h to guard the passage. Koolau found his people disheartened.
The majority of them were too helpless to forage food for themselves
under such forbidding circumstances, and all were starving. He selected
two women and a man who were not too far gone with the disease, and sent
them back to the gorge to bring up food and mats. The rest he cheered
and consoled until even the weakest took a hand in building rough
shelters for themselves.

But those he had dispatched for food did not return, and he started back
for the gorge. As he came out on the brow of the wall, half a dozen
rifles cracked. A bullet tore through the fleshy part of his shoulder,
and his cheek was cut by a sliver of rock where a second bullet smashed
against the cliff. In the moment that this happened, and he leaped back,
he saw that the gorge was alive with soldiers. His own people had
betrayed him. The shell-fire had been too terrible, and they had
preferred the prison of Molokai.

Koolau dropped back and unslung one of his heavy cartridge-belts. Lying
among the rocks, he allowed the head and shoulders of the first soldier
to rise clearly into view before pulling trigger. Twice this happened,
and then, after some delay, in place of a head and shoulders a white flag
was thrust above the edge of the wall.

"What do you want?" he demanded.

"I want you, if you are Koolau the leper," came the answer.

Koolau forgot where he was, forgot everything, as he lay and marvelled at
the strange persistence of these _haoles_ who would have their will
though the sky fell in. Aye, they would have their will over all men and
all things, even though they died in getting it. He could not but admire
them, too, what of that will in them that was stronger than life and that
bent all things to their bidding. He was convinced of the hopelessness
of his struggle. There was no gainsaying that terrible will of the
_haoles_. Though he killed a thousand, yet would they rise like the
sands of the sea and come upon him, ever more and more. They never knew
when they were beaten. That was their fault and their virtue. It was
where his own kind lacked. He could see, now, how the handful of the
preachers of God and the preachers of Rum had conquered the land. It was
because--

"Well, what have you got to say? Will you come with me?"

It was he voice of the invisible man under the white flag. There he was,
like any haole, driving straight toward the end determine