tide—where Cook died. We sit talking far into the night, with the impressive silence broken only by the plash of the sea at our very door.

By and by the moon looks down upon us from the sepulchre of the kings. We are half clad, having adopted the native costume as the twilight deepened and our modesty permitted. The heat is still excessive. All this low land was made to God's order some few centuries ago. We wonder if He ever changes his mind; this came down red-hot from the hills yonder, and cooled at high-water mark. It holds the heat like an oven-brick, and we find it almost impossible to walk upon it at noontime, even our sole-leather barely preserving our feet from its blistering surface. The natives manage to hop over it now and then; they are about half leather, anyhow, and the other half appetite.

We come first upon No. II. in the list of historic haunts.

Let us pass down to the rock, and cool ourselves in the damp moss that drapes it. It is almost as large as a dinner-table, and as level. You can wade all around it, count a hundred little crabs running up and down over the top of it. So much for one object of interest, and the artist draws his pencil through it. At ten, P. M., we are still chatting, and have added a hissing pot of coffee over some live coals to our housekeeping. Now down a little pathway at our right comes a native woman, with a plump and tough sort of pillow under each arm. These she implores us to receive and be comfortable. We refuse to be comforted in this fashion, we despise luxuries, and in true cosmopolitan independence hang our heads over our new saddle-trees, and sleep heavily in an atmosphere rank with the odor of fresh leather; but not till we have seen our humane visitor part of the way home. Back by the steep and winding path we three pass in silence. She pauses a moment in the moonlight at what seems a hitching-post cased in copper. It is as high as our hip, and has some rude lettering apparently scratched with a nail upon it. We decipher with some difficulty this legend:—

+
Near this spot
fell
CAPTAIN JAMES COOK, R. N.,
the
Renowned Circumnavigator,
who
discovered these islands,
A. D. 1778.
His Majesty's Ship
Imogene,
Oct. 17, 1837.

So No. I. of our list is checked off, and no lives lost.

"Aloha!" cries a soft voice in the distance. Our native woman has left us in our pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and now there is no visible trace of her and her pillows,—only that voice out of the darkness crying, "Love to you!" She lives in memory,—this warm-hearted Waihine; so do her pillows.

Returning to our lodgings, we discover a square heap of broken lava rocks. It seems to be the foundation for some building; and such it is, for here the palace of Kamehameha I. stood,—a palace of grass like this one we are sleeping in. Nothing but the foundation remains now. Half a dozen rude stairs invite the ghosts of the departed courtiers to this desolate ruin. They are all Samaritans in this kingdom. By sunrise a boy with fresh coffee and a pail of muffins rides swiftly to our door. He came from over the hill. Our arrival had been reported, and we are summoned to a late breakfast in the manner of the Christians. We are glad of it. Our fruit diet of yesterday, the horrors of a night in the saddle—a safe and pretty certain mode of dislocating the neck—make us yearn for a good old-fashioned meal. Horses are at our service. We mount after taking our muffins and coffee in the centre of a large and enthusiastic gathering of villagers. They came to see us eat, and to fumble the artist's sketches, and wonder at his amazing skill.

Up the high hill with the jolliest sun shining full in our eyes, brushing the heavy and dew-filled foliage on both sides of the trail, and under the thick webs spun in the upper branches, looking like silver laces this glorious morning,—on, till we reach the hill-top.

Here the guide pauses and points his horse's nose toward a rude corral. The horses seem to regard it from habit,—we scarcely with curiosity. A wall half in ruins in the centre, rising from a heap of stones tumbled together, a black, weather-stained cross, higher than our heads as we sit in the saddle. It is the altar of sacrifice. It is here that the heart of the great navigator survived the flames.

No. III. scored off. At this rate we shall finish by noon easily. The sequel of an adventurous life is soon told.

After breakfast, to horse again, and back to the little village by the sea. We ride into a cluster of palms, our guide leading the way, and find two together, each with a smooth and perfectly round hole through its body, about three feet from the roots, made by the shot of Cook's avengers. A lady could barely thrust her hand through them; they indicate rather light calibre for defence nowadays, but enough to terrify these little villages, when Cook's men sent the balls hissing over the water to bite through the grit and sap of these slender shafts. They still live to tell the tale in their way. So much for No. IV.

We pause again in the queer little straggling alleys of the village, planned, I should think, after some spider's web. They are about as regular in their irregularity. It is No. V. this time. A bit of withered humanity doubled up in the sun, as though some one had set him up on that wall to bake. He is drawn all together; his chin sunk in between his knees, his knees hooped together with his dreadfully slim arms, a round head, sleek and shining as an oiled gourd; sans teeth; eyes like the last drops in desert wells; the skeleton sharply protruding; no motion; apparently no life beyond the quick and incessant blinking of the eyelids,—the curtains fluttering in the half-shut windows of the soul. Is it a man and a brother? Yes, verily! When the uncaptured crew of the Resolution poured their iron shot into the tents of the adversary, this flickering life was young and vigorous, and he ran like a good fellow. Better to have died in his fiery youth than to have slowly withered away in this fashion. For here is the philosophy of mammon left to itself: when you get to be an old native, it is your business to die; if you don't know your business, you are left to find it out: what are you good for but to bury?

Let us slip over the smooth bay, for we must look into one of these caverns. Cross in this canoe, so narrow that we cannot get into it at all, but balance ourself on its rim and hold our breath for fear of upsetting. These odd-looking out-riggers are honest enough in theory, but treacherous in practice; and a shark has his eye on us back yonder. Sharks are mesmeric in their motions through the water, and corpse-colored.

A new guide helps us to the most easily reached cave, and with the lad and his smoking torch we climb into the dusky mouth.

There is dust everywhere and cobwebs as thick as cloth, hanging in tatters. An almost interminable series of small cells, just high enough to straighten one's back in, leads us farther and farther into the mountain of bones. This cave has been pillaged too often to be very ghostly now. We find a little parcel of bones here. It might have been a hand and an arm once, cunning and dexterous. It is nothing now but a litter. Here is an infant's skull, but broken, thin and delicate as a sea-shell, and full of dust. Here is a tougher one, whole and solid; the teeth well set and very white; no sign of decay in any one of these molars. Perhaps it is because so little of their food is even warm when they eat it. This rattles as we lift it. The brain and the crumbs of earth are inseparably wedded. Come with us, skull. You look scholarly, and shall lie upon our desk,—a solemn epistle to the living. But the cave is filled with the vile smoke of our torch, and we are choked with the heat and dust. Let us out as soon as possible. The Great Navigator's skeleton cannot be hidden in this tomb. Down we scramble into the sand and shadow by the water, and talk of departing out of this place of relics.

We are to cross the lava southward where it is frescoed with a wilderness of palm-trees: for when the mountain came down to the sea, flowing red-hot, but cooling almost instantly, it mowed down the forests of palms, and the trunks were not consumed, but lay half buried in the cooling lava, and now you can mark every delicate fibre of the bark in the lava, as firm as granite.

Still farther south lies the green slope that was so soon to be shaken to its foundations. I wonder if we could discover any of the peculiar loveliness that bewitched us the evening we crossed it in silence. There was something in the air that said, "Peace, peace"; and we passed over the fatal spot without speaking. But the sea spoke under the cliffs below us, and the mountain has since replied.

This place is named prettily, Kealekakua. You see that mountain? There are paths leading to it. Thither the gods journeyed in the days of old. So the land is called "the path of the gods."

It is a cool, green spot up yonder; the rain descends upon it in continual baptism. The natives love these mountains and the sea. They are the cardinal points of their compass. Every direction given you is either toward the mountain or toward the sea.

There is much truth in the Arabian tale, and it is time to acknowledge it. Mountains are magnetic. The secret of their magnetism may lie in the immobility of their countenances. Praise them to their face, and they are not flattered; forget them for a moment: but turn again, and see their steadfast gaze! You feel their earnestness. It is imposing, and you cannot think lightly of it. Who forgets the mountains he has once seen? It is quite probable the mountain cares little for your individuality: but it has given part of itself to the modelling of your character; it has touched you with the wand of its enchantment; you are under the spell. Somewhere in the recesses of this mountain are locked the bones of the Great Navigator, but these mountains have kept the secret.