“give her but a least excuse to love me!”—r. browning.
“but he
can visit thee with dreader woe than death’s.”—e. b. browning.
as soon as tolta had seen his captives disposed of for the night, he despatched a messenger to pohaku, requesting a few warriors to be sent him. the fortress was but twelve miles distant, so that before daybreak the men had arrived. taking every precaution not to let his movements be seen by any one who would communicate them to liliha, he entered the house where olmedo was still sleeping, and told him he must rise and follow him.
“nay, tolta, i will not leave beatriz,” said olmedo, firmly.
“she will join you immediately,” replied tolta. “up, priest, if you would save yourself and her.”
“whence this untimely haste, tolta? the poor child now rests. to you we owe the perils and fatigues of our abduction. i will trust you no further, but remain amid these friendly natives until juan can learn where we are.”
“ha! do you brave me? it is time then to throw off the mask! have you forgotten, monk, that you[198] are in the power of the son of an aztec priest, slain by the sacrilegious hands of your countrymen? priest for priest,—life for life,—my father’s blood cries for thine,—to-morrow’s sun will set on your sacrifice. no more shall you hold fond dalliance with the white maiden. she is my spoil.”
“what mean you, mexican? what words are these? you rave! you cannot,—you dare not injure beatriz! nay,—you seek to alarm me. it is a jest,—is it not, tolta? your heart will not let you ruin that pure being, whose life has been a good gift to you as well as me.”
“silence! i can listen no longer to this babble. we must be off. a mexican is not wont to be moved by the tongue of a spaniard.”
olmedo started up and looked around for some means of defence, but before he could even call for help, tolta’s men, at a signal from him, had seized and bound him. taking him upon their shoulders in silence, they left the house and rapidly bore him towards pohaku’s quarters. his mouth and eyes being bandaged, he was unable to cry out or to obtain any clue to his route. they hurried him on, and early in the morning, bruised by their rough handling, he found himself deposited on the ground apparently in a house, and there left by himself.
tolta had now obtained one great object, which was to secure olmedo in the fortress, while beatriz, equally in his power, was removed from the immediate presence of pohaku.
hewahewa, the father of liliha, was the high-priest of pele. second only to pohaku in authority,[199] he was his superior in influence, from his position as the chief minister of the goddess. himself a skeptic, believing in none of the grosser superstitions of the people, and using them merely as a source of power, he was indifferent to everything but his own ambition. his lands were the best cultivated, and his tenantry the most favored of all this portion of hawaii, because being tabu, the wars and anarchy which so generally prevailed spared them. rigorous in conforming to all the rites of his fearful worship, he expiated his external hypocrisy by inward contempt. but his mind, though intelligent, had never conceived any purer system, and only busied itself in scheming to turn the national mythology to his individual profit. he was the rival of pohaku, but for the present coalesced with him. not being of the highest blood, he was obliged to rely for his influence mainly upon his increasing importance as a priest, but was slowly making his way to supreme rule, aided much by the tyranny of pohaku, to whose capricious cruelties his studied suavity and mildness afforded a contrast greatly to his advantage. liliha was his only child. he loved her tenderly, and by this tie only was he connected with true humanity. no other being had sufficient influence to move him to any action not calculated from selfish policy. she at times made him susceptible to feeling by her impulsive nature, so prone to joy and kindly emotions, from her affinity with all she found fair and good. this was little at the best, but she kept that little fresh and active from her own fountain[200] of affections, and it appeared brighter and more winsome from the dark shadows about her.
she was the idol of her immediate attendants, and though capricious from unregulated authority, yet they had nothing to fear. her father, so far from seeking to instil into her mind the vulgar faith, left her free to her own intuitions. she believed in the beautiful and sublime nature she so loved to look upon, and felt there had been given her in it a varied and limitless source of enjoyment. not that she reasoned much upon anything, but she was so quick to recognize all that was innocent and virtuous, under the circumstances of her life, that her heart and mind were ever developing in the right direction. her religion, therefore, was not the result of thought, but the spontaneous action of an untrammelled soul, that instinctively attracting to itself good in preference to evil, spoke the faith in actions which it was powerless to frame in words. she knew nothing of a personal god, yet, had any one explained to her his existence, she would have listened as if it were nothing new, and rejoiced in a higher mental satisfaction than she had before realized. quick to perceive, she had acquired from her father, almost without his will, his disbelief in the demon origin of the terrific phenomena of nature in their vicinity, and looked upon them as fearlessly as upon the placid ocean or the tiny sea shell. why should she fear? had she not been born among them? like herself, they were the creation of some unseen power, who ruled all! so her few years had gone by kindly[201] and lovingly, with health coursing in every vein, and happiness overflowing her heart.
as soon as tolta had secured olmedo, he hastened to announce to pohaku his success. that grim chief was not in the best humor upon learning the death of so many of his warriors, by the new flow of the crater. “a poor exchange this, is it not, hewahewa,” said he turning to that person; “so many of our fighting men for this foreign priest and his woman. but let us see the prize that has cost so much.”
the three passed to the hut in which olmedo was confined. his bandages were removed, and he found himself in their presence. pohaku looked at him as he would have at a strange animal, and marvelling at his long robes and the effeminate air they gave him, said to tolta, “you mexicans must have been less than women to have been conquered by such a race as this. would you have my warriors fight them? i have a mind to tie you to him and toss you both into the crater. kiana would have been a prey worth a legion of such as this long-robed, pale-faced she.”
tolta’s hand nervously sought the dagger he wore, but prudence restrained him, and he quietly replied, “the spanish chief has for the while escaped. he will soon enough give you a chance to feel his stroke in battle. till then spare your taunts. their priests are women in looks, but devils in deeds. if you would see the faces of their soldiers, look there,” and he tossed out of a[202] bag before him the ghastly heads of the three spaniards.
even pohaku was surprised at their long grisly beards and fierce faces, scarred by wounds, and bronzed by a score or more of years of constant adventure and warfare. “these may have been men,” said he, “but my soldiers would have soon rolled their heads in the dust,” at the same time kicking them scornfully, not choosing to remember that some of his best warriors had within the past year fallen by their blades. “guards,” he added, “take this carrion away, and put it up over the eastern gate of the fortress,—’twill be a fit target for our boys. as for you, puny priest, you are destined for pele. thank your gods you are to be so honored.”
“chieftain,” replied olmedo, “the god i serve will protect me living or dying. i am indeed a man of peace, but fear not the sword. death has no terrors, for it opens to me a heaven, such as your idolatry can never know. in your delusion and ignorance you are to be pitied—not me. you shall see how calmly a christian can die. perhaps it will lead you to ask what it is to be a christian.”
“i will tell you what it is to be a christian, pohaku, for none know better than my countrymen,” broke in tolta. “it is to rob, to murder, to burn, to ravish, to lie, to torture, to destroy the sacred images and break down the altars of the gods; to demolish towns and to waste fields; to breed famine and pestilence. all this, for gold and conquest, have the spaniards, cursed be their mothers,[203] brought upon mexico in the name of their god, and this will they bring to you, o chief! even if you welcome them to your bosom, as did our sovereign, montezuma, they will imprison and spurn you to your death, or they will broil you on hot coals as they did the emperor guatimotzin, to make you confess riches that you have not. yet they say their god is merciful and full of love. see, here is the lying image,” and snatching the crucifix from olmedo’s neck, he handed it contemptuously to pohaku, who, putting it curiously to his ear, said, “it does not talk. how does it give you power to do all this? pele thunders and destroys. she speaks, and we listen. she is silent, and we fill her with gifts to buy her good will. but this bit of wood is dumb. pele eats the ocean and the earth,—mountains and rivers she swallows. she is a dread goddess, and must be worshipped or we perish. here, take your god,” added he, disdainfully flinging it towards olmedo, “to-morrow we will give pele a rare meal. you and your god shall she feast upon.”
“hold, chief!” cried olmedo, excited by his sacrilegious act, “the mercy you refuse you may shortly need. this image is no god, but it represents the son of god; his words of peace and love will fill my heart and rejoice my spirit, when your false pele, with all her thunderings, is dumb in my ears. god made the volcano, and at his bidding it sleeps or overflows. cease to bow the knee to pele, and pray to him, and you shall learn such truths as shall make you live on earth in peace, and welcome death with joy.”
[204]
“ha! white priest, do you despise pele?” replied pohaku fiercely, and seizing olmedo by the arm, he dragged him outside the house to the verge of the precipice, which looked down upon the crater of kilauea.
that immense circle of dead lava, now known as the black ledge, which contracts the active portion of the crater to a circuit of a few miles, was not then in existence. the whole pit, embracing an area sufficient to contain the city of new york, was in commotion. from where olmedo looked, the height above the fiery mass was about five hundred feet. it had undermined the wall of the crater, so that it overhung the sea of lava, as the table rock does the cataract of niagara. immediately beneath him, therefore, lay the lurid cauldron. its heavy, sluggish waves, of deep crimson, surged against the banks with a muffled roar, as unlike the glad sound of surf, as a groan to laughter. occasionally a thick black crust formed over the surface, like a huge scab. then this would break asunder, and bright red currents of liquid rock appear underneath; whirlpools of boiling blood fusing everything they touched into their own gore-hued flood. huge masses of solid stone were vomited high into the air, and fell hissing and sputtering back again into the depths of the fiery gulf, to be again cast forth, or melt like wax in a ten-fold heated furnace. lighter jets of lava were being thrown up, sometimes in rapid succession, and sometimes at long intervals, which filled the atmosphere with red hot spray and steam, and[205] gases, blown hither and thither, and whirled about like the sands of the desert before a simoom, by the furious blasts of wind that swept with mingled moans and shrieks across that lake of hell, and through its glowing caverns and out of its black pits. overhead hung a dense cloud, gradually spreading as it rose, until it enveloped all the region of the crater. the smoke of its torment, like a pall, covered the cancerous earth, to screen its throes from the light of the sun.
coming so unexpectedly upon a spectacle of which he had heard only vague accounts, olmedo, at first sight, forgot both himself and his enemies in awe. it was indeed a fearful spectacle, beautiful even in its terror, exciting all that was appalling in the imagination, and fascinating the eye as by a spell. the solid earth was passing away in a flame, and would soon be as a vapor. olmedo felt as if he were the sole spectator. the wreck of matter lay before the last man. such was his immediate sensation, from which he was rudely roused by pohaku’s hoarse voice crying, “how like you this lake to swim in? you shall bathe in it before to-morrow’s sun sinks behind yonder forest. my people shall see if your god will carry you unharmed over pele’s billows of fire. meantime, feast and be merry, for the goddess likes a full stomach,” and thrusting him back into the house he left him.
tolta lingered behind. approaching olmedo, he whispered in spanish, “would you save yourself from this death?”
“my life is the gift of my god,” he replied.[206] “his will and not that cruel chief’s will determine my fate.”
“have you forgotten beatriz so soon? how would she feel to see your form shrivelling and writhing as it plunged into that boiling lava? think of her, priest.”
“wretch, you dare not tell her this, much less make her witness such a horror!”
“i dare not! know that tolta dares anything for his revenge, and to glut his desires. with you it lays to save yourself and her from this fate. pohaku has summoned his people to a solemn festival, before he strikes at kiana. he is furious that the three spaniards should have escaped their intended sacrifice. think you he will spare beatriz when he sees her? she either dies on the altar or by his lust.”
olmedo for the instant was dumb with anguish at the threatened fate of beatriz. but clinging to the slightest hope of rescuing her, as he recovered his voice, with hands clasped in an appealing gesture towards tolta, he eagerly asked, “how can i save her? oh, gladly would i ransom her life with mine. tell me, good tolta; by the love you bore your mother, by your hope of heaven, tell me, mexican, and the prayers of gratitude, and all that a chaste maiden and a christian priest may do, shall be forever yours. she saved your life amid the ruin of your native city—you rescued her from drowning, but not for this fate. let her not perish now, and thus”—olmedo paused for an instant, as his imagination pictured to him with the force[207] of reality, all the horrors that encompassed her for whom he plead; big drops of agony came upon his brow as he met the cold, fierce, lustful eye of the aztec fixed unmoved upon his, while the same wily, implacable look, born of his deepest passions, overspread his pitiless features which he had noticed once before, and now, as then, involuntarily shuddered to see; but the stake at issue was the honor and life of his daughter in christ, and so he plead on. “no! you cannot—you will not suffer this; the hand that has fed you, nursed you, the heart that has cared for you and your eternal welfare, when all others were cold; the tongue that never spoke to you but in love and kindness,—surely you will not harm them? look, tolta, olmedo the priest, the friend of the mexican,—your father was a priest,—olmedo on his knees beseeches you to save the white maiden, to restore her in all honor to her brother; take my life as a ransom for hers, if your vengeance must have life,—will you not, tolta?”
olmedo became silent, and dropped his eyes to the ground, then raising them for a second towards heaven, he ejaculated in spanish, as he met the relentless gaze of tolta still fixed upon him, “mother of christ, soften the heart of this heathen,—save thy lamb from the wolves that beset her. if there be no escape prepared, sustain and fortify our spirits until their hour of final deliverance has come.”
as he finished his prayer, tolta grasped his arm and said to him, “now listen to me, olmedo. i[208] would save beatriz, for i love her—start not—yes, the mexican dog dares love the castilian maid, loves her with all the fiery, quenchless passion of his race, as noble and proud as her own, and, till the spaniards came, as victorious. i saved her from the ocean because i loved her. i have borne insult, oppression, slavery, the fierce words of juan, and even a christian baptism from you because of this love. i have been faithful to the spaniard when revenge was offered me until now, because i love beatriz. would you know how much i love her?—as deeply as i hate her nation. she must become mine. it is in your power to accomplish this. you are her confessor, and you will she obey. persuade her to be mine, and you shall be free, juan warned, and even kiana be spared the slaughter now ready to fall upon him. i can easily fool this brute pohaku, and lead him into the destruction he richly deserves. speak, priest, will you not make her my wife to save her, yourself, and all you love, from destruction?”
more in sorrow than in anger at his blindness and confessed villany did olmedo reply to him. “life is dear to all of us, but our souls are dearer. willingly would i do all but violate my conscience and her truth to save her a single pang. you know not a christian woman’s heart. she mate with you! the dove seek the nest of the hawk! never! beatriz would die a thousand deaths first. oh! tolta, is it for this you have played the traitor? were i to name the price of my safety, she would spurn me, as i do you, for the thought. tempt me no further.[209] repent of this wrong before it be too late, or you will learn that though you may imprison the body, the spirit escapes your bondage. destroy her you may, but you cannot dishonor a christian maiden. her soul will defy your wiles, and we shall meet in paradise. no more! i will hear no more of this.”
tolta could as little comprehend the lofty motive of olmedo in refusing to abase beatriz’s purity, by merely hinting at its sacrifice, as a door of escape from bodily torment for either himself or her, as could pohaku the spiritual strength of his faith in contrast with the thunder and lightnings of pele. unmoved by his reply, he sneeringly said, “i give you till night to think of this. after the moon rises it will be too late,” and left him.
