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On the fourth side the earth fell away into a tremendous abyss, and, far below, could be seen the summits of lesser peaks and crags, at whose bases foamed and rumbled 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.
Then there were the fat, lush days of King Kalakaua, when Ah Chun paid three hundred thousand dollars for the opium licence. If he paid a third of a million for the drug monopoly, the investment was nevertheless a good one, for the dividends bought him the Kalalau Plantation, which, in turn, paid him thirty per cent for seventeen years and was ultimately sold by him for a million and a half.
They emptied their rifles at him as he limped and climbed along his dizzy way. Afterwards they found bloodstains and knew that he was wounded. At the end of six weeks they gave up. The soldiers and police returned to Honolulu, and Kalalau Valley was left to him for his own, though head-hunters ventured after him from time to time and to their own undoing.
It was already in the sky when the fastenings broke, and the workmen were precipitated over every part of Fiji. The sun stood still for Hiaka when she attempted to recover the body of Lohiau, her sister Pele's lover. There was not daylight enough to climb the mountain Kalalau and bring down the body from a cave, so she prayed, and the sun set much later than usual.
"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.
He did not disclose himself, but spoke from the thicket. "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 harried out of Niihau, across Kauai, to Kalalau Valley, and out of the valley to the gorge.
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 followers into the recesses 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 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.
They drove to the end of the road and peered into the mist obscuring Kalalau valley where Koolau, the leper, remained buried. Clouds swirled and lifted, revealing glimpses of tree tops, steep ridges, and once, a small curve of beach far below. "I almost like it better this way," Mo said, "when you can't see it all at once. Brrrrr!"
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