“You cannot escape liking¹ the climate,” Cudworth said, in reply to my panegyric³ on the Kona coast.  “I was a young fellow, just out of college, when I came here eighteen years ago.  I never went back, except, of course, to visit.  And I warn you, if you have some spot dear to you on earth, not to linger here too long, else you will find this dearer.”  
We had finished dinner, which had been served on the big lanai, the one with a northerly exposure, though exposure is indeed a misnomer⁴ in so delectable⁵ a climate.
 
The candles had been put out, and a slim, white-clad Japanese slipped like a ghost through the silvery moonlight, presented us with cigars, and faded away into the darkness of the bungalow⁶.  I looked through a screen of banana and lehua trees, and down across the guava scrub to the quiet sea a thousand feet beneath.  For a week, ever since I had landed from the tiny coasting-steamer, I had been stopping with Cudworth, and during that time no wind had ruffled⁷ that unvexed sea.  True, there had been breezes, but they were the gentlest zephyrs⁸ that ever blew through summer isles⁹.  They were not winds; they were sighs—long, balmy sighs of a world at rest.
 
“A lotus land,” I said.
 
“Where each day is like every day, and every day is a paradise of days,” he answered.  “Nothing ever happens.  It is not too hot.  It is not too cold.  It is always just right.  Have you noticed how the land and the sea breathe turn and turn about?”
 
Indeed, I had noticed that delicious rhythmic¹⁰, breathing.  Each morning I had watched the sea-breeze begin at the shore and slowly extend seaward as it blew the mildest, softest whiff of ozone¹¹ to the land.  It played over the sea, just faintly darkening its surface, with here and there and everywhere long lanes of calm, shifting, changing, drifting, according to the capricious kisses of the breeze.  And each evening I had watched the sea breath die away to heavenly calm, and heard the land breath softly make its way through the coffee trees and monkey-pods.
 
“It is a land of perpetual calm,” I said.  “Does it ever blow here?—ever really blow?  You know what I mean.”
 
Cudworth shook his head and pointed¹² eastward¹³.
 
“How can it blow, with a barrier like that to stop it?”
 
Far above towered the huge bulks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, seeming to blot¹⁴ out half the starry¹⁵ sky.  Two miles and a half above our heads they reared their own heads, white with snow that the tropic sun had failed to melt.
 
“Thirty miles away, right now, I’ll wager¹⁶, it is blowing forty miles an hour.”
 
I smiled incredulously.
 
Cudworth stepped to the lanai telephone.  He called up, in succession, Waimea, Kohala, and Hamakua.  Snatches of his conversation told me that the wind was blowing:  “Rip-snorting and back-jumping, eh? . . . How long? . . . Only a week? . . . Hello, Abe, is that you? . . . Yes, yes . . . You will plant coffee on the Hamakua coast . . . Hang your wind-breaks!  You should see my trees.”
 
“Blowing a gale,” he said to me, turning from hanging up the receiver.  “I always have to joke Abe on his coffee.  He has five hundred acres, and he’s done marvels¹⁷ in wind-breaking, but how he keeps the roots in the ground is beyond me.  Blow?  It always blows on the Hamakua side.  Kohala reports a schooner¹⁸ under double reefs beating up the channel between Hawaii and Maui, and making heavy weather of it.”
 
“It is hard to realize,” I said lamely¹⁹.  “Doesn’t a little whiff of it ever eddy²⁰ around somehow, and get down here?”
 
“Not a whiff.  Our land-breeze is absolutely of no kin², for it begins this side of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.  You see, the land radiates its heat quicker than the sea, and so, at night, the land breathes over the sea.  In the day the land becomes warmer than the sea, and the sea breathes over the land . . . Listen!  Here comes the land-breath now, the mountain wind.”
 
I could hear it coming, rustling²¹ softly through the coffee trees, stirring the monkey-pods, and sighing through the sugar-cane.  On the lanai the hush²² still reigned²³.  Then it came, the first feel of the mountain wind, faintly balmy, fragrant²⁴ and spicy²⁵, and cool, deliciously cool, a silken coolness, a wine-like coolness—cool as only the mountain wind of Kona can be cool.
 
“Do you wonder that I lost my heart to Kona eighteen years ago?” he demanded.  “I could never leave it now.  I think I should die.  It would be terrible.  There was another man who loved it, even as I.  I think he loved it more, for he was born here on the Kona coast.  He was a great man, my best friend, my more than brother.  But he left it, and he did not die.”
 
“Love?” I queried²⁶.  “A woman?”
 
Cudworth shook his head.
 
“Nor will he ever come back, though his heart will be here until he dies.”
 
He paused and gazed down upon the beachlights of Kailua.  I smoked silently and waited.
 
“He was already in love . . . with his wife.  Also, he had three children, and he loved them.  They are in Honolulu now.  The boy is going to college.”
 
“Some rash act?” I questioned, after a time, impatiently.
 
He shook his head.  “Neither guilty of anything criminal, nor charged with anything criminal.  He was the Sheriff of Kona.”
 
“You choose to be paradoxical,” I said.
 
“I suppose it does sound that way,” he admitted, “and that is the perfect hell of it.”
 
He looked at me searchingly for a moment, and then abruptly²⁷ took up the tale.
 
“He was a leper.  No, he was not born with it—no one is born with it; it came upon him.  This man—what does it matter?  Lyte Gregory was his name.  Every kamaina knows the story.  He was straight American stock, but he was built like the chieftains of old Hawaii.  He stood six feet three.  His stripped weight was two hundred and twenty pounds, not an ounce of which was not clean muscle or bone.  He was the strongest man I have ever seen.  He was an athlete and a giant.  He was a god.  He was my friend.  And his heart and his soul were as big and as fine as his body.
 
“I wonder what you would do if you saw your friend, your brother, on the slippery lip of a precipice²⁸, slipping, slipping, and you were able to do nothing.  That was just it.  I could do nothing.  I saw it coming, and I could do nothing.  My God, man, what could I do?  There it was, malignant²⁹ and incontestable, the mark of the thing on his brow.  No one else saw it.  It was because I loved him so, I do believe, that I alone saw it.  I could not credit the testimony³⁰ of my senses.  It was too incredibly horrible.  Yet there it was, on his brow, on his ears.  I had seen it, the slight puff³¹ of the earlobes—oh, so imperceptibly slight.  I watched it for months.  Then, next, hoping against hope, the darkening of the skin above both eyebrows—oh, so faint, just like the dimmest touch of sunburn.  I should have thought it sunburn but that there was a shine to it, such an invisible shine, like a little highlight seen for a moment and gone the next.  I tried to believe it was sunburn, only I could not.  I knew better.  No one noticed it but me.  No one ever noticed it except Stephen Kaluna, and I did not know that till afterward³².  But I saw it coming, the whole damnable, unnamable awfulness of it; but I refused to think about the future.  I was afraid.  I could not.  And of nights I cried over it.
 
“He was my friend.  We fished sharks on Niihau together.  We hunted wild cattle on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.  We broke horses and branded steers³³ on the Carter Ranch³⁴.  We hunted goats through Haleakala.  He taught me diving and surfing until I was nearly as clever as he, and he was cleverer than the average Kanaka.  I have seen him dive in fifteen fathoms³⁵, and he could stay down two minutes.  He was an amphibian³⁶ and a mountaineer.  He could climb wherever a goat dared climb.  He was afraid of nothing.  He was on the wrecked³⁷ Luga, and he swam thirty miles in thirty-six hours in a heavy sea.  He could fight his way out through breaking combers that would batter³⁸ you and me to a jelly.  He was a great, glorious man-god.  We went through the Revolution together.  We were both romantic loyalists.  He was shot twice and sentenced to death.  But he was too great a man for the republicans to kill.  He laughed at them.  Later, they gave him honour and made him Sheriff of Kona.  He was a simple man, a boy that never grew up.  His was no intricate brain pattern.  He had no twists nor quirks³⁹ in his mental processes.  He went straight to the point, and his points were always simple.
 
“And he was sanguine⁴⁰.  Never have I known so confident a man, nor a man so satisfied and happy.  He did not ask anything from life.  There was nothing left to be desired.  For him life had no arrears⁴¹.  He had been paid in full, cash down, and in advance.  What more could he possibly desire than that magnificent body, that iron constitution, that immunity⁴² from all ordinary ills, and that lowly wholesomeness⁴³ of soul?  Physically⁴⁴ he was perfect.  He had never been sick in his life.  He did not know what a headache was.  When I was so afflicted⁴⁵ he used to look at me in wonder, and make me laugh with his clumsy attempts at sympathy.  He did not understand such a thing as a headache.  He could not understand.  Sanguine?  No wonder.  How could he be otherwise with that tremendous vitality⁴⁶ and incredible health?
 
“Just to show you what faith he had in his glorious star, and, also, what sanction he had for that faith.  He was a youngster at the time—I had just met him—when he went into a poker⁴⁷ game at Wailuku.  There was a big German in it, Schultz his name was, and he played a brutal⁴⁸, domineering game.  He had had a run of luck as well, and he was quite insufferable, when Lyte Gregory dropped in and took a hand.  The very first hand it was Schultz’s blind.  Lyte came in, as well as the others, and Schultz raised them out—all except Lyte.  He did not like the German’s tone, and he raised him back.  Schultz raised in turn, and in turn Lyte raised Schultz.  So they went, back and forth⁴⁹.  The stakes were big.  And do you know what Lyte held?  A pair of kings and three little clubs.  It wasn’t poker.  Lyte wasn’t playing poker.  He was playing his optimism.  He didn’t know what Schultz held, but he raised and raised until he made Schultz squeal⁵⁰, and Schultz held three aces⁵¹ all the time.  Think of it!  A man with a pair of kings compelling three aces to see before the draw!
 
“Well, Schultz called for two cards.  Another German was dealing⁵², Schultz’s friend at that.  Lyte knew then that he was up against three of a kind.  Now what did he do?  What would you have done?  Drawn⁵³ three cards and held up the kings, of course.  Not Lyte.  He was playing optimism.  He threw the kings away, held up the three little clubs, and drew two cards.  He never looked at them.  He looked across at Schultz to bet, and Schultz did bet, big.  Since he himself held three aces he knew he had Lyte, because he played Lyte for threes, and, necessarily, they would have to be smaller threes.  Poor Schultz!  He was perfectly⁵⁴ correct under the premises⁵⁵.  His mistake was that he thought Lyte was playing poker.  They bet back and forth for five minutes, until Schultz’s certainty began to ooze⁵⁶ out.  And all the time Lyte had never looked at his two cards, and Schultz knew it.  I could see Schultz think, and revive, and splurge with his bets again.  But the strain was too much for him.”
 
“‘Hold on, Gregory,’ he said at last.  ‘I’ve got you beaten from the start.  I don’t want any of your money.  I’ve got—’”
 
“‘Never mind what you’ve got,’ Lyte interrupted.  ‘You don’t know what I’ve got.  I guess I’ll take a look.’”
 
“He looked, and raised the German a hundred dollars.  Then they went at it again, back and forth and back and forth, until Schultz weakened and called, and laid down his three aces.  Lyte faced his five cards.  They were all black.  He had drawn two more clubs.  Do you know, he just about broke Schultz’s nerve as a poker player.  He never played in the same form again.  He lacked confidence after that, and was a bit wobbly.”
 
“‘But how could you do it?’ I asked Lyte afterwards.  ‘You knew he had you beaten when he drew two cards.  Besides, you never looked at your own draw.’”
 
“‘I didn’t have to look,’ was Lyte’s answer.  ‘I knew they were two clubs all the time.  They just had to be two clubs.  Do you think I was going to let that big Dutchman beat me?  It was impossible that he should beat me.  It is not my way to be beaten.  I just have to win.  Why, I’d have been the most surprised man in this world if they hadn’t been all clubs.’”
 
“That was Lyte’s way, and maybe it will help you to appreciate his colossal⁵⁷ optimism.  As he put it he just had to succeed, to fare well, to prosper⁵⁸.  And in that same incident, as in ten thousand others, he found his sanction.  The thing was that he did succeed, did prosper.  That was why he was afraid of nothing.  Nothing could ever happen to him.  He knew it, because nothing had ever happened to him.  That time the Luga was lost and he swam thirty miles, he was in the water two whole nights and a day.  And during all that terrible stretch of time he never lost hope once, never once doubted the outcome.  He just knew he was going to make the land.  He told me so himself, and I know it was the truth.
 
“Well, that is the kind of a man Lyte Gregory was.  He was of a different race from ordinary, ailing⁵⁹ mortals.  He was a lordly being, untouched by common ills and misfortunes.  Whatever he wanted he got.  He won his wife—one of the Caruthers, a little beauty—from a dozen rivals.  And she settled down and made him the finest wife in the world.  He wanted a boy.  He got it.  He wanted a girl and another boy.  He got them.  And they were just right, without spot or blemish⁶⁰, with chests like little barrels, and with all the inheritance of his own health and strength.
 
“And then it happened.  The mark of the beast was laid upon him.  I watched it for a year.  It broke my heart.  But he did not know it, nor did anybody else guess it except that cursed hapa-haole, Stephen Kaluna.  He knew it, but I did not know that he did.  And—yes—D............