Hawaiian idylls of love and death
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Title: Hawaiian idylls of love and death

Author: Herbert H. Gowen

Release date: July 14, 2025 [eBook #76499]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Cochrane Publishing Co, 1908

Credits: Susan E., David E. Brown, Mary Fahnestock-Thomas, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAWAIIAN IDYLLS OF LOVE AND DEATH ***

Statue of Kamehameha I, Honolulu.

Hawaiian Idylls of
Love and Death

BY THE
REV. HERBERT H. GOWEN
F.R.G.S., M.R.S.A. (Lond.)
Author of “The Paradise of the Pacific,” etc.

NEW YORK
COCHRANE PUBLISHING CO.
1908

Copyright, 1908, by
COCHRANE PUBLISHING CO.

INTRODUCTION

The following stories are concerned mainly with incidents bearing on the career of the first sovereign of the Hawaiian archipelago, Kamehameha I, worthily distinguished from his successors as “Kamehameha the Great,” who, born about the year 1736, achieved the unification of the group in 1795, and died in 1819, leaving behind him no one capable of following in his footsteps.

A few words about this notable ruler of a kingdom now no more may not be amiss as introductory to the stories to follow.

Every visitor to Honolulu finds his way in course of time to the splendid square between the Iolani Palace and the Aliiolani Hale. At least, such were the names borne till recent years by the dwelling-place of the sovereign and the meeting-place of the legislators of Hawaii. But times are changed, and names have changed with them. Now more prosaic names have been adopted by more prosaic times.

Changing times, however, can never take away the interest attaching to one prominent object in this square, just in front of the Legislative Buildings. For monarch and legislature, ay, and people, too, may pass away and only bring into greater relief the true greatness of the man whose statue here keeps sentry guard.

It is the statue of the chief who made Hawaii a kingdom, and gave it such cohesion and such stability that as a kingdom it endured for just a century. Here stands Kamehameha I, “the lonely one,” as his name implies, represented by the artist as he might have appeared in life at the head of his army in those heroic days when the chiefs of Hawaii fought “like gods of war dispensing fate.”

We see him here a man of gigantic mould, with furrowed and smileless countenance, as of one who seldom spoke save to command, and who commanded to be obeyed. Spear in hand, feather-helmet on head, and on his shoulders the famous feather cloak which took nine generations of kings to construct—we seem to see before us that “Mars armipotent,” of whom it might be said, as it was said of the Homeric hero:

“On him the war is bent, the darts are shed,

And all their falchions wave about his head:

Repulsed, he stands, nor from his stand retires,

But with repeated shouts his army fires.”

The statue was modelled after a fine specimen of the Hawaiian race, named Kaopuiki, with whom the writer has several times crossed the channel from Maui to Lanai, but we have authority for the features in the portrait painted by M. Choris, the artist attached to Kotzebue’s expedition in 1816. This is the only authentic picture of Kamehameha in existence, and was painted when he was nearly eighty years old.

Over a hundred and ten years ago, in the year of our era 1795, this man effected what, under the circumstances, seemed a task of insuperable difficulty—the union of the eight islands of the Hawaiian group under one government. What those difficulties were only those who have studied the matter will be able to appreciate. Here it will suffice to say that of his race there was none like him before, there has been none like him since. In all that shadowy time from the dawn of Hawaiian history to the establishment of intercourse with the western world, the time of heroes eight or nine feet high, who wielded spears ten yards long; heroes who fought with gods and received aid from gods, as the Greek warriors at Troy from Minerva and Apollo—heroes like Kiha of the magic conch, like Liloa and Umi and Lono, there was none who accomplished what Kamehameha did by the patient toil and dauntless courage of forty years.

And in all the time since, in spite of that unexampled advance in civilization, which has made of Hawaii a land of telephones, electric light, public schools, universal suffrage and the rest, there has arisen no Hawaiian with one-tenth part of the manhood possessed and used, mainly for good, by this heroic savage.

If the conquests of Kamehameha were inferior in extent to those of Alexander, it was because he had not Alexander’s scope. At any rate, he fought till he had no more worlds to conquer, and what he conquered he kept for himself and his family until the dynasty expired. Like Napoleon (and Kamehameha is often spoken of as the “Napoleon of the Pacific”), he had an unswerving faith in his destiny. Otherwise, he never could have overcome so completely the obstacles in his way.

For, although the uniting of eight small islands into one kingdom may appear to us a slight achievement, as a matter of fact, the task was anything but easy. Each of the islands had its traditions of pre-eminence, and the relations of island with island were marked by furious jealousy and hostility. Intercourse, for many generations, was almost suspended, except for purposes of war. Even a few years ago the natives of the windward and the leeward islands could be distinguished by their language—the Kauai and Oahu people using t and r in the Tahitian dialect, where the natives of Hawaii and Maui used k and l. But the fusion commenced by Kamehameha has progressed so well that the ancient differences of language are nearly as much obliterated as the desire for separate and independent governments.

The consolidation of the kingdoms had been attempted before by able soldiers and statesmen, but had failed. Even the wise and philanthropic Vancouver tried to dissuade Kamehameha from what he believed a Utopian scheme which must result disastrously. Nevertheless, the savage followed his stars and prevailed.

The late king—Kalakaua—an unbiased witness, since he succeeded to the throne as the first of a new line, unconnected with and in a measure hostile to the dynasty of the Kamehamehas—thus passes judgment on his illustrious predecessor:

“Kamehameha was a man of tremendous physical and intellectual strength. In any land, and in any age, he would have been a leader. The impress of his mind remains with his crude and vigorous laws, and wherever he stepped is seen an imperishable track. He was so strong of limb that ordinary men were but children in his grasp, and in council the wisest yielded to his judgment. He seems to have been born a man and to have had no boyhood. He was always sedate and thoughtful, and, from his earliest years, cared for no sport or pastime that was not manly. He had a harsh and rugged face, less given to smiles than frowns, but strongly marked with lines indicative of self-reliance and changeless purpose. He was barbarous, unforgiving and merciless to his enemies, but just, sagacious and considerate in dealing with his subjects. He was more feared than loved or respected; but his strength of arm and force of character well fitted him for the supreme chieftaincy of the group, and he accomplished what no one else could have done in his day.”

This extract does no more than justice to Kamehameha’s powers of body and mind. Indeed it was his intellectual greatness which distinguished him so much from his contemporaries, and which forms his chief claim to the recognition of thoughtful men of all times and races.

He is, in the first place, worthy to be put beside Fabius Maximus for his invincible pertinacity and patience. “Unus homo cunctando restituit rem,” was said of Hannibal’s great conqueror, and of the conqueror of Kalanikapule and la haute noblesse of all Hawaii it might be said with truth that not less by waiting than by fighting did he make for himself a kingdom. There may have been something of the Hawaiian indifference to the flight of time in the patience which enabled Kamehameha to take defeat so easily and to retire so contentedly, like another Cincinnatus, to cultivate his patrimonial fields at Waipio, but there was also without doubt abundant faith in waiting for the fullness of time—a faith the very reverse of common in barbarous or semi-civilized communities.

None knew, like Kamehameha, how to endure defeat so as to make it but a step to a deferred but more complete victory. Had he been a student of history he might well have adopted the words of Admiral Coligni, who said of himself: “In one respect I may claim superiority over Alexander, over Scipio, over Cæsar. They won great battles, it is true. I have lost four great battles; and yet I shew to the enemy a more formidable front than ever.”

Nevertheless, Kamehameha knew when to strike and did strike hard. Like Napoleon, he could hurl all his force at a given point with marvellous celerity and precision, and, once having developed his plan, he suffered no obstacle to prevent its being carried into effect.

In the third place, he had a singular power of knowing the right instruments to employ in his undertakings. Very many great men ruin the work they take in hand, either by undertaking too much personally, or else by employing inefficient and unsuitable instruments. In either case, the work fails to outlive the worker, even if he be not destined to see the ruin himself. It is sometimes said that such and such a successful ruler had the good fortune to be surrounded by such and such a brilliant galaxy of statesmen. The good fortune is in reality the good sense and insight which lead a ruler to select the fit instruments for his purpose.

Kamehameha’s throne had for its pillars of support men who might very well have been his rivals, and among all the notable chiefs of the time none was discarded or neglected, save such men as Kaiana, whose fickleness made him more of a menace than a mainstay. As it was, few kings ever had an abler council—more conspicuous for courage in battle or for wisdom in the arts of government—than that which included men like Kalanimoku, alias William Pitt, Kameeiamoku and Keeaumoku, and the Englishmen—Young and Davis.

Kamehameha, too, lived long enough after he had crushed out all opposition to his rule to show that he understood the art of consolidating as well as that of establishing a monarchy. For twenty-five years he governed Hawaii with steadily increasing skill and enlightenment, piloting the new kingdom through every kind of embroilment with the nations represented in the realm.

Like William the Conqueror, he purposed to govern with good laws what he had won with a cruel sword, and, if he was overstern to repress, he undoubtedly spared the country much misery which a weaker or more lenient policy might have entailed.

Finally, looking at Kamehameha as a man, rather than as a ruler, we need not deny him the title of “Great.” He could be loved as well as feared. He was scrupulously just, even when it came to the condemnation of his own past actions, and perhaps greater than any victory over the rival chiefs was the victory he won over himself when he broke free from the trammels the “fire-water” of the foreigner were fast making for him, and bade his countrymen imitate him and be free.

Enough has been suggested in these introductory remarks to make clear that not only to the antiquary, searching amid the ruins of a perishing people for some faded remnants of romance; not only to the historian, seeking here and there in the archives of nations to glean illustrations of some great historical generalization; not only to the lover of the story of war and adventure; but, above all, to the student of men as men the memory of the first monarch of Hawaii ought to be of sufficient interest not to pass into oblivion.

For heroism is of no one age, and of no one race. It commands the sympathy and respect of all, and it is the writer’s hope that these simple sketches may show, in the story of the first Kamehameha, that touch of Nature which makes the whole world kin, that quality of manhood which obliterates the distinction between white and black, between East and West, between the man of yesterday and the man of to-day.

“For East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth.”

CONTENTS

PAGE
I— | The Poison Goddess of Molokai | 11
II— | The Story of the Kiha-Pu | 19
III— | The Splintered Paddle | 27
IV— | The Slandered Priest of Oahu | 34
V— | Keala | 43
VI— | Pele Declares for Kamehameha | 51
VII— | The City of Refuge | 59
VIII— | Sweet Leilehua | 67
IX— | The Spouting Cave of Lanai | 78
X— | Lono’s Last Martyr | 89
XI— | Keoua, a Story of Kalawao | 101

Hawaiian Idylls of Love and Death

I
THE POISON GODDESS OF MOLOKAI

Kaneakama was as handsome a young fellow as you could have found on the eight islands; neither unknown to war nor unskilled in divination and the learning of the priests. But he had one vice—he was an inveterate gambler.

And here he sat in his grass hut on the slopes of the Olukui, feeling as miserable as any wretch of to-day who had squandered his patrimony at Monte Carlo, for he had been playing maika the whole day long and luck had been against him at every throw. The devil, he thought, must have been in the smooth black stones; throw as he might, they would not go straight. Yes, they were certainly bewitched. And now he had nothing to call his own but one little pig—everything was lost.

Why did he not stake the pig? you ask. Ah! Kaneakama had asked himself that question many a time that evening, but had each time repelled the very thought as a temptation. For he had dedicated this pig to his Aumakua, or tutelary divinity, and with all his faults he was too pious to break his vows to the gods.

So, although happy thus far in the possession of a good conscience, he nursed his grief until the kind divinities sent their messenger, sleep—welcome to all men everywhere.

And, as Kaneakama slept, he had a wonderful vision. The song of a bird broke upon his ear, then the sweet sounds transformed themselves into an aura of radial light and in the light he beheld the loveliest form he had ever seen.

It was that of a young girl, but Kaneakama’s first impression was that it was some glorious bird, for he wanted to get up and throw a mat across the door lest she should fly away. Her black hair fell in a great shadow behind her like a pair of wings; no chief arrayed for battle had feather cloak so rich in orange and scarlet as that which clung to her perfect form from throat to shapely knee. Her eyes, too, even in the bright aura which encircled her, shone like stars in the night.

Kaneakama gazed he knew not how long, and when he came to himself he was only conscious of having received a command from the goddess (for such indeed was his adorable visitant) to take his dedicated pig and stake it as he had done the rest. You see, the gods and goddesses of ancient Hawaii had rather backward ideas regarding the morality of gambling.

However, Kaneakama is not to be blamed for this. He did as his divinity had told him, and now if the ill-luck of his former experience had been surprising, still more so was the turn of fortune which seemed to pour riches into his lap. He went home from that day’s maika-playing a rich man, but, remembering the source of his wealth, he determined to dedicate one-half of it to the service of the goddess, and to build a temple where she might dwell and receive his worship.

This he did, and no sooner was the temple so far completed that it only lacked its central idol, than once more the vision of the Aumakua broke in upon his sleep.

This time there was no doubt about the voice. It was as sweet to hear as the vision was to see.

“Go to the king, O Kaneakama,” it said; “tell him that the akua wish to dwell in the temple made by man in the shadow of his court. Power shall be his if he will shelter them. Let him send warriors with their axes and knives to the top of Maunaloa. Out of the wood let them hew me an image, and this shall be my shrine in the heiau you have built, and you, O Kaneakama, shall be my high-priest, worshipper and lover of Kalaipahoa, terrible to mortals.”

When Kaneakama awoke he hastened to obey the command, and the king was pleased to hear of the honours in store. Three hundred men were chosen; and these, carrying, besides their weapons, great folds of kapa (for the venom of the poison goddess was a thing to be dreaded), set out on their march. Kaneakama, commissioned by the king, went before them as a guide to the spot designated in his sleep.

As they marched they recalled all they had heard of the poison goddess—how she had come from an unknown land to Molokai and had made her home on Maunaloa. There, so it was said, the earth was burnt and blackened, and the birds fell dead as they flew over it. It was, moreover, the dwelling-place of Laamaomao, the god of the winds, and at any moment a strong spirit of the air might break loose from the calabash of the god and hurl the intruders afar into the Paiolo Channel.

So they journeyed on with teeth chattering and hearts cold within them. They climbed upwards along the torrent-bed over boulders for two hours or more; then they came to the forest belt where the silver leaves of the kukui seemed to shiver with sympathetic fear; then they came to the black lava slopes, where they had to look carefully to their steps.

At last they heard a rumbling like that of the winds of Laamaomao wrestling in his calabash, and suddenly before them lay the vast extinct crater, half hidden in the mist.

Their way lay downwards, the mist parting to receive them, until they saw in front of them a great black blot, such as a fire would make in some weird forest which shrivels and blackens but will not burn. The only whiteness was the whiteness of the bones strewn around, and the only greenness came from one tree in the centre, which rose erect and plumy in this wilderness of death. Some said they beheld a scarlet and yellow bird perched in its branches, but many doubted, as they saw strong-winged birds fly right up to the rim of the circle and fall dead as though pierced by an arrow.

It was true, then, this story of the poison goddess; it was true that her touch was death. One hundred men went straightway back to the king, afraid. But Kaneakama stayed the fear of the others and commanded them to do their work.

Twenty men took their axes and went forward to hew down the tree, but, alas! they fell dead before they had advanced twenty yards. Five times did Kaneakama send fresh detachments forward, moving slowly in a circle, and five times did they perish as beneath a blast of death. So five circles of dead men lay round about the tree.

Then Kaneakama commanded half the remaining hundred to take kapa and wrap themselves in it, making of it masks and shields, and they went forward till they reached the tree. Then they hewed at it, each man dying with the blow he struck, till, with a noise that awoke echoes in Maunaloa, the great tree fell crashing through the shrivelled trunks around it. Then the remaining band, still shielding themselves as best they could with the kapa, took their pahoas and cut away the branches, working feverishly, for men fainted and fell apace, till at last a rough shape was ready to be carried back to the heiau.

It was a rough and ugly idol, with widely distended mouth (to be filled presently with hideous rows of shark’s teeth), extended arms, hands and fingers, but Kaneakama looked beyond the art of the craftsman, and, wrapping the image in fold upon fold of kapa, he with his few remaining men wended his way down the mountainside, through the long valley to the seashore.

There was great rejoicing at the court when Kalaipahoa, for so the goddess hewn out with daggers was named, was placed in her shrine, and the temple dedicated with many victims; but all the rejoicing was faint and hollow as compared with the joy of the man who was at once the high-priest and lover of the goddess.

When he ministered before the shrine he saw not the rough and hideous idol, but the celestial beauty of the birdlike maiden who had visited him in the night visions. If she was terrible to others, she was always smiling and beneficent to him.

Yet, though he faithfully performed his duties at the heiau, carrying and presenting the offerings, interpreting the wishes of the goddess to the king, performing all the accustomed rites and observing all the prescribed tabus, he was not yet satisfied. It grew more and more hard to nourish himself on visions of the past. He recalled how that Pele, the volcano goddess, had had a mortal lover and had come down on earth to dwell. Why should not Kalaipahoa give him at least a sign? From pitying those who had died in the mountain, he began to envy them.

O man of little faith! The sign came. He dreamed and seemed in his dreams in Paliuli, the Elysian land, land of the blue mountain and the water of life, and, as soon as his eyes could bear the light, he saw Kalaipahoa in all her radiance, and around her stood the men who had perished at the shaping of the idol. They bore her calabashes, waved her kahilis, and stood about her as her soldiers and her slaves. But after one swift glance around him, Kaneakama saw only Kalaipahoa, and she, so he believed, saw only him.

“O Kalaipahoa,” he cried, “why am I worse off than the serfs who died in Maunaloa? They stand in thy presence and see thy face, while I toil in thy service and have no reward!”

Kalaipahoa’s face lightened with a smile.

“Foolish mortal!” she cried, “did you not see that my court is incomplete, wanting its greatest? The great chiefs have their ‘companions in death,’ but you have your household gone before you. However, you shall have your reward to-night.”

Then she bade him bring the puhenehene board and play.

He played; but, alas! such was his confusion that he lost every game, and such his preoccupation that he was not even sorry to find himself once again a pauper. At last he had nothing left to lose, and knew not what to do.

“Stake yourself!” cried a sweet voice.

No sooner said than done. Once more the stones were thrown. Once more Kaneakama lost. And the vision vanished, the goddess with a smile still upon her face.

“Ah, well!” said Kaneakama, “I am the lover of the goddess; I will die. Let me prepare an offering for her; I will place bananas in her hands and will share her feast. It may be she will bid me come sit at her feet.”

He prepared his offering, and dared to take of the food presented to the goddess. The banana he ate must have received from the hands of the goddess the gift of death, for when the temple slaves came next morning to the heiau, there, before the shrine of wickerwork, lay the lover of the goddess—dead, and, by the look of his eyes, he had died neither unwillingly nor afraid.

It was this image of Kalaipahoa that Kamehameha long begged in vain from Kahekili. It came to him after the death of the savage old Maui chief and he kept it always near him. It was a useful idol to him, for a single chip placed in the food of an obnoxious person would send him to the shades in less than twenty-four hours. Kamehameha, by his will, had the image divided among some of his chiefs, but the good Queen Kaahumanu collected all the chips she could lay her hands on, and burned them.

It is said, however, one or two fragments are still in existence. Perhaps the visitor to Honolulu may find them in the Kamehameha museum, but let us hope their virulent properties may never be put to the test.

II
THE STORY OF THE KIHA-PU

“Of this small horn one feeble blast

Would fearful odds against thee cast.”

—“The Lady of the Lake.”

The minstrels of the olden world were wont to sing of the marvels of Olifant, the magic horn of Roland, which that glorious paladin had won in battle from the giant Jatmund. All nature trembled at its blast, the fowls of the air fell dead, the trees shivered and the hearts of the Saracens failed them for fear, even though the sound came from thirty miles away.

The counterpart of this famous horn is, we believe, still to be seen among the relics of the old savage world of Hawaii preserved in the museum at Honolulu. Let the visitor not fail to ask for a sight of the Kiha-pu, the famous war trumpet or magic conch of Kiha. It is a huge nautilus-shell of a species exceedingly rare in the island group, adorned (one can scarcely say beautified) with the inlaid teeth of conquered chieftains whose death-cry was once drowned by that strident blast. Whenever the trumpet is blown, such at least is the popular belief, the groans and cries of these old warriors are heard on the wind. Far back in the generations of old, in the twelfth century of our era, this wonder-working shell was brought from the distant isles of Samoa, but its historical career in Hawaii does not commence till the reign of the mighty warrior Kiha, who ruled the land for forty years midway in the fifteenth century.

Since then in what innumerable battles has it played its part! Kamehameha prized it as he prized Kalaipahoa, the poison goddess; Kaili, the war god, or even as he prized the fire-vomiting guns of the white men. The unique qualities of the Kiha-pu caused its possession to be eagerly coveted by the rival chiefs. When blown with skill, it had power over the gods and over the legions of genii. Were the canoes at sea and the rowers lacking food, one blast of the Kiha-pu would summon Ukanipu, the shark god, to drive the flying fish so that they might fall into the open boats. Were it necessary to replenish the water calabashes, then the trumpet could call upon Kuluiau, the goddess of rain, and the oarsmen would have scarce time to arrange the vessels ere the rain came down from the clouds in torrents. Was it wind that was wanted, lo! in answer to the prayer of the Kiha-pu, Laamaomao, the god of wind, would open his swelling calabashes towards the sea, and the breezes would rush forth. Thus useful in peace, it was a hundredfold useful in war. The king could send forth at will strident voices such as startled the ears of the enemy with challenge to battle and premonition of defeat. He could make the magic conch utter clarion notes such as would summon the forces of the spirit world to his aid and rally his people from the most hopeless fight. The sound was like the sound of breakers against the rocky shores of Hawaii.

To-day, alas! though the horn may still be blown, no deity responds to its despairing wail. When, during the native insurrection of 1889, the shell conches sounded out shrilly upon the air, many of those present thought of the Kiha-pu and its traditional magic. But Lono came not from his age-long sleep, and all things conspired to show that the potency of the trumpet of Kiha was no more.

Here is a tale founded on the old meles, of the times when the famous conch was in the hands of the king who gave it its name.

Kiha was desirous of a new feather cloak to mark his dignity among the alii. He would summon to his presence the feather hunters to go forth into the forest to snare the mame and the oo, that from their brilliant feathers of scarlet and yellow he might weave his royal mantle. To bring them to the royal enclosure he bethought himself of the Kiha-pu and dispatched its trusted guardian, whose name was Hoilo, to bring it forthwith from the heiau or temple. In a little while Hoilo came back with rueful countenance and announced that the treasure had disappeared. In its place was an ugly, carved black stone.

The king, as may be imagined, was terribly wroth, but waxing wise with cunning he concealed from everybody his loss, even announcing to Hoilo that the shell was in a place known to himself. But, as soon as he dared, he hastened to the heiau and there made a confidant of the high-priest, with whom he consulted as to the fate of the Kiha-pu. After the due sacrifices, there came a response from the oracle. A voice from the wicker shrine announced that the conch had been stolen by a band of marauders, half human and half demon, who had for some time been prowling about the neighborhood. The king was in despair, but presently a gleam of hope was vouchsafed by the tidings that the lost treasure should be recovered by the king on the day when Kiha ate of the first fruit of the cocoanut tree to be planted by himself at the next fullness of the moon. In answer to the question as to who should be the instrument of the restoration, only the mysterious reply was given that it would be a being without hands and wearing neither a malo nor mantle.

It was with a very heavy heart that Kiha returned to his palace, knowing that his trumpet was in the hands of the demi-demon band, but nevertheless he dissembled his grief, kept his secret manfully, planted his cocoanut and watered the soil daily with his own hand.

In the meanwhile the demons departed with their spoil northwards to Kauai, where after many adventures they arrived and settled themselves down in the mountains at the back of Waimea.

Here Ika, the leader of the band, who took care to retain the personal control of the Kiha-pu, had the misfortune to provoke, by some unusual piece of tyranny, a quarrel with one of his comrades, and this latter, bent upon revenge, determined to repeat the theft, for his own personal ends, of the magic trumpet. Not willing to run the risk of being its possessor, however, he contented himself with robbing it of its miraculous powers. He found out that this could be effected by placing a cross mark upon its rim, accompanying the operation with incantations and prayers to Lono. So, while Ika lay, made drunk with awa, the Kiha-pu was stolen, marked with the tabu sign by the priest at Waiolani and returned again to its place. The next day Ika arose, hung the horn by its cord of human hair around his neck and sallied proudly forth, as he had been wont, to exhibit its wonderful powers, and extort the admiration of his followers. But, alas! when he raised the conch to his mouth and blew, even though he blew with the full force of his lungs, there came back nothing but a comparatively feeble, natural hollow sound.

Ika was sadly mortified at his humiliation in the sight of men, and still more so when, after further and fruitless experiments, he had to confess that the virtue of the ill-gotten trophy had departed.

He came to the conclusion that supernatural powers had been invoked against him, and in search of further light paid a visit to an aged seer at Waialua to enquire whether the voice of the Kiha-pu would be ever restored. To his great joy the answer was returned: “Yes, once more among the hills of Hawaii the Kiha-pu shall speak to the ears of gods and men.” More than this, the prophet, after the manner of oracles, refused to tell.

Thereupon Ika decided to return at once with his companions to Hawaii, and in a few days they had crossed the channels, beheld once more the snows of the very district from which they had so suddenly decamped eight years before.

Now it happened that on this very day King Kiha, who, to the amazement of his people, had been apparently spending eight years in the cultivation of a single palm, went out to his tree and was delighted to find that three cocoanuts had attained their maturity and were ready for his eating. In accordance with the ritual prescribed by the priests, these were now solemnly eaten, and at the very moment the feast was consummated came the news that the band of demoniac marauders had reoccupied the marshy wood behind the mountains of Waipio.

The tidings had scarcely reached the expectant chief when, lo! there was a tumult at the palace gate and, advancing a few steps, Kiha beheld the royal guard bringing into his presence the strangest looking old man he had ever seen. His hands were tied behind his back for more security, but at his heels followed an object still stranger to the eye. It was a dog, a big, ill-shapen beast of no earthly breed. It had blue bristles, its ears were human and the eyes were small and fiery, like those of a demon, one burning with a greenish light, and the other white.

The charge against the man was that of stealing awa, and it was represented that the dog, in this business, was his accomplice and a marvellously cunning brute. Across the mind of the king, however, there flashed the prediction of the oracle, which he had kept hoarded up in his mind. Surely, here, in this dog, was a being without hands and wearing neither malo nor mantle. Was not this the instrument of the gods, sent to his aid?

Without a moment’s delay he had the two, the man and the dog, sent to the heiau at Pakaalani, and thence he sent forth the dog to hunt through the mountains the wonder-working conch, and recover it from the hands of the thief.

There could be no doubt that the strange hound understood his mission, for he leaped through the open door, hurried to the mountains, and, after a long hunt, at length seized and bore away in his teeth the object of Kiha’s eight years’ quest. As, however, he was returning down the mountains, for one moment he dropped his spoil, and then there rang out upon the air a sound terrible to hear. For in the fall a tiny piece of the Kiha-pu, the very piece upon which was scratched the tabu cross of Lono, was broken off, and, liberated from silence, the old voice sounded forth as in the years gone by, startling the unaccustomed echoes of the mountains.

The robbers heard and, discovering their loss, started in pursuit. The king heard, too, and found it hard to possess his soul in patience till the dog’s return. Presently the door of the temple burst open and in rushed the green-eyed dog with the Kiha-pu in his mouth. The weird brute dropped it at the king’s feet, and then immediately fell dead. His companion, the awa-stealer, was inconsolable for his loss, but Kiha awarded to him a royally generous compensation, and then placing the horn to his lips blew such a blast as the mountains of Hawaii had not heard for many a year. The troops rushed together at the potent summons, and, led at once into the mountains, fell upon the demon band.

In a few hours the whole gang was exterminated, with the exception of Ika and two or three of his comrades, who were reserved for the sacrifices at the heiau, to be offered on the rededication of the Kiha-pu.

After this, Kiha took more care of his famous trumpet and regarded it as one of the chief talismans by which the authority of the throne was supported, but the awa-stealer, though having no further need of recourse to his old trade, deemed his new fortune no true compensation for the loss of his old friend, the green-eyed dog.

III
THE SPLINTERED PADDLE

In the year 1784 there was raging on the island of Hawaii the conflict known as “Kaua awa,” or “the bitter war,” a name very accurately descriptive of its exasperating and unmerciful character. There were in those days two kinds of wars in Hawaii, viz., wars of courtesy, when the arrangements for the contest were made with the most punctilious regard for the etiquette of Hawaiian chivalry, when the object of the invasion was considerately notified, and the place of landing and of battle carefully chosen, and, in the second place, wars of devastation, when everything was done to harass a foeman without respect to his feelings.

The “bitter war,” however, outran even this latter in the envenomed nature of the hostility aroused between the contending chiefs. These were, on the one side, Keoua and Keawemauhili, high chiefs who had lately shared the defeat of the ill-fated Kiwaloa in the battle of Mokuohai, and, on the other side, Kamehameha, whose future destiny had already been revealed to men like Keeaumoku, “the king-maker” of Hawaii.

These three waged a kind of triangular contest for the sovereignty of the island and brought to the struggle animosities which had been intensified by the events following the death of Kalaniopuu and his son.

For the moment, however, there was a lull in the campaign. Kamehameha had retired foiled, with his fleet, upon Laupahoehoe. Keawemauhili had just lost the help of the mercenaries from Maui, and Keoua was busy collecting his forces. In fact some parts of the country were enjoying the unwonted feeling of peace, and remained undisturbed by the arrival of the fleet-footed lunapais to gather together the tribesmen for the war.

Such was the case along the Puna coast, near the extreme southeastern point of the island, not far from the ever-burning abode of Pele in Kilauea. A traveler, dropping down near the village of Kapoho one morning in the early summer, would have thought the scene an ideal picture of peace. The purple mountains in the background seemed still asleep under the morning shadows which hung among the groves of kukui and kou; the surf on the white reef was lazily playing with the branching coral; and the blue-green water of the Pacific slumbered under the long, level rays of the awaking sun. Yet, early as it was, a hundred dusky fisher folk of the Puna coast were plying their business, not with the fierce energy of western workers who rise early to wage war with the hours, but with the happy languor of those who have no quarrel with Time, and know that the whole day is before them, one long free leisure, in which they can lazily catch and prepare and enjoy the bounty of the sea.

They have taken out in the canoes an immense rope of banana leaves, fully half a mile in length, and are spreading it in a circle upon the shining waters. When spread out it is a veritable magic ring. Glancing down into the waters beneath, you may perceive hundreds of strange creatures of the deep, blue, green, scarlet and yellow, with queer beaks and fins, darting hither and thither, but never daring—poor, silly fishes, like some inhabitants of the upper air—to cross the black shadow which hangs so threateningly over them. And, after a while, the fishermen enter with the canoes and, poising their spears, strike where and when they choose, till the boats begin to sink deeper in the sea with the weight of their finny spoil.

Such was the aspect of things on the Puna coast a moment before it was suddenly changed by a very unwelcome apparition. Sweeping around the headland of Kumukahi, there bore down upon the peaceful fishermen, from the direction of Laupahoehoe, the war canoe of a chief, one inspired, doubtless, with no amicable intentions. It was painted red from stem to stern and bore a pennon at the masthead. The sturdy rowers wore short cloaks of yellow feathers which gleamed in the sunlight. Now, a visit of a chief was at no time a very welcome event to the fishermen, as it meant the confiscation of their spoil to supply the necessity of a by no means scanty following. Sometimes they felt inclined to follow the example of the men of Kau and respond to the demands of the chief for fish by hurling enough into the canoes to sink them and their occupants to the bottom of the sea. In this case, however, there was evidently more to be feared than confiscation. And as, when some hungry shark enters the lagoon where all the children are bathing and surf-swimming, there rises the dread cry of “Mao!” and instantly there follows a “pilipili” scramble to the shore, so when this great red and yellow monster of the deep, with its swift paddles and its human voices, swept over the waves, there was such a movement shoreward as showed that the indolent Hawaiian could be agile enough when he chose.

But the pursuit did not end with the shore. Leaping from the war canoe, the attendants of the ravaging alii hurled their spears with effect. Some of the fishermen resisted and more than one with his paddle made things lively for his assailant. Presently, however, in the manner of Hawaiian warfare, the combat resolved itself into a duel. The combatants on either side grounded their spears and paddles to watch a single combat which promised to decide the fortunes of the day. The champion of the fishermen was Napopo, who, with a child slung upon his back, seemed unequally matched with his opponent, a chief of tremendous size and unspeakable ferocity of countenance. Once seen, this chief was not to be forgotten, and, as he rushed towards the unlucky fisherman in his path, he appeared to both sides alike irresistible. But Napopo was no coward, and he knew the ground better than his foe. Craftily he drew his antagonist over the coral beach and watched with lightning eye the moment when the spear should rush forth upon the air. Thus it happened that in launching his spear the chief tripped in a crevice of the rocks and fell face downward, while the missile whizzed harmlessly through the air. Then, leaping forward, Napopo used his paddle to such effect that he had surely left the chief dead upon the ground had not his followers rushed forward to the assistance of their lord. Encumbered with the child and fearing to risk its life by continuing as the aggressor, Napopo allowed the retainers to take away the battered and crestfallen raider. With his child and his splintered paddle he retired to his house a little distance from the shore, and was in time when he reached it to see the gaily painted canoe put back around the headland, the rowers somewhat sobered, doubtless, by their adventure and without a single fish.

Years have passed away and the wars of Hawaii are well nigh over. Kamehameha has won the reward of his patience and of his many defeats, and is now overlord of all the Eight Islands.

He has been making his triumphal progress round the coast of Hawaii, consecrating new heiaus, superintending the construction of fish ponds and collecting his tributes in labor, sandalwood, yellow feathers and fish. He has come, in due course, to Kapoho, and many are assembled at the royal enclosure to meet him and present their hookana. Among these comes Napopo with an enormous calabash of fish. He has no reason to fear, but as he approaches the lanai and sees the concourse of runners, heralds, soldiers, and executioners, priests and hula-dancers, it seems impossible for him to raise his eyes. What is there in the eyes which face him which seems to freeze his blood? Glaring at him with the recognition of an ancient enemy are the eyes of the man whom he had once encountered on the coral beach and whose head he had broken with his paddle. The recognition is, at any rate, mutual. Kamehameha, the quondam raider, and Napopo, the bold fisherman of Puna, have met face to face. It is in vain to attempt escape. Napopo feels that, even did not the soldiers crowd the entrance, there was no strength in his limbs to move. He can only await death with what composure he may. Kamanawa and Kalaimoku, and the two white chiefs, Young and Davis, glance at the king for orders, conscious of his emotion, though ignorant of its cause. But the king waved them aside and, rising amid the assembly, spoke in tones which reached the outer fringe of the spectators.

“Chiefs and people of Hawaii, and ye men of Puna in particular, I thank you for your welcome and your gifts to-day. Not for the first time, however, have I come among you, and I venture to confess that when I came before, you treated me even better than you have to-day. For you gave me wisdom, which is better for kings than valor. I came among you in the bitterness of my heart, thinking to revenge the rebellion of Keawemauhili upon his subjects. I swooped down upon you as the shark upon the flying fishes, and had well nigh plundered you of your fish and burned your houses and slain your men. But this man here before me came against me, not with battle-axe or javelin, but with his fisher’s paddle, and therewith stayed the course of the blood-drinking spear and well nigh ended the battles of Kamehameha. Surely even then were the gods my friends, or I had gone down shamed into the halls of the dead. And now what shall be done with the fellow who lifted up his hand against me?”

The chiefs looked upon one another, and no one ventured to speak. They knew the grim, sardonic humor of the man and, in spite of his words, would not have been surprised at some fearful sentence. As for Napopo, the bitterness of death was almost past. Hope had not yet begun to torture him.

Then amid the silence of the multitude the king spoke again, almost a smile in his furrowed face.

“My sentence is that the men of Puna be not required to pay the fish tax, except as a gift of love. Well do I deserve to lose the fish. That day, I remember, I felt lucky not to have lost my life. Go, Napopo, and defend the shores of Puna against every doer of a lawless deed. And the child thou didst bear upon thy back, what has become of it?”

“He is here, my lord,” said Napopo, scarcely knowing whether or not he was dreaming, as he brought forward a young man, tall and erect and handsome as any warrior in Kamehameha’s suite.

“It is well,” said the monarch, “he shall be my care and shall be numbered among my bodyguard. May the gods give him a heart as fearless as his sire’s!”

The next day Kamehameha promulgated the law known as “Mamalahoe”—“the law of the splintered paddle”—by which it was decreed that any chief who should henceforth engage in a raid upon unarmed and helpless people should be surely put to death.

Thus the king proved himself worthy to rule, because strong enough to condemn publicly the errors of his past.

IV
THE SLANDERED PRIEST OF OAHU

The chiefs left the council chamber of Kahahana moody and displeased. Such a proposition as they had heard had never before been suggested by a king of Oahu. The wiles of Kahekili, the moi of Maui, they knew. Like a greedy octopus, he was ever stretching out his tentacles to lay hold on everything within reach, and his eyes had for many a long year been on the coastland of Kualoa. But that Kahahana, their own feudal lord, the king who had but recently been installed with extraordinary solemnities and the sacrifice of an unwonted number of victims, the king whom they were expecting to bring back the glorious days of Peleioholani, should propose such a cession was far more than weakness; it was imbecility and treason. They gazed in imagination upon the beautiful amphitheatre of Koolau Bay, stretching in a perfect semi-circle from Kualoa Point to Kaneohe, counted up the revenue in whalebone and whale’s teeth it was wont to produce and at once, in a fierce kind of unanimity, overrode the proposal of the king. They then despatched, in the name of the whole college of the alii, a rejoinder to the king of Maui, such as would stir up that terrible old warrior even from his awa-drinking to order forth the lunapais with the chant of war. However, better war than disgrace, they felt—better even defeat, better to prostrate themselves before Kahekili with the ignominious appeal of the vanquished, “E make paha, e ola paha—iluna ke alo? ilalo ke alo?” than tamely to give away the choicest of their lands. Let the country be parcelled out after defeat, and not before!

Such had been the patriotic advice of the priest Kaopulupulu, who had long stood near the throne of Oahu, a support to its kings, learned in the traditions of kingship and in the lore of the gods, skilled not only to read the clouds and the auguries, but also to understand the hearts of mortals and of spirits. The white hair which descended over his dusky shoulders covered a brain whose like for experience and sagacity Oahu did not contain from Maena to Makapuu.

So the chiefs departed to send their message, leaving Kahahana in no enviable mood, reclining on the lanai. Truth to say, he was ashamed of himself and had made his proposal not over willingly. He had been brought up with Kahekili on the island of Maui, had adventured with him in the wars against Hawaii, their spears had drunk blood together, nay, they had become almost one in family ties, for he had taken the half-sister of Kahekili for his bride. Thus, in making himself the tool of Kahekili, the weak and credulous chief had acted without considering the aspects his proposal would present to the rest of the alii. Now, ill at ease, bitter and angry, as well as ashamed, he could only anticipate what would be the wrath of Kahekili and what degree of revenge he would plan.

Kahahana was right in one particular at least. Kahekili, when he received the news, went almost stark mad with anger. His followers whispered one to another that he had become “hehena,” and quailed before him, or, if possible, kept themselves afar from the royal enclosure. At length, however, the paroxysm passed and counsel took the place of passion. There sits Kahekili, a mighty man yet, in spite of his years, emaciated somewhat through the drinking of awa, but terrible to look on. One side of his body was tattooed almost black, the other retained its natural hue, his eyes were somewhat heavy, yet now and again lustrous with his thoughts. Long had he dreamed of being the possessor of Kualoa. It was his “Naboth’s Vineyard.” Here were ivory and whalebone enough to make him rich and envied. He had deemed the fool Kahahana sufficiently his creature and vassal not to gainsay him in such a matter as this. Now, wherefore should he not pronounce the word and send out the black maika-stone to the chiefs for war?

But other and craftier counsels prevailed. Why go to the trouble of war if he could break the power of Oahu some easier way? Oahu was strong and formidable in battle array, thanks to the counsel of the priest Kaopulupulu. The issue of conflict on the field was by no means assured while he remained by Kahahana’s side. Kaopulupulu removed, the fruit of Oahu would fall from the tree into his hands. Were it not better to proceed craftily? Fortunately, he had in his court the younger brother of Kaopulupulu, whose jealousy of the high-priest of Oahu was notorious, and with him ere the day was done, had Kahekili speech and agreement.

The days went by and Kahahana began to lose his uneasy mind. Kahekili had taken his rebuff much more readily than of wont, and there was no sign of hostile preparation or intent. Only Kaopulupulu persisted in urging the king to beware and remain ready for a visit from Kahekili’s flotilla of canoes at any hour of the day or night.

One day, nearly two weeks from the time the cession of Kualoa had been rejected, he was on his way to the royal lanai to urge a doubling of the coast watch, when, greatly to his surprise, as he went in to stand before the king, there went out Nanoa, his brother, who had come with messages from Kahekili. Kaopulupulu liked not the look which Nanoa cast upon him as he passed, but shame withheld him from mistrusting so close a kinsman, and he replied heartily to the other’s formal salutation. But when he stood before the king, Kahahana looked blackly on him and gave him no such greeting as had been customary. Kaopulupulu misdoubted in his heart that some evil was afoot, and presently learned from the king that he was adjudged a traitor to Oahu. Had he not, so the charge ran, conspired to aid Kahekili to the overlordship of Oahu? But for the desire of the Maui king to be true to his old roofmate and kinsman by marriage, the treachery had remained unrevealed.

Kaopulupulu remained awhile silent, sorrowful, and in bitter anger before the king. “I scorn,” he said, “to defend myself with words—I whose deeds ought to speak louder than the calumnies of Kahekili. Yet is he laboring to overcome with guile those whom he fears to meet with the war-spear. Beware of Kahekili, but if ye will heed me not, suffer me to depart with my only son to Waianae to till my fields. Time shall be the judge between us.”

The king, who was scarce prepared as yet to take upon himself the risk of an arrest, did not withhold his permission, and presently Kaopulupulu might have been seen with bowed head, led by the hand of his only son, and followed at a little distance by his amazed retainers, wending his way slowly to Waianae. Hither he arrived just as the rising moon had kindled its beacon on the mountain-tops.

That very night, in spite of his dejection, he tattooed himself and all his followers upon the knee, in token of loyalty to Kahahana.

“He eha nui no, he nui loa lakuu aloha!”[A] said the faithful slaves as the sharp instrument of fish-bones pierced their skin.

[A] “Great is the pain, but greater still is our love.”

“Soon, I foresee,” answered Kaopulupulu, “you will tattoo yourselves not for the living, but for the dead.” And all the household uttered their loud “auwe.”

And now followed lamentable days for Oahu. The king, distrusted and distrustful, held few parleys with his chiefs: more and more careless grew the guards along the coast; fewer and fewer the appeals to the gods. In the heiaus the shrines stood neglected. A few tattered shreds of clothing washed by the rain and bleached by the sun were all that was left of their once gaudy array of idols, while piles of broken calabashes and cocoanut shells, with rotten wreaths of flowers and putrid masses of meat, formed unsightly heaps in the sacred enclosures. Men’s hearts seemed to have gone to sleep and even the old warriors allowed their spears to rust, and to dream only of the past.

Into the midst of this doleful time came the news that Kahekili was preparing to muster his canoes on the beach of Lahaina, but Kahahana, so far from allowing the tidings to reveal to his heart the craft of the Maui chief and his emissary, kept still within his bosom the poisoned shaft and muttered:

“Kaopulupulu predicted this. Surely the priest is skillful to ensure the fulfillment of his own predictions.”

So his anger waxed against the aged priest and he sent canoes with his ilamoku, or executioner, to Waianae. In his frenzy it seemed better to slay one who had been his friend than to sit still and await the oncoming of Kahekili.

Kaopulupulu and his son were fishing along the shore when the boat hove in sight, and, as it were, by the afflatus of the gods, the priest knew that it was an errand of blood.

“Farewell,” he said, “my son, blood of my blood. A little while we shall wander apart, but Lono will see and hear, and will not allow death to sever us long, since we are true kin!”

Nevertheless, he went courteously to the landing-place to meet the men and asked them whence they had come. But they answered roughly and straightway seized the boy, who cried piteously for his life. Out into the canoe they bore him, and then hurled him headlong into the water between the boat and the reef. When he tried to swim they smote him on the head with the paddles and with clubs, till the waves were reddened with blood and the sharks scented their prey afar. Then upon the shore stood Kaopulupulu, his white hair streaming in the breeze, and cried aloud under the inspiration of the gods:

“It is better to sleep in the sea, for from the sea comes the means of life.”

Men mused much upon this saying in the aftertime, but understood it not till many years had flown. The enemies of Kaopulupulu said: “It is a proof of his conspiracy with Kahekili,” but all men afterwards interpreted it of the coming of Kamehameha, the overlord of the Eight Islands, from the sea.

Kahahana was, however, not content with the death of the son, and when he had allowed Kaopulupulu some space for the torment of grief, he sent again the death-boat for the priest.

So Kaopulupulu was brought, not all unwillingly, to Puulio, and there in the presence of the king for whom he would willingly have died to preserve him from the impending storm, he was slain by the club of the ilamoku. All men wept to see such sacrilege committed, as the old man stood up for his death-blow before the king. Once more the prophetic fire glowed in his eye-sockets, and once more he cried aloud so that all the assembly might hear:

“Farewell, my lord, O king! Alas! that I should in my death foreshadow thine own. When the fatal club whirls behind thee, then shalt thou know the faith of Kaopulupulu to Oahu and to thee!” A moment after he fell face foremost and was dragged away with a hook to the temple.

Great is the commotion on the beach of Waikiki. The echoes of Diamond Head are rudely awakened with the shouts of warriors. The forces of Maui have swept over from Lahaina and have effected their landing almost without opposition from Kahahana. The Oahu forces, undisciplined and demoralized, are driven helter-skelter to the valleys, and Kahekili may solace himself ere long with Kualoa, and all Koolau to boot.

Kahahana fled to the mountains around Ewa and here for nearly two years was hidden, fed and clothed by his compassionate subjects. Then, having learned how lovely it is to rely upon fidelity, such fidelity as he now knew to have been that of his slandered priest, Kaopulupulu, he learned in his turn also how bitter it is to be betrayed.

His wife’s brother, Kehuamanoha, yielded up the secret of his hiding-place to Kahekili, and he was dragged by the order of the conqueror from Ewa to Waikiki, to stand in the presence of his crafty antagonist.

Thus in all points Nemesis overtook him, and when he died a sacrifice to the gods at Waikiki, he cried out for the vengeful deities to wash out in his blood the wretchedness of his unfaithfulness and allow him to meet the manes of Kaopulupulu in peace.

But a man’s folly, so far as its consequences are concerned, does not end with repentance, and heavily did Kahekili lay his yoke upon Oahu. Men, women and children were butchered, the streams were piled high with the dead, and ran scarlet to the sea, and one of the Maui chiefs built a house at Lapakea with the bones of the slain.

V
KEALA

The man-eating mu was in the street.

This accounted for the silence in the village. No one was in sight when the two chiefs, Kakaua and Kapahala, met.

“Ha, Kakaua, hearest thou the news? Kahekili is dead!”

“Auwe! dark the day of Maui! There will be pickings for crows, now the eagle is gone! Methinks the ‘Lonely One’ in Kohala will soon be looking this way again.”

“Ay, said not Kahekili to him: ‘When the black kapa covers me, then shalt thou be the maika-stone sweeping from Hawaii to Niihau’?”

“What say Kaeo and Kalanikapule?”

“Nay, I know not. When I left the royal enclosure they were wailing and knocking out their teeth, and between whiles they discussed the disposal of Kahekili’s bones.”

“Ah, Kalani had best grind them to powder and mix them with poi for the eating of the chiefs. They will need all the strength of Kahekili’s heart to stand up against the lord of Halawa.”

“Yea,” said a newcomer, “and methinks, Kakaua, you need to eat his liver, for I hear the man-eating mu is in the street, seeking some victim to please the gods and the dead chief therewith. The mu, who is, you may know, none other than Ahi, the priest, has a special love for you, Kakaua! Is it not so? Aloha! I go a-fishing.”

Kakaua turned white under his dusky skin, and apparently concluded to go fishing, too, for when an hour later the priest Ahi came to make a call of honor—having destined Kakaua for the sacrifice which was to appease the manes of the dead king—the intended victim was not to be found, nor was his canoe.

This looked bad, for the surf was thundering upon the reef as though the shark god himself had come to attend the obsequies of Kahekili, and Laamaomao in his train—a big leak in his calabash, from whence poured forth angry gusts of wind along the shore.

Meanwhile Ahi, acting the part of that unpopular functionary, the mu-ai-kanaka, was parading the empty streets with horrible yells and contortions of the body. In one hand he held a club with which to fell his victim from behind, in the other a hook with which to drag the body to the heiau. He was very angry, for he had calculated by this time to have had the hook in the flesh of Kakaua, against whom he bore a special grudge.

The history, as is so often the case, concerned a maiden.

Sweet Keala! ill was it for thy peace that thou wast beautiful as the lehua which is wooed by the olokele in the morning sun, and ill was it for Ahi and Kakaua that they, the one or the other, agreed not to give thee up and seek another maiden, whereof there were many in the Eight Islands!

Ahi was a priest and cruel, and Keala loved him not, loved neither himself nor his vocation; but Kakaua she loved because he was a warrior, straight as a palm-tree and smiling as the dawn. This was not pleasant knowledge to Ahi, and he had loved the idea of personating the man-eating mu, because he might thereby rid himself of his rival, and, Kakaua away—why, surely Keala would love him.

And now Kakaua was away—if not consumed upon the altar of the gods, assuredly eaten by the sharks outside the reef, for the surf which boomed upon the coral rocks had cruel white teeth which must have devoured any canoe out that night. Ahi protested to Keala that, beyond all doubt, Kakaua had gone down to the realm of Milu to eat lizards and butterflies and recline under ghostly trees—nevermore to revisit the upper air. But, somehow, such is the obstinacy of womankind, Keala loved Ahi none the more, and Kakaua none the less. Moreover, she told the priest to his face she would rather be the bride of the sharks than share his loathsome couch.

In his heart, however, Ahi was by no means so sure of the death of Kakaua, and oftentimes at night he would build a fireplace on the hearth of his hut, plant kapa-sticks at the corners and make a fire by rubbing the firestick, aulima, on a twig of akia and endeavor to send out his soul through the smoke, to discover the whereabouts of the man whom he feared absent even more than present.

But his visions for many nights were vague—rolling seas, surf-beaten shores, groves of palms, slopes of lava, concourses of men, troops preparing for battle, but no Kakaua. Each night his soul came back to his body fruitlessly wearied.

His disappointment he revenged upon the girl whom he hoped to win. Day by day he persecuted her with his advances, and day by day she repelled him with the bitterest scorn. All the power of the gods he denounced against her faithful obstinacy, but Keala refused to believe that the akua were hostile to human constancy, and bore the revilings of the priest in patience.

But it was hard to live in the Hawaii of olden time the enemy of the priests. The high chief Hua had ventured to oppose them, and of him it was said in proverbs: “Rattling are the bones of Hua in the sun.” Is it, then, to be wondered at that, week by week, the situation of Keala became more perilous? Till one day, after Ahi had been most violent in his protestations of love, and Keala most bitter in her repulse, the struggle ceased with the slaughter of the maiden—on a charge, supported by false witnesses, of having broken the kapu and eaten of the forbidden food. Like a meek lamb, and amid the tears of the people, Keala was slain before the altar of the heiau, but with her dying voice she appealed to the only goddess whose power she knew—Pele, the mistress of the great volcano whose lava-floods ravaged the coasts of Hawaii. Pele was a fickle deity, she knew, but surely she would avenge the wrongs of her sex. So Keala died, faithful to Kakaua. Yet Ahi was not happy. The people hated him, and his own heart was not at peace.

More zealous than ever in his priestly duties, he made daily offerings to propitiate the volcano goddess, for he feared the prayer of the dying maiden, and as the rumor of his subornation grew he feared even more the living arm of Kakaua, to be assured of whose death he would have given half his wealth. Again and again he projected his spirit into space, to search for his former rival, and each time he grew certain that Kakaua was alive and not dead.

But one night, no sooner had he made his fire, prepared and drunk his awa, chanted his fire-prayer and called upon the terrible name of Uli, than he felt his soul go out through the smoke, like an invisible bird, over the sand plains and over the sea, till he came to a dark mountain mass rising far above the clouds. Here he once more felt himself touch the ground and able to look about him. Down below through the driving mists he could see the gray shore-line and the white reef. The locality seemed familiar to him, though he recalled not its name. Up above was the mountain sparsely covered with ohelo and with clouds of sulphurous smoke rolling from its summit. Now he suspected his whereabouts, and when he glanced a second time along the road he was certain. The green water below was the bay of Hilo, the mountain was the terrible Kilauea, where in Halemaumau, the house of everlasting fire, the goddess Pele was wont to ride the red surges with her sisters and tilt with lances of flaming lava. The road was the mountain-path from Waiakea to Kapapala, and up the road, as the spirit of Ahi gazed at the well-known landmarks, a strangely familiar figure was making its way. A foretaste of malicious joy thrilled the disembodied spirit and he hurriedly gained the path which the toiling wayfarer must take. Right in the middle of the road he made the magic sign known only to the kahunas, uttered the imprecation of Uli, and then, although conscious that he was only a ghost, and invisible, withdrew to a cave near by to watch the working of his wizardry.

Scarcely had he reached his place of concealment when he felt a strange trembling of the earth, and a moment later, gazing out, he beheld a sight which made him, spirit though he was, shiver like a leaf. The traveler had almost reached the spellbound square when from the top of the mountain there appeared the head of a tide of lava like a river of molten lead, and on the lurid crest, as though riding upon the surf-board, was the dreaded goddess of the crater. The tide of flame was making its way straight along the channel of the road, and Ahi saw with relief it would sweep by him and leave him untouched. And when the traveler lifted his face in terror toward the oncoming death, Ahi was happy at last, for the face was indeed the face of Kakaua. The spell was working. His old enemy was doomed, and by the very power to whom Keala had made her supplication.

But Ahi’s joy was short-lived and gave way to convulsive rage when he looked again. For the terror had fled from Kakaua’s face and in its stead was joy, and the priest following the eyes of the doomed man looked upon the countenance of Pele, and lo! it was Pele no longer, but Keala. And the man stretched out his arms in ecstasy for the embrace of the goddess. Yes, Pele had, after all, hearkened to Keala’s prayer.

Darkness came over the frustrate ghost, and presently from the smoke of his own hearth Ahi’s spirit went out unbidden and stood in the halls of the underworld, the abode of Milu. A great paradise stretched out before the portals of the gloomy prison-house. There were waters fresher and palms greener than those of Waipio, and down the mossy rocks trickled the sparkling drops which made the stream, as though the tears of lovers shed on earth were here distilling into the river of the water of life. Delicious perfumes and the song of innumerable birds filled the air.

But all this gave no pleasure to the soul of Ahi, who made fruitless efforts not to see, when before him glided the happy shades of Kakaua and Keala in joyous converse, and he cursed Uli and Kiiaka and all his gods when they looked upon him and said:

“Thanks, Ahi, through thee we are alive, for we love, and thou, alas! art dead!”

Ahi awoke and the ashes upon his hearth were dead and cold.

As for Ahi himself, his hair was white and his limbs palsied. He knew that the words of Kakaua and Keala were true, and that the gods had written down his name as dead. His heart within his breast was like stone, and his life was gone from him like smoke. He lived thus many years, but he gave no more offerings to Pele, for he said: “Verily, the fires of Pele turn to sunshine, and the spells of the kahuna are vain before such love as that of Kakaua and Keala.”

VI
PELE DECLARES FOR KAMEHAMEHA

The ancient kings of Hawaii showed their wisdom and their appreciation of the beautiful when they chose Waipio for a royal residence. There was no other spot in the Eight Islands so blessed by nature, prodigal as she was of her gifts from Niihau to Hawaii. A romantic valley nearly a mile wide at the seaward entrance, enclosed on the other sides by nearly perpendicular hills, clothed with grass, creepers and shrubs—such was Waipio. Winding paths led upwards amid the jutting rocks and threadlike cascades descending almost at one leap, forming the stream below which flowed deviously among the sand-hills to the sea.

At one time, says an old legend, the stream was more sluggish than now, but a great fish which lived off the Hamakua coast found the supply of fresh water too scanty for his need and appealed to Kane for more. In consequence, fresh springs were created, the bed of the river tilted up and the requisite increase of water obligingly supplied. The great fish is there no longer; but, if so disposed, you may still see the finger marks of Kane on the huge stones which he hurled into the river to raise its bed.

A hundred and eighteen years ago Waipio was still the loveliest spot in the Paradise of the Pacific. Here the palms were tallest, the foliage greenest, the blossoms brightest, the water coolest. And in recognition of this fact many were the folk who here made their abode. Along the foot of the mountains and extending up the valley as far as the eye could reach were little groups of grass huts looking almost as natural as the trees and mountains. Nearer the sea was part of the patrimony of Kamehameha, and many were the evidences of the labors in which the great chief, like a modern Cincinnatus, had indulged in the intervals of fighting his many foes. Here were the fish ponds, here the taro-patches, here even attempts at the construction of an aqueduct—attempts rendered, however, futile by the lack of adequate tools.

At the time of which we speak Kamehameha was at home, but nevertheless not bent upon peaceful pursuits. This was at once evident from a glance at the coral beach. Gigantic war canoes painted and pennoned lay along the sand mile after mile. A great double pirogue, containing mounted cannon and chests of firearms, was evidently the king’s own special craft. There were, however, several more or less seaworthy schooners of American build in the royal fleet.

In these Kamehameha and his army had come hurriedly back from Molokai, whither he had gone after his great victory in Maui. The battle in the Iao valley, known as the “damming of the waters,” had rendered him, for the time being, master of Maui, and, after sending one ambassador to Kauai to look out a powerful wizard and another to Oahu to interview Kahekili, he had gone himself to Molokai to secure influence over the high chiefess Kalola, her daughter Liliha and her granddaughter Keopuolani. With these on his side, or under his protection, Kamehameha knew he could appeal with every hope of success to the aristocratic instincts of the people.

But suddenly, almost from the blue sky, a thunderbolt had fallen into the midst of his plans. A messenger landed one morning with the news that Keoua in Hawaii had attacked and slain Keawemauhili in a battle near Hilo, had overrun and annexed his dominions in Puna and Kau, and had forthwith invaded the territories of Kamehameha in Hamakua, Waipio, and Waimea, destroying fish ponds and potato fields, and committing all kinds of barbarities.

Such news was an imperative summons to Kamehameha to return at once to Hawaii, and this he had done with his usual celerity. Keoua, taken by surprise, retreated to Paauhau in Hamakua and there awaited attack. Two bloody battles were fought, but neither side gained much advantage, and, while Keoua fell back on Hilo, Kamehameha withdrew to Waipio, where we now behold him, in November, 1790, getting ready for the final struggle.

Little groups of chiefs and warriors are sitting on the beach, polishing their weapons and talking of the prospects of the campaign.

“Kamehameha has been playing with Keoua so far,” said an old grizzled warrior, scarred with the wounds of twenty battles. “When he begins to fight real battles, he will win.”

“He has the favor of the gods,” said another; “he should soon make an end of rebellion.”

“Ay,” added a third, “what chief in Hawaii aforetime has been at once the guardian of Kaili, the war god, and the possessor of Kalaipahoa, the poison goddess?”

“And,” said Kamanawa, “the owner of the magic conch, Kiha-pu!”

“And has had the help of the white men,” interposed Kaiana, proud of his friendship with the haole captains, with whom he made a visit to China. “See what havoc the red-mouthed guns made in Kepaniwai!”

“Yea,” resumed Keeaumoku, “the ‘Lonely One’ must succeed. Years ago, when I withdrew from the battlefield because I knew no leader whose battle-shout stirred my blood, the old prophet Keaulumoku came across the hills from Lahaina to my dwelling and chanted me the events which were to come. That was years ago, but I wait in patience.”

“One thing Kamehameha lacks,” said a chief who had hitherto remained silent—and as he spake the others lifted their faces in expectant surprise—“one thing the lord of Kohala lacks. Marked you not the other night how, while we slept, there came a tremor of the earth which waked us all and brought cold blood to our hearts? If that same goddess who thus changed sleep into fear would come to the help of our chief, Keoua would not long remain in the upper air. Pele is stronger than the white man’s fire-breathing guns! But, behold! yonder comes the lunapai, and with him a goodly number of recruits for the war. Let us go and hear his news.”

As though the speaker’s thought were the thought of the whole camp, there was a simultaneous movement towards the lanai, whither the messenger had directed his steps. The excitement grew when it was seen that the lunapai had news. He had gone well nigh round the island, three hundred miles in nine days, and had met with signal success. There had been no need of the uluku to slit the ears of the recruits and drag them reluctant to the war. Goodly young men had joined him at every village, and Kamehameha’s ranks were swelled by a daily increasing army of those who had heard of his exploits in Maui and how he had at last avenged the slaughter on the sand-hills fifteen years before.

But the man had evidently something else to relate besides his success as a lunapai and, refusing to eat or drink until he told his tale, he only waited until Kamehameha, who had just come in from fishing, had taken his place on a couch of pulu and then began:

“O king, verily a mightier lunapai than Pakahala has gone through the island. Hearken, chiefs, and fear the gods! Hearken, warriors, and follow your lord, the beloved of heaven, to sure and happy victory!”

The chiefs and spearmen gathered round at once and a great silence was made. Then the orator resumed:

“Keoua assembled his warriors and set out for Kau. They marched, a great host lusting for the noise of battle, along the road which leads by the abode of Pele, the death-dealing Kilauea. Heedless of the power of the goddess, they rolled stones into the crater, unmindful of the sacrilege.

“But Pele was not pleased with their amusement, neither liked she to receive rocks instead of ohelo-berries. And when the men slept, she awakened in her anger and threw out the stones they had thrown in, with flame and cinders, to a great distance. Then were Keoua’s men afraid and in vain tried to soothe the goddess. But she refused to be appeased, and all through that day and the second and the third the earth shook and the fire leaped from the mountain, and the ashes rained down upon the host.

“Then on the third night Keoua spake and said: ‘Why stay we here to be consumed of Pele? Let us advance.’ So they advanced in three companies. The first company moved on over the mountain, and, verily, as they went they died a thousand deaths.

“For the earth rocked beneath their feet and darkness came forth from the crater which entered into their souls, and the thunder made their hearts quake, and the lightnings burned up many among them. From the pit beside them the fire glared red and blue and yellow, as though all the sisters and cousins of Pele were holding revel and mocking their victims. Scarce could they breathe, but they hastened on and gained at last the free air.

“After these marched the second company and, a little later, the third. These felt the earthquake and the showers of sand, but lost no men in the darkness and storm. As they pressed on, hoping soon to overtake their fellows, they rejoiced and each bade the other be of good cheer, since they had escaped the fury of the goddess.

“But, ere they had gone a hundred paces further, they saw a sight which moved their hearts with such a fear as comes to man but once in life. What was that crowd of warriors doing yonder, sitting silent on the earth? Were they asleep or turned to stone? There was the whole central band of the army, silent and still; some sat upright, some were lying down, some even yet embracing their wives and children, some joining noses, as taking leave one of another. And all was ghastly and still. Every heart was chilled with the cold shadow of death.

“Nevertheless, scarce could they believe the truth until they approached and touched and shook them. Then they knew that suddenly, as in a moment, the third part of Keoua’s army had been breathed upon by Pele, and the life had fled from them like vapor before the fire. But one living thing was there. It was a hog rooting among the trees, and the men were afraid, believing it to be Kamapuaa, the man-pig, spouse of the goddess. So they did not dare to stay to raise the wail of mourners. They hurried on and, after much time, reached the band which first crossed the mountain. From these, O king, I heard the story, and thither I am come to proclaim that the queen of Halemaumau has declared herself on our part. Verily, Pele has accepted thee for a son and will bring thee to the lordship of Hawaii!”

The concourse scarce awaited the orator’s peroration. A mighty shout arose from the host, and with one voice they cried: “E Kamehameha! Praise we the goddess of fire, gracious to us and to our lord.”

Kamehameha arose. He had thrown his cloak over his shoulders, donned his feather-helmet and grasped his terrible spear. Head and shoulders he appeared above every man in the assembly, and as he spake his form seemed to swell and his voice increase in power, as though the afflatus of the gods possessed him. Then he cried, and men in the canoes far out to sea heard his voice:

“Great is the favor of Pele! Now, chiefs and warriors of Hawaii, the time is come. On with the building of the great heiau! On with Puukohola! Make the altar ready for the body of the victim, even for Keoua. A few more days and Keliimaikai shall present Kaili the blood for which he thirsts. Keoua’s death-day draws nigh and the day of victory. Praise to Pele, dwelling in the vaults of eternal fire, the friend and guardian of Kamehameha, your king.”

VII
THE CITY OF REFUGE

A Tale of Oahu

“All day long the noise of battle roll’d.”

But it was night now, and there was silence on the battlefield. As the moon rose, its long shafts of light quivered across the lagoons which stretched between Moanalua and Waianae, and silvered the coral beach of Ewa, so that the dark heaps of corpses stood out with weird distinctness.

The treachery of Kalanikapule had been crowned with success—a success which in the aftertimes proved ruinous enough, since the folly of Kahekili’s heirs was preparing the way for the supremacy of Kamehameha—and Kaeo was dead. The brave invader from Maui had accepted war with a light heart, since it brought him immunity from the plottings of his chiefs, and might even have repelled the wanton attack of his brother, had it not been for the guns and ships of the white man.

But, as it was, he found himself in a trap. “Better to die in battle,” he said, “many will be the companions in death,” and so fought to the last, and died.

Yes, indeed! many had been the “companions in death”—not only among the yellow-cloaked aliis who had hurled their spears in vain against the “red-mouthed” guns, but even among the women, who, following at first to supply the warriors with food and drink from their calabashes, stood at last, side by side, with their husbands to aid them, and fell across their corpses.

It was thus that Liliha had stood by and fallen with her husband Kahulu; but, in the moonlight, who was to distinguish hero from hero? Their souls had gone down into the dark halls of Milu, their bodies were objects of attention to the foul night-birds which flapped their dusky wings with joy and scarce had leisure to break the silence with a scream as they gorged themselves on the red fruit of fraternal discord.

There was apparently no one to disturb the horrid feast, but suddenly a little cry came from one of the hills of slain which sent the whole black brood whirring across to another part of the battlefield. A bird had been pecking at the eyes of the slain and had aroused, by the smart, some unconscious one back to life.

The cry was faint enough, but presently from the gory hillock whence it came, there might have been seen a form of a woman painfully disengaging herself from the surrounding dead. One corpse she sought, but could not find, or she had been content to clasp it and send forth her soul to seek its soul in the nether world. So with a little cry, which might have been the expression of disappointment or of hope, Liliha, daughter of the high-priest of Kauai and wife of Kaulu (for so you might have recognized her as the traveling lamp of night sent its cold rays across her beautiful face), slipped, with a shudder, from her gruesome bedfellows, and laboriously sought the shore. The little waves were sleepily plashing on the coral beach, toying with the dripping branches and blossoms of the overhanging hau. Here was an invitation if not to life, at least to death, which latter Liliha felt was almost, if not quite, as good.

But when the water flowed around her limbs she felt suddenly strong and instinctively swam out into the silver waters of the lagoon. The waves bathed her wounds and cooled her fevered brow, and there seemed above her the spirit-wings of Hope whom even Hawaiian mythology recognized and worshipped. She struck out for the Aiea shore, where she hoped to find refuge among her kin until the wrath of Kalanikapule should be overpast.

But, as she went on, the wounds bled again, some hungry shark was surely behind her scenting the blood, and, when at length she cast her body, bruised and bleeding, upon the beach, she no longer hoped for life, but for a cave in which to die.

At the entrance of the Halawa valley was a thicket almost concealing the mouth of the pass. A tangle of ieie had overgrown the shrubs and trees, so that to right or left of the white boulders, over which in freshet-times the torrents passed from the mountains to the sea, there was just the place where a hunted fugitive might hide or a wounded animal might die.

Here Liliha lay on the pulu, never so luxuriously soft as now. (We may appreciate the instinct which leads the Hawaiians to-day to pad their coffins with it.) But the valley of Halawa was not to be Liliha’s coffin. Her swoon of the battlefield was but repeated, and when she awoke there was near her the sound of many men all talking together around a fire whose glow penetrated her hiding-place. They were mixing awa; the bowl was in their midst, and they were busy chewing the narcotic root and steeping the masticated morsels in the bowl. They had evidently shared in the recent fight, for they had their weapons with them, and, as the firelight shone upon their breasts, Liliha saw that the ivory palaoa of several had been stained with blood.

But presently a groan startled the awakened woman. It came from an inert bundle just beyond the fireglow. The warriors turned their heads. They were in a merry mood. Victory had crowned their arms, and an awa orgy was in sight. Hence they only chuckled and said:

“E Kahulu! but you shall soon drink awa with Milu! Kaeo will have some boon companions down there in the dark. There is twitching of the eyes in the house of Kahulu to-day, or verily the akua are all asleep.”

The object of their mockery answered not, but turned over to nurse his thoughts in silence. As his face for one instant caught the light, the woman in the thicket knew him and—decided to live.

Meanwhile the awa-brewing went on, and presently came the awa-drinking. For an hour the merriment grew and then for an hour it declined, till one form after another, with a sidelong glance at the helpless prisoner, yielded to the seductive narcotic and slept—a sleep not pleasant to look on, for the bodies of the men turned uneasily and writhed as in pain.

But one slept not. He had had no awa, and bitter thoughts keep him wakeful. Death was certain. All the omens proved it. Was not even now that low cooing sound the voice of the alae, the waterfowl, whose call was always the harbinger of death? He raised his head to listen, and then he doubted. Had he been in his native woods in Kauai that low cry would have brought him to Liliha’s arms. How often had she thus greeted him as she came back from beating the kapa in the pools. Alas! nevermore should he see her on this beautiful earth, but, perchance, when the ordeal of the sacrificial oven was passed——

Ah! that coo-ee, softly repeated and so near him! He had never thought of Milu—the Hawaiian Pluto—as a benign deity, but now he breathed a thanksgiving to the grim akua that he had permitted the shade of Liliha to come back from the dead. They would keep together, and soon enter the underworld together, and then—who shall separate?

But was it a ghost who cut the thongs which bound him? Was it a ghost who, finger on lip, led him stealthily over the prostrate bodies of the guards, and placed his feet on the downward path? He dared not stop to reflect. His brain whirled. But no sooner were they side by side and hand in hand on the dark plain together than they sped fleetly as though they knew no wound nor fatigue. One thought buoyed them up, one word passed between them, as they gazed half-frightened at each other for one moment. It was the word “Puuhonua”—the city of refuge—a word which called up to view an open gate, and white-robed priests with branches of maile who would bid them enter into peace in the name of the gods.

Oh! how long the way was! How dark the road! Never had the sun been so slow rising from its watery bed to look forth once more upon the world from behind the barred cage made by the trunks of the cocoanut palms along the shore!

Light at last—and lo! in the distance before them the long line of stockaded wall, with the guarded gates, and the white flags floating at either end from the lofty spear points. The grim idols along the wall seemed to smile and mock alternately. To smile, as the distance to the gate grew less, to mock, as behind them rose the ferocious yell which proclaimed that the awa-drinkers had not long overslept their watch. The same sun which made shine so fair the walls of the city of refuge glinted upon the spears and feather helmets of the pursuers.

Liliha and Kahulu ran like hunted hares, but Nature has her limits. They had done miracles, but even miracles have their laws, and stern Nature would yield no more. They stood between the priests and the pursuers; they saw life before them and death behind them—alas! ineluctable. Then they looked into one another’s faces and saw something stronger than death and better than life itself. So they fell vanquished upon the sand. But as Kahulu fell, he knew a dear, pale face—no ghost—a face scarred with wounds, looking at him with radiant, starlike eyes and—was content.

A company stood before the victorious Kalanikapule. The chief was reclining upon a heap of ferns, with a crowd of runners, diviners, priests, hula-dancers, and kahili-bearers around him. The eyes of all, however, were fixed upon two bruised and bleeding forms which made the center of the company before the king. The chiefs, with their spears and gorgeous feather capes, the priests with their red cloaks and white wands were vigorously declaiming before the king. They seemed unanimous as they clamored for the death of Kahulu.

“O Kalanikapule,” cried the chiefs, “we have brought hither the rebel to die. His head is forfeit to the king, and the gods desire to drink his blood. We took him—the slayer of our brethren—the right hand of Kaeo—we took him in the battle. We bound him fast, foot to foot, hand to hand, his neck between his knees, and we were bearing him to your feet. But while we rested, for it was night, and we were in the mountains, came this woman, who assuredly fought by his side in the battle and died before our eyes—came this woman, we say, even as from the dead, and loosed his bands and helped him to escape from our hands. Verily, had not thy servants been keen-sighted as the hawk, and very wakeful, they—the guilty ones—had reached the puuhonua, and had now been in peace. But, O king, be this remembered to our good: thy servants were swifter than the fleet dogs of the haole and outstripped the rebels, that Kaili and all the gods may become pleasant towards thee, when they see the flesh of men smoking on their altars in the heiau.”

And the priests added to the voice of the chiefs: “Ai! we have sharpened the pahoa and heated the oven for Kahulu. He did not reach the puuhonua, but fell before the very threshold—such was the will of the gods! Therefore he must die! Is it not death for the defeated one who reaches not the city of refuge?”

Then the king—with a light playing across his features such as no man had seen before—answered and said:

“Set Kahulu free! Verily, he reached the puuhonua, for there is no city of refuge like that of a woman’s love.”

And the priests and the chiefs stood silent, but the people shouted greatly at the decree of Kalanikapule.

VIII
SWEET LEILEHUA

What the rose is to England and the lily to France is the Lehua to Hawaii nei. When the maidens lying on the beach of coral sand or beneath the lauhala palms touch their guitars and sing the meles of times gone by, it is of “Sweet Leilehua” that they sing. And when they would inspire departing visitors with happy memories of the mid-ocean Paradise they twine around their necks the fragrant wreaths of maile and lehua.

And the beautiful flower well deserves its place as the emblem of Hawaii. Almost all over the country, anywhere between fifteen hundred and six thousand feet above sea-level, you may see its scarlet blossoms flashing in the sun. Here it is slender and graceful, like the island maidens, a shrub some fifteen feet high; there a tree of a hundred feet, strong and tall, like the island men. Men say that the higher up the trees grow the finer are the blossoms, and certainly where the white man’s foot has trodden least the lehua seems most at home.

“Sweet Leilehua” has a lover who is as the nightingale to the rose—the olokele, a bright little scarlet bird, whose life’s happiness it is to drink honey from the scarlet flower. You can scarcely distinguish bird from blossom. The tree seems alive with flashing wings.

But, alas! civilization has doomed the olokele, and perhaps the lehua. Is it true, also, that their human counterparts in the youth and maidenhood of Hawaii are going, too?

The following tale of Leilehua and Hakuole is a tale of over a hundred years ago. Still the maidens sing it, still men remember it; but where now is there an olokele so bold in his love for the lehua as was Hakuole, the chief of Oahu?

Hakuole stood on Leahi gazing earnestly seawards or turning his eyes occasionally to the left, in the direction of Koko Head and Makapuu. The sun never shone upon a fairer scene than that upon which he looked. Down below lay the glistening white beach of Waikiki, fringed a few yards from the water with dense thickets of hau trees, whose short, crooked trunks, glossy leaves and showy yellow flowers were a welcome relief to the eye from the coral sand. In the blue-green waters which stretched out to the horizon there was only the break of the white reef on which the Pacific waves rolled with thunderous noise, and here and there a fishing boat in which the fishers sat silent with uplifted spear. Leahi, on which the chieftain stood, rose like a crouching lion from the seashore, its lava slopes almost bare of vegetation save for a few straggling indigo bushes, while in the crater behind Hakuole was a large swamp surrounded by rushes and patched here and there with the white wings of flocking sea-birds.

The chief was in the very prime of youth, and his figure showed to advantage on the rocky promontory against the sky. He had upon his head the usual helmet of yellow feathers, on his shoulders a small feather cloak, and the rest of his dress was of dark brown kapa. He had a necklace of shells and shark’s teeth round his neck and a heavy spear of Kauila wood in his hand. It was easy to see by his erect and martial bearing that he was an alii, whose pedigree was uncontaminated by mixture with the common people, and his training had been the training of a warrior.

And warriors were needed now, for the great Kamehameha was on his way from Apani to attempt the conquest of Oahu, and so complete the subjugation of the Eight Islands. Hawaii was his from Kalae to Upolo. Maui had in vain gathered its warriors to meet him. And now the news had come that Kamehameha was on his way to Oahu. He had embarked with the veterans of his army and the fleet of war canoes was fast lessening the distance between him and his last great rival, Kalanikapule.

Meanwhile Kalanikapule was not to be caught napping. The flower of his army was assembled on the south side of the island: watchmen were stationed on Makapuu, Koko Head and Leahi, and for the last two nights the waves had been illumined by a constant burning of papala sticks. But so far no sign of the war prows of the great alii had been discovered.

Hakuole at his lonely post wished they would appear, to terminate the awful suspense. With eyes still turned seaward he flung himself down wearily on the ground in the shade of a dark-foliaged milo, whose quivering aspen-like leaves seemed, like his own heart, apprehensive of the trouble to come. He was in love; he longed to declare his passion, to lead his bride to the house he had prepared for her. But what could he do? This horrible conflict was impending, and who could say what would be the result? Kamehameha, the unconquered Kamehameha, was at hand: a bloody battle would be fought. Who would win? Who was even sure of surviving?

In this dismal strain ran his thoughts, when suddenly the bushes behind him parted and a face peered through, timidly advancing and then retreating amid the leaves. It was a beautiful face—with great, soft brown eyes gleaming like evening stars from the dusky olive skin, a face surrounded by thick masses of wavy hair of raven blackness, a face full of warm blood and passionate life. It belonged to no other than Leilehua.

Sweet Leilehua!—who among the maidens of Oahu was more loved than she, the daughter of the great kahuna, the priest of Lono?

When the maidens sat by the streams and beat out the kapa with their mallets on the broad, flat boulders, whose song was merrier than hers? Or who was obeyed so devotedly by all? If Hakuole’s love was returned, happy was he among men; but if Leilehua thought not of him, there was no other maiden in the land who could solace him for her loss.

Hakuole turned, and his face changed when he saw her. As the sun, when it shines opposite the mists of Pauoa, spans the valleys with double rainbows, so the face of Leilehua brought brightness to the darkness of Hakuole’s brow. He was again the chieftain in the pride of his manhood, the bravest, the strongest of the young aliis. Raising himself and stretching out his eager arms towards the maiden, he cried: “Leilehua, my Leilehua, my beautiful scarlet flower!” But even as he spoke the graceful form vanished, dropping at his feet a wreath of brilliant lehua.

Had he been too impetuous and frightened her away? Had she dropped the lei in her haste? Or had she designedly left it for him? He would follow her and see; but his face was no longer troubled, for he had felt the light of Leilehua’s eyes, and he knew she loved him. He had her sweet floral namesake on his neck; he was strong as Kamehameha himself; he would conquer now and live for love.

But for the present he would follow her, or would she escape him?

“E ala, e ala, e ala-a-a-a——”

Loud and shrill came the voice of the lonely watcher far to his left, and then shriller still, like the harsh shriek of sea-birds, followed blasts from the conch-shell trumpets which woke all the echoes of the dead old crater, and sent the gulls clangorous and protesting from their marshy resting-place to fill the air, hitherto so still, with noise and motion. And as the upper element was thus suddenly awakened into life, so the waves below became, almost in another moment, ridged with foam in a hundred places. Where the sunbeams had slept placidly on an unbroken surface of azure, they were now reflected hither and thither by the black sides of canoes, the flashing of outriggers, the sheen of polished metal, the scarlet and yellow of innumerable feather cloaks, the glittering of oars amid the spray-rain, the gleaming of dusky bodies, and the forward leap of the high prows, whose painted eyes seemed to glow with the fire of life. And in advance was the famous double war canoe Peleleu, the rowers straining at the oars, and the kahili-bearers and warriors standing around the mighty chief who was destined to make Hawaii a nation.

On they came, nearing the flat beach of Waikiki, where unless Kalanikapule opposed, they could enter the coral reef and land without impediment. But Kalanikapule chose to meet his rival in the heart of the country among the palis, rather than on the level ground; so, though from Leahi you could have seen the moving of dark masses of men among the forests of the southern side of the island, there was no sign on the beach of opposition to the landing of the Hawaiian troops.

Hakuole hastened to his post in the army, but he did not forget Leilehua, for her gift was around his neck.

Of the strife that followed, with all its thrilling episodes, we must forbear to speak. How Kalanikapule collected his forces in the Nuuanu Pali; how Kamehameha followed him with his veterans, driving him to the ridge of the island; how the traitor Kaiana met his doom; how Kamehameha’s white men brought into battle the red-mouthed guns which made the thunder roll among the mountains; how the fight raged on till the awful precipice was reached, from which men poured down in a living avalanche to the rocks below; how at last Kamehameha drew back his victorious troops into the lower country, where the loud “Auwe” of the women rent the air in wailing for their husbands and fathers—all these are stories by themselves.

Kamehameha knew himself at last lord of the Eight Islands from Niihau to Hawaii.

It was a day of great mourning in Oahu. In every house there was wailing and rending of hair for the warriors transfixed by the sharp spears or battered to death on the rocks of the Nuuanu Pali. But they had fought well, they were gone to Paliuli, the blue mountain, to the land of the divine water of Kane, and as the sun set men saw the great procession of the dead in the western sky leaving the earth forever by the road of the gods. But when the sun rose again in the east they turned their thoughts to the living and the day. What now would be their fate? Kamehameha would hold his court; he would receive the homage of the conquered people; he would expect his hookana or tribute. “Let us hasten,” they said, “to propitiate the new king.” So all prepared to go with their gifts. Prominent among these was Kamakahou, the father of Leilehua. He had known of Hakuole’s love and had been himself disposed to accept him for a son-in-law, but he was a sycophant and a schemer. As a kahuna he had been among the advisers of the fallen chiefs, and his reputation for learning was great. He knew the five planets and suspected the existence of a sixth; he knew all the kapu days, the holy seasons and the prescribed ordinances; he could prepare lustral waters to drive away diseases and demons. He was proficient in all the ten branches of priestly lore, and could even cause the spirits of the dead to enter the body of a person and possess it. He was skilled, moreover, in the preparation of medicines, and could cure toothache and bruises and broken bones.

But with all his learning he was avaricious and preferred the favor of the king to the approval of his conscience. So he prepared his gift and went.

The court of Kamehameha was held in the open air, the royal pavilion consisting of a raised couch of ferns over which a slight lanai had been built of lauhala palms. The king reclined at his ease. Beside him stood the royal kahili-bearers waving their huge feather brushes. Close by stood the pukanas, or trumpeters, with gorgeous headgear and capes. Near these stood the kukini, or runners, the kahunas, with tabu-sticks, while the hula-girls with instruments of music squatted a little to the left. In the midst of the kahunas, on a carpet of red cloth was the famous war god of Kamehameha, Kaili, whose shriek could be heard above the din of battle. It was of wickerwork decorated with small feathers, its eyes made of large oyster shells and mouth ornamented by a double row of dog’s fangs.

Before the king the gifts lay in piles—calabashes of rare wood, logs of iliahi, or sandalwood, rolls of curiously wrought kapa, pigs, dogs, cocoanuts, sweet potatoes, seaweeds, shrimps, papai, opelo, awa, and many another costly article of dress, or dainty morsel of food.

Finally, when Kamehameha seemed a little sated with his hookana, came a gift which drew all eyes. They saw Kamakahou leading his daughter Leilehua forward to the presence of the king. “O king,” he cried, “behold the kaikamahine; take her, the light of my eyes, and let there be peace between us.”

The maiden, who had advanced reluctantly, stood timidly before the couch, her face hid in her hands. The black tresses fell down her back in great coils, rippling over her dusky shoulders and falling to the skirt of yellow kapa which was fastened around her waist. On her head was a wreath of the scarlet flowers from which she took her name; on her wrists and ankles bracelets of sea-shells, and on her breast the ivory emblem suspended by the mystic three hundred braids of human hair.

Only a moment she stood, and then, weeping, sank on her knees, let her hands fall from her face, and with pleading eyes gazed into the king’s face. Kamehameha, startled at so beauteous a vision, raised himself from the couch and, as he stood erect, clad in the brilliant feather cloak which was the work of ten generations of kings, he seemed a god come down in human form. As he stepped forward to take the hand of the tribute girl, a great shout began—

“Nani loa! Maikai loa! e——”

Began, I say, but did not finish; for, lo! the circle of spectators parted, and there strode to the side of the weeping maid a young man who lacked but little of the height of Kamehameha himself. He was covered with blood and dust, having almost crawled from the battlefield, but he stood erect now, and he had a torn wreath of flowers around his neck. He did not flinch before the gaze of the king, but caught the hand of Leilehua, lifted her up, and bore her in among the people. It took only a few seconds, but the stillness of death had fallen upon the people. Was Hakuole mad? Had he seen a lapu and been bewitched? Rash man! See the thunder-cloud in the face of the chief who was never crossed with impunity! What fate did the conqueror of Oahu meditate for the man who braved him? Would he be offered as a sacrifice at the heiau, or would he be clubbed to death, burned, or buried alive?

Hark! the king raises his voice, and his guards seize the overbold youth and the maiden, hurry them before the dais, and stand ready to carry out whatever sentence of death is imposed.

Leilehua and Hakuole stand before Kamehameha, and they can hear their hearts beat, the people are so quiet.

Then Kamehameha speaks in strong, firm tones, which show the man born for command, but with no touch of immoderate anger. The cloud has gone from his face, but he begins sharply enough:

“E Hakuole, so you are tired of life, tired of fighting. You dream already of maiden’s eyes and a life among the nala. You would let the prows rot on the beach, seeking no more for the glory a man ought to love. Well, as you mean to stay among the wahine, and love a maiden here more than you fear me, I suspend you from a soldier’s duty till the moon Ikiiki returns. Away! and for the girl, Leilehua, the faithful in love, all the lands which were her father’s are hers from henceforth. Take the kaikamahine—beautiful is she as the morning breaking the shadows—and may the loves of Leilehua and Hakuole be as glorious to Hawaii as the wars of Kamehameha.”

Kamehameha had indeed won a greater victory than that of Nuuanu Pali, for the hearts of the people, and not their bodies only, were henceforth his forever.

Thus the first of the Seven Kings of Hawaii established his sovereignty and founded a dynasty, and the statue of this “Napoleon of the Pacific” in front of Aliiolani Hale, in Honolulu, will ever attract the reverence of men. Had all the island kings been like the first Kamehameha, Hawaii had never more known the strife of factions.

Hakuole and Leilehua had a long honeymoon, in which they learned depths of love as yet unfathomed. Then they came back to be among the staunchest supporters of the new king. Love grew with the years, and the sweet singers of Hawaii to-day can choose no better theme to bring back the romance of the old barbaric times than the story of sweet Leilehua and her bold lover Hakuole, who for her sake braved the wrath of a king.

IX
THE SPOUTING CAVE OF LANAI

“Over the mountains and under the waves.

Over the fountains and under the graves.

Over floods that are deepest,

Which Neptune obey,

Over rocks that are steepest,

Love will find out the way.”

—Old Song.

Readers of Byron will remember, in his poem entitled, “The Island,” the description of a wonderful cavern at Toobanai, the only entrance to which was under the sea. The way by which Neuha guided Torquil to its safe retreat is described as follows:

“Young Neuha plunged into the deep, and he
Follow’d; her track beneath the native sea.
Was as a native’s of the element,
So smoothly, bravely, brilliantly she went,
Leaving a streak of light behind her heel,

Which struck and flash’d like an amphibious steel.

Closely, and scarcely less expert to trace

The depths where divers hold the pearl in chase,

Torquil, the nursling of the northern seas,
Pursued her liquid steps with art and ease.
Deep—deeper for an instant Neuha led
The way—then upward soar’d—and as she spread

Her arms and flung the foam from off her locks

Laugh’d and the sound was answered by the rocks.

They had gain’d a central realm of earth again,

But look’d for tree, and field, and sky in vain.

Around she pointed to a spacious cave,

Whose only portal was the keyless wave.”

The poet admits having found the original of his submarine cave in Mariner’s “Account of the Tonga Islands,” taking advantage of the license allowed to poets to transplant it to the scene of his poem.

Probably he did not know that there existed in the Hawaiian group a cavern similar to that which he describes, to which attaches a story far more romantic than that of the loves of Torquil and Neuha.

The Puhio-kaala, or Spouting Cave of Kaala, is on the rocky coast of the little island of Lanai, near Kaumalapau Bay. Down below the rocky bluff is that “refuge submarine” where “Nature played with the stalactites, and built herself a chapel of the seas.”

The entrance is marked by the vortex of a whirlpool, from which a column of foam rises up when the tide runs out. He who dared to venture the perils of the entrance would, on gaining his footing below, find himself beneath a “self-born Gothic canopy,”

“A hollow archway by the sun unseen,

Save through the billows’ glassy veil of green.”

The pleasure of the diver, however, would be rudely disturbed when he found the cave already occupied by millions of cold-blooded, slimy, shelly, stinging, dank and noisome creatures of the deep. Once, legend says, it was inhabited by the great lizard god, Moalii, but Ukanipo, the shark god, threatened to block up the entrance with rocks if he did not move. Thereupon the cave was left to its present smaller, but no less uncanny tenants.

These were quite sufficient to prevent frequent visits to the cave, though in truth there were few bold and skillful enough to shoot through the whirlpool into its sunless depths, even if inclined.

At the present time Lanai has but a few hundred inhabitants at most, although one of the loveliest islands of the group. But when, over a hundred years ago, Kamehameha, with his court, paid it a brief visit to enjoy an interval of rest and refreshment, he found no fewer than five or six thousand people on the beach to welcome him. Rich and numerous were the presents brought, and among those who offered their gifts was Kaala, “the flower of Lanai,” who strewed flowers no lovelier than herself in the conqueror’s path.

She was a beautiful girl of fifteen, the daughter of a chief named Opunui, and one who had no lack of admirers. Even Kamehameha could not help following her graceful movements with pleasure. But in the heart of one who followed in the king’s train, the warrior Kaaialii, the girl made such instant havoc that it needed only a glance for her to detect the passion she had kindled. And, strange to say, she who had repulsed so many adorers in her native isle, felt herself won in a moment by this tall, sinewy chief from Oahu.

Kaaialii, seeing and reading her smile, apprehended no difficulty in winning her for his wife, but he was overestimating the smoothness of true love’s course.

When he begged Kamehameha to grant him Kaala for a wife, the king made no objection, but ventured to suggest, in justice, a reference to the father, too.

Even this, difficult as it may appear in prospect to most lovers, did not seem a hopeless task to Kaaialii, for he was well known as a warrior and better born than Opunui.

Opunui, however, thought otherwise. He had a grudge against Kaaialii which went back as far as the battle of Maunalei, when they had been opposed in the conflict, and, moreover, there was another suitor, who, although detested by the girl, was more than eligible in the eyes of her father.

This favored one was Mailou, “the bone breaker”—one whose prowess as a wrestler had won the unstinted admiration and regard of the father, but inspired no tender feeling in the breast of the daughter.

Now Opunui was too wise to meet Kamehameha’s request for his daughter with a blunt refusal, and he respected the “bone breaker’s” powers of body too much to cast him aside for another without an effort, so he assumed an air of great deference, told the king how pleased he would be to comply, and how great an honor he would esteem it to have Kaaialii for a son-in-law, but that unfortunately he had pledged his word to his estimable friend Mailou. The only way out of the dilemma, the wily old man suggested, was for Mailou and Kaaialii to wrestle the matter out between them. He would be content to leave the girl in the victor’s hands.

Of course he had such faith in the cruel embrace of the “bone breaker” that he believed it vain for his daughter to aspire to the embrace of Kaaialii.

Everywhere the news of the contest spread, and was received with pleasure, for the Hawaiian needed nothing more than panem et circenses to make up the joy of life. There was only one exception and this was the maiden who was to be chief gainer or loser by the struggle.

She was driven almost to despair by the news, for she knew the deadly strength of Mailou, and could not forget the reports of the many wives he had slain and cast into the sea. She clung to Kaaialii as to one whom she was sending to his death, and yet one in whom was her only hope of life.

Meanwhile the arena was prepared. The two combatants stood face to face—Mailou with his long arms, broad shoulders and mighty limbs, his fingers opening and closing, as if impatient to tear his adversary to pieces—Kaaialii in comparison almost frail and slender, yet with no lack of cheerful confidence expressed in his handsome features.

Kaala knew no more of Shakespeare than Shakespeare knew of her; but, as she gazed trembling at her lover, she felt, with Rosalind:

“The little strength that I have, I would it were with you.”

Then the battle began, a struggle to the death, in which every injury it was possible to inflict was permissible. To the taunts of Mailou, Kaaialii made no reply, but when the “bone breaker” sprang like a wild beast at his throat, his shark-like teeth grinning with anticipated triumph, he was on the alert and, dexterously swinging aside his body, he allowed Mailou to fall headlong to the earth. In another instant he had seized his right arm, and with a skillful kick snapped the bone below the elbow. With a howl of rage Mailou rushed again to the attack, but was felled to the ground and his left arm broken as the right had been. With both arms broken, the furious giant rushed once again at the warrior, charging with lowered head, like a bull. But this was his last charge, for Kaaialii had him by the hair as he fell, and, placing his knee against his back, with a mighty effort broke his spine.

There was general rejoicing at Kaaialii’s victory, for the wrestler, though feared on account of his strength, was too much of a bully to be popular, and only in the heart of Opunui was there any regret at the issue. Opunui, so far from being reconciled to Kaala becoming the wife of Kaaialii, was more than ever determined that the latter should never carry away his prize.

So, although he opposed no word when Kamehameha placed the lovers hand in hand before him and pronounced them married, he formed his plan. With soft, plausible words he approached his daughter, expressing his delight at her happiness, but requesting that she would come with him for the last time to visit her mother, Kalani, and speak the sad words of farewell. The maiden tearfully acquiesced and, assuring Kaaialii of her speedy return, followed her father down the valley of Palawai, towards the Bay of Kaumalapau.

“Why go to the bay, my father, since you say that my mother is ill at Malana?” inquired the girl.

The old hypocrite answered that her mother was at the seashore, where she had prepared a banquet in celebration of her child’s marriage. There were crabs, shrimps, limpets, and all kinds of dainties. Kalani only awaited her husband and daughter.

Arrived at the shore, however, Kaala saw that her mother’s fire was not there, and knew that her father was deceiving her. Glancing up she saw his face lighted with a cruel smile, which no longer concealed his real feelings.

“Listen,” he said, “rather than be the bride of Kaaialii you shall have a shark for your mate, and in his palace beneath the sea I will keep you safe till the king has left Lanai with his warriors.”

The poor girl screamed, for she guessed his purpose, but it was too late to resist. Just below the bench of rock on which they stood, the Spouting Cave roared and foamed. Opunui knew its entrance well, and seizing his daughter in his arms waited for the moment when the column of water settled down into the vortex. Then he sprang and, sinking beneath the surface, the two found themselves drawn swiftly by the current down and down, and then suddenly swept through the entrance into a dark and gloomy cavern.

The greenish light showed even to the fainting girl the horror of her surroundings, and it was as in a dream that she heard her father declare that there she should remain till the hated Kaaialii had given her up and gone. She had barely time to renew her vow of fidelity to her lover before Opunui seized the proper moment, plunged once more into the water and was sucked up with the spouting column into the upper air.

The girl, brought back to consciousness by the very terror of her situation, was left alone to waste her strength in unavailing efforts to return through the water. Alas! this was a feat requiring a strength and a skill far beyond such as hers.

We return to Kaaialii, who was anything but pleased with the bride’s so sudden departure. He followed her with his eyes as long as he could, then he transferred his thoughts to the meeting again on the morrow. But when the morrow came and no Kaala, and, still more, when he learned that Kaala had never been near the hut of Kalani, his heart misgave him.

He started to seek his lost one, and wherever he went signs of evil multiplied. The path of his beloved led to the sea and stopped; Opunui kept out of his way and took refuge in a puuhonua; the diviners, whom he consulted, could only tell him:

“The sweet-smelling flower of Lanai is neither in the hills nor in the valleys. Search the sea. There are cliffs that are hollow, and caves beneath the waves.”

With this vague oracle in his mind he wandered along the rocky shore, crying out in his despair:

“O Kaala, Kaala! if living, where sleepest thou? If dead, where rest thy bones?”

Suddenly from the waters below him there seemed to come a voice mounting upward from a wraith of water. He looked below, and the vortex at his feet seemed to call him by name and invite him. She was dead, he thought, her spirit had called! What could he do better than die too?

So with the cry “Kaala” upon his lips, he leaped and was engulfed in the waves which dragged him below as with invisible hands.

A friend following him and knowing that here was the entrance to the Spouting Cave, fled along the rocks and told what he had seen, and in an hour or two Kamehameha himself, rowed by his sturdiest oarsmen, was near the spot in his canoe.

Kaaialii found himself drawn downwards till he no longer believed himself alive. At last his feet gained the sloping beach and he found his head once more above water, but, in the dark, he believed he had arrived in the hall of the dead. The thundering of the breakers sounded above him, life seemed left far behind, but both hope and memory came back with the touch of cold and slimy things crawling over and stinging his flesh. He knew he was alive, and just at that moment a low moan reached his ears which made his heart stand still.

Looking around he saw a dark form upon the strand, and from this direction came the moaning.

He crawled towards it, and had barely reached it ere he heard his name pronounced. It was the body of Kaala he saw before him and the creeping things of the sea were sucking her blood.

Kaaialii flung himself upon her with a passionate kiss.

“O Kaala! Kaaialii is here!” He pushed back her wet hair, took her in his arms, and began to carry her towards the opening of the cave. But with a voice which grew gradually fainter, Kaala told him that she was dying.

“I am so happy that you are here! Lay me down and let me die!”

The smile that played upon her lips testified to her joy, but it also made Kaaialii hope for her life. When, however, he laid his hand upon her heart, it was cold and still. Death had come and found her happy.

But Kaaialii still clasped his precious burden as though waiting for Kaala to awake. He sat in silence, all unconscious of the flight of time, until he was roused from his stupor by a splash.

In another instant came another, and then there rose up from the water two forms: first the figure of Ua, a friend of Kaala, and immediately behind Kamehameha, who had been shown the mouth of the cave and had dauntlessly leaped to wrest from it its secret and his friend.

A swift glance revealed to the king all that had happened. The warrior laid his dead bride beside him, rose to his feet, and with bent head stood before his chief.

The stern monarch was touched with Kaaialii’s unspoken grief. “I see,” he said; “she is dead. Let her rest; she can have no better sepulchre. Come, Kaaialii, let us go.”

Then Kaaialii came to himself. He had never gone further in his thoughts as yet than the discovery of his loved one. Now he knew and faced the consequences.

“Go?” he cried. “Nay, I stay. Oh, my king, never have I disobeyed you before, and never will I disobey you again. But here I must stay. My life ends here.”

With a swift movement he seized a stone, dashed it against his head, crushing into the very brain, then sank lifeless beside the body of Kaala.

Kamehameha left them together, and by-and-by had them wrapped in folds of kapa. There their bones lie to-day. Few, however, to-day know the secret of the entrance to Puhio-Kaala.

The minstrels made a dirge about it and in after years, when Kamehameha rested at Kealia or Waipio, there was no mele he loved so well to hear as that which told of the faith of Kaala and Kaaialii:

“Oh! dead is Kaaialii, the young chief of Hawaii,

The chief of few years and many battles.

His limbs were strong and his heart was gentle.

His face was like the sun, and he was without fear.

For his love he plunged into the deep waters;

For his love he gave his life.”

X
LONO’S LAST MARTYR

The heroes of victory are rarely without their monuments: the heroes of lost causes are too often forgotten. The old order changes, giving place to new, and in course of time we praise the bold innovators who let in the light, but we forget that even the defeated darkness may have its martyrdoms, its faith and its courage worthy of the poet’s song.

It is a story of such heroism as this which gathers round a neglected tumulus, now well nigh hidden in clustering ferns and creeping vines on the island of Hawaii. Not far from Kilau, on the western coast of the island, almost under the shadow of Mauna Hualalai, which rises nearly 9,000 feet above the sea, there is a plain of rough lava, whose barrenness is only in places veiled by tufts of waving grass and by spreading creepers and richly hued flowers. In many places there rise the ruins of former temples and fortifications belonging to the old warlike time. The massive, squarely shapen stones contrast strangely with the spherical volcanic boulders which attest that here Nature has warred as well as man. After traveling over two miles of such country as this you will begin to stumble over frequent heaps of stones well nigh concealed in the grass and ferns. Your imagination suggests graves, rightly so, and you pick your way among them till you come to Kuamoo, where there is an oblong cairn, some ten feet long by six wide, built in the form of a tomb, and almost hidden from sight in the greenery of innumerable ferns and the blossoms of morning glory and passion flower. Well does Nature keep the spot beautiful and fragrant, for here lie side by side the mortal remains of two heroes and two lovers, whom, heathen though they were, the new time will not willingly permit to be forgotten.

It was in the autumn of 1819 that the great change came which has been hailed by many as the day of new birth for the Eight Islands—the abolition of the tabu and the destruction of the idols. We shall not attempt to defend the anterior condition of the island kingdom, but it will be seen in the course of this story that the transition was by no means without its element of danger and mischief.

No darkness could well have been deeper than that of olden Hawaii, with its bloody worship, its human sacrifices, its oppression of the makaainana, or common people, and, above all, its tabu. How this pressed with leaden weight upon the people would be almost incredible if described in detail. Suffice it to say that for every act and condition of life there was a tabu, extending to food, dress, etiquette, time, place, labor, and privilege. And for every breach of the tabu there was but one penalty—death.

It might, therefore, be thought that its abolition would be received with universal applause, that only from the hearts of the cruel bigots of heathenism, monsters thirsting for human gore, tyrants ruling by oppression and fraud, would there be a sigh of regret when the death-knell of the old heathenism sounded forth.

This, however, was not the case. Viewing the matter from close quarters we can easily see that the priests and worshippers of Lono, who protested against the act of Liholiho had some justice on their side.

The mighty Kamehameha had breathed his last, and his dust had been hidden away somewhere, where, no one but Hoapili knew, among the mountains of Hawaii. Liholiho, his successor, was under the influence of the queen mother, Kaahumanu, who had long been chafing under the restraints of the tabu upon her sex. He himself, a youth of twenty-two, no stranger, unfortunately, to the fire-water of the whalers, deemed the law of tabu overmuch of a clog on his own princely liberty, and as entailing, moreover, a heavy expenditure for the support of the state idolatry and the maintenance of the priesthood.

Arrived at Kawaihae, he heard of Kaahumanu’s intention to attempt the sacrilege, and, not indisposed to have his own share in the contemplated work, immediately sailed to the south. Landing at Puako, there followed a series of debauches to which the court of Kamehameha had been a stranger. For twenty-four hours the tumultuous merriment went on. The royal party joined the hula-dancers in their obscene revelry. They tossed bottles of liquor to the sea gods, inviting them to drink themselves drunk with them, and at last the moment arrived when a public violation of the tabu was to take place, in order to show that the old order had passed forever. This breach with the past was made by the king’s deliberate act of sending prohibited food from his own table to that of the women, and by his taking his own place among them. In a moment the royal example was followed, men and women were eating and drinking promiscuously together, and the feast was no longer “ai kapu,” or sacred eating, but “ai noa,” or common eating. A few chiefs turned pale in their drunkenness at the outrages offered to their religion and their law, some strode forth indignant and held counsel together, while Liholiho and the high-priest, Hewahewa, with their drunken crew, rode forth to destroy the images of the insulted gods, and the shrines where no sacrifice should be offered more.

We shall not be ashamed to stay among the few still faithful to the old order and its traditions. It is true the tabu was tyrannous and cruel beyond belief, but a cruel code is far better than anarchy, and Liholiho had nothing to put in the place of the tabu but the lawless wantonness of the whalers. Was the liquor of the white men a better inspiration than the will of the chiefs? Had not Kamehameha, to whom the land owed prosperity and peace, deliberately given up drinking the haole gin and expressly warned his people against falling into its pernicious snare? And now had they not lived to see his son, a shameful sight to the people, reeling on horseback, arms and legs extended, raging against the gods of their fathers? If Vancouver had sent the white teacher he had promised they might have heard tidings worth giving ear to, as, rumor had it, had been the case in Tahiti, but surely it was better to keep the old law, by which the chiefs and people alike guided their steps, until they had considered the new!

The chief speaker in the conference was the young and handsome Kekuaokalani, upon whom had fallen the defense of the traditions of church and state. No nobler Hawaiian had ever been listened to by the alii. Well nigh seven feet in height, with masses of raven black hair hanging upon his shoulders, perfect in features and form, wise, brave and magnetic, a chief of even bluer blood than his uncle Kamehameha, by his own choice also a priest, equal in learning to Hewahewa, he was a man well fitted to be the leader of a cause however desperate it might appear. Moreover, his marriage with the beautiful Manono, who lived in the light of his love, had touched the sympathy and imaginations of the people, and when he strode forth from the wild revelry of the crowd, bearing in his arms the insulted image of Lono, he may well have seemed a hero, or even a demi-god, to the amazed and troubled people.

Whether ambitious or not, Kekuaokalani conceived that to him had come a charge from the gods to avenge their cause upon a drunken and degenerate king and to take the place before the shrines vacated by the renegade Hewahewa. As for Kaahumanu, he knew her to be a light woman, whose escapades had sorely troubled the heart and patience of Kamehameha. Certainly Lady Pele, goddess of the fire-world, slumbering within the mountain, would protect her honor against law-breakers such as she.

So Kekuaokalani withdrew to Kaaweloa, where the conservative leaders and the priests offered him the crown, with the oracular saying: “A religious chief shall possess the kingdom, but irreligious chiefs shall always be poor.” It was a dangerous honor thus thrust upon him, but he accepted it gladly and prepared for the trial of strength with Liholiho. Many of the people who shared his spirit gathered around him and, when the winter solstice brought with it the annual feast of Lono, the festival was kept with a sincerity and enthusiasm all the more impressive from the presentiment entertained by not a few that it was the last festival which Lono would ever have in Hawaii. It is not a little pathetic to contemplate the people “about to die” face to face with the gods “about to die” for these five strange, sad, festive days.

Meanwhile the work of the royal “reformers” went on throughout the land and a month passed by, during which the news came daily of the pulling down of heiaus and the burning of idols. The king was happy in his iconoclasm, but no word came to him of the preparations of Kekuaokalani. Then suddenly the tidings reached Liholiho that Hamakua was being invaded by the rebels, and that one of the chiefs, Kainapau by name, was slain. Some of the king’s favorites endeavored to belittle the affair and strove to allay the royal alarm by offering, with forty warriors, to suppress the insurrection. Hewahewa, the renegade priest, knew Kekuaokalani better, and declared:

“Not forty times forty will be enough! Kekuaokalani is in the field to conquer or to die!”

Then the alarm was genuine and general, and while the resourceful Kaahumanu bethought herself of the purchase of muskets from the white traders, Liholiho endeavored to quench the fire of rebellion by the sending of an embassy.

Some of the most notable men in the crowd were selected, men close of kin to Kekuaokalani, as well as high in the counsels of Liholiho. There was prominent among them, Naihe, the uncle of the rebel chief, and Kalaimoku, the commander of the king’s forces. And with these was Keopuolani, the bluest blooded queen of Kamehameha.

“We come,” they said, “to make peace between you and the king. Liholiho offers you freedom to follow your own religion if you will consent to lay aside your arms.”

“Alas!” replied the chief, “to what avail is liberty to worship when the gods and the temples are consumed with fire? How can we serve the gods acceptably when the tabu exists no more and men know not what is sacred and what is common?”

“You will have war, then?” asked the ambassadors.

“Nay, I choose not,” cried Kekuaokalani. “Here stand I where Liholiho and Hewahewa, king and high-priest, should stand to defend the traditions to which I am pledged by my oath as alii. Lono will not forget the faithful, and if we die we die true to our ancestors and to the gods who made them kings.”

Kalaimoku withdrew with his company sadly and respectfully, and Kekuakoalani went within his house and, falling upon the breast of his wife, burst into tears.

O! beautiful was life surrounded with the love of Manono! Hard it were to die and go beneath the ground with such sunshine flooding the earth. But Kekuaokalani was right: “He could not choose.”

“Is there a choice for strong souls to be weak?” Though he die, he must be loyal to his faith in Lono. The night before, the alae had uttered its shrill note of presaging ill outside the house. Manono was all disconsolate with so many auguries of ill about her, but her husband bravely used every endeavor to turn aside her fears, saying that forebodings of ill were only for those who did ill. Yet he felt in his heart that the gods perhaps intended to take their cause into their own hands, and that he might be only a sacrifice where he had hoped to be a deliverer.

Nevertheless, the next morning, when the army made itself ready for the march, Kekuaokalani had a countenance wherein was no trace of fear or foreboding. With cheerful shouts of encouragement to his eager followers, he trod the lava plains with as much alacrity as if starting to a feast, and close behind him, rather than with the other women in the rear, marched Manono, happier to stand on the field of blood beside her lover than to tarry behind in ignoble safety. There were priests of Lono, too, carrying the gods newly arrayed for the carnage. Perchance, yet once again, might the war god Kaili be seen flying above the contending hosts, a luminous streak of vapor, uttering aloud the war cries which had cleared the way to victory for Kamehameha. How the drunkard Liholiho would feel his blood freezing in his veins at such an apparition!

As they marched along they came to the spot where, twelve generations before, the mighty giant Maukaleoleo had appeared to the hero Umi and had given him strength above the lot of man to overcome his foes. Would that now that terrific figure might appear, plucking the cocoanuts from the tallest trees as he walked, or wading out to sea among the canoes!

But, alas! no marvels came to aid their faith. They must fight the battle of the gods alone to-day.

So at last they came to Kuamoo on the morning of December 19, 1819, a day forever memorable in the history of Hawaii as the day in which the forces of the old era were defeated by those of the new, both struggling in the dark and ignorant of the light which was so soon to come.

Kalaimoku was even yet anxious to avoid a battle with Kekuaokalani, who was his own sister’s son, and he sent a messenger with an affectionate entreaty for another interview. But, even though his own mother pleaded, together with his uncle, the dauntless heathen refused to listen to the messenger and compelled him to leap into the sea and swim with all his might to save his life.

The forces then took up their respective positions, Kalaimoku knowing that now only the grim arbitrament of battle could decide. Liholiho’s forces were strong in musketry and in the aid of foreigners, and their retreat was protected by the formidable squadron of double canoes which had been the pride of Kamehameha’s declining years. Kekuaokalani placed the priests of Lono with the images in the front of his line for a while, and then loud were the imprecations denounced upon the royal army. But, to be of more avail to-day, behind these was a splendid force of spearmen eager for the lehua, or first-slain victim. Behind all were the women, who followed the soldiers with calabashes of water and dried fish, to recruit the strength of the combatants when these were weary or athirst. But every woman was ready to fight and die with Kekuaokalani.

The attack was made by the rebel forces, who bore down upon the army of Liholiho with an impetus such as must have swept all before it, had it not been for the foreigners with their guns vomiting streams of fire upon their assailants. The company of musketeers kept up such a murderous fire upon the rebel center that, after a terrific and protracted struggle, this was driven back to the rising ground. Kekuaokalani, whose tall form was seen everywhere in the fray as he shouted orders to his spearmen, was wounded early in the battle, but fought on without knowing it, rallying his forces behind a stone wall about breast high, where there took place a struggle which for obstinacy and valour had no parallel in the annals of Hawaiian warfare. The double canoes commanded by the queen mother, Kaahumanu, raked the insurgent position with their guns, but two heroic figures seemed to stand out among the falling after every discharge, as if bearing charmed lives amid the rain of death. These were Kekuaokalani and his wife, Manono, who fought side by side, heedless of the heaped corpses around them. Weak with loss of blood from his previous wounds, Kekuaokalani more than once leaned fainting upon the arm of his wife, but he revived again and again to fight with a still more desperate valor. The temptation was sore when he beheld, through the battle smoke, his uncle Kalaimoku and his mother signalling him to ask for quarter; he set his teeth hard and fired again. Had it been Manono herself, he had most like done the same, though her breast had faced the bullets! No longer able to stand, he sat upon a fragment of lava and continued to load and fire his musket. No Kaili flew above the host as of old, no Lono came to lend supernatural aid to his faithful martyrs. Instead, the forces of Kalaimoku were advancing, and Kekuaokalani knew himself left to die, with life still sweet on his lips. The fated ball came at last, pierced his left breast, and, folding his face in his feather cloak, Kekuaokalani fell forward at the feet of Manono, and expired without a groan. Manono wept not, but awaited hopefully the messenger of death which should make them fellows again in the halls of Milu. On came the conquerors; in vain Kalaimoku and his sister cried to save her. Another bullet, unerring in its aim, pierced her temple and she fell upon the warm but lifeless body of her husband.

The insurgents made but little more resistance now that their leader had fallen. It was sunset and under the cover of the darkness any that could, escaped. Some surrendered or were captured by the royal troops, a few crept into caves and holes of the mountains, and, covering the entrance with pieces of lava, lay concealed till Liholiho had returned to Kailua.

Kalaimoku and his sister stood over the corpses of Kekuaokalani and Manono, and, gazing long upon the noble dead, exclaimed with tears:

“Truly, since the days of Keawe, no nobler Hawaiians have lost the light of the sun!”

Thus perished Lono’s last champions, faithful unto death.

Three months later the first Christian missionaries reached the group with the tidings so long desired. The first news which reached them from the shore was in the almost incredible words: “The idols of Hawaii are no more!”

May we not, while rejoicing in the new day which was thus brought to the land left by Liholiho bereft of law and religion, retain a tender heart for the youthful pair whose bodies sleep beneath the morning glory and the heaped-up stones on the shore of Kuamoo?

XI
KEOUA

A Story of Kalawao

The laws of men are merciful in intent, but they sometimes grind hard upon the innocent and the poor, at times through the necessary imperfection of all human efforts after the ideal, at times through the harsh administration of enactments good enough in themselves.

No laws have ever seemed so necessary in Hawaii as the laws enforcing the segregation of lepers; no laws just in themselves have ever been the cause of so much grief and pain. There have been times, moreover, when they were carried out neither wisely nor mercifully.

At such a time only could the following story have been possible—the story of a love which laws could not abrogate nor death itself annul.

Pauoa is a valley of almost perpetual rainbow, where the mists dance in the sunshine on the mountainside and the waters trickle down through thickets of ferns and scarlet creepers to the long lines of cocoanut palms which stand like sentinels along the beach from Diamond Head to Honolulu.

But its chief beauty to Keoua, returning with his net from fishing outside the coral reef, lay in the fact that he was homeward bent. There, a hundred yards further, was the grass hut, secluded behind a screen of banana trees, and rising apparently out of a glistening swamp of taro-patch made on a terrace of the mountainside. What joy to feel the embrace of his good wahine, Luka, and to have the crowing brown baby thrust into his arms to fondle! Was it not always worth while to be the long day away to know such a homecoming as this?

But to-night there was no welcome, and Keoua’s heart sank. In his haste he waded through the taro-patch, instead of skirting the enclosure as usual. The child was there, he heard its cry before he entered, but of wife there was no sign. The baby lay on the matted floor, feebly whining; the mother was gone, apparently not without struggle, for the matting at the door had been torn violently away, making the hut look like a desolate cave.

Keoua did not search the enclosure: he knew what had happened. The officers of the Board of Health had found his hut at last, and had taken away his wife, for—she was a leper. They had taken her away in the husband’s absence, for they knew that, had he been there, he would have fought to the death. His loaded gun still lay where he had left it in the corner of the hut. They had taken her by violence as it seemed, and callously left the helpless babe behind, for Hawaiian officials, even those with bowels of compassion, were not much given to thinking about babies. Some Chinese coolies working in the neighborhood corroborated the suggestions of his fear. Luka had been carried away to the haole (white) doctors, and she would be taken to Molokai, and there be dead—dead to husband, child and friends.

Keoua was a crushed man when he took his helpless babe in his arms. It did not occur to him to give it away, as many of his friends would have done, or even to find a nurse for it. Somehow it reminded him that he once had a home. He did not go fishing now. For three or four days he tried to make the babe eat some poi, or even, so stupid or ignorant was the man, some hard taro, or a piece of banana, but, although it did not cry, it refused to eat, and one day towards evening its cries ceased forever. Then Keoua, more miserable and lonely than ever, wrapped the tiny corpse in fold upon fold of kapa and took it to the Kawaiahao cemetery. Here, among the graves of so many of his fast-dying race, he found a little wooden hut and knocked at the door. An old white-haired Hawaiian, no other indeed than Keoua’s father, opened. He was living here on the very soil which was in time to be his grave, and to him Keoua handed the bundle without a word of explanation, even as to the absence of Luka. The two men uttered their “auwe” together, the young man in his youth and the old man in his age, over the body of the babe. Then, as the moon rose, silvering the cocoanut groves of Waikiki, Keoua stole back to his deserted hut, with the instinct of a beast wishing to hide its head in the earth.

Two days later the “Likelike” is on her way from Honolulu to Mani. What a dream that voyage is! For a while the empty craters of Leahi and Koko Head, fringed with breakers along the coral reef, stand out in glorious sunlight. Then suddenly—

“The sun’s rim dips,
The stars rush out,
At one stride comes the dark.”

Mattresses are spread on deck, the passengers stretch themselves for sleep, the air is heavy with the scent of the wreaths of flowers with which almost every voyager is bedecked; overhead the stars swing like lamps, or as though the whole vault of heaven, with its million eyes, were one lamp swaying in infinite space. Then, with a faint consciousness of something breaking in upon your dream, you feel an anchor drop and hear the splash of oars. You have not, however, reached your destination yet. This is some boat coming off from the shores of Molokai for stores for a lonely ranch in the mountains. If you rise, you may lean over the bulwarks and look through the mists upon a black mass of mountain wall which conceals the most loathsome scene the world affords—the great lazar house of Hawaii in Nature’s fairest garden, the saddest witness our earth possesses to the existence of the serpent’s trail.

Yes, it is not the chill night-mist which makes you shiver; for, although you know the leper settlement is not on this side of the island, at Kaunakakai, but on the other side over the pali at Kalaupapa, you feel that no wall of mountain can shut out the thought of thirteen hundred fellow creatures suffering a living death in the land which God made so fair.

If you had been onboard the “Likelike” on the day of which I speak, you would have heard, almost coincident with the lifting of the anchor, a splash so indistinct that when some one shouted “Man overboard!” few believed the cry. Men lazily looked over the bulwarks, but saw nothing, for the moon was behind the mountain, and presently, with the comforting assurance that, if anybody had gone overboard, he was by this time food for sharks, lay back on their mattresses to continue their dreams and their voyage.

But a man had gone overboard, a man whose heart was bent on crossing seas and mountains to his leper bride. Keoua swam ashore silently, fearing every second to see the white fin of a shark start up beside him in the water. Once he felt the cold, slimy sucker of a squid against his ankle, but he tore himself free, and, shooting on a high roller through a narrow break in the reef, lay at last, spent and breathless, but safe upon the beach.

Yet the worst was still before him. Kalaupapa could only be approached by crossing the mountain range, and the only path on the other side was down a pali so steep that it made the head of the bravest climber dizzy to look upon it. However, there was no help for it, and in a few minutes, Keoua, recovering from the exhaustion consequent upon his swim, set off on the upward journey. This was comparatively easy, though it was still easier in the darkness to miss the path and get into those haunted gorges where of old the poison goddess had her grove. Long ropes of ieie, tough as wire cables, formed a ladder up the face of the mountain. By these, scarcely touching the ground, he toiled upwards through tangled growths which would otherwise have been impassable. When he reached the top, the sun was just rising from the clouds, and revealing one after another the majestic ridges of Haleakala and the rock-bound coasts of Maui and Lanai. Then the wind came sweeping up and threatened to dash the intruder backwards down the rocks. The trees swayed and bent, the foliage of the kukui shivered with its ghostly sheen, the clouds swept away from the bay of Kalawao, and there, several thousand feet below, lay the white roofs and lanais of as peaceful a settlement, to all appearances, as any upon which the sun has ever shone.

But if ever a place could be called a whited sepulchre it was this; not that Christian love and self-sacrifice had not cast an aureole of beauty about it which made it sacred, but because here was the realization of Milton’s terrible vision:

“A lazar house it seemed, wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseased; all maladies
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic pangs,
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moonstruck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus and wide-wasting pestilence,

Dropsies and asthmas and joint-racking rheums.

Dire was the tossing, deep the groans: Despair

Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch;

And over them triumphant Death his dart

Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked,

With vows, as their chief good and final hope.”

How could Nature sing so sweetly and smile so fair when the eyes rested upon a cancer so foul!

Keoua looked down as though he expected to see there the grass hut of Pauoa Valley with Luka and her baby at the door to greet him, but the place seemed deserted till, when half-way down, the sweet tinkle of a chapel bell roused him from a dream, and he supported himself by a clump of guava bushes to watch the dark-cassocked priests and white-hooded sisters passing from the House of Misery to the solace of the House of God. Such was the mood of Keoua that he could not feel any thrill in the thought of these brave men and sweet women thus living in grim company with death. He thought only of the curse the white man had brought to his race from the days of Cook, the discoverer, to the day when the fruits of ancient vice had burst forth in the heart of his own home. So it was with hard and bitter thoughts he hastened on his way, scarce knowing what he intended to do, perhaps carry Luka bodily away from the pest-house to the fastnesses of the mountains, where they might live like the free wild beasts and die in peace.

As he came near the hospital, however, there met him, sauntering forth, a man dressed in a cool suit of white linen, whose keen eye and earnest serious face proclaimed him the doctor.

He glanced at the wayfarer with something of surprise, seeing that he was endeavoring to avoid an encounter.

“Aloha!” he exclaimed, using the familiar Hawaiian greeting. The man made no response, but looked savagely on the ground.

“Hello, my man; what’s the matter?” For Keoua looked ghastly through his olive skin, and his steps tottered. But strength came to answer, fiercely:

“Hele aku—go away—curse you. Before time, kanaka live here, no pake mai—(leprosy)—all maikai loa—very good. Then haole man come, bring pake mai. Poor kanaka die; make die all time. Haole man thief steal kanaka’s wahine; haole man kill kanaka’s keiki (child). Hele!”

The doctor thought of all he might say, for it was eminently reasonable, all this segregation, and the kanaka had much cause to be grateful for what the government was doing for the lepers. But he knew logic was not what the poor wretch wanted, and while he hesitated the need of answering vanished, for there rose up from the hospital a strange sound, strange at least from such a place. It was the strain of a band of music, plaintive yet joyful—no dirge, but the voice of rejoicing. For in this lazar-house joy is not unknown, albeit it comes at an hour when others weep. A soul freed from pain, from pollution, and from the body of death, born into the light of Paradise—in such a case was it not fitting that cymbals should clash and trumpets sound?

“Heaha kela?” exclaimed Keoua; “what is that?”

“The good God has taken to rest the soul of a poor woman who was glad to go.”

“What was her name?” cried the Hawaiian, excitedly.

“Luka,” replied the doctor.

An ashy pallor spread over the man’s already bloodless face. It was plain to the doctor that Death had come even quicker than Love. Then there came a bitter cry, mingled with bitter laughter.

“Akua maikai! Good God!... Ha, ha, ha, ha.... He bad God! He all same haole! Steal poor kanaka’s wahine.... Auwe ... auwe.... Me curse Him!”

But the curse came not. A change as though an angel had whispered to him came swift as thought. He pressed his hands on his heart and murmured:

“Me no curse Him! Good God! He good God! Sweet wife, sweet keiki ... I come. E Christo e aloha mai.” Then he fell heavily to the ground.

An angel had indeed spoken to him—the kindest angel whom God had sent to Kalaupapa—the angel of Death.

The music played on, and celestial harmonies seemed to mingle with its strains. It was as though glad spirits met and welcomed one another in a land fairer even than Hawaii, a land, moreover, where the serpent’s blight may never come.

A double funeral took place in the leper cemetery that very afternoon, and those who were there said the priest must have been absent-minded, for at the close of the service he spread his hands over the grave and said:

“Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

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Table of Contents

- Hawaiian Idylls of Love and Death
- INTRODUCTION
- CONTENTS
- I THE POISON GODDESS OF MOLOKAI
- II THE STORY OF THE KIHA-PU
- III THE SPLINTERED PADDLE
- IV THE SLANDERED PRIEST OF OAHU
- V KEALA
- VI PELE DECLARES FOR KAMEHAMEHA
- VII THE CITY OF REFUGE
- VIII SWEET LEILEHUA
- IX THE SPOUTING CAVE OF LANAI
- X LONO’S LAST MARTYR
- XI KEOUA
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE