“You are a brave man,” said Koolau wonderingly. “I could kill you like a fly.”

“No, you couldn’t,” was the answer.

“Why not?”

“Because you are a man, Koolau, though a bad one. I know your story. You kill fairly.”

Koolau grunted, but was secretly pleased.

“What have you done with my people?” he demanded. “The boy, the two women, and the man?”

“They gave themselves up, as I have now come for you to do.”

Koolau laughed incredulously.

“I am a free man,” he announced. “I have done no wrong. All I ask is to be left alone. I have lived free, and I shall die free. I will never give myself up.”

“Then your people are wiser than you,” answered the young captain. “Look-they are coming now.”

Koolau turned and watched the remnant of his band approach. Groaning and sighing, a ghastly procession, it dragged its wretchedness past. It was given to Koolau to taste a deeper bitterness, for they hurled imprecations and insults at him as they went by; and the panting hag who brought up the rear halted, and with skinny, harpy-claws extended, shaking her snarling death’s head from side to side, she laid a curse upon him. One by one they dropped over the lip-edge and surrendered to the hiding soldiers.

“You can go now,” said Koolau to the captain. “I will never give myself up. That is my last word. Good-bye.”

The captain slipped over the cliff to his soldiers. The next moment, and without a flag of truce, he hoisted his hat on his scabbard, and Koolau’s bullet tore through it. That afternoon they shelled him out from the beach, and as he retreated into the high inaccessible pockets beyond, the soldiers followed him.

For six weeks they hunted him from pocket to pocket, over the volcanic peaks and along the goat-trails.