Mark Twain - The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain (Illustrated)

"I'm only a private personage—an unassuming stranger—lately arrived from America."

"No! Not a missionary! not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty's Government! not even Secretary of the Navy! Ah! heaven! it is too blissful to be true; alas! I do but dream. And yet that noble, honest countenance—those oblique, ingenuous eyes—that massive head, incapable of— of—anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excuse these tears. For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment like this, and——"

Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitied this poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved. I shed a few tears on him, and kissed him for his mother. I then took what small change he had, and "shoved."

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The landlord of the American hotel at Honolulu said the party had been gone nearly an hour, but that he could give me my choice of several horses that could easily overtake them. I said, Never mind—I preferred a safe horse to a fast one—I would like to have an excessively gentle horse—a horse with no spirit whatever—a lame one, if he had such a thing. Inside of five minutes I was mounted, and perfectly satisfied with my outfit. I had no time to label him, "This is a horse," and so if the public took him for a sheep I cannot help it. I was satisfied, and that was the main thing. I could see that he had as many fine points as any man's horse, and I just hung my hat on one of them, behind the saddle, and swabbed the perspiration from my face and started. I named him after this island, "Oahu," (pronounced O-waw-hoo.) The first gate he came to he started in; I had neither whip nor spur, and so I simply argued the case with him. He firmly resisted argument, but ultimately yielded to insult and abuse. He backed out of that gate and steered for another one on the other side of the street. I triumphed by my former process. Within the next six hundred yards he crossed the street fourteen times, and attempted thirteen gates, and in the meantime the tropical sun was beating down and threatening to cave the top of my head in, and I was literally dripping with perspiration and profanity. (I am only human, and I was sorely aggravated; I shall behave better next time.) He quit the gate business after that, and went along peaceably enough, but absorbed in meditation. I noticed this latter circumstance, and it soon began to fill me with the gravest apprehension. I said to myself, This malignant brute is planning some new outrage—some fresh devilry or other; no horse ever thought over a subject so profoundly as this one is doing just for nothing. The more this thing preyed upon my mind the more uneasy I became, until at last the suspense became unbearable, and I dismounted to see if there was anything wild in his eye; for I had heard that the eye of this noblest of our domestic animals is very expressive. I cannot describe what a load of anxiety was lifted from my mind when I found that he was only asleep. I woke him up and started him into a faster walk, and then the inborn villany of his nature came out again. He tried to climb over a stone wall five or six feet high. I saw that I must apply force to this horse, and that I might as well begin first as last. I plucked a stout switch from a tamarind tree, and the moment he saw it he gave in. He broke into a convulsive sort of a canter, which had three short steps in it and one long one, and reminded me alternately of the clattering shake of the great earthquake and the sweeping plunging of the Ajax in a storm.

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Dreamed at the Volcano House, Crater of "Kilauea," Sandwich Islands, April 1, 1866.

All day long I have sat apart and pondered over the mysterious occurrences of last night. . . There is no link lacking in the chain of incidents—my memory presents each in its proper order with perfect distinctness, but still—

However, never mind these reflections—I will drop them and proceed to make a simple statement of the facts.

Towards eleven o'clock, it was suggested that the character of the night was peculiarly suited to viewing the mightiest active volcano on the earth's surface in its most impressive sublimity. There was no light of moon or star in the inky heavens to mar the effect of the crater's gorgeous pyrotechnics.

In due time I stood, with my companion, on the wall of the vast cauldron which the natives, ages ago, named Hale mau mau —the abyss wherein they were wont to throw the remains of the chiefs, to the end that vulgar feet might never tread above them. We stood there, at dead of night, a mile above the level of the sea, and looked down a thousand feet upon a boiling, surging, roaring ocean of fire!—shaded our eyes from the blinding glare, and gazed far away over the crimson waves with a vague notion that a supernatural fleet, manned by demons and freighted with the damned, might presently sail up out of the remote distance; started when tremendous thunder-bursts shook the earth, and followed with fascinated eyes the grand jets of molten lava that sprang high up toward the zenith and exploded in a world of fiery spray that lit up the sombre heavens with an infernal splendour. "What is your little bonfire of Vesuvius to this?" My ejaculation roused my companion from his reverie, and we fell into a conversation appropriate to the occasion and the surroundings. We came at last to speak of the ancient custom of casting the bodies of dead chieftains into this fearful cauldron; and my comrade, who is of the blood royal, mentioned that the founder of his race, old King Kamehameha the First—that invincible old pagan Alexander—had found other sepulture than the burning depths of the Hale mau mau. I grew interested at once; I knew that the mystery of what became of the corpse of the warrior king had never been fathomed; I was aware that there was a legend connected with this matter; and I felt as if there could be no more fitting time to listen to it than the present. The descendant of the Kame-' hamehas said:—

"The dead king was brought in royal state down the long, winding road that descends from the rim of the crater to the scorched and chasm-riven plain that lies between the Hale mau mau and those beetling walls yonder in the distance. The guards were set and the troops of mourners began the weird wail for the departed. In the middle of the night came a sound of innumerable voices in the air, and the rush of invisible wings; the funeral torches wavered, burned blue, and went out. The mourners and watchers fell to the ground paralyzed by fright, and many minutes elapsed before any one dared to move or speak; for they believed that the phantom messengers of the dread Goddess of Fire had been in their midst. When at last a torch was lighted, the bier was vacant—the dead monarch had been spirited away! Consternation seized upon all, and they fled out of the crater. When day dawned, the multitude returned and began the search for the corpse. But not a footprint, not a sign was ever found. Day after day the search was continued, and every cave in the great walls, and every chasm in the plain, for miles around, was examined, but all to no purpose; and from that day to this the resting-place of the lion king's bones is an unsolved mystery. But years afterward, when the grim prophetess Wiahowakawak lay on her deathbed, the goddess Pele appeared to her in a vision, and told her that eventually the secret would be revealed, and in a remarkable manner, but not until the great Kauhuhu, the Shark god, should desert the sacred cavern Alia Puhi, in the Island of Molokai, and the waters of the sea should no more visit it, and its floors should become dry. Ever since that time the simple, confiding natives have watched for the sign. And now, after many and many a summer has come and gone, and they who were in the flower of youth then have waxed old and died, the day is at hand! The great Shark god has deserted the Aua Puhi: a month ago, for the first time within the records of the ancient legends, the waters of the sea ceased to flow into the cavern, and its stony pavement is become dry! As you may easily believe, the news of this event spread like wildfire through the islands, and now the natives are looking every hour for the miracle which is to unveil the mystery and reveal the secret grave of the dead hero."