On the Makaloa Mat and Island Tales

by On The Makaloa Mat

  "Perhaps it is you that are a dream," I laughed. "And that I, and

  sky, and sea, and the iron-hard land, are dreams, all dreams."

  "I have often thought that," he assured me soberly. "It may well

  be so. Last night I dreamed I was a lark bird, a beautiful singing

  lark of the sky like the larks on the upland pastures of Haleakala.

  And I flew up, up, toward the sun, singing, singing, as old

  Kohokumu never sang. I tell you now that I dreamed I was a lark

  bird singing in the sky. But may not I, the real I, be the lark

  bird? And may not the telling of it be the dream that I, the lark

  bird, am dreaming now? Who are you to tell me ay or no? Dare you

  tell me I am not a lark bird asleep and dreaming that I am old

  Kohokumu?"

  I shrugged my shoulders, and he continued triumphantly:

  "And how do you know but what you are old Maui himself asleep and

  dreaming that you are John Lakana talking with me in a canoe? And

  may you not awake old Maui yourself, and scratch your sides and say

  that you had a funny dream in which you dreamed you were a haole?"

  "I don't know," I admitted. "Besides, you wouldn't believe me."

  "There is much more in dreams than we know," he assured me with

  great solemnity. "Dreams go deep, all the way down, maybe to

  before the beginning. May not old Maui have only dreamed he pulled

  Hawaii up from the bottom of the sea? Then would this Hawaii land

  be a dream, and you, and I, and the squid there, only parts of

  Maui's dream? And the lark bird too?"

  He sighed and let his head sink on his breast.

  "And I worry my old head about the secrets undiscoverable," he

  resumed, "until I grow tired and want to forget, and so I drink

  swipes, and go fishing, and sing old songs, and dream I am a lark

  bird singing in the sky. I like that best of all, and often I

  dream it when I have drunk much swipes . . . "

  In great dejection of mood he peered down into the lagoon through

  the water-glass.

  "There will be no more bites for a while," he announced. "The

  fish-sharks are prowling around, and we shall have to wait until

  they are gone. And so that the time shall not be heavy, I will

  sing you the canoe-hauling song to Lono. You remember:

  "Give to me the trunk of the tree, O Lono!

  Give me the tree's main root, O Lono!

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  Give me the ear of the tree, O Lono!--"

  "For the love of mercy, don't sing!" I cut him short. "I've got a

  headache, and your singing hurts. You may be in devilish fine form

  to-day, but your throat is rotten. I'd rather you talked about

  dreams, or told me whoppers."

  "It is too bad that you are sick, and you so young," he conceded

  cheerily. "And I shall not sing any more. I shall tell you

  something you do not know and have never heard; something that is

  no dream and no whopper, but is what I know to have happened. Not

  very long ago there lived here, on the beach beside this very

  lagoon, a young boy whose name was Keikiwai, which, as you know,

  means Water Baby. He was truly a water baby. His gods were the

  sea and fish gods, and he was born with knowledge of the language

  of fishes, which the fishes did not know until the sharks found it

  out one day when they heard him talk it.

  "It happened this way. The word had been brought, and the

  commands, by swift runners, that the king was making a progress

  around the island, and that on the next day a luau" (feast) "was to

  be served him by the dwellers here of Waihee. It was always a

  hardship, when the king made a progress, for the few dwellers in

  small places to fill his many stomachs with food. For he came

  always with his wife and her women, with his priests and sorcerers,

  his dancers and flute-players, and hula-singers, and fighting men

  and servants, and his high chiefs with their wives, and sorcerers,

  and fighting men, and servants.

  "Sometimes, in small places like Waihee, the path of his journey

  was marked afterward by leanness and famine. But a king must be

  fed, and it is not good to anger a king. So, like warning in

  advance of disaster, Waihee heard of his coming, and all food-

  getters of field and pond and mountain and sea were busied with

  getting food for the feast. And behold, everything was got, from

  the choicest of royal taro to sugar-cane joints for the roasting,

  from opihis to limu, from fowl to wild pig and poi-fed puppies--

  everything save one thing. The fishermen failed to get lobsters.

  "Now be it known that the king's favourite food was lobster. He

  esteemed it above all kai-kai" (food), "and his runners had made

  special mention of it. And there were no lobsters, and it is not

  good to anger a king in the belly of him. Too many sharks had come

  inside the reef. That was the trouble. A young girl and an old

  man had been eaten by them. And of the young men who dared dive

  for lobsters, one was eaten, and one lost an arm, and another lost

  one hand and one foot.

  "But there was Keikiwai, the Water Baby, only eleven years old, but

  half fish himself and talking the language of fishes. To his

  father the head men came, begging him to send the Water Baby to get

  lobsters to fill the king's belly and divert his anger.

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  "Now this what happened was known and observed. For the fishermen,

  and their women, and the taro-growers and the bird-catchers, and

  the head men, and all Waihee, came down and stood back from the

  edge of the rock where the Water Baby stood and looked down at the

  lobsters far beneath on the bottom.

  "And a shark, looking up with its cat's eyes, observed him, and

  sent out the shark-call of 'fresh meat' to assemble all the sharks

  in the lagoon. For the sharks work thus together, which is why

  they are strong. And the sharks answered the call till there were

  forty of them, long ones and short ones and lean ones and round

  ones, forty of them by count; and they talked to one another,

  saying: 'Look at that titbit of a child, that morsel delicious of

  human-flesh sweetness without the salt of the sea in it, of which

  salt we have too much, savoury and good to eat, melting to delight

  under our hearts as our bellies embrace it and extract from it its

  sweet.'

  "Much more they said, saying: 'He has come for the lobsters. When

  he dives in he is for one of us. Not like the old man we ate

  yesterday, tough to dryness with age, nor like the young men whose

  members were too hard-muscled, but tender, so tender that he will

  melt in our gullets ere our bellies receive him. When he dives in,

  we will all rush for him, and the lucky one of us will get him,

  and, gulp, he will be gone, one bite and one swallow, into the

  belly of the luckiest one of us.'

  "And Keikiwai, the Water Baby, heard the conspiracy, knowing the

  shark language; and he addressed a prayer, in the shark language,

  to the shark go
d Moku-halii, and the sharks heard and waved their

  tails to one another and winked their cat's eyes in token that they

  understood his talk. And then he said: 'I shall now dive for a

  lobster for the king. And no hurt shall befall me, because the

  shark with the shortest tail is my friend and will protect me.

  "And, so saying, he picked up a chunk of lava-rock and tossed it

  into the water, with a big splash, twenty feet to one side. The

  forty sharks rushed for the splash, while he dived, and by the time

  they discovered they had missed him, he had gone to bottom and come

  back and climbed out, within his hand a fat lobster, a wahine

  lobster, full of eggs, for the king.

  "'Ha!' said the sharks, very angry. 'There is among us a traitor.

  The titbit of a child, the morsel of sweetness, has spoken, and has

  exposed the one among us who has saved him. Let us now measure the

  lengths of our tails!

  "Which they did, in a long row, side by side, the shorter-tailed

  ones cheating and stretching to gain length on themselves, the

  longer-tailed ones cheating and stretching in order not to be out-

  cheated and out-stretched. They were very angry with the one with

  the shortest tail, and him they rushed upon from every side and

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  devoured till nothing was left of him.

  "Again they listened while they waited for the Water Baby to dive

  in. And again the Water Baby made his prayer in the shark language

  to Moku-halii, and said: 'The shark with the shortest tail is my

  friend and will protect me.' And again the Water Baby tossed in a

  chunk of lava, this time twenty feet away off to the other side.

  The sharks rushed for the splash, and in their haste ran into one

  another, and splashed with their tails till the water was all foam,

  and they could see nothing, each thinking some other was swallowing

  the titbit. And the Water Baby came up and climbed out with

  another fat lobster for the king.

  "And the thirty-nine sharks measured tails, devoting the one with

  the shortest tail, so that there were only thirty-eight sharks.

  And the Water Baby continued to do what I have said, and the sharks

  to do what I have told you, while for each shark that was eaten by

  his brothers there was another fat lobster laid on the rock for the

  king. Of course, there was much quarrelling and argument among the

  sharks when it came to measuring tails; but in the end it worked

  out in rightness and justice, for, when only two sharks were left,

  they were the two biggest of the original forty.

  "And the Water Baby again claimed the shark with the shortest tail

  was his friend, fooled the two sharks with another lava-chunk, and

  brought up another lobster. The two sharks each claimed the other

  had the shorter tail, and each fought to eat the other, and the one

  with the longer tail won--"

  "Hold, O Kohokumu!" I interrupted. "Remember that that shark had

  already--"

  "I know just what you are going to say," he snatched his recital

  back from me. "And you are right. It took him so long to eat the

  thirty-ninth shark, for inside the thirty-ninth shark were already

  the nineteen other sharks he had eaten, and inside the fortieth

  shark were already the nineteen other sharks he had eaten, and he

  did not have the appetite he had started with. But do not forget

  he was a very big shark to begin with.

  "It took him so long to eat the other shark, and the nineteen

  sharks inside the other shark, that he was still eating when

  darkness fell, and the people of Waihee went away home with all the

  lobsters for the king. And didn't they find the last shark on the

  beach next morning dead, and burst wide open with all he had

  eaten?"

  Kohokumu fetched a full stop and held my eyes with his own shrewd

  ones.

  "Hold, O Lakana!" he checked the speech that rushed to my tongue.

  "I know what next you would say. You would say that with my own

  eyes I did not see this, and therefore that I do not know what I

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  have been telling you. But I do know, and I can prove it. My

  father's father knew the grandson of the Water Baby's father's

  uncle. Also, there, on the rocky point to which I point my finger

  now, is where the Water Baby stood and dived. I have dived for

  lobsters there myself. It is a great place for lobsters. Also,

  and often, have I seen sharks there. And there, on the bottom, as

  I should know, for I have seen and counted them, are the thirty-

  nine lava-rocks thrown in by the Water Baby as I have described."

  "But--" I began.

  "Ha!" he baffled me. "Look! While we have talked the fish have

  begun again to bite."

  He pointed to three of the bamboo poles erect and devil-dancing in

  token that fish were hooked and struggling on the lines beneath.

  As he bent to his paddle, he muttered, for my benefit:

  "Of course I know. The thirty-nine lava rocks are still there.

  You can count them any day for yourself. Of course I know, and I

  know for a fact."

  GLEN ELLEN.

  October 2, 1916.

  THE TEARS OF AH KIM

  There was a great noise and racket, but no scandal, in Honolulu's

  Chinatown. Those within hearing distance merely shrugged their

  shoulders and smiled tolerantly at the disturbance as an affair of

  accustomed usualness. "What is it?" asked Chin Mo, down with a

  sharp pleurisy, of his wife, who had paused for a second at the

  open window to listen.

  "Only Ah Kim," was her reply. "His mother is beating him again."

  The fracas was taking place in the garden, behind the living rooms

  that were at the back of the store that fronted on the street with

  the proud sign above: AH KIM COMPANY, GENERAL MERCHANDISE. The

  garden was a miniature domain, twenty feet square, that somehow

  cunningly seduced the eye into a sense and seeming of illimitable

  vastness. There were forests of dwarf pines and oaks, centuries

  old yet two or three feet in height, and imported at enormous care

  and expense. A tiny bridge, a pace across, arched over a miniature

  river that flowed with rapids and cataracts from a miniature lake

  stocked with myriad-finned, orange-miracled goldfish that in

  proportion to the lake and landscape were whales. On every side

  the many windows of the several-storied shack-buildings looked

  down. In the centre of the garden, on the narrow gravelled walk

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  close beside the lake Ah Kim was noisily receiving his beating.

  No Chinese lad of tender and beatable years was Ah Kim. His was

  the store of Ah Kim Company, and his was the achievement of

  building it up through the long years from the shoestring of

  savings of a contract coolie labourer to a bank account in four

  figures and a credit that was gilt edged. An even half-century of

  summ
ers and winters had passed over his head, and, in the passing,

  fattened him comfortably and snugly. Short of stature, his full

  front was as rotund as a water-melon seed. His face was moon-

  faced. His garb was dignified and silken, and his black-silk

  skull-cap with the red button atop, now, alas! fallen on the

  ground, was the skull-cap worn by the successful and dignified

  merchants of his race.

  But his appearance, in this moment of the present, was anything but

  dignified. Dodging and ducking under a rain of blows from a bamboo

  cane, he was crouched over in a half-doubled posture. When he was

  rapped on the knuckles and elbows, with which he shielded his face

  and head, his winces were genuine and involuntary. From the many

  surrounding windows the neighbourhood looked down with placid

  enjoyment.

  And she who wielded the stick so shrewdly from long practice!

  Seventy-four years old, she looked every minute of her time. Her

  thin legs were encased in straight-lined pants of linen stiff-

  textured and shiny-black. Her scraggly grey hair was drawn

  unrelentingly and flatly back from a narrow, unrelenting forehead.

  Eyebrows she had none, having long since shed them. Her eyes, of

  pin-hole tininess, were blackest black. She was shockingly

  cadaverous. Her shrivelled forearm, exposed by the loose sleeve,

  possessed no more of muscle than several taut bowstrings stretched

  across meagre bone under yellow, parchment-like skin. Along this

  mummy arm jade bracelets shot up and down and clashed with every

  blow.

  "Ah!" she cried out, rhythmically accenting her blows in series of

  three to each shrill observation. "I forbade you to talk to Li

  Faa. To-day you stopped on the street with her. Not an hour ago.

  Half an hour by the clock you talked.--What is that?"

  "It was the thrice-accursed telephone," Ah Kim muttered, while she

  suspended the stick to catch what he said. "Mrs. Chang Lucy told

  you. I know she did. I saw her see me. I shall have the

  telephone taken out. It is of the devil."

  "It is a device of all the devils," Mrs. Tai Fu agreed, taking a

  fresh grip on the stick. "Yet shall the telephone remain. I like

  to talk with Mrs. Chang Lucy over the telephone."

  "She has the eyes of ten thousand cats," quoth Ah Kim, ducking and

  receiving the stick stinging on his knuckles. "And the tongues of

  ten thousand toads," he supplemented ere his next duck.