THE RESCUE OF THE BOAT
THE Hawaiian Islands, as all the world knows, are entirely of volcanic
origin. The soil, whether red or black, that produces a hundred tons
of sugar-cane and fourteen tons of sugar to the acre, is lava
pulverized by the suns and rains of thousands of years. The coffee
lands are lava, rotten, honey-combed, porous, to a degree still
unpulverized, but far on the way to becoming so. And the recent flows
show what every part of every island has been--first, an overflowing
sea of boiling rock; then, when the rock-currents froze, weird,
fantastic, utter desolation. In the mighty crater of _Haleakala_ (The
House of the Sun) are rock-billows as they stiffened unknown ages
ago, rock-billows five hundred feet high. And smaller volcanoes, once
active, now extinct, are almost numberless.
Hiwa's refuge was the crater of one of these small, extinct volcanoes.
At some time a lake of boiling rock, perhaps a mile long and
three-quarters of a mile wide and a thousand feet deep, forcing a
subterranean exit to the sea, had disappeared, leaving a huge _puka_,
a hole in the mountain, some two thousand feet deep. As the centuries
came and went the surface rock gradually became soil of marvellous
fertility. Birds, flying across, dropped seeds of vegetables, fruits,
shrubs, and trees. The place became a wilderness of luxuriant
vegetation. In moist, eternal summer food for a hundred mouths ripened
every day in the year. Nor was Hiwa denied her accustomed food from
the sea, as well as from the land. The _makai_ or sea entrance to the
passage was some three or four fathoms below the ebb and flow of the
tide, but after a few rods its roof rose abruptly to a height of
several hundred feet, and the passage itself broadened into a large
cavern, its bottom being a salt-water pool swarming with fish. And
the mountain rivulet, after its wild leap of two thousand feet, lazily
crawled along the bottom of the crater till it reached the pool.
So Hiwa and Aelani were safe from hunger and thirst. Nature provided a
varied and abundant diet. They had no need of clothes, for the days
were not hot nor the nights cold. They had no enemies to fear. No
other human being knew of their refuge or dreamed of their existence.
There were no wild beasts to attack them, no poisonous serpents, no
snakes of any kind, no reptiles or insects that could seriously injure
or annoy them. In that age even mosquitoes were unknown.
But Hiwa did not look to a safe and easy existence. She had devoted
her life to a great purpose. She had become more than a woman, more
than a mother. Her son was Aelani, The Pledge from Heaven. The rainbow
had covered him at his birth, and Ku had answered her irrevocable vow
with thunder from the mountains. Separated from her lover, exiled from
the human race, consecrated to death on the altar of Ku, yet still
_moi wahine_, believing herself goddess-born, and as far above mere
mortals as we think ourselves above the brutes, her sole remaining
object in life was to care for her child, to teach him the
accomplishments, duties and prerogatives of a _moi_, to prepare the
way for his return to his people, and then send him forth to battle
for his throne.
Her first task was to secure the fisherman's boat.
It is said that a native woman on Kahlooawe kept appointments with her
lover on Lanai, swimming to meet him one night and returning the next,
the round trip being nearly six miles. Such stories are accepted
without hesitation by people familiar with a race which still spends
much of its time in the sea, and was practically amphibious until
civilization changed its habits.
Although in swimming and diving Hiwa had proved herself a match for
Kaanaana, the champion athlete of the nation, she knew she was
undertaking a task dangerous even for her, if not impossible. Yet she
felt that the boat was worth risking everything.
At break of the day following the birth of her child, having nursed
him and tenderly laid him on a soft bed of ferns, in the shade of a
big _koa_ tree, she swam forth, armed with a sharp stick to protect
herself from sharks. Sharks, however, were a matter of small concern;
the danger lay in the fierce waves and terrible cliff.
She crossed the pool, dived through the _makai_ entrance, and struck
boldly out to reconnoitre. The boat, as she anticipated, had been
left, a thing accursed, to drift where it would. She found it,
together with the paddles, a couple of miles to leaward, wedged
between two rocks. It was uninjured, but dangerously near frequented
fishing-grounds, and there was no time to lose. After an hour of hard
work she got it loose and paddled swiftly to windward. It was
necessary to load it with small rocks, to make it nearer the specific
gravity of water, so that it could be floated or sunk at will; but no
stones could be had for half a mile on either side of the entrance to
the crater. The bare, perpendicular cliff, rising from deep water,
made it impossible to get them at a nearer point, and, when she had
gotten them, the weight and unwieldy bulk of her prize made progress
exceedingly slow and difficult. She struggled on for hours.
"My child," she muttered, "will need this boat before he can be _moi_;
and _moi_ he shall be, for what the Ruler of the Gods promises never
fails!"
A huge shark attacked her. As he turned to bite she jabbed the stick
into his eye, and he disappeared, leaving blood behind. It was a
moment of extreme peril to her undertaking, for the incident, trifling
as it was, came near causing her to lose the ballast from the boat.
At length she neared the entrance to the crater. The supreme test of
fortune, courage, skill, and endurance, was at hand, for the waves
pounded against the cliff with tremendous power, and the boat had to
be sunk some four fathoms and steered through a narrow passage of
jagged rocks, where the water sucked back and forth with frightful
velocity.
"It is impossible for a mortal," Hiwa repeated to herself, "but I am
daughter of the gods--and it must be done!"
For some time she lay quietly on her back, just outside the
surf-line, recovering her strength and watching for her opportunity.
When it came she sank to a depth of about twenty-five feet, taking the
boat with her. Then the wave struck her and bore her towards the cliff
with resistless power. She had to keep the boat right side up or the
ballast would be lost. She had to guide it to the entrance, straight
as a spear to a warrior's heart, or it would be dashed to pieces. She
had to make the entrance herself or be hurled against the rock,
mangled out of human shape. The passage was small, and certain death
awaited her a single yard above or below or to the right or to the
left.
Strength, skill, and fortune favored her, or, as she would have said,
the will of almighty Ku. After two minutes of life and death struggle
she entered the passage with her prize, escaping destruction by a
hair's-breadth.
Then the wave receded, the waters pent up within poured back, and Hiwa
felt herself being irresistibly sucked to the open sea. With the
quickness of thought she took a turn of the rope around a projecting
rock, and thus hung on until the out-going current had nearly spent
its force.
But already she had been four minutes under water. The strain of
intense action, the excitement of extreme peril, and the torture of
long-suspended respiration passed away. The horrible, sickening green
and white of the mad flood in which she was perishing became
cultivated lowlands, rich fields, beautiful meadows, and waving
forests before her eyes, and the wild surge and roar seemed the loved
voice of Kaanaana, in whose arms she was falling asleep.
"This," she said to herself, longingly, "is the peace the gods send to
their children!" Then the thought returned to her, "If I die the child
will die also!"
Even as Death seized her, her unconquerable spirit flashed forth, and
she tore herself from his grasp. Abandoning the boat for the moment,
she made her way through the passage to the surface of the pool.
As her lungs filled with air, the sweet delirium of a water death
vanished, and her whole body was racked with pain. But it was no time
to heed that, and, diving again, she caught the incoming flood and
saved the boat. Then, staggering to the tree where her baby lay half
famished, she gave it her breast and fainted.
Sleep followed the swoon, the long, deep sleep of utter exhaustion,
and then, after many hours of death-like unconsciousness, came dreams.
She dreamed that Kaanaana, lying beside her, with his arms twined
around her, told her, between hot kisses, that Ii and Aa were dead,
and that he, being of the next noblest blood, could now marry her.
As she uttered a cry of rapture, the dream changed. She saw her child
and her lover dead at her feet, and her fierce uncle stood before her
with a bloody spear in his hand.
The swiftly succeeding events of the past two days came back to her in
visions more horrible than the reality: her sin against Ku, the doom
hanging over her, the flight, the pursuit, the escape, the maternity,
the irrevocable vow, and the rescue of the boat--all these facts,
colored and intensified by the ghastly fancies that come to us only in
dreams.
She awoke with a shiver. Her head throbbed. Every bone in her body
ached. Every nerve was pain. Yet, for the moment, superstitious terror
and the reaction of a noble but over-taxed spirit were far harder to
bear.
Baby fingers and a plaintive wail of hunger aroused her, and, when the
little _keike_ was again fed and sleeping, she arose and went to the
boat, a few steps away, to satisfy her bewildered senses that the
day's work was not a dream.
It rested upon the beach of smooth, hard, white sand, the gift of the
coral insect, a rare one, too, on the rock-bound, windward coast of
Hawaii. Tiny waves murmured on the shore as softly as a mother's
lullaby. The thunder of the ocean was muffled by a wall of eternal
rock, and the mad rush and swirl of waters in the passage sounded but
faintly from the furthermost recess of the cavern. Save for these
distant sounds and the occasional splash of a fish, the silence of
death reigned. All around were black walls, two thousand feet high,
and overhead shone the moon and the stars.
The beauty and grandeur of the solitude appealed strongly to Hiwa,
child of an impressionable and poetic race, and restored her to her
wonted frame of mind.
"Eternal Ku," she cried, falling on her knees, "Ruler of Gods, from
whom I am descended, and to whom I shall return, I have rescued this
boat through thy help. In it my child shall learn to do such deeds as
I have done this day. In it, when he is grown, he shall go to meet the
chiefs who will follow him to victory. I thank thee, Ku, and, when the
time comes, I will pay thee with my blood according to my vow, knowing
that my son is Aelani, The Pledge from Heaven, and that he shall yet
be _moi_, mightiest of his line!"