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Updated: May 18, 2025
Still, Pai-ku-li did not come, and, growing anxious on Miss G 's account, we resolved to cross as we had before. Again we went down into the cold flood, again our light was quenched and our feet nearly swept from under us, but we reached the opposite side in safety.
The bridge was washed away; there was no boat; Miss P had taken the only horse to go to Honolulu. Whoever went must ford the river. Like Lord Ullin's daughter, who would meet the raging of the skies, but not an angry father, I was less afraid to go than to stay, and volunteered to bring Pai-ku-li.
We listened for the sound of his horse's feet, for we had planned to ride across the river, one at a time, behind Pai-ku-li, but he did not overtake us, and we waited at the river nearly half an hour.
As we crossed the lawn we saw every window lighted, and knew by the sounds of yelling and singing and laughing that the girls were still raving. Miss G sat quietly in the parlor. She had been up stairs to try to reason with the girls, but they drowned her voice with hooting and reviling. Pai-ku-li came a little later, but he had no better success.
The thorny prickly pears were stiff and ungraceful, but a delicate wild vine grew all over them and hung in festoons from the top. While Pai-ku-li, the native minister, preached a sermon in Hawaiian, I, not understanding a word, looked at the side pews where the old folks sat, and tried to picture the life they had known in their youth, when the great Kamehameha reigned.
Without a light to guide our steps, we slipped, now with one foot into the road, now with the other into the taro-patch, and by the time we emerged into the level cactus-field around the church we were covered with mud to our knees. Pai-ku-li lived nearly a mile beyond the village, but close by the church lived Mrs. W , whose place I had taken as English teacher in the school.
She begged me to stay all night, saying that she would not trust her life with the girls at such a time they might attempt to poison us or to burn the house down but I thanked her for her hospitality and lighted our lantern, and we started back as soon as Mr. W returned saying that Pai-ku-li would come.
We knocked at her door to beg for a light, and when she found what the matter was she made us come in, muddy and dripping as we were, and put on some dry clothes, while her husband, pulling on his boots, went for Pai-ku-li.
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