On the Makaloa Mat and Island Tales

by On The Makaloa Mat

  He turned to me a weary and sceptical eye, saying:

  "And if I die to-morrow, not alone will the lawyers contest my

  disposition of my property, but they will contest my benefactions

  and my pensions accorded, and the clarity of my mind.

  "It was the right weather of the year; but even then, with our old

  weak ones at the paddles, we did not attempt the landing until we

  had assembled half the population of Ponuloo Valley down on the

  steep little beach. Then we counted our waves, selected the best

  one, and ran in on it. Of course, the canoe was swamped and the

  outrigger smashed, but the ones on shore dragged us up unharmed

  beyond the wash.

  On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales

  Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

  65

  "Ahuna gave his orders. In the night-time all must remain within

  their houses, and the dogs be tied up and have their jaws bound so

  that there should be no barking. And in the night-time Ahuna and I

  stole out on our journey, no one knowing whether we went to the

  right or left or up the valley toward its head. We carried jerky,

  and hard poi and dried aku, and from the quantity of the food I

  knew we were to be gone several days. Such a trail! A Jacob's

  ladder to the sky, truly, for that first pali" (precipice), "almost

  straight up, was three thousand feet above the sea. And we did it

  in the dark!

  "At the top, beyond the sight of the valley we had left, we slept

  until daylight on the hard rock in a hollow nook Ahuna knew, and

  that was so small that we were squeezed. And the old fellow, for

  fear that I might move in the heavy restlessness of lad's sleep,

  lay on the outside with one arm resting across me. At daybreak, I

  saw why. Between us and the lip of the cliff scarcely a yard

  intervened. I crawled to the lip and looked, watching the abyss

  take on immensity in the growing light and trembling from the fear

  of height that was upon me. At last I made out the sea, over half

  a mile straight beneath. And we had done this thing in the dark!

  "Down in the next valley, which was a very tiny one, we found

  evidence of the ancient population, but there were no people. The

  only way was the crazy foot-paths up and down the dizzy valley

  walls from valley to valley. But lean and aged as Ahuna was, he

  seemed untirable. In the second valley dwelt an old leper in

  hiding. He did not know me, and when Ahuna told him who I was, he

  grovelled at my feet, almost clasping them, and mumbled a mele of

  all my line out of a lipless mouth.

  "The next valley proved to be the valley. It was long and so

  narrow that its floor had caught not sufficient space of soil to

  grow taro for a single person. Also, it had no beach, the stream

  that threaded it leaping a pali of several hundred feet down to the

  sea. It was a god-forsaken place of naked, eroded lava, to which

  only rarely could the scant vegetation find root-hold. For miles

  we followed up that winding fissure through the towering walls, far

  into the chaos of back country that lies behind the Iron-bound

  Coast. How far that valley penetrated I do not know, but, from the

  quantity of water in the stream, I judged it far. We did not go to

  the valley's head. I could see Ahuna casting glances to all the

  peaks, and I knew he was taking bearings, known to him alone, from

  natural objects. When he halted at the last, it was with abrupt

  certainty. His bearings had crossed. He threw down the portion of

  food and outfit he had carried. It was the place. I looked on

  either hand at the hard, implacable walls, naked of vegetation, and

  could dream of no burial-place possible in such bare adamant.

  "We ate, then stripped for work. Only did Ahuna permit me to

  retain my shoes. He stood beside me at the edge of a deep pool,

  likewise apparelled and prodigiously skinny.

  On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales

  Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

  66

  "'You will dive down into the pool at this spot,' he said. 'Search

  the rock with your hands as you descend, and, about a fathom and a

  half down, you will find a hole. Enter it, head-first, but going

  slowly, for the lava rock is sharp and may cut your head and body.'

  "'And then?' I queried. 'You will find the hole growing larger,'

  was his answer. 'When you have gone all of eight fathoms along the

  passage, come up slowly, and you will find your head in the air,

  above water, in the dark. Wait there then for me. The water is

  very cold.'

  "It didn't sound good to me. I was thinking, not of the cold water

  and the dark, but of the bones. 'You go first,' I said. But he

  claimed he could not. 'You are my alii, my prince,' he said. 'It

  is impossible that I should go before you into the sacred burial-

  place of your kingly ancestors.'

  "But the prospect did not please. 'Just cut out this prince

  stuff,' I told him. 'It isn't what it's cracked up to be. You go

  first, and I'll never tell on you.' 'Not alone the living must we

  please,' he admonished, 'but, more so, the dead must we please.

  Nor can we lie to the dead.'

  "We argued it out, and for half an hour it was stalemate. I

  wouldn't, and he simply couldn't. He tried to buck me up by

  appealing to my pride. He chanted the heroic deeds of my

  ancestors; and, I remember especially, he sang to me of Mokomoku,

  my great-grandfather and the gigantic father of the gigantic

  Kaaukuu, telling how thrice in battle Mokomoku leaped among his

  foes, seizing by the neck a warrior in either hand and knocking

  their heads together until they were dead. But this was not what

  decided me. I really felt sorry for old Ahuna, he was so beside

  himself for fear the expedition would come to naught. And I was

  coming to a great admiration for the old fellow, not least among

  the reasons being the fact of his lying down to sleep between me

  and the cliff-lip.

  "So, with true alii-authority of command, saying, 'You will

  immediately follow after me,' I dived in. Everything he had said

  was correct. I found the entrance to the subterranean passage,

  swam carefully through it, cutting my shoulder once on the lava-

  sharp roof, and emerged in the darkness and air. But before I

  could count thirty, he broke water beside me, rested his hand on my

  arm to make sure of me, and directed me to swim ahead of him for

  the matter of a hundred feet or so. Then we touched bottom and

  climbed out on the rocks. And still no light, and I remember I was

  glad that our altitude was too high for centipedes.

  "He had brought with him a coconut calabash, tightly stoppered, of

  whale-oil that must have been landed on Lahaina beach thirty years

  before. From his mouth he took a water-tight arrangement of a

  matchbox composed of two empty rifle-cartridges fitted snugly

  On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales

  Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

  67

  together. He lighted the wicking that floated on the oil, and I

  looked about, and knew disappointment. No burial-chamber was it,
/>   but merely a lava tube such as occurs on all the islands.

  "He put the calabash of light into my hands and started me ahead of

  him on the way, which he assured me was long, but not too long. It

  was long, at least a mile in my sober judgment, though at the time

  it seemed five miles; and it ascended sharply. When Ahuna, at the

  last, stopped me, I knew we were close to our goal. He knelt on

  his lean old knees on the sharp lava rock, and clasped my knees

  with his skinny arms. My hand that was free of the calabash lamp

  he placed on his head. He chanted to me, with his old cracked,

  quavering voice, the line of my descent and my essential high alii-

  ness. And then he said:

  "'Tell neither Kanau nor Hiwilani aught of what you are about to

  behold. There is no sacredness in Kanau. His mind is filled with

  sugar and the breeding of horses. I do know that he sold a feather

  cloak his grandfather had worn to that English collector for eight

  thousand dollars, and the money he lost the next day betting on the

  polo game between Maui and Oahu. Hiwilani, your mother, is filled

  with sacredness. She is too much filled with sacredness. She

  grows old, and weak-headed, and she traffics over-much with

  sorceries.'

  "'No,' I made answer. 'I shall tell no one. If I did, then would

  I have to return to this place again. And I do not want ever to

  return to this place. I'll try anything once. This I shall never

  try twice.'

  "'It is well,' he said, and arose, falling behind so that I should

  enter first. Also, he said: 'Your mother is old. I shall bring

  her, as promised, the bones of her mother and of her grandfather.

  These should content her until she dies; and then, if I die before

  her, it is you who must see to it that all the bones in her family

  collection are placed in the Royal Mausoleum.'

  "I have given all the Islands' museums the once-over," Prince Akuli

  lapsed back into slang, "and I must say that the totality of the

  collections cannot touch what I saw in our Lakanaii burial-cave.

  Remember, and with reason and history, we trace back the highest

  and oldest genealogy in the Islands. Everything that I had ever

  dreamed or heard of, and much more that I had not, was there. The

  place was wonderful. Ahuna, sepulchrally muttering prayers and

  meles, moved about, lighting various whale-oil lamp-calabashes.

  They were all there, the Hawaiian race from the beginning of

  Hawaiian time. Bundles of bones and bundles of bones, all wrapped

  decently in tapa, until for all the world it was like the parcels-

  post department at a post office.

  "And everything! Kahilis, which you may know developed out of the

  fly-flapper into symbols of royalty until they became larger than

  hearse-plumes with handles a fathom and a half and over two fathoms

  On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales

  Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

  68

  in length. And such handles! Of the wood of the kauila, inlaid

  with shell and ivory and bone with a cleverness that had died out

  among our artificers a century before. It was a centuries-old

  family attic. For the first time I saw things I had only heard of,

  such as the pahoas, fashioned of whale-teeth and suspended by

  braided human hair, and worn on the breast only by the highest of

  rank.

  "There were tapes and mats of the rarest and oldest; capes and leis

  and helmets and cloaks, priceless all, except the too-ancient ones,

  of the feathers of the mamo, and of the iwi and the akakane and the

  o-o. I saw one of the mamo cloaks that was superior to that finest

  one in the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and that they value at

  between half a million and a million dollars. Goodness me, I

  thought at the time, it was lucky Kanau didn't know about it.

  "Such a mess of things! Carved gourds and calabashes, shell-

  scrapers, nets of olona fibre, a junk of ie-ie baskets, and fish-

  hooks of every bone and spoon of shell. Musical instruments of the

  forgotten days--ukukes and nose flutes, and kiokios which are

  likewise played with one unstoppered nostril. Taboo poi bowls and

  finger bowls, left-handed adzes of the canoe gods, lava-cup lamps,

  stone mortars and pestles and poi-pounders. And adzes again, a

  myriad of them, beautiful ones, from an ounce in weight for the

  finer carving of idols to fifteen pounds for the felling of trees,

  and all with the sweetest handles I have ever beheld.

  "There were the kaekeekes--you know, our ancient drums, hollowed

  sections of the coconut tree, covered one end with shark-skin. The

  first kaekeeke of all Hawaii Ahuna pointed out to me and told me

  the tale. It was manifestly most ancient. He was afraid to touch

  it for fear the age-rotted wood of it would crumble to dust, the

  ragged tatters of the shark-skin head of it still attached. 'This

  is the very oldest and father of all our kaekeekes,' Ahuna told me.

  'Kila, the son of Moikeha, brought it back from far Raiatea in the

  South Pacific. And it was Kila's own son, Kahai, who made that

  same journey, and was gone ten years, and brought back with him

  from Tahiti the first breadfruit trees that sprouted and grew on

  Hawaiian soil.'

  "And the bones and bones! The parcel-delivery array of them!

  Besides the small bundles of the long bones, there were full

  skeletons, tapa-wrapped, lying in one-man, and two- and three-man

  canoes of precious koa wood, with curved outriggers of wiliwili

  wood, and proper paddles to hand with the io-projection at the

  point simulating the continuance of the handle, as if, like a

  skewer, thrust through the flat length of the blade. And their war

  weapons were laid away by the sides of the lifeless bones that had

  wielded them--rusty old horse-pistols, derringers, pepper-boxes,

  five-barrelled fantastiques, Kentucky long riffles, muskets handled

  in trade by John Company and Hudson's Bay, shark-tooth swords,

  wooden stabbing-knives, arrows and spears bone-headed of the fish

  and the pig and of man, and spears and arrows wooden-headed and

  On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales

  Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

  69

  fire-hardened.

  "Ahuna put a spear in my hand, headed and pointed finely with the

  long shin-bone of a man, and told me the tale of it. But first he

  unwrapped the long bones, arms, and legs, of two parcels, the

  bones, under the wrappings, neatly tied like so many faggots.

  'This,' said Ahuna, exhibiting the pitiful white contents of one

  parcel, 'is Laulani. She was the wife of Akaiko, whose bones, now

  placed in your hands, much larger and male-like as you observe,

  held up the flesh of a large man, a three-hundred pounder seven-

  footer, three centuries agone. And this spear-head is made of the

  shin-bone of Keola, a mighty wrestler and runner of their own time

  and place. And he loved Laulani, and she fled with him. But in a

  forgotten battle on the sands of Kalini, Akaiko rushed the lines of

  the enemy, leading the charge that was successful, and seized upon

  Keola, his wife'
s lover, and threw him to the ground, and sawed

  through his neck to the death with a shark-tooth knife. Thus, in

  the old days as always, did man combat for woman with man. And

  Laulani was beautiful; that Keola should be made into a spearhead

  for her! She was formed like a queen, and her body was a long bowl

  of sweetness, and her fingers lomi'd' (massaged) 'to slimness and

  smallness at her mother's breast. For ten generations have we

  remembered her beauty. Your father's singing boys to-day sing of

  her beauty in the hula that is named of her! This is Laulani, whom

  you hold in your hands.'

  "And, Ahuna done, I could but gaze, with imagination at the one

  time sobered and fired. Old drunken Howard had lent me his

  Tennyson, and I had mooned long and often over the Idyls of the

  King. Here were the three, I thought--Arthur, and Launcelot, and

  Guinevere. This, then, I pondered, was the end of it all, of life

  and strife and striving and love, the weary spirits of these long-

  gone ones to be invoked by fat old women and mangy sorcerers, the

  bones of them to be esteemed of collectors and betted on horse-

  races and ace-fulls or to be sold for cash and invested in sugar

  stocks.

  "For me it was illumination. I learned there in the burial-cave

  the great lesson. And to Ahuna I said: 'The spear headed with the

  long bone of Keola I shall take for my own. Never shall I sell it.

  I shall keep it always.'

  "'And for what purpose?' he demanded. And I replied: 'That the

  contemplation of it may keep my hand sober and my feet on earth

  with the knowledge that few men are fortunate enough to have as

  much of a remnant of themselves as will compose a spearhead when

  they are three centuries dead.'

  "And Ahuna bowed his head, and praised my wisdom of judgment. But

  at that moment the long-rotted olona-cord broke and the pitiful

  woman's bones of Laulani shed from my clasp and clattered on the

  rocky floor. One shin-bone, in some way deflected, fell under the

  dark shadow of a canoe-bow, and I made up my mind that it should be

  On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales

  Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com

  70

  mine. So I hastened to help him in the picking up of the bones and

  the tying, so that he did not notice its absence.

  "'This,' said Ahuna, introducing me to another of my ancestors, 'is