Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The food was extraordinarily rich and plenty, with biscuits and salt beef every day, and pea-soup and puddings made of flour and suet twice a week, so that Keola grew fat. The captain also was a good man, and the crew no worse than other whites.
Still, it would not do to make too sure of a warlock like Kalamake, and they determined at last to take counsel of a white missionary. So the first one that came by, Keola told him everything. And the missionary was very sharp on him for taking the second wife in the low island; but for all the rest, he vowed he could make neither head nor tail of it.
Presently he is spent and goes down, and his bones are scattered with the rest, and the gods devour his spirit.” Fear came on Keola at the words, and he looked, and by the light of the stars and the lantern, the warlock seemed to change. “What ails you?” cried Keola, quick and sharp. “It is not I who am ailing,” said the wizard; “but there is one here very sick.”
And he turned and went off walking with great strides; and as often as Keola sank in the trough he could see him no longer; but as often as he was heaved upon the crest, there he was striding and dwindling, and he held the lamp high over his head, and the waves broke white about him as he went. Since first the islands were fished out of the sea, there was never a man so terrified as this Keola.
They gave him gin and biscuit and dry clothes, and asked him how he came where they found him, and whether the light which they had seen was the lighthouse Lae o Ka Laau. This ship was a schooner bound for Honolulu and then to trade in the low islands; and by a very good chance for Keola she had lost a man off the bowsprit in a squall. It was no use talking.
With that he set flame to the herbs, and began to mutter and wave the branch of palm. At first the light was dim because of the closed shutters; but the herbs caught strongly afire, and the flames beat upon Keola, and the room glowed with the burning: and next the smoke rose and made his head swim and his eyes darken, and the sound of Kalamake muttering ran in his ears.
"You are there with the mat?" he asked. "Here, at your side," said she. And he felt her arms about him. "Quick! the leaves and the herbs, before my father can get back!" So Keola ran for his life, and fetched the wizard fuel: and Lehua guided him back, and set his feet upon the mat, and made the fire.
It was there the schooner had gone after Keola deserted; there, too, the mate had died, like the fool of a white man as he was. It seems, when the ship came, it was the beginning of the sickly season in that isle; when the fish of the lagoon are poisonous, and all who eat of them swell up and die.
Keola thought a good bit with himself. He saw he would be all right when the tribe returned to the main island, and right enough where he was, if he kept by the lagoon, yet he had a mind to make things righter if he could. So he told the high chief he had once been in an isle that was pestered the same way, and the folk had found a means to cure that trouble.
Now I begin to think I may have found an assistant and successor in my difficult business. A concertina? You shall have the best in Honolulu. And to-night, as soon as it is dark, you and I will go and find the money.” “Shall we return to the beach?” asked Keola. “No, no!” replied Kalamake; “you must begin to learn more of my secrets.
Word Of The Day