by Grant Allen
On the very day when Warren and Elsie finally fixed the date for their approaching wedding, the calm and happy little bride-elect came in with first tidings of the accomplished arrangement, all tremors and blushes, to her faithful Edie. To her great chagrin, however, her future sisterin-law received the news of this proximate family event with an absolute minimum of surprise or excitement. “You don’t seem to be in the least astonished, dear,” Elsie cried, somewhat piqued at her cool reception. “Why anybody’d say, to see the way you take it, you’d known it all a clear twelvemonth ago!”
“So I did, my child all except the mere trifling detail of the date,” Edie answered at once with prompt commonsense, and an arch look from under her dark eyebrows. “In fact, I arranged it all myself most satisfactorily beforehand. But what I was really thinking of just now was simply this why shouldn’t one cake do duty for both at once, Elsie?”
“For both at once, Edie? For me and Warren? Why, of course, one cake always does do for the bride and bridegroom together, doesn’t it? I never heard of anybody having a couple, darling.”
“What a sweet little silly you are, you dear old goose, you! Are you two the only marriageable people in the universe, then? I didn’t mean for you and Warren at all, of course; I meant for you and myself, stupid.”
“You and myself!” Elsie echoed, bewildered. “You and myself, did you say, Edie?”
“Why, yes, you dear old blind bat, you,” Edie went on placidly, with an abstracted air; “we might get them both over the same day, I think seriously: kill two weddings, so to speak, with one parson. They’re such a terrible nuisance in a house always.”
“Two weddings, my dear Edie?” Elsie cried in surprise. “Why, what on earth are you ever talking about? I don’t understand you.”
“Well, Mr. Hatherley’s a very good critic,” Edie answered, with a twinkle: “he’s generally admitted to have excellent taste; and he ventured the other day on a critical opinion in my presence which did honor at once to the acuteness of his perceptions and the soundness and depth of his aesthetic judgment. He told me to my face, with the utmost gravity, I was the very sweetest and prettiest girl in all England.”
“And what did you say to that, Edie?” Elsie asked, amused, with some dawning perception of the real meaning of this queer badinage.
“I told him, my dear, I’d always considered him the ablest and best of living authorities on artistic matters, and that it would ill become my native modesty to differ from his opinion on such an important question, in which, perhaps, that native modesty itself might unduly bias me to an incorrect judgment in the opposite direction. So then he enforced his critical view in a practical way by promptly kissing me.”
“And you didn’t object?”
“On the contrary, my child, I rather liked it wise.”
“After which?”
“After which he proceeded to review his own character and prospects in a depreciatory way, that led me gravely to doubt the accuracy of his judgment in that respect; and he finished up at last by laying those very objects he had just been depreciating, his hand and heart, at the foot of the throne, metaphorically speaking, for the sweetest girl in all England to do as she liked accept or reject them.”
“And the sweetest girl in all England?” Elsie asked, smiling.
“Unconditionally accepted with the most pleasing promptitude. You see, my dear, it’ll be such a splendid thing for Warren, when he sets up house, to have an influential art critic bound over, as it were, not to speak evil against him, by being converted beforehand into his own brother-in-law. Besides which, you know, I happen, Elsie, to be ever so much in love with him.”
“That’s a good thing, Edie.”
“My child, I considered it such an extremely good thing that I ran upstairs at once and had a regular jolly old-fashioned cry over it Elsie, Arthur’s a dear good fellow. And you and I can be married together. We’ve always been sisters, ever since we’ve known each other. And now we’ll be sisters even more than ever.”
THE END
The White Man’s Foot
This teenage adventure story, written for Allen’s son, was originally serialised in Atalanta, a girls’ magazine, from April 1888. The narrative is set on a volcano in Hawaii and concerns savage religious cults, human sacrifice and the rescue of a “dusky” maiden by bold British sailors. The book also included a preface by Allen addressed to his son.
The magazine in which the novel was serialised
The first edition’s title page
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
The original frontispiece
TO
JERRARD GRANT ALLEN,
THE ONLY BEGETTER OF THESE ENSUING ADVENTURES.
My Dear Grantie,
From the following pages, written with a single eye to your own personal tastes and predilections, you may, I trust, learn three Great Moral Lessons.
First, never to approach too near the edge of an active volcano.
Second, never to continue your intimacy with a man who deliberately and wickedly declines to pull you out of a burning crater.
And third, never to intrust the care of youth to a cannibal heathen South Sea Islander.
With the trifling exception of these three now enumerated, I am not aware that you can extract any Great Moral Lesson whatsoever from the hairbreadth escapes of Kea and her associates.
Having thus almost entirely satisfied your expressed wishes in this matter — for “a story without a moral” — I subscribe myself, with pride,
Your obedient servant and very loving father,
G.A.
CHAPTER I
My brother Frank is a most practical boy. I may be prejudiced, but it seems to me somehow there’s nothing like close personal contact with active volcanoes to teach a young fellow prudence, coolness, and adaptability to circumstances. “Tom,” said he to me, as we stood and watched the queer party on deck, devouring taro-paste as a Neapolitan swallows down long strings of macaroni: “don’t you think, if we’ve got to live so long in a native hut, and feed on this port of thing, we may as well use ourselves to their manners and customs, whatever they may be, at the pearliest convenient opportunity?”
“Haven’t you heard, my dear boy,” said I, “what the naval officer wrote when he was asked to report to the Admiralty on that very subject of the manners and customs of the South Sea Islanders? ‘Manners they have none,’ he replied with Spartan brevity, ‘and their customs are beastly.’”
“Not a bit of it,” Frank answered quickly in his jolly way. “For my part I think this sticky, pasty stuff they’re eating with their fingers, though it’s a bit stodgy, looks like real jam, and I’d much rather take my lunch off things like that up here on deck, out of a native calabash, than go down and eat a civilized meal with a knife and fork in that hoky-poky, stuffy little cabin there.”
I confess, for myself, I didn’t exactly like the look of it. Cosmopolitan as I am, I object to fingers as a substitute for spoons. We were on board the Royal Hawaiian mail steamer Liké Liké, 500 tons registered burden, from Honolulu for Hilo, in the island of Hawaii; and a quainter group than the natives on deck I’m bound to admit, in all my wanderings, by sea or by land, I had never set eyes on. The tiny steamer was built in fact on purpose to accommodate all tastes alike, be the same savage or civilized. Down stairs was a saloon where regular meals in the European fashion were well served by a dusky Polynesian steward in a white linen jacket, to such luxurious persons as preferred to take them in that orthodox manner. But the unsophisticated natives, in their picturesque dress, believing firmly in the truth of the proverb that fingers were made before f
orks, liked better to carry their own simple provisions in their baskets with them. They picnicked on deck in merry little circles, laughing and talking at the top of their voices (when they weren’t sea-sick) as they squatted on their mats of woven grass round the family taro-bowl. From this common dish, parents and children, young men and maidens, fed all alike, each dipping his forefinger dexterously into the sticky mess, and then twisting it round, as one might twist a lot of half-boiled toffee, till they landed it safely with a sudden twirl in their appreciative mouths. “It must be awfully good,” Frank went on meditatively, eyeing the doubtful mixture with a hungry look. “They seem to enjoy it so, or else of course they wouldn’t lick their fingers! I wish we could strike up a friendship now with some of these amiable light-coloured natives, and get them to share their lunch with us off-hand. I wonder what they call this precious stuff of theirs?”
“We call it taro,” one of the nearest group answered, greatly to our surprise, in perfectly good and clear English. “Would you like to taste some? It’s very nice. We shall be delighted if you’ll try it. Hawaiians are always proud indeed to show any hospitality in their power to friendly strangers.”
She was a pretty young girl of eighteen who spoke, lighter a good deal in complexion than most of the other natives around, and she was seated with a tall, dark, serious-looking old Hawaiian at a calabashful of the strange pasty mixture the appearance of which had so attracted Frank’s favourable attention. As she spoke, she moved a little aside to make room for us on her mat, as if they were all playing Hunt-the-Slipper; and Frank, whose fault, I’m bound to admit, was never shyness, squatted down at once, nothing loth, tailor-fashion, on the deck by her side, and with many thanks accepted the courteous offer of a dip in the taro-bowl.
“Upon my word, Tom,” he said, twirling a great dab of the queer-looking paste awkwardly into his mouth, “it’s first-rate grub when you come to taste it. A little sour to be sure, but as good as pancakes. If you’re going to feed us like this on the islands, sir,” he added, turning to the stern old man, “I don’t think we’ll be in any hurry to run away again.”
“Bring out some more food, Kea,” the dark old Hawaiian half whispered to the girl politely, in English not quite so good as her own, but still very fluent, “and ask the gentleman,” with a slight bow towards me, “if he won’t be good enough to join us in our simple luncheon.”
“I shall be only too glad,” I answered, immensely surprised, and with some qualms of conscience about my unfortunate remark as to the manners and customs, which I never expected any native on board to understand. “It will be much more pleasant, I’m sure, to take my meals up here on deck than to go down to that hot and stuffy little saloon below.”
As I seated myself, the girl Kea took up from her side a pretty basket of plaited palm-leaves, and produced from it a few pieces of dried fish, some cold roast pork, a stick or two of sugar-cane, several fresh oranges just picked from the tree, and a tempting display of bananas and bread-fruits. Frank and I were old enough sailors and old enough travellers to fare sumptuously off such excellent food stuffs; indeed we had just arrived in the Islands from San Francisco by the last mail steamer, and fresh fruit was a great luxury to us; while after so long a voyage on the open Pacific we thought nothing of this pleasant little summer cruise between the beautiful members of that volcanic archipelago.
A meal together is a capital introduction. In the course of ten minutes we were all four of us on excellent terms with one another. Kea had introduced to us the dark old man as her Uncle Kalaua, a Hawaiian chief of the old stock of some distinction, whose house was remarkable for being situated higher up the slopes of the great volcano, Mauna Loa, than any other on the entire island. She herself, she let us know by casual side-glimpses, was a half-caste by birth, though she hardly looked as dark as many Europeans; her mother had been Kalaua’s only sister, and her father the captain of an English whaling-ship; but both were dead, she added with a sigh, and she lived now with her grim old uncle near the very summit of the great burning mountain. She told us a vast deal about herself, in fact, by way of introduction, with the usual frankness of the simple, unsophisticated children of nature, and she asked us a lot of questions in return, being anxious to learn, as we were neither missionaries, nor whalers, nor sugar-planters, nor merchants, what on earth our business could be in Hawaii.
“Well,” said I, with a smile of amusement, “you’ll think it a very funny one indeed when I tell you what it is. We’ve come to make observations on Mauna Loa.”
“To make observations!” Kea answered with a faint thrill of solemn awe in her hushed voice. “Oh, don’t say that. It’s — it’s so very dangerous.” And she glanced aside timidly at her uncle.
Kalaua looked up at us quickly with a suspicious glance. “Observations on Mauna Loa?” he cried in a very stern tone. “On our great volcano? Scientific observations? The man is ill advised in truth who tries to go poking and prying too much about Mauna Loa!”
“Oh, you needn’t be afraid,” Frank answered laughing; “need they, Tom? It’s not by any means our first experience of eruptions. My brother’s an awful dab at volcanoes, you know. He’s seen dozens; and he’s been sent out to examine this one in particular by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. I’m his assistant-examiner, without salary. Sounds awfully grand that, doesn’t it? But we mean to have a jolly lark in Hawaii for all that. Expenses paid, and all found; and nothing to do but to go down the crater and look about us. We expect to have a splendid time. There’s nothing I love like a really good volcano.”
But in spite of Frank’s enthusiastic way of looking at the matter I could see at a glance that the mention of our object in visiting Hawaii had cast a shade of gloom at once over both Kea and her uncle. The old man seemed to grow moody and sullen; Kea was rather grieved and saddened. The rest of our meal passed off less pleasantly. It was not till we began to chew green sugar-cane together by way of dessert, that Kea’s spirits at all returned. She laughed and talked then once more with native good-humour, showing us how to strip and peel the fresh cane, and making fun of us merrily because in our English awkwardness we got pieces of the fibre wedged hopelessly in between our front teeth. Yet even so I couldn’t help suspecting that something was weighing upon her mind a little. Evidently they were either hurt or distressed that we should think of scientifically observing Mauna Loa. I wondered much whether they held the mountain too sacred a thing for inquisitive science to poke its nose into, or whether they only considered it too dangerous a crater for the bold explorer to meddle with carelessly. If it was merely the last, I didn’t much mind. Frank and I were thoroughly at home with nasty-tempered volcanoes, and knew their tricks and their manners down to the ground far too well to be in the least afraid of them. I had been engaged in studying their manifestations indeed for the last six years; and Frank, who was born to face danger, had joined me in all my expeditions and explorations ever since he’d been big enough to carry a knapsack.
In the course of the afternoon however I happened to be standing with pretty little Kea near the bow of the steamer, while her uncle was slowly pacing the quarterdeck, immersed in conversation with a Hawaiian acquaintance. She was a graceful young girl, with a wreath of yellow flowers twined, Pacific fashion, round her broad straw hat, and another garland of crimson hibiscus thrown lightly like a scarf like one well-shaped shoulder. She glanced timidly round to see if Kalaua was well out of earshot; then, seeing herself safe, she said to me in a low, half-whispered voice, “If I were you, Mr. Hesselgrave, I’d give up the idea of exploring Mauna Loa.”
“Give it up!” I cried. “Why, really, you know, that would be quite impossible! I’ve come all the way from England on purpose to visit it. Is the mountain so very dangerous then?”
Kea’s voice dropped a tone lower still. “It’s more than dangerous,” she said very nervously. “It’s almost certainly fatal.”
“How so?” I asked. I was not easily frightened.
“Why not?” I inquired. “Are they all so dreadfully afraid of the volcano?”
“Not of the volcano,” Kea replied with evident awe in her tone, “but of Pélé, of Pélé. —— I suppose you’ve never even heard about Pélé, though!”
“Never!” I repeated, laughing unconcernedly. “Enlighten my darkness. Who is he, or what is it?”
“It’s neither he nor it,” the Hawaiian girl answered in a hushed voice. “It’s she, if it’s anybody. Pélé’s the goddess who lives, as our people used once to believe, in a fiery cave at the bottom of Mauna Loa!”
“Nonsense!” I replied, amused at the girl’s apparent superstition. “I thought you were all converted here long ago. You don’t mean to say your people go on believing still in such childish nonsense as gods and goddesses?”
Kea’s voice sank lower than ever, and she glanced around her with a frightened little gaze. “We don’t worship them, you know,” she answered apologetically, under her breath almost; “but we can’t help believing there’s somebody there, of course, some super-natural being, when we hear Pélé groaning and moaning and sobbing in the dead of night, or see her casting up huge red-hot stones and showers of lava, whenever she’s angry.” She paused a moment: then she added mysteriously in a solemn undertone. “There must be something in it. My father knew that. He was one of the bravest and most skilful whalers in the whole Pacific, and he always said there was something in it.”