Paina o waikiki hula full#

Also, as his snow-white hair and beard attested, he was much older. Large as were the Hawaiian cowboys, the sleeper was larger. The eyes of all were intently fixed upon the solitary sleeper who lay on his back on a lauhala mat a hundred feet away under the monkey-pod trees. From far off, muffled by distance, came the faint stamping of their tethered horses. Above them, casting a shelter of shade from the sun, grew a wide-spreading canopy of Ponciana regia, itself a flame of blossoms, out of each of which sprang pom-poms of feathery stamens. One of them, deliciously and roguishly handsome as a faun, with the eyes of a faun, wore a flaming double-hibiscus bloom coquettishly tucked over his ear.

They had the appearance of banditti, save for the incongruous wreaths of flowers and fragrant maile that encircled the crowns of their flopping cowboy hats. On their heels were huge-rowelled Spanish spurs. Into the tops of their rough leather leggings were thrust long knives, the handles projecting. To all of which a seeming contradiction was given by the ferociousness of their accoutrement. Brown-skinned, with luminous brown eyes and black, their features large and regular, they showed all the signs of being as good-natured, merry-hearted, and soft-tempered as the climate. Well-muscled, broad-shouldered, they were all strapping men.

Paina o waikiki hula full#

Other women, hapa-haole and full native, watched her anxiously as she fled.Īt the front of the house, on the grass, squatted a score of Hawaiians. The mother, a slender hapa-haole (half-white), clad in a loose- flowing holoku of white muslin, hastened away swiftly among the banana and papaia trees to remove the babe's noise by distance. At the rear of the house a tiny babe piped up a thin blatting wail that the quickly thrust breast could not appease. The rest were on the tense tiptoes of silence. Of humans about the low bungalow-like house, there were many but one only of them slept. In the intervals between the soft breathings, the air grew heavy and balmy with the perfume of flowers and the exhalations of fat, living soil. Only intermittently did the atmosphere so breathe-for breathing it was, the suspiring of the languid, Hawaiian afternoon. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stoweįrom over the lofty Koolau Mountains, vagrant wisps of the trade wind drifted, faintly swaying the great, unwhipped banana leaves, rustling the palms, and fluttering and setting up a whispering among the lace-leaved algaroba trees.

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett.

The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane.

The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne.