began to retreat, helping along their wounded. As Koolau picked
them off he became aware of the smell of burnt meat. He glanced
about him at first, and then discovered that it was his own hands.
The heat of the rifle was doing it. The leprosy had destroyed most
of the nerves in his hands. Though his flesh burned and he smelled
it, there was no sensation.

He lay in the thicket, smiling, until he remembered the war guns.
Without doubt they would open upon him again, and this time upon the
very thicket from which he had inflicted the danger. Scarcely had
he changed his position to a nook behind a small shoulder of the
wall where he had noted that no shells fell, than the bombardment
recommenced. He counted the shells. Sixty more were thrown into
the gorge before the war-guns ceased. The tiny area was pitted with
their explosions, until it seemed impossible that any creature could
have survived. So the soldiers thought, for, under the burning
afternoon sun, they climbed the goat-trail again. And again the
knife-edged passage was disputed, and again they fell back to the
beach.

For two days longer Koolau held the passage, though the soldiers
contented themselves with flinging shells into his retreat. Then
Pahau, a leper boy, came to the top of the wall at the back of the
gorge and shouted down to him that Kiloliana, hunting goats that
they might eat, had been killed by a fall, and that the women were
frightened and knew not what to do. Koolau called the boy down and
left him with a spare gun with which 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