still with a strong Lowland accent, were good company; the
night was warm, the victuals plain but good. Mr. Gilfillan gave me his
berth, and I slept well, though I heard the sisters sick in the next
stateroom, poor souls. Heavy rolling woke me in the morning; I turned
in all standing, so went right on the upper deck. The day was on the
peep out of a low morning bank, and we were wallowing along under
stupendous cliffs. As the lights brightened, we could see certain
abutments and buttresses on their front where wood clustered and grass
grew brightly. But the whole brow seemed quite impassable, and my heart
sank at the sight. Two thousand feet of rock making 19 deg. (the Captain
guesses) seemed quite beyond my powers. However, I had come so far; and,
to tell you the truth, I was so cowed with fear and disgust that I dared
not go back on the adventure in the interests of my own self-respect.
Presently we came up with the leper promontory: lowland, quite bare and
bleak and harsh, a little town of wooden houses, two churches, a
landing-stair, all unsightly, sour, northerly, lying athwart the
sunrise, with the great wall of the pali cutting the world out on the
south. Our lepers were sent on the first boat, about a dozen, one poor
child very horrid, one white man, leaving a large grown family behind
him in Honolulu, and then into the second stepped the sisters and
myself. I do not know how it would have been with me had the sisters not
been there. My horror of the horrible is about my weakest point; but the
moral loveliness at my elbow blotted all else out; and when I found that
one of them was crying, poor soul, quietly under her veil, I cried a
little myself; then I felt as right as a trivet, only a little crushed
to be there so uselessly. I thought it was a sin and a shame she should
feel unhappy; I turned round to her, and said something like this:
"Ladies, God Himself is here to give you welcome. I'm sure it is good
for me to be beside you; I hope it will be blessed to me; I thank you
for myself and the good you do me." It seemed to cheer her up; but
indeed I had scarce said it when we were at the landing-stairs, and
there was a great crowd, hundreds of (God save us!) pantomime masks in
poor human flesh, waiting to receive the sisters and the new patients.

Every hand was offered: I had gloves, but I had made up my mind on the
boat's voyage _not_ to give my hand; that seemed less offensive than the
gloves. So the sisters