That night, like the nights before, I tossed and turned on my bed incessantly. The pain in my leg had come back once more. It was long before I dropped asleep by degrees. When I did sleep, I slept very heavily, almost as if some one had drugged or tampered with my drink at dinner.
In the stillness of the night, a sound again awoke me. I raised my head and gazed up suddenly. Could this be Kalaua and his friend again? No, not this time. A red glare poured in at the window. And it was Frank who stood with a warning finger uplifted close by my bedside in the glow of Mauna Loa.
"Tom," he whispered in a hoarse, low voice, "there\'s foul play going on, I\'m certain. I see nobody in Kalaua\'s room, and just look how red it all is to eastward."
At the word, I jumped out of bed awkwardly, and crept to the window as well as my injured limb would permit me. Sure enough, a lurid light hung over the peak where the sailors were encamped: "Give me the glass!" I cried. Frank handed it to me hastily. I looked and saw a great glare of fire surrounding the tents with their white awnings. At first my eyes told me no more than that: after a while, as I grew more and more accustomed to the gloom, I could see that a dozen little points of fire were blazing away around the frail canvas shelters.
"There\'s something up on Mauna Loa," I cried. "An eruption!" Frank inquired with bated breath.
"No, no," I answered. "Not a mere eruption. Worse than that—a fire, an incendiary fire. The ground around them seems to be all one blaze."
"Kalaua said it was inflammable, you remember," Frank cried.
"But sulphur would never burn like that," I answered. "I fancy he must mean to turn them out by fair means or foul; and as far as I can see he\'s succeeding in his object."
"You think it\'s he who\'s set it on fire then?" Frank asked curiously.
"Run up and see," I answered. "The sailors are awake and moving about hastily; but perhaps you may yet be of some use to them."
"All right," Frank answered, "I\'ll be with them like wildfire."
In a minute he had tumbled into his coat and trousers, pulled on his boots, clapped his hat on his head, and run out lightly up the road to the encampment. By the time he reached the burning summit, I could see with the glass that the whole camp was in a perfect turmoil of wild confusion. The sailors were rapidly unpegging the tents and carrying away the instruments from the burning patch to a place of safety lower down the mountain. I could make out Frank joining eagerly in the task; he was helping them now with all his heart and soul. I only wished I too was there to second him. In this struggle of science against savage malignancy, my indignant sympathy went fiercely out on the side of knowledge. But my lame leg kept me painfully inactive.
Presently, in the dim light, far nearer home, I saw two men creep slowly down the crater path from the summit: two skulking men, with native scarves tied loosely round their waists; tall and erect, lithe and cautious. I recognized them at once; one was Kalaua, the other was his visitor of the preceding evening. They crept down with the air of men engaged on some criminal undertaking. In their hands they bore two empty tin kegs: I knew the shape well; they were American petroleum cans!
Like lightning the truth flashed through my startled brain. For some reason or other best known to themselves, these two secret votaries of an almost extinct faith desired to dislodge the eclipse-observing party from the peak that overhung and commanded the crater. They feared perhaps the wrath of their hideous goddess. Unable to move the Englishmen by force of reasoning, they had tried to drive them out from this sacred site by means of fire. They had saturated the porous and sulphurous soil here and there with petroleum. No pity, no remorse; they must have meant to burn them as they lay, for then, applying a match to it quietly, they had stolen away, leaving the flames to fight the battle in their absence against the sleeping white men, whom they had perhaps supplied with drugged water from the well in the garden.
At the gate they separated. It was a weird sight. Neither spoke, but both together bowed down thrice in the direction of the steaming crater. After that each placed his palms against his neighbour\'s. Then Kalaua stalked silently on towards his own house; his companion descended the zig-zag path that led right down to the Floor of the Strangers.
Could Maloka live in some cave of the platform? It was terrible to dwell in an atmosphere like this—an atmosphere of doubt, suspicion, and heathen treachery. Save for Kea\'s sake I would have left it at once. But Kea\'s fate bound me still to the spot. I must learn the truth about this terrible marriage.
For half an hour I sat and watched, while the observers on the hill-top ran to and fro in their eager desire to save their tents and baggage from the menaced destruction. Happily, they had waked before the fire reached them. At the end of that time, Frank and the first lieutenant came down with news. "How goes the fire?" I asked in breathless eagerness.
"Almost under now," the officer answered cheerily. "We\'ve managed to put it out somehow for the present. But what can you do in the way of putting out fire when the very earth under your feet\'s inflammable! I never saw stuff burn like that. The flames spread at first on every side with just wonderful rapidity."
"Ah," I put in as carelessly as I could. "Lava, I suppose, and sulphur, and so forth?"
"H\'m," the lieutenant answered with a dubious sniff. "You may call it sulphur and lava if you like; but for my part, I think it smelt precious like petroleum."
"You don\'t mean to say so!" I cried, astonished at this independent confirmation of my worst suspicions.
"Yes, I do," he answered. "That\'s just about the name of it. And petroleum doesn\'t grow of itself in Hawaii."
"Tom," my brother said, coming up to me quietly, and speaking in a very unwonted whisper; "this is not the place to discuss all these things. The sooner you and I can get out of it the better. It\'s my belief Kalaua has saturated the ground with something and set it on fire."
"I don\'t know what particular heathen did it," the officer put in with a confident tone; "but of this I\'m sure, that somebody\'s poured coal oil all over the place. I smelt it distinctly. Now, I don\'t mind camping out on volcanoes or craters when they\'re left to themselves, but I\'m hanged if I like them when they\'re stirred up with coal oil to go burning down the tent over a fellow\'s head. It\'s clear these Sandwich Islanders are inhospitable folk; they don\'t mean to let us pitch our tents on that particular spot; and if they can\'t turn us out one way, why then they\'ll turn us out in another. As it is, we\'ve lost already two of our tents, and it was a blessing we didn\'t lose the whole lot together, not to mention the lives of Her Majesty\'s lieges to our care committed, for we were snoring most peacefully when the fire began."
"How did it all happen?" I asked with interest.
"Why, just like this. We were lying asleep, like warriors taking their rest, on our own mattresses—sound asleep, every man Jack of us—when I saw a glare shining under the tent, which I suppose would never have woke me if a spark hadn\'t happened to fall on my forehead. My first idea was that the volcano had got up an eruption on purpose in our honour: but when I got outside and looked at the ground, I came to the conclusion it couldn\'t be that for various reasons, and I set it down to your friend the native. For one thing, the place just reeked of petroleum, and for another, it was only alight on the surface, in half-a-dozen different places at once, exactly as if somebody had set a match to it."
"And what did you do then?" I inquired.
"Oh, I waked the men—and I never knew men so hard to waken. By dint of care however we\'ve put it out, and I\'ve come down here to talk the thing over with you."
"Well, what do you think you\'ll do now?" I asked.
"Why, the British tar doesn\'t like to be beaten," my new friend answered, "but I\'m shot if I\'m going to lie still and be roasted alive in my bed like a salamander. These fellows seem too shifty for us to deal with. Open fighting I don\'t object to, mind you, but I do object to baking a man to death unawares while he\'s sleeping. It\'s distinctly caddish. The other place seems a very decent one. It\'s not so good as this in some ways, I admit, but it\'ll do anyhow better than a baking. And as soon as we can get away down to Honolulu, we shall have the law against these petroleum-spilling brown fellows."
"You will get no redress," I said. "No Hawaiian will believe any story against Pélé. But at any rate you had better move for the present. Some evil will befall you if you stop where you are. Kalaua sticks neither at fire nor poison."
And sure enough, they were forced to shift their quarters next day to the place Kalaua had at first pointed out to them.
By this time indeed I will frankly confess, it was beginning to strike me that Kalaua\'s was not a safe place to live in. We had almost made up our minds indeed that as soon as the eclipse was well over, we would return on the Hornet to Honolulu. Kea\'s wedding alone could detain us longer: but my curiosity on that point was so strong and vivid that I determined to ask our new friends to wait till it was over, and then to take us with them to the neighbouring island. I couldn\'t bear to abandon her to Kalaua\'s mercy. Meanwhile, the sailors were busy with their own preparations, for the eclipse arrangements took up their whole time.
For the next few days accordingly Frank was all agog with this new excitement. He was running about all over the summit from morning till night, deeply engaged in the mysteries of tent-pegging, and absorbed in discussions of level, theodolite, telescope, and spectrum analysis. He was proud to display his knowledge of the volcano to his new friends. He showed the first lieutenant every path and gully round that terrific crater: leaped horrible fissures, yawning over abysses of liquid flame, with the junior midshipman; and made the good-humoured and easy-going sailors teach him marvellous knots, or instruct him in the art and science of splicing. As for me, I hobbled about lamely on my crutches as well as I could, envying him the ease with which he did it all, and longing for the time when I too might get about up and down the crater on my own two legs, without let or hindrance.
"Sailors are awfully jolly fellows," Frank confided to me one evening, after a day spent in exploring and setting up instruments. "Upon my word, do you know, Tom, if I wasn\'t so awfully gone on volcanoes, I think I\'d really run away to sea and be a gallant midshipmite."
"For my part I don\'t care for such dangerous occupations," I answered prudently, gazing down with pensive regret into the slumbering crater, that heaved now and then uncomfortably in its sleep with the most enticing motion. "A storm at sea\'s an unpleasant sort of thing. I don\'t like all that tossing and plunging. Give me the peace and quiet of dry land, with no more excitement than one gets afforded one by an occasional eruption or a stray earth-quake, just to diversify the monotony of every-day existence."
And indeed I could never understand myself why anybody should want any more adventurous life than that of a sober scientific man, with a taste for volcanoes. None of your hurricanes and tornadoes for me. A good eruption\'s fun enough for anybody.
The point finally selected by the naval men for their camp and observatory lay at some considerable distance from Kalaua\'s house, but full in view from the open verandah. It was difficult of access however in spite of its position, because a huge gully or rent in the mountain-side, descending to several hundred feet below, intervened to separate us; and the interval could therefore only be covered by something like half an hour\'s hard riding. I was not able myself accordingly to assist at any of their preparations; I could only sit on the verandah like an idle man, and watch them through a good field-glass, which enabled me to follow all their movements intelligibly, and to interest myself to some small exten............