"They have war guns," Koolau made answer."The soldiers have not yet spoken."In the drowsy afternoon, most of the lepers lay in their rock dens asleep.Koolau, his rifle on his knees, fresh-cleaned and ready,dozed in the entrance to his own den.The maid with the twisted arms lay below in the thicket and kept watch on the knife-edge passage.Suddenly Koolau was startled wide awake by the sound of an explosion on the beach.The next instant the atmosphere was incredibly rent asunder.The terrible sound frightened him.It wasas if all the gods had caught the envelope of the sky in their hands and were ripping it apart as a woman rips apart a sheet of cotton cloth.But it was such an immense ripping, growing swiftly nearer.Koolau glanced up apprehensively, as if expecting to see the thing.Then high up on the cliff overhead the shell burst in a fountain of black smoke.The rock was shattered, the fragments falling to thefoot of the cliff.
Koolau passed his hand across his sweaty brow.He was terribly shaken.He had had no experience with shell-fire, and this was more dreadful than anything he had imagined.
"One," said Kapahei, suddenly bethinking himself to keep count.
A second and a third shell flew screaming over the top of the wall, bursting beyond view.Kapahei methodically kept the count.The lepers crowded into the open space before the caves.At first they were frightened, but as the shells continued their flight overhead the leper folk became reassured and began to admire the spectacle.
The two idiots shrieked with delight, prancing wild antics as each air-tormenting shell went by.Koolau began to recover his confidence.No damage was being done.Evidently they could not aim such large missiles at such long range with the precision of arifle.
But a change came over the situation.The shells began to fall short.One burst below in the thicket by the knife-edge.Koolau remembered the maid who lay there on watch, and ran down to see.The smoke was still rising from the bushes when he crawled in.He was astounded.The branches were splintered and broken.Where thegirl had lain was a hole in the ground.The girl herself was in shattered fragments.The shell had burst right on her.
First peering out to make sure no soldiers were attempting the passage, Koolau started back on the run for the caves.All the time the shells were moaning, whining, screaming by, and the valley was rumbling and reverberating with the explosions.As he came in sight of the caves, he saw the two idiots cavorting about, clutching each other's hands with their stumps of fingers.Even as he ran, Koolau saw a spout of black smoke rise from the ground, near to the idiots.They were flung apart bodily by the explosion.One lay motionless, but the other was dragging himself by his hands toward the cave.His legs trailed out helplessly behind him, while the blood was pouring from his body.He seemed bathed in blood, and as he crawled he cried like a little dog.The rest of the lepers, with the exception of Kapahei, had fled into the caves.
"Seventeen," said Kapahei."Eighteen," he added.
This last shell had fairly entered into one of the caves.The explosion caused the caves to empty.But from the particular cave no one emerged.Koolau crept in through the pungent, acrid smoke.Four bodies, frightfully mangled, lay about.One of them was the sightless woman whose tears till now had never ceased.
Outside, Koolau found his people in a panic and already beginning to climb the goat-trail that led out of the gorge and on among the jumbled heights and chasms.The wounded idiot, whining feebly and dragging himself along on the ground by his hands, was trying tofollow. But atthe first pitch of the wall his helplessnessovercame him and he fell back.
"It would be better to kill him," said Koolau to Kapahei, who still sat in the same place.
"Twenty-two," Kapahei answered."Yes, it would be a wise thing to kill him. Twenty-three--twenty-four."The idiot whined sharply when he saw the rifle levelled at him.Koolau hesitated, then lowered the gun.
"It is a hard thing to do," he said.
"You are a fool, twenty-six, twenty-seven," said Kapahei."Let me show you."He arose, and with a heavy fragment of rock in his hand, approached the wounded thing.As he lifted his arm to strike, a shell burst full upon him, relieving him of the necessity of the act and at the same time putting an end to his count.
Koolau was alone in the gorge.He watched the last of his people drag their crippled bodies over the brow of the height and disappear.Then he turned and went down to the thicket where the maid had keen killed.The shell-fire still continued, but he remained; for far below he could see the soldiers climbing up.A shell burst twenty feet away.Flattening himself into the earth, he heard the rush of the fragments above his body.A shower of hau blossoms rained upon him.He lifted his head to peer down the trail, and sighed.He was very much afraid.Bullets from rifles would not have worried him, but this shell- fire was abominable.Each time a shell shrieked by he shivered and crouched; but eachtime he lifted his head again to watch the trail.
