as
unmistakable. Love danced in all his movements, and, next, dancing with
him on the mat, was a woman whose heavy hips and generous breast gave the
lie to her disease-corroded face. It was a dance of the living dead, for
in their disintegrating bodies life still loved and longed. Ever the
woman whose sightless eyes ran scalding tears chanted her love-cry, ever
the dancers of love danced in the warm night, and ever the calabashes
went around till in all their brains were maggots crawling of memory and
desire. And with the woman on the mat danced a slender maid whose face
was beautiful and unmarred, but whose twisted arms that rose and fell
marked the disease's ravage. And the two idiots, gibbering and mouthing
strange noises, danced apart, grotesque, fantastic, travestying love as
they themselves had been travestied by life.

But the woman's love-cry broke midway, the calabashes were lowered, and
the dancers ceased, as all gazed into the abyss above the sea, where a
rocket flared like a wan phantom through the moonlit air.

"It is the soldiers," said Koolau. "Tomorrow there will be fighting. It
is well to sleep and be prepared."

The lepers obeyed, crawling away to their lairs in the cliff, until only
Koolau remained, sitting motionless in the moonlight, his rifle across
his knees, as he gazed far down to the boats landing on the beach.

The far head of Kalalau Valley had been well chosen as a refuge. Except
Kiloliana, who knew back-trails up the precipitous walls, no man could
win to the gorge save by advancing across a knife-edged ridge. This
passage was a hundred yards in length. At best, it was a scant twelve
inches wide. On either side yawned the abyss. A slip, and to right or
left the man would fall to his death. But once across he would find
himself in an earthly paradise. A sea of vegetation laved the landscape,
pouring its green billows from wall to wall, dripping from the cliff-lips
in great vine-masses, and flinging a spray of ferns and air-plants in to
the multitudinous crevices. During the many months of Koolau's rule, he
and his followers had fought with this vegetable sea. The choking
jungle, with its riot of blossoms, had been driven back from the bananas,
oranges, and mangoes that grew wild. In little clearings grew the wild
arrowroot; on stone terraces, filled with soil scrapings, were the _taro_
patches and the melons; and in every open space where the sunshine
penetrated were _pap