Part 8 (2/2)
At last we turned our prow and shot through a low arch in a cliff, so low that we both ducked our heads instinctively, letting the vines and parasites trail over our shoulders and down our backs.
It was a dark pa.s.sage into an inner cave lit from below,--a cave filled with an eternal and sunless twilight that was very soothing to our eyes as we came in from the glare of sea and sky.
”Look!” said Hua Manu. Overhead rose a compressed dome of earth, a thick matting of roots, coil within coil. At the side innumerable ledges, shelves, and seams lined with nests, and never a nest without its egg, often two or more together. Below us, in two fathoms of crystal, sunlit and luminous bowers of coral, and many an oyster asleep with its mouth open, and many a prismatic fish poising itself with palpitating gills, and gauzy fins fanning the water incessantly.
”Hua Manu!” I exclaimed in rapture, ”permit me to congratulate you. In you I behold the regular South Sea Monte Christo, and no less magnificent t.i.tle can do you justice.” Thereat Hua Manu laughed immoderately, which laugh having run out we both sat in our canoe and silently sucked eggs for some moments.
A canoe-length from where we floated a clear rill stole noiselessly from above, mingling its sweet waters with the sea; on the roof of our cavern fruits flourished, and we were wholly satisfied. After such a lunch as ours it behoved us to cease idling and dive for pearls. So Hua Manu knotted his long hair tightly about his forehead, cautiously transferred himself from the canoe to the water, floated a moment, inhaling a wonderfully long breath, and plunged under. How he struggled to get down to the gaping oysters, literally climbing down head-first! I saw his dark form wrestling with the elements that strove to force him back to the surface, crowding him out into the air again. He seized one of the sh.e.l.ls, but it shut immediately, and he tugged and jerked and wrenched at it like a young demon till it gave way, when he struck out and up for air. All this seemed an age to me. I took full twenty breaths while he was down. Reaching the canoe, he dropped the great, ugly-looking thing into it, and hung over the outrigger gasping for breath like a man half hanged. He was pale about the mouth, his eyes were suffused with blood, blood oozed from his ears and nostrils; his limbs, gashed with the sharp corals, bled also. The veins of his forehead looked ready to burst, and as he tightened the cords of hair across them it seemed his only salvation.
I urged him to desist, seeing his condition, and fearing a repet.i.tion of his first experience; but he would go once more; perhaps there was no pearl in that sh.e.l.l; he wanted to get me a pearl. He sank again and renewed his efforts at the bottom of the sea. I scarcely dared to count the minutes now, nor the bubbles that came up to me like little balloons with a death-message in each. Suppose he were to send his last breath in one of those transparent globes, and I look down and see his body snared in the antlers of coral, stained with his blood? Well, he came up all right, and I postponed the rest of my emotion for a later experience.
Some divers remain three minutes under water, but two or three descents are as many as they can make in a day. The ravages of such a life are something frightful.
No more pearl-hunting after the second dive that day; nor the next, because we went out into the air for a stroll on sh.o.r.e to gather fruit and stretch our legs. There was a high wind and a heavy sea that looked threatening enough, and we were glad to return after an hour's tramp.
The next day was darker, and the next after that, when a gale came down upon us that seemed likely to swamp Motu Hilo. A swell rolled over the windward reef and made our quarters in the grotto by no means safe or agreeable. It was advisable for us to think of embarking upon that tempestuous sea, or get brained against the roof of our retreat.
Hua Manu looked troubled, and my heart sank. I wished the pearl oysters at the bottom of the sea, the ”Great Western” back at Tahiti, and I loafing under the green groves of Papeete, never more to be deluded abroad.
I observed no visible changes in the weather after I had been wis.h.i.+ng for an hour and a half. The swell rather increased; our frail canoe was tossed from side to side in imminent danger of upsetting.
Now and then a heavy roller entirely filled the mouth of our cavern, quite blinding us with spray; having spent its fury, it subsided with a concussion that nearly deafened us, and dragged us with fearful velocity toward the narrow mouth of the cave, where we saved ourselves from being swept into the sea by grasping the roots overhead and within reach.
Could I swim? asked Hua Manu. Alas, no! That we must seek new shelter at any risk was but too evident. ”Let us go on the next wave,” said Hua, as he seized a large sh.e.l.l and began clearing the canoe of the water that had acc.u.mulated. Then he bound his long hair in a knot to keep it from his eyes, and gave me some hasty directions as to my deportment in the emergency.
The great wave came. We were again momentarily corked up in an air-tight compartment. I wonder the roof was not burst open with the intense pressure that nearly forced the eyes out of my head and made me faint and giddy. Recovering from the shock, with a cry of warning from Hua, and a prayer scarcely articulated, we shot like a bomb from a mortar into the very teeth of a frightful gale.
Nothing more was said, nothing seen. The air was black with flying spray, the roar of the elements more awful than anything I had ever heard before. Sheets of water swept over us with such velocity that they hummed like circular saws in motion.
We were crouched as low as possible in the canoe, yet now and then one of these, the very _blade_ of the wave, struck us on the head or shoulders, cutting us like knives. I could scarcely distinguish Hua's outline, the spray was so dense, and as for him, what could he do?
Nothing, indeed, but send up a sort of death-wail, a few notes of which tinkled in my ear from time to time, a.s.suring me how utterly without hope we were.
One of those big rollers must have lifted us clean over the reef, for we crossed it and were blown into the open sea, where the canoe spun for a second in the trough of the waves, and was cut into slivers by an avalanche of water that carried us all down into the depths.
I suppose I filled at once, but came up in spite of it (almost every one has that privilege), when I was clutched by Hua Manu and made fast to his utilitarian back-hair. I had the usual round of experiences allotted to all half-drowned people: a panoramic view of my poor life crammed with sin and sorrow and regret; a complete biography written and read through inside of ten seconds. I was half strangled, call it two-thirds, for that comes nearer the truth; heard the water singing in my ears, which was _not_ sweeter than symphonies, nor beguiling, nor in the least agreeable. I deny it! In the face of every corpse that ever was drowned I emphatically deny it!
Hua had nearly stripped me with one or two tugs at my thin clothing, because he didn't think that worth towing off to some other island, and he was willing to float me for a day or two, and run the risk of saving me.
When I began to realize anything, I congratulated myself that the gale was over. The sky was clear, the white caps scarce, but the swell still sufficient to make me dizzy as we climbed one big, green hill, and slid off the top of it into a deep and bubbling abyss.
I found Hua leisurely feeling his way through the water, perfectly self-possessed and apparently unconscious that he had a deck pa.s.senger nearly as big as himself. My hands were twisted into his hair in such a way that I could rest my chin upon my arms, and thus easily keep my mouth above water most of the time.
My emotions were peculiar. I wasn't accustomed to travelling in that fas.h.i.+on. I knew it had been done before. Even there I thought with infinite satisfaction of the Hawaiian woman who swam for forty hours in such a sea, with an aged and helpless husband upon her back. Reaching land at last she tenderly drew her burden to sh.o.r.e and found him--dead!
The fact is historical, and but one of several equally marvellous.
We floated on and on, cheering each other hour after hour; the wind continuing, the sea falling, and anon night coming like an ill-omen,--night, that buried us alive in darkness and despair.
I think I must have dozed, or fainted, or died several times during the night, for it began to grow light long before I dared to look for it, and then came sunrise,--a sort of intermittent sunrise that gilded Hua's shoulder whenever we got to the top of a high wave, and went out again as soon as we settled into the hollows.
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