Island Nights' EntertainmentsStevenson, Robert Louis
General
Island Nights' Entertainments
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Islands of the Pacific -- Fiction; Short stories
Now, when Keola could see his wife at last he was mighty pleased, and
he was mighty pleased to be home again in Molokai and sit down beside a
bowl of poi—for they make no poi on board ships, and there was none in
the Isle of Voices—and he was out of the body with pleasure to be clean
escaped out of the hands of the eaters of men. But there was another
matter not so clear, and Lehua and Keola talked of it all night and
were troubled. There was Kalamake left upon the isle. If, by the
blessing of God, he could but stick there, all were well; but should he
escape and return to Molokai, it would be an ill day for his daughter
and her husband. They spoke of his gift of swelling, and whether he
could wade that distance in the seas. But Keola knew by this time where
that island was—and that is to say, in the Low or Dangerous
Archipelago. So they fetched the atlas and looked upon the distance in
the map, and by what they could make of it, it seemed a far way for an
old gentleman to walk. 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.
“However,” says he, “if you think this money of your father’s ill
gotten, my advice to you would be, give some of it to the lepers and
some to the missionary fund. And as for this extraordinary rigmarole,
you cannot do better than keep it to yourselves.”
But he warned the police at Honolulu that, by all he could make out,
Kalamake and Keola had been coining false money, and it would not be
amiss to watch them.
Keola and Lehua took his advice, and gave many dollars to the lepers
and the fund. And no doubt the advice must have been good, for from
that day to this, Kalamake has never more been heard of. But whether he
was slain in the battle by the trees, or whether he is still kicking
his heels upon the Isle of Voices, who shall say?
Footnotes:
[1] Please pronounce _pappa_ throughout.
[2] Alas!
[3] Aeolian
[4] Yes.
[5] Leprosy.
[6] Whites.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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