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disciples on the Big Island.
    When she reached the terrace, she brushed the sand off her feet and put on her sandals. Walking back through the lobby, she noticed a corridor of shops and moseyed into a few of them to browse. They carried an array of designer scarves, pricey jade and coral jewelry in a rainbow of colors, Chinese vases, Japanese netsukes, and Louis Vuitton luggage along with a few more prosaic guest needs. She bought a tube of toothpaste, a newspaper and, on impulse, a pack of cigarettes—Sincerely Yours, menthol lights. What were a few paltry carcinogens compared to the deadly gases she’d be inhaling on the rim of that volcano?
    In the last shop, she found a book of Hawaiian history, legends, and myths and charged it to her room. That strange fray with the protesters suggested a more complicated Hawaii than the one depicted in the travel brochures. She had a feeling that molten lava wasn’t the only fire smoldering under the surface of Paradise.

Chapter Four
    In November of 1880, Mauna Loa burst open and began discharging lava. There was no great concern during the winter, but over the spring the lava oozed closer and closer to Hilo. The forests west of town glowed red and the air was thick and acrid with smoke. By June, the fiery flow had reached the outskirts of town and real estate values plummeted. On June 26th, the flow coursed down from the streambeds above Hilo gobbling as much as five hundred feet of earth each day. Methane explosions sounded like cannon fire and the heat and glare were intense. The Christian inhabitants closed their shops and businesses and thronged the churches to beg the intercession of Jehovah. The Hawaiian inhabitants sent an urgent message to Princess Luka Ke’elikolani, a descendant of King Kamehameha I and an unreconstructed worshipper of Pele.
    Princess “Ruth” as she had been re-christened by the Western missionaries, was fifty-five years old and tipped the scales at four-hundred-and-forty pounds. Her nose had been crushed in a pitched battle with her second husband and her voice boomed like thunder. She wasn’t one to be overawed by the U.S. government, or the white man’s Jehovah, or Madame Pele’s flare-ups.
    When she came ashore in Hilo in July, Princess Ruth ordered a batch of red silk handkerchiefs, a large quantity of brandy, two roast pigs, and an unrolled taro leaf and commanded her underlings to conduct her royal personage to the edge of the flow. The horse selected to pull her carriage wasn’t up to the task and a crew of prisoners from the Hilo jail was drafted to haul her to her destination.
    When she was satisfied with her vantage point, she disembarked and directed that a luau be held on the spot. Then, chanting a sacred poem and swaying her imposing hips in a hula, she fed the taro leaf and the handkerchiefs into the flames. When these had been consumed, she smashed a bottle of brandy against the hot lava sending up a hair-singeing gust of fire. The Princess and her party drank the rest of the brandy, ate the pigs, and slept all night in the path of Pele’s progress. By morning, the lava had cooled and the goddess had retired to her mountain. Score one for Ruth, whose attitude and description called to mind the formidable woman leading the anti-Garst demonstration outside the hotel.
    Dinah closed the book, turned the no-smoking sign to the wall, and lit a Sincerely Yours. Showered and smelling of some citrusy lotion, she lay propped up on her king-sized bed in her luxurious ocean-front room thinking about Eleanor’s views on Hawaiian real estate and Xander Garst. Claude Ann had sounded perplexed by Xander’s lack of assertiveness with the protesters, even a little fearful. Did she feel she had to stand up to them because he wouldn’t, or couldn’t? She’d showed her loyalty, but Dinah didn’t think her bravado would discourage the woman who resembled Princess Ruth.
    She picked up the newspaper and glanced over the front page. The man who’d