“This inhuman cavern— It were too bad a prison-house for goblins.
—— —— —— no place safe but this!”
Coleridge.
Mutual terror forces hostile animals into peaceful companionship. Under its influence the wolf lies down as quietly beside the lamb as if in the kingdom of love. The extremes of faith and education produce in man under threatened, speedy death, much the same outward result. Pohaku’s warriors, bred in cruelty, and believing only in malignant deities, viewed their fast coming fate with sullen indifference. So long as there was hope in their exertions they were ready to show themselves men, but when death looked them right in the face, they were equally ready to proffer their breasts to his stroke without further struggle. Their instincts taught them that as life was beyond their control, so was death. He was a foe they could not conquer, neither should he triumph in their fear. Thus in his ignorance and unbelief the savage meets the great change with an insensibility, which, in its outward calm, rivals the faith of the Christian.
Having abandoned hope, they sat stoically regarding[178] the rising tide of lava,—seldom speaking, for it was a scene in which nature, uniting them by a common feeling, made speech useless. The air grew hotter each second. Puffs of steam issued from the rocks near by. At times a thick cloud of suffocating vapor swept so close to them, that they were obliged to hold their breaths until it passed.
Olmedo and Beatriz, with their hands joined, calmly awaited their end. As the danger drew nigher they shrunk closer together, each impulsively seeking to shield the other.
“How terrible this is, Olmedo, to see earth and air on fire,” said Beatriz to him, in a voice scarce above a whisper. “Look, it will soon reach us.” She shuddered and was silent for a minute, but recovering herself, added, with her eyes seeing only him, “it will be sweet to enter heaven together, will it not, my more than father?” She thought of him now only as the being who had awakened in her faith and feelings, which made her look forward with joy to celestial freedom.
“Yes, my daughter, this is indeed a terrible sight. Nature perishes like a scroll in the flames. The last day has indeed come upon us, and we shall soon see the Holy One and his Saints. Have no fear. As we have fought the good fight, so shall we be welcomed into the joy of our Lord. But my soul faints for these poor heathen, who await their death with such unconcern. Would that I could even now baptize them into the true faith.”
In the meantime Tolta had returned from his fruitless endeavor to find an avenue for escape. In[179] his anger, he had cursed the gods of Hawaii and denied his own, from whom no succor came. More enlightened and cultivated than the Hawaiians, with a moral conviction of the superior truths of the Catholic faith, yet hating it for the injuries it had brought upon him and his country, Tolta was filled with distracting emotions. The Spaniard’s deity might even now save them, as he had ever shown himself so much more powerful than his own, but he disdained to call upon him, and the very sight of the crucifix which Olmedo wore filled him with fresh anger.
He felt that his treachery had brought this awful fate upon those of all the Spanish race, who had never done him evil. This was a source of misery to him, but far weaker than that which sprung from having his hopes baffled by so unexpected and lingering a death, which in releasing his victims, consigned himself to the accumulated horrors of his own and the Christian’s hell. Oppressed by these thoughts, believing but contemning repentance; seeing that just retribution was seeking him out, yet bidding it defiance; sorrowing, not for his selfish passions, but for their defeat, he crept back despairing, and laying himself down close to the feet of Beatriz, said to her, “We shall all burn together. You will go to the Virgin Mother and I to darkness,—to despair,—to any hell that shall release me from the sight of the hated white man—curses upon them all,” and covering his head with his mantle he shut out all outward objects, and remained as motionless as if turned to stone.
[180]
Olmedo made no appeal to him, comprehending its uselessness, but turning to the warriors, spoke to them of a brighter world which awaited them if they would trust in the Christian’s God and be baptized. “Renounce your demon idols and call upon the Saviour this represents,” said he, holding up his crucifix, and pointing to a calabash of water, added, “you can be baptized and saved even at the last hour.”
“We have offended Pele,” one of them replied, “and she dooms us. No one can escape her anger. More powerful is she than your deity. You and your god will soon be but ashes. See how she rides the air, spouting fire in her anger! She comes, she comes!” “auwe! auwe!” and a mournful and prolonged wail, like the death-song of the Indian, burst from their united lips, as a shower of hot cinders began to fall so thick and fast as to obscure the little light that had reached them through the smoke, which the wind had hitherto in a considerable degree kept off.
“The cave, Olmedo, the cave,—quick, quick!” cried Beatriz, grasping his hand to urge him forward. Tolta started up at the call, like one retouched with life, and the three were soon under its shelter.
The warriors remained as Olmedo last spoke to them, either not hearing the cry of Beatriz, or preferring to meet their death like soldiers at their posts in the open air. Their wail continued to be heard to the latest moment, rising from a low monotonous, tremulous note of suppressed suffering[181] into a prolonged chorus of muffled shrieks, that fell upon the ears of Beatriz and Olmedo like the last despairing cry of humanity, and thrilled their hearts with horror. For an instant it made them regardless of their own safety, and they turned back a step or two, calling upon the warriors to follow, but the burning ashes fell so fast that they were immediately driven still farther into the recesses of the cave. Their ears were ringing with the dismal wail; the effect of which from sheer sympathetic force, is to enhance the bitterness of grief and paralyze joyous emotion, so that the listener is changed into the mourner, despite his own indifference to the cause. In this case, the sensibilities of the priest and maiden were the more acute from their own participation in the dangers which were bringing a lingering death upon so many of their number, added to their inability to render any assistance. Doubtless the stupefaction from the poisonous gases, with which the atmosphere was laden, added to their own exhaustion from pr............