ready, and Keawe and Lopaka took
a passage in the _Hall_, and went down Kona way to view the house, and
see if all had been done fitly according to the thought that was in
Keawe's mind.

Now, the house stood on the mountain side, visible to ships. Above, the
forest ran up into the clouds of rain; below, the black lava fell in
cliffs, where the kings of old lay buried. A garden bloomed about that
house with every hue of flowers; and there was an orchard of papaia on
the one hand and an orchard of bread-fruit on the other, and right in
front, toward the sea, a ship's mast had been rigged up and bore a flag.
As for the house, it was three stories high, with great chambers and
broad balconies on each. The windows were of glass, so excellent that it
was as clear as water and as bright as day. All manner of furniture
adorned the chambers. Pictures hung upon the wall in golden frames:
pictures of ships, and men fighting, and of the most beautiful women,
and of singular places; nowhere in the world are there pictures of so
bright a colour as those Keawe found hanging in his house. As for the
knick-knacks, they were extraordinary fine; chiming clocks and musical
boxes, little men with nodding heads, books filled with pictures,
weapons of price from all quarters of the world, and the most elegant
puzzles to entertain the leisure of a solitary man. And as no one would
care to live in such chambers, only to walk through and view them, the
balconies were made so broad that a whole town might have lived upon
them in delight; and Keawe knew not which to prefer, whether the back
porch, where you got the land-breeze, and looked upon the orchards and
the flowers, or the front balcony, where you could drink the wind of the
sea, and look down the steep wall of the mountain and see the _Hall_
going by once a week or so between Hookena and the hills of Pele, or the
schooners plying up the coast for wood and ava and bananas.

When they had viewed all, Keawe and Lopaka sat on the porch.

"Well," asked Lopaka, "is it all as you designed?"

"Words cannot utter it," said Keawe. "It is better than I dreamed, and I
am sick with satisfaction."

"There is but one thing to consider," said Lopaka; "all this may be
quite natural, and the bottle imp have nothing whatever to say to it. If
I were to buy the bottle, and got no schooner after all, I should have
put my hand in the fire for nothing. I gave you my word, I know; but yet
I think you would n