“Because we are sick they take away our liberty.  We have obeyed the law.  We have done no wrong.  And yet they would put us in prison.  Molokai is a prison.  That you know.  Niuli, there, his sister was sent to Molokai seven years ago.  He has not seen her since.  Nor will he ever see her.  She must stay there until she dies.  This is not her will.  It is not Niuli’s will.  It is the will of the white men who rule the land.  And who are these white men?  
“We know.  We have it from our fathers and our fathers’ fathers.  They came like lambs, speaking softly.  Well might they speak softly, for we were many and strong, and all the islands were ours.  As I say, they spoke¹ softly.  They were of two kinds.  The one kind asked our permission, our gracious permission, to preach to us the word of God.  The other kind asked our permission, our gracious permission, to trade with us.  That was the beginning.  Today all the islands are theirs, all the land, all the cattle—everything is theirs.  They that preached the word of God and they that preached the word of Rum have fore-gathered and become great chiefs.  They live like kings in houses of many rooms, with multitudes of servants to care for them.  They who had nothing have everything, and if you, or I, or any Kanaka be hungry, they sneer² and say, ‘Well, why don’t you work?  There are the plantations³.’”
 
Koolau paused.  He raised one hand, and with gnarled and twisted fingers lifted up the blazing wreath of hibiscus that crowned his black hair.  The moonlight bathed the scene in silver.  It was a night of peace, though those who sat about him and listened had all the seeming of battle-wrecks.  Their faces were leonine.  Here a space yawned in a face where should have been a nose, and there an arm-stump showed where a hand had rotted off.  They were men and women beyond the pale, the thirty of them, for upon them had been placed the mark of the beast.
 
They sat, flower-garlanded, in the perfumed, luminous⁵ night, and their lips made uncouth⁶ noises and their throats rasped approval of Koolau’s speech.  They were creatures who once had been men and women.  But they were men and women no longer.  They were monsters—in face and form grotesque⁷ caricatures of everything human.  They were hideously⁸ maimed and distorted, and had the seeming of creatures that had been racked in millenniums of hell.  Their hands, when they possessed⁹ them, were like harpy claws.  Their faces were the misfits and slips, crushed and bruised¹⁰ by some mad god at play in the machinery¹¹ of life.  Here and there were features which the mad god had smeared¹² half away, and one woman wept scalding tears from twin pits of horror, where her eyes once had been.  Some were in pain and groaned¹³ from their chests.  Others coughed, making sounds like the tearing of tissue.  Two were idiots, more like huge apes marred¹⁴ in the making, until even an ape were an angel.  They mowed¹⁵ and gibbered in the moonlight, under crowns of drooping¹⁶, golden blossoms.  One, whose bloated ear-lobe flapped like a fan upon his shoulder, caught up a gorgeous flower of orange and scarlet¹⁹ and with it decorated the monstrous²⁰ ear that flip-flapped with his every movement.
 
And over these things Koolau was king.  And this was his kingdom,—a flower-throttled gorge¹⁸, with beetling²¹ cliffs and crags, from which floated the blattings of wild goats.  On three sides the grim walls rose, festooned in fantastic draperies of tropic vegetation and pierced by cave-entrances—the rocky lairs²² of Koolau’s subjects.  On the fourth side the earth fell away into a tremendous abyss, and, far below, could be seen the summits of lesser²³ peaks and crags, at whose bases foamed²⁴ and rumbled²⁵ the Pacific surge.  In fine weather a boat could land on the rocky beach that marked the entrance of Kalalau Valley, but the weather must be very fine.  And a cool-headed mountaineer might climb from the beach to the head of Kalalau Valley, to this pocket among the peaks where Koolau ruled; but such a mountaineer must be very cool of head, and he must know the wild-goat trails as well.  The marvel²⁶ was that the mass of human wreckage²⁷ that constituted Koolau’s people should have been able to drag its helpless misery²⁸ over the giddy goat-trails to this inaccessible²⁹ spot.
 
“Brothers,” Koolau began.
 
But one of the mowing³⁰, apelike travesties³¹ emitted a wild shriek³² of madness, and Koolau waited while the shrill³³ cachination was tossed back and forth³⁴ among the rocky walls and echoed distantly through the pulseless night.
 
“Brothers, is it not strange?  Ours was the land, and behold³⁵, the land is not ours.  What did these preachers of the word of God and the word of Rum give us for the land?  Have you received one dollar, as much as one dollar, any one of you, for the land?  Yet it is theirs, and in return they tell us we can go to work on the land, their land, and that what we produce by our toil³⁷ shall be theirs.  Yet in the old days we did not have to work.  Also, when we are sick, they take away our freedom.”
 
“Who brought the sickness, Koolau?” demanded Kiloliana, a lean and wiry man with a face so like a laughing faun’s that one might expect to see the cloven hoofs³⁸ under him.  They were cloven, it was true, but the cleavages were great ulcers³⁹ and livid putrefactions.  Yet this was Kiloliana, the most daring climber of them all, the man who knew every goat-trail and who had led Koolau and his wretched followers⁴⁰ into the recesses⁴¹ of Kalalau.
 
“Ay, well questioned,” Koolau answered.  “Because we would not work the miles of sugar-cane where once our horses pastured, they brought the Chinese slaves from overseas.  And with them came the Chinese sickness—that which we suffer from and because of which they would imprison⁴² us on Molokai.  We were born on Kauai.  We have been to the other islands, some here and some there, to Oahu, to Maui, to Hawaii, to Honolulu.  Yet always did we come back to Kauai.  Why did we come 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 missionaries⁴⁴.  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 mire⁴⁵ of human horror that he was above the law as well as beneath it.  His face was featureless, save for gaping⁴⁶ 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 stumps⁴⁷ of hands that all might see.  “Yet have I the joint⁴⁸ 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 distillation⁴⁹ 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 strings⁵⁰ 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 tingled⁵¹ with her cry, softly imperious and seductive.  Upon a mat, timing⁵² 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 hips⁵³ and generous breast gave the lie to her disease-corroded face.  It was a dance of the living dead, for in their disintegrating⁵⁴ 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 ravage⁵⁵.  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 flared⁵⁶ like a wan⁴³ phantom⁵⁷ 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 Kalalau Valley had been well chosen as a refuge.  Except Kiloliana, who knew back-trails up the precipitous walls, no man could win to the gorge save by advancing across a knife-edged ridge⁵⁸.  This passage was a hundred yards in length.  At best, it was a scant⁵⁹ twelve inches wide.  On either side yawned the abyss.  A slip, and to right or left the man would fall to his death.  But once across he would find himself in an earthly paradise.  A sea of vegetation laved the landscape, pouring its green billows from wall to wall, dripping from the cliff-lips in great vine-masses, and flinging a spray of ferns and air-plants in to the multitudinous crevices⁶⁰.  During the many months of Koolau’s rule, he and his followers had fought with this vegetable sea.  The choking jungle, with its riot of blossoms, had been driven back from the bananas, oranges, and mangoes that grew wild.  In little clearings grew the wild arrowroot; on stone terraces, filled with soil scrapings, were the taro⁶¹ patches and the melons; and in every open space where the sunshine penetrated⁶² were papaia trees burdened with their golden fruit.
 
Koolau had been driven to this refuge from the lower valley by the beach.  And if he were driven from it in turn, he knew of gorges⁶³ among the jumbled⁶⁴ peaks of the inner fastnesses where he could lead his subjects and live.  And now he lay with his rifle beside him, peering down through a tangled⁶⁵ screen of foliage⁶⁶ at the soldiers on the beach.  He noted⁶⁷ that they had large guns with them, from which the sunshine flashed as from mirrors.  The knife-edged passage lay directly before him.  Crawling upward along the trail that led to it he could see tiny specks⁶⁸ of men.  He knew they were not the soldiers, but the police.  When they failed, then the soldiers would enter the game.
 
He affectionately rubbed a twisted hand along his rifle barrel and made sure that the sights were clean.  He had learned to shoot as a wild-cattle hunter on Niihau, and on that island his skill as a marksman was unforgotten.  As the toiling⁶⁹ specks of men grew nearer and larger, he estimated the range, judged the deflection of the wind that swept at right angles across the line of fire, and calculated the chances of overshooting marks that were so far below his level.  But he did not shoot.  Not until they reached the beginning of the passage did he make his presence known.  He did not disclose himself, but spoke from the thicket⁷⁰.
 
“What do you want?” he demanded.
 
“We want Koolau, the leper,” answered the man who led the native police, himself a blue-eyed American.
 
“You must go back,” Koolau said.
 
He knew the man, a deputy sheriff, for it was by him that he had been harried⁷¹ out of Niihau, across Kauai, to Kalalau Valley, and out of the valley to the gorge.
 
“Who are you?” the sheriff asked.
 
“I am Koolau, the leper,” was the reply.
 
“Then come out.  We want you.  Dead or alive, there is a thousand dollars on your head.  You cannot escape.”
 
Koolau laughed aloud in the thicket.
 
“Come out!” the sheriff commanded, and was answered by silence.
 
He conferred with the police, and Koolau saw that they were preparing to rush him.
 
“Koolau,” the sheriff called.  “Koolau, I am coming across to get you.”
 
“Then look first and well about you at the sun and sea and sky, for it will be the last time you behold them.”
 
“That’s all right, Koolau,” the sheriff said soothingly⁷².  “I know you’re a dead shot.  But you won’t shoot me.  I have never done you any wrong.”
 
Koolau grunted⁷³ in the thicket.
 
“I say, you know, I’ve never done you any wrong, have I?” the sheriff persisted.
 
“You do me wrong when you try to put me in prison,” was the reply.  “And you do me wrong when you try for the thousand dollars on my head.  If you will live, stay where you are.”
 
“I’ve got to come across and get you.  I’m sorry.  But it is my duty.”
 
“You will die before you get across.”
 
The sheriff was no coward.  Yet was he undecided.  He gazed into the gulf⁷⁴ on either side and ran his eyes along the knife-edge he must travel.  Then he made up his mind.
 
“Koolau,” he called.
 
But the thicket remained silent.
 
“Koolau, don’t shoot.  I am coming.”
 
The sheriff turned, gave some orders to the police, then started on his perilous⁷⁵ way.  He advanced slowly.  It was like walking a tight rope.  He had nothing to lean upon but the air.  The lava⁷⁶ rock crumbled⁷⁷ under his feet, and on either side the dislodged fragments pitched downward through the depths.  The sun blazed upon him, and his face was wet with sweat.  Still he advanced, until the halfway⁷⁸ point was reached.
 
“Stop!” Koolau commanded from the thicket.  “One more step and I shoot.”
 
The sheriff halted, swaying for balance as he stood poised⁷⁹ above the void.  His face was pale, but his eyes were determined⁸⁰.  He licked his dry lips before he spoke.
 
“Koolau, you won’t shoot me.  I know you won’t.”
 
He started once more.  The bullet whirled him half about.  On his face was an expression of querulous surprise as he reeled to the fall.  He tried to save himself by throwing his body across the knife-edge; but at that moment he knew death.  The next moment the knife-edge was vacant.  Then came the rush, five policemen, in single file, with superb steadiness, running along the knife-edge.  At the same instant the rest of the posse opened fire on the thicket.  It was madness.  Five times Koolau pulled the trigger, so rapidly that his shots constituted a rattle⁸¹.  Changing his position and crouching⁸² low und............