The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 17

“You do not mean to say you are serious about that bottle?” cried the boatswain.

“There is the lamp,” said Keawe. “Do I look as if I was jesting?”

“That is so,” said the boatswain. “You look as serious as a ghost.”

“Well, then,” said Keawe, “here are two centimes; you must go to my wife in the house, and offer her these for the bottle, which (if I am not much mistaken) she will give you instantly. Bring it to me here, and I will buy it back from you for one; for that is the law with this bottle, that it still must be sold for a less sum. But whatever you do, never breathe a word to her that you have come from me.”

“Mate, I wonder are you making a fool of me?” asked the boatswain.

“It will do you no harm if I am,” returned Keawe.

“That is so, mate,” said the boatswain.

“And if you doubt me,” added Keawe, “you can try. As soon as you are clear of the house, wish to have your pocket full of money, or a bottle of the best rum, or what you please, and you will see the virtue of the thing.”

“Very well, Kanaka,” says the boatswain. “I will try; but if you are having your fun out of me, I will take my fun out of you with a belaying-pin.”

So the whaler-man went off up the avenue; and Keawe stood and waited. It was near the same spot where Kokua had waited the night before; but Keawe was more resolved, and never faltered in his purpose; only his soul was bitter with despair.

It seemed a long time he had to wait before he heard a voice singing in the darkness of the avenue. He knew the voice to be the boatswain’s; but it was strange how drunken it appeared upon a sudden.

Next, the man himself came stumbling into the light of the lamp. He had the devil’s bottle buttoned in his coat; another bottle was in his hand; and even as he came in view he raised it to his mouth and drank.

“You have it,” said Keawe. “I see that.”

“Hands off!” cried the boatswain, jumping back. “Take a step near me and I’ll smash your mouth. You thought you could make a cat’s-paw of me, did you?”

“What do you mean?” cried Keawe.

“Mean?” cried the boatswain. “This is a pretty good bottle, this is; that’s what I mean. How I got it for two centimes I can’t make out; but I’m sure you shan’t have it for one.”

“You mean you won’t sell it?” gasped Keawe.

“No, sir!” cried the boatswain. “But I’ll give you a drink of the rum, if you like.”

“I tell you,” said Keawe, “the man who has that bottle goes to hell.”

“I reckon I’m going anyway,” returned the sailor; “and this bottle’s the best thing to go with I’ve struck yet. No, sir!” he cried again, “this is my bottle now, and you can go and fish for another.”

“Can this be true?” Keawe cried. “For your own sake, I beseech you, sell it me!”

“I don’t value any of your talk,” replied the boatswain. “You thought I was a flat; now you see I’m not; and there’s an end. If you won’t have a swallow of the rum I’ll have one myself. Here’s your health, and good-night to you!”

So off he went down the avenue towards town, and there goes the bottle out of the story.

But Keawe ran to Kokua light as the wind; and great was their joy that night; and great, since then, has been the peace of all their days in the Bright House.

THE ISLE OF VOICES

Keola was married with Lehua, daughter of Kalamake, the wise man of Molokai, and he kept his dwelling with the father of his wife. There was no man more cunning than that prophet; he read the stars, he could divine by the bodies of the dead, and by the means of evil creatures: he could go alone into the highest parts of the mountain, into the region of the hobgoblins, and there he would lay snares to entrap the spirits of ancient.

For this reason no man was more consulted in all the Kingdom of Hawaii. Prudent people bought, and sold, and married, and laid out their lives by his counsels; and the King had him twice to Kona to seek the treasures of Kamehameha. Neither was any man more feared: of his enemies, some had dwindled in sickness by the virtue of his incantations, and some had been spirited away, the life and the clay both, so that folk looked in vain for so much as a bone of their bodies. It was rumoured that he had the art or the gift of the old heroes. Men had seen him at night upon the mountains, stepping from one cliff to the next; they had seen him walking in the high forest, and his head and shoulders were above the trees.

This Kalamake was a strange man to see. He was come of the best blood in Molokai and Maui, of a pure descent; and yet he was more white to look upon than any foreigner: his hair the colour of dry grass, and his eyes red and very blind, so that “Blind as Kalamake, that can see across to-morrow” was a byword in the islands.

Of all these doings of his father-in-law, Keola knew a little by the common repute, a little more he suspected, and the rest he ignored. But there was one thing troubled him. Kalamake was a man that spared for nothing, whether to eat or to drink or to wear; and for all he paid in bright new dollars. “Bright as Kalamake’s dollars” was another saying in the Eight Isles. Yet he neither sold, nor planted, nor took hire – only now and then for his sorceries – and there was no source conceivable for so much silver coin.

It chanced one day Keola’s wife was gone upon a visit to Kaunakakai, on the lee side of the island, and the men were forth at the sea-fishing. But Keola was an idle dog, and he lay in the verandah and watched the surf beat on the shore and the birds fly about the cliff. It was a chief thought with him always – the thought of the bright dollars. When he lay down to bed he would be wondering why they were so many, and when he woke at morn he would be wondering why they were all new; and the thing was never absent from his mind. But this day of all days he made sure in his heart of some discovery. For it seems he had observed the place where Kalamake kept his treasure, which was a lockfast desk against the parlour wall, under the print of Kamehameha the Fifth, and a photograph of Queen Victoria with her crown; and it seems again that, no later than the night before, he found occasion to look in, and behold! the bag lay there empty. And this was the day of the steamer; he could see her smoke off Kalaupapa; and she must soon arrive with a month’s goods, tinned salmon and gin, and all manner of rare luxuries for Kalamake.

“Now if he can pay for his goods to-day,” Keola thought, “I shall know for certain that the man is a warlock, and the dollars come out of the Devil’s pocket.”

While he was so thinking, there was his father-in-law behind him, looking vexed.

“Is that the steamer?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Keola. “She has but to call at Pelekunu, and then she will be here.”

“There is no help for it then,” returned Kalamake, “and I must take you in my confidence, Keola, for the lack of anyone better. Come here within the house.”

So they stepped together into the parlour, which was a very fine room, papered and hung with prints, and furnished with a rocking-chair, and a table and a sofa in the European style. There was a shelf of books besides, and a family Bible in the midst of the table, and the lockfast writing-desk against the wall; so that anyone could see it was the house of a man of substance.

Kalamake made Keola close the shutters of the windows, while he himself locked all the doors and set open the lid of the desk. From this he brought forth a pair of necklaces, hung with charms and shells, a bundle of dried herbs, and the dried leaves of trees, and a green branch of palm.

“What I am about,” said he, “is a thing beyond wonder. The men of old were wise; they wrought marvels, and this among the rest; but that was at night, in the dark, under the fit stars and in the desert. The same will I do here in my own house and under the plain eye of day.”

So saying, he put the Bible under the cushion of the sofa so that it was all covered, brought out from the same place a mat of a wonderfully fine texture, and heaped the herbs and leaves on sand in a tin pan. And then he and Keola put on the necklaces and took their stand upon the opposite corners of the mat.

“The time comes,” said the warlock; “be not afraid.”

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. And suddenly, to the mat on which they were standing came a snatch or twitch, that seemed to be more swift than lightning. In the same wink the room was gone and the house, the breath all beaten from Keola’s body. Volumes of light rolled upon his eyes and head, and he found himself transported to a beach of the sea, under a strong sun, with a great surf roaring: he and the warlock standing there on the same mat, speechless, gasping and grasping at one another, and passing their hands before their eyes.

“What was this?” cried Keola, who came to himself the first, because he was the younger. “The pang of it was like death.”

“It matters not,” panted Kalamake. “It is now done.”

“And in the name of God where are we?” cried Keola.

“That is not the question,” replied the sorcerer. “Being here, we have matter in our hands, and that we must attend to. Go, while I recover my breath, into the borders of the wood, and bring me the leaves of such and such a herb, and such and such a tree, which you will find to grow there plentifully – three handfuls of each. And be speedy. We must be home again before the steamer comes; it would seem strange if we had disappeared.” And he sat on the sand and panted.

Keola went up the beach, which was of shining sand and coral, strewn with singular shells; and he thought in his heart —

“How do I not know this beach? I will come here again and gather shells.”

In front of him was a line of palms against the sky; not like the palms of the Eight Islands, but tall and fresh and beautiful, and hanging out withered fans like gold among the green, and he thought in his heart —

“It is strange I should not have found this grove. I will come here again, when it is warm, to sleep.” And he thought, “How warm it has grown suddenly!” For it was winter in Hawaii, and the day had been chill. And he thought also, “Where are the grey mountains? And where is the high cliff with the hanging forest and the wheeling birds?” And the more he considered, the less he might conceive in what quarter of the islands he was fallen.

In the border of the grove, where it met the beach, the herb was growing, but the tree farther back. Now, as Keola went toward the tree, he was aware of a young woman who had nothing on her body but a belt of leaves.