Excerpted from Chapter Nine, “Be Ambitious and Bold.”

On a Wednesday morning in early 1873, the interisland steamer Kilauea completed its weekly run from Honolulu to Hilo, by way of Molokai and Maui. Isabella Bird, of Yorkshire, England, was among the passengers, a genial forty-two-year-old with chronic back pain and a tendency toward depression. Her doctor had recommended travel as a cure for both complaints. Twenty years later, Bird was still at sea, keeping a journal of all she observed.

As the steamer entered Hilo Bay, young men shoved canoes from the beach, followed by swimmers and boys hugging nine-foot-long surfboards. A welcome party stood onshore, and “brilliantly-dressed riders galloped along the sands,” Bird wrote, “till a many-coloured tropical crowd had assembled at the landing.” She saw a whaleboat launch, rowed by eight singing men in white linen suits. Carrying garlands of flowers and bouncing with glee, the men scrambled aboard the ship and rushed past her to embrace a slender figure dressed in suit and hat and light kid gloves, with a silk scarf twirled around his neck. She had met him a day earlier: this “very handsome half white gentleman, a lawyer of ability” whose speech was “eloquent and poetic.” During the two-day voyage he had changed his outfit three times and kept the passengers entertained with his theatrical manner and a “combination of patois, invective, and sarcasm.” The man was returning home, he had explained, and his name was William Ragsdale.

Isabella Bird was not the first writer to capture the dandified Ragsdale in a journal. Seven years earlier, Mark Twain had stood in the gallery of the Hawaiian Supreme Court, where the legislature met, observing the lawmakers. “The mental caliber of the Legislative Assembly is up to the average of such bodies the world over,” he wrote. “And I wish it were a compliment to say it, but it is hardly so.” At the time the legislature included a dozen white men among the forty or so Hawaiian representatives. Dr. Ferdinand Hutchison was present, and the future king, David Kalakaua, and also the government’s official interpreter, the lawyer William Ragsdale, whose role it was to translate every speech. This he accomplished “with a readiness and facility of language that are remarkable,” wrote Twain. “Without departing from the spirit of a member’s remarks, he will, with apparent unconsciousness, drop in a little voluntary contribution occasionally in the way of a word or two that will make the gravest speech utterly ridiculous.” Ragsdale was the son of an American lawyer and plantation owner who had migrated to Hawaii from Virginia and wed a Hawaiian chiefess. The couple had three children, who were raised, as Twain imagined, “in the midst of the ancient idolatrous system.” Twain began to jot an outline for a novel, with William Ragsdale as its protagonist.

In Hilo, while Isabella Bird watched, Ragsdale climbed from the whaleboat and was lofted delicately ashore, clasped, and kissed. When the greetings subsided, he straightened his suit and ambled off, stepping gingerly over the puddles in the path so he would not soil his spats. Bird collected her bags and went to find the home of Hilo’s sheriff, Luther Severance, with whom she had arranged to stay. The village did not have a hotel.

On a lane set back from shore was the cottage that served as Ragsdale’s law offices. He often worked late. One evening that spring, Ragsdale lit an oil lamp against the gloom, then returned to his law book. The case he studied was complicated, and Ragsdale later explained that he became distracted and accidentally tipped the lamp. Just as quickly, he snatched it back up, grasping the hot chimney. A strange sound started, followed by a sharp odor, but Ragsdale did not feel anything. He pressed his palm against the glass again and watched the skin blister. It occurred to Ragsdale that he had leprosy.

During the next few months Ragsdale prepared himself for exile. Later there was talk of a fiancée, a beautiful half-white girl whose touch he now forbade, but much of that was myth. What was fact was that he seems never to have considered running, or hiding the disease, which barely marked him. Instead, he made a show of his surrender, hoping to encourage others. When he sent a letter to Sheriff Severance’s home to report himself, he had already booked passage for the colony, by way of Honolulu. “I therefore surrender myself to you so that I may be disposed of as by law directed,” he wrote the sheriff. At Kalihi Hospital the doctor ran a needle across the unfeeling hand and marked William Ragsdale on the list, as patient 1008.

Two days before his disease was confirmed, Ragsdale had sailed from Hilo for the final time. He spent the morning riding the village’s shaded lanes, saying his farewells. At the pier, ten persons with leprosy were being rowed to the ship, to join thirty other exiles aboard. “The relations of those who have been taken from Hilo are still howling on the beach,” wrote Isabella Bird. By chance she was in Hilo again, for a second visit. Just as the ship weighed anchor, Ragsdale appeared on the waterfront, “carefully dressed as usual, decorated with leis and ohia and gardenia, and escorted by nearly the whole native population,” Bird wrote. “Tears and sobs accompanied him, and his countrymen and women all clung to him, kissing him to the last moment, whilst all the foreigners shook hands as they offered him their good wishes.” His belongings had been sent ahead to the colony: law books, a Bible, his linen suits, and a horse. Ragsdale turned to face his audience. Speaking in Hawaiian, he praised the government’s segregation policy as a sad yet necessary measure. He announced that he expected life to be livable in the colony, despite rumors of the place, and hoped his example of “quiet submission” would inspire others to come forward. He told the crowd that he loved them and would remember them in prayer. “Aloha,” he said, “may God bless you, my brothers.” Then he repeated the speech, this time in English.