Island Nights' EntertainmentsStevenson, Robert Louis
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Island Nights' Entertainments
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Islands of the Pacific -- Fiction; Short stories
Now, it is a sad thing for any man to fall into this sickness. And it
would be a sad thing for anyone to leave a house so beautiful and so
commodious, and depart from all his friends to the north coast of
Molokai between the mighty cliff and the sea-breakers. But what was
that to the case of the man Keawe, he who had met his love but
yesterday, and won her but that morning, and now saw all his hopes
break, in a moment, like a piece of glass?
Awhile he sat upon the edge of the bath; then sprang, with a cry, and
ran outside; and to and fro, to and fro, along the balcony, like one
despairing.
“Very willingly could I leave Hawaii, the home of my fathers,” Keawe
was thinking. “Very lightly could I leave my house, the high-placed,
the many-windowed, here upon the mountains. Very bravely could I go to
Molokai, to Kalaupapa by the cliffs, to live with the smitten and to
sleep there, far from my fathers. But what wrong have I done, what sin
lies upon my soul, that I should have encountered Kokua coming cool
from the sea-water in the evening? Kokua, the soul ensnarer! Kokua, the
light of my life! Her may I never wed, her may I look upon no longer,
her may I no more handle with my loving hand; and it is for this, it is
for you, O Kokua! that I pour my lamentations!”
Now you are to observe what sort of a man Keawe was, for he might have
dwelt there in the Bright House for years, and no one been the wiser of
his sickness; but he reckoned nothing of that, if he must lose Kokua.
And again, he might have wed Kokua even as he was; and so many would
have done, because they have the souls of pigs; but Keawe loved the
maid manfully, and he would do her no hurt and bring her in no danger.
A little beyond the midst of the night, there came in his mind the
recollection of that bottle. He went round to the back porch, and
called to memory the day when the devil had looked forth; and at the
thought ice ran in his veins.
“A dreadful thing is the bottle,” thought Keawe, “and dreadful is the
imp, and it is a dreadful thing to risk the flames of hell. But what
other hope have I to cure my sickness or to wed Kokua? What!” he
thought, “would I beard the devil once, only to get me a house, and not
face him again to win Kokua?”
Thereupon he called to mind it was the next day the _Hall_ went by on
her return to Honolulu. “There must I go first,” he thought, “and see
Lopaka. For the best hope that I have now is to find that same bottle I
was so pleased to be rid of.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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