• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 4346 0

tragedy, and they mumbled strongly against him. Alone, looking neither right nor left, he passed through the hostile groups until at last he stood at the gangplank, and then two huge Hawaiians hurried forward to bid him good-bye. They were Kimo and his wife Apikela, and without fear they embraced the leper, kissed him on the cheeks, and bade him farewell. With some relief, the thin, shivering Chinese man walked up the gangplank. He had hoped, on this last journey, that Dr. Whipple would be present to bid him good-bye, but the doctor could no longer suffer the sight of people whom he had helped condemn taking their last farewells. Among the group sailing that day were more than twenty upon whose investigating boards he had sat, and he could not bear to see them go, partly at his command. On days when the Kilauea sailed, he stayed home and prayed.

When Mun Ki was safely aboard, the captain shouted, "Open the cage!" And two sailors went aft to a wicker cage that had been built on the deck of the leper ship, and they swung back on its hinges a latticed gate, and when it was open, other sailors, careful not to touch the lepers, growled, "All right! All right! Get in!"

The cage was not large, nor was the door high, and one by one the condemned people stooped, crawled in, and found their places. The wicker gate was lashed shut, whereupon the captain called down reassuringly, "There will be a man stationed by you at all times. If we start to sink, he'll cut open the gate."

While this encagement of the lepers was under way, two other sailors had appeared with buckets of soapy water and now proceeded to wash down the handrails of the gangplank, after which normal passengers were allowed to board, and when they had hurried below to escape the smell of the forty caged lepers the captain shouted, "All right! Kokuas aboard!"

From the wailing crowd some dozen Hawaiians, men and women alike, stepped forward and in a kind of spiritual daze groped for the clean handrails of the gangplank. They were the kokuas, that strange band of people who in Hawaii in the later years of the nineteenth century proved that the word love had a tangible reality, and as each kokua reached the deck of the Kilauea a police marshal asked carefully, "Are you sure you know what you are doing in volunteering for the lazaretto?" And one man replied, "I would rather go with my wife to the lazaretto than stay here free without her."

No one, looking at the kokuas, could have predicted that these particular people would have been so moved by love. True, there were some old women whose lives were nearly spent and it was understandable that they should join the leprous men with whom they had lived so long; and there were older men who had married young women who had fallen prey to the disease, and it was also understandable that these men might prefer to remain with their girls; but there were also men and women of the most indiscriminate sort who climbed the gangplank to embrace other women and men of no apparent attraction whatever, so that the people on the dock had to ask themselves: "Why would a man in good health volunteer for the lazaretto in order to be with such a woman?" And to this question there was no answer except the word love.

No kokua came to stand beside the little ten-year-old girl, and none came to be with the beautiful Kinau. But there was general surprise when the police dropped their arms and allowed the Chinese woman, Nyuk Tsin, to join her husband, and as she reached the gangplank, once more the two huge Hawaiians, Kimo and Apikela, stepped forward to embrace her, and Apikela placed about the sloping shoulders of her yellow-skinned friend a chain of maile, saying, "We will love your children."

The gangplank was hauled aboard. The cattle tethered forward began lowing pitifully. The crowd ashore started shouting, "Auwe, auwe!” and the Kilauea stood out to sea with its horrible burden. When Dr. Whipple, inland in his study, heard the whistle blow farewell, he prayed, "Oh, may God have mercy upon them." For he alone, of all who heard the whistle