some hundred isles that lay all about them in that sea; but it was a
thing peculiar to the Isle of Voices. They told him also that these
fires and voices were ever on the seaside and in the seaward fringes of
the wood, and a man might dwell by the lagoon two thousand years (if he
could live so long) and never be any way troubled; and even on the
sea-side the devils did no harm if let alone. Only once a chief had cast
a spear at one of the voices, and the same night he fell out of a
cocoa-nut palm and was killed.

Keola thought a good bit with himself. He saw he would be all right when
the tribe returned to the main island, and right enough where he was, if
he kept by the lagoon, yet he had a mind to make things righter if he
could. So he told the high chief he had once been in an isle that was
pestered the same way, and the folk had found a means to cure that
trouble.

"There was a tree growing in the bush there," says he, "and it seems
these devils came to get the leaves of it. So the people of the isle cut
down the tree wherever it was found, and the devils came no more."

They asked what kind of tree this was, and he showed them the tree of
which Kalamake burned the leaves. They found it hard to believe, yet the
idea tickled them. Night after night the old men debated it in their
councils, but the high chief (though he was a brave man) was afraid of
the matter, and reminded them daily of the chief who cast a spear
against the voices and was killed, and the thought of that brought all
to a stand again.

Though he could not yet bring about the destruction of the trees, Keola
was well enough pleased, and began to look about him and take pleasure
in his days; and, among other things, he was the kinder to his wife, so
that the girl began to love him greatly. One day he came to the hut, and
she lay on the ground lamenting.

"Why," said Keola, "what is wrong with you now?"

She declared it was nothing.

The same night she woke him. The lamp burned very low, but he saw by her
face she was in sorrow.

"Keola," she said, "put your ear to my mouth that I may whisper, for no
one must hear us. Two days before the boats begin to be got ready, go
you to the sea-side of the isle and lie in a thicket. We shall choose
that place before-hand, you and I; and hide food; and every night I
shall come near by there singing. So when a night comes and you do not
hear me, you shall know we are clean gone out of the island, and you may