The House of Pride | Page 9

back? There must be a reason. Because we love Kauai. We were born
here. Here we have lived. And here shall we die--unless--unless--there
be weak hearts amongst us. Such we do not want. They are fit for
Molokai. And if there be such, let them not remain. Tomorrow the
soldiers land on the shore. Let the weak hearts go down to them. They
will be sent swiftly to Molokai. As for us, we shall stay and fight. But
know that we will not die. We have rifles. You know the narrow trails
where men must creep, one by one. I, alone, Koolau, who was once a

cowboy on Niihau, can hold the trail against a thousand men. Here is
Kapalei, who was once a judge over men and a man with honour, but
who is now a hunted rat, like you and me. Hear him. He is wise."
Kapalei arose. Once he had been a judge. He had gone to college at
Punahou. He had sat at meat with lords and chiefs and the high
representatives of alien powers who protected the interests of traders
and missionaries. Such had been Kapalei. But now, as Koolau had said,
he was a hunted rat, a creature outside the law, sunk so deep in the mire
of human horror that he was above the law as well as beneath it. His
face was featureless, save for gaping orifices and for the lidless eyes
that burned under hairless brows.
"Let us not make trouble," he began. "We ask to be left alone. But if
they do not leave us alone, then is the trouble theirs and the penalty.
My fingers are gone, as you see." He held up his stumps of hands that
all might see. "Yet have I the joint of one thumb left, and it can pull a
trigger as firmly as did its lost neighbour in the old days. We love
Kauai. Let us live here, or die here, but do not let us go to the prison of
Molokai. The sickness is not ours. We have not sinned. The men who
preached the word of God and the word of Rum brought the sickness
with the coolie slaves who work the stolen land. I have been a judge. I
know the law and the justice, and I say to you it is unjust to steal a
man's land, to make that man sick with the Chinese sickness, and then
to put that man in prison for life."
"Life is short, and the days are filled with pain," said Koolau. "Let us
drink and dance and be happy as we can."
From one of the rocky lairs calabashes were produced and passed round.
The calabashes were filled with the fierce distillation of the root of the
ti-plant; and as the liquid fire coursed through them and mounted to
their brains, they forgot that they had once been men and women, for
they were men and women once more. The woman who wept scalding
tears from open eye-pits was indeed a woman apulse with life as she
plucked the strings of an ukulele and lifted her voice in a barbaric
love-call such as might have come from the dark forest-depths of the
primeval world. The air tingled with her cry, softly imperious and

seductive. Upon a mat, timing his rhythm to the woman's song
Kiloliana danced. It was unmistakable. Love danced in all his
movements, and, next, dancing with him on the mat, was a woman
whose heavy hips and generous breast gave the lie to her
disease-corroded face. It was a dance of the living dead, for in their
disintegrating bodies life still loved and longed. Ever the woman whose
sightless eyes ran scalding tears chanted her love-cry, ever the dancers
of love danced in the warm night, and ever the calabashes went around
till in all their brains were maggots crawling of memory and desire.
And with the woman on the mat danced a slender maid whose face was
beautiful and unmarred, but whose twisted arms that rose and fell
marked the disease's ravage. And the two idiots, gibbering and
mouthing strange noises, danced apart, grotesque, fantastic, travestying
love as they themselves had been travestied by life.
But the woman's love-cry broke midway, the calabashes were lowered,
and the dancers ceased, as all gazed into the abyss above the sea, where
a rocket flared like a wan phantom through the moonlit air.
"It is the soldiers," said Koolau. "Tomorrow there will be fighting. It is
well to sleep and be prepared."
The lepers obeyed, crawling away to their lairs in the cliff, until only
Koolau remained, sitting motionless in the moonlight, his rifle across
his knees, as he gazed far down to the boats landing on the beach.
The far head of