The days were long to him,and the nights terrifying.He made a lamp of cocoa-shell,and drew the oil of the ripe nuts,and made a wick of fibre;and when evening came he closed up his hut,and lit his lamp,and lay and trembled till morning.Many a time he thought in his heart he would have been better in the bottom of the sea,his bones rolling there with the others.
All this while he kept by the inside of the island,for the huts were on the shore of the lagoon,and it was there the palms grew best,and the lagoon itself abounded with good fish.And to the outer slide he went once only,and he looked but the once at the beach of the ocean,and came away shaking.For the look of it,with its bright sand,and strewn shells,and strong sun and surf,went sore against his inclination.
"It cannot be,"he thought,"and yet it is very like.And how do Iknow?These white men,although they pretend to know where they are sailing,must take their chance like other people.So that after all we may have sailed in a circle,and I may be quite near to Molokai,and this may be the very beach where my father-in-law gathers his dollars."So after that he was prudent,and kept to the land side.
It was perhaps a month later,when the people of the place arrived -the fill of six great boats.They were a fine race of men,and spoke a tongue that sounded very different from the tongue of Hawaii,but so many of the words were the same that it was not difficult to understand.The men besides were very courteous,and the women very towardly;and they made Keola welcome,and built him a house,and gave him a wife;and what surprised him the most,he was never sent to work with the young men.
And now Keola had three periods.First he had a period of being very sad,and then he had a period when he was pretty merry.Last of all came the third,when he was the most terrified man in the four oceans.