TRAINING A WARRIOR
IT was well for Hiwa and Aelani that a generous soil and a soft
climate gave them food and warmth. The separation from her lover, the
hardships of the escape, the lacerations inflicted by sharp lava and
thorny jungles, the ordeal of motherhood, the rescuing of the boat,
the grief and suffering, the bodily exhaustion and mental strain,
concentrated in forty-eight hours, which Hiwa had undergone, would
have killed any ordinary woman. And Hiwa, of iron constitution as she
was, escaped a lingering death from fever, fatigue, and wounds almost
as narrowly as a sudden one from violence. For many days she lay
tossing on her bed of ferns, sore from head to foot, bruised and
strained and torn, aching in all her bones, parched with thirst, at
times wildly delirious. Yet, in her lucid moments, she managed to
nurse her babe, and to pick wild fruits sufficient to keep herself
from absolute starvation. For her child's sake she fought hard for
life and won. Health and strength returned to her.
Then began an existence much like Robinson Crusoe's on his desert
island, but without clothes, tools, or weapons. It was unlike Crusoe's
also, in that it was cheered by mother-love, and inspired by a great
purpose.
Although Hiwa had been served from infancy by chiefs and chiefesses,
she now did a slave's work with willing hands. She gathered grasses
and made a hut--ample shelter from the rains. She plaited _tapa_ and
wrapped the royal _mamo_ in it, and covered and sealed it with a
coating of gums, and over all with a coating of coral sand, so that
moths could not get at it or bees bore it or mice gnaw it, and she
layed it away in a secret place. She also plaited _tapa_ mats for beds
and coverlets, and _tapa_ garments for herself.
Among the first things she did, she chose a hiding-place in the
cavern for the boat, and plaited a great quantity of matting, and
collected a great quantity of gums, and covered the boat and sealed it
up, as she had sealed up the _mamo_, that it might be perfectly
preserved until Aelani should have need of it. The sealing of the boat
was the work of three months.
Fire was a prime necessity. She had great difficulty in getting it,
although she was acquainted with the only method known to her people,
and had seen the thing done many times. Rapidly and with all her
strength she rubbed a pointed stick in a groove, made in another stick
of the _hau_ tree, until at last the fine combustible powder in the
end of the groove ignited. Then she fanned it to a flame, feeding it
with dry leaves and little pieces of wood. During all her stay in the
crater she never once allowed it to go out.
She made fish-hooks from shells, filing them down with a sharp stone,
and braided lines and nets from the fibre of the _olona_. A few
minutes' work each morning supplied her with fishes for the day.
Sometimes she cooked them in _ti_ leaves, but more frequently ate them
raw, as the most refined people in the Hawaiian Islands do to this
day--people of pure white as well as native blood. Some varieties of
fish are considered great delicacies raw. The _malihini_ (newcomer)
marvels to see ladies and gentlemen who would grace any society in
Europe or America eating fish raw; but he eats oysters raw.
Fish and _poi_ are the Hawaiian staff of life. _Poi_ is made from
_taro_, one of the most digestible and nutritious of vegetables.
Fortunately for the exiles, _taro_ grew abundantly along the swampy
borders of the stream. Hiwa baked it under ground, on hot rocks, and
mashed it with a stone, and kneaded and pounded it until it became a
soft dough, and mixed it with water and left it to ferment. Then it
was _poi_, which little Aelani learned to eat almost as soon as his
mother's milk. In that barbarous age, as now, making _poi_ was
considered too severe work for women, even for female slaves, and no
chief had condescended to it; yet the goddess-queen bent her back to
the task, meanwhile chanting to her child ancient _meles_ that
commemorated the glories of his ancestors for forty generations.
They were by no means confined to fish and _poi_. Baked bread-fruit,
pounded up and mixed with milk of cocoanuts and juice of sugar-cane
and berries, made a luscious dish closely approaching a civilized
pudding. Any quantity of fruit was to be had for the picking, and Hiwa
often succeeded in snaring wild geese, rich and fat from their diet of
berries, and ducks that visited the pool.
Before Aelani was six months old he added to his diet of mother's milk
and _poi_ large yellow _ohias_ and delicious berries, the _ohelo_, the
_poha_, and the _akala_, sweetened with juice of sugar-cane. At the
end of his first year he toddled down to the beach and swallowed the
tiny fishes his mother gave him, their tails wiggling as they
disappeared. At the end of his third year he swam like a fish himself,
and felt as much at home in the water as out of it. And so, never
seeing a human form or hearing a human voice save his mother's and his
own, he grew to be a strong, supple, active boy, of brave spirit and
of thoughtful, inquiring mind.
In time there was a work-shop under the shade of the great _koa_ tree,
and tools--shells of all sizes and shapes, sharp stones that served
for knives, and rough stones that served for saws and files--and coral
sand for polishing. Sticks and pieces of wood, heavy and hard like
iron, were selected with anxious care, and were cut and fashioned with
infinite labor. Hiwa worked patiently with the tools Nature gave her
week after week, and at length that task was finished--the complete
arms of a warrior of sizes adapted to a boy--a sling woven from his
mother's hair, long spears, _pololu_, short spears, _ihe_, a war-club,
_newa_, and a feather helmet, but not of the _mamo_, the _oo_, or the
_iiwi_, for these were unattainable. There were also blunted darts,
and circular, highly-polished disks of stone, swelling with a slight
convexity from the edge to the centre, such as warriors used in
athletic games.
Then a training, already begun, was patiently continued month after
month and year after year. For two hours or more each day mother and
son bowled the disks and fought sham battles. The teacher was
intelligent and exacting. The pupil was apt. He was scarcely more than
half grown when he could bring down a flying bird with his sling, and,
while running at full speed, could hurl spear after spear at a
hair's-breadth and not miss. He could catch spears faster than they
could be thrown at him; he could parry them; he could avoid them,
twisting his body like a flash of lightning. He could hurl the disks
farther and straighter, run faster, leap higher, and stay under water
longer than Hiwa, although in training him she had equally trained
herself. She had been familiar with such things from childhood, and
knew that in these warlike feats her boy already excelled all men
except Kaanaana. He was also immensely strong for his years, and gave
promise of gigantic stature.
He fought his first battle when he was eleven. He was sitting, as he
had been taught to do, on a rock at the bottom of the pool spearing
fish, when his mother dived down and hastily beckoned him to the
surface.
"It is a shark," she said as soon as their heads were above water. "I
am going to kill him."
A man-eating monster eighteen feet long was swimming leisurely about,
carrying terror to smaller fishes that had thus far found the pool a
safe refuge from sharks, and had accordingly congregated in large
numbers. It was the first fish larger than an _ulua_ that Aelani had
ever seen.
"Let me kill him!" he eagerly cried, catching hold of the stick,
sharpened at both ends, which Hiwa held in her hands.
For a moment, as it seemed to Hiwa, her heart stopped beating. The boy
was a mere child, and, if he should become frightened and lose his
wits at the critical instant, he would surely be bitten in twain. But
there was no sign of fear in his face. His eyes shone, and his pulses
throbbed with the joy of coming battle. Why should not he do it? He
was a fish himself almost, with human intelligence. He knew the trick
perfectly, for in the training, in which nothing a warrior should know
was forgotten, he had been exercised in it many times, his mother
personating the shark. Even baseborn men faced sharks without fear,
and Aelani, though but a child, was _Aelani_, The Pledge from Heaven.
"He is born to great deeds," reflected Hiwa, "and must learn to do
them. And there is no danger, for only the God of Sharks can swim
before a child of Wakea and Papa."
Nevertheless, she armed herself with a spear and kept near him.
The boy swam quietly out to within a few fathoms of the shark, and
then lay upon the water, almost motionless. The great fish, thinking
he had an easy prey, approached slowly and turned to bite. As he did
so a small hand, quick as lightning, thrust the stick between his
jaws, and they closed over it, burying one sharp end in the roof of
the mouth and the other through the great tongue into the lower jaw.
The next instant, with the supple swiftness of an _ulua_, the child
dived and glided away. His work was finished. He had only to keep
beyond reach of the mighty tail threshing the water in death agony.
The teeth were laid carefully aside for the war-club of man's estate,
and the bones were preserved for fish-hooks and other domestic uses.
Soon, however, there was a glut of sharks' teeth and bones, for the
flesh, being cast into the pool, attracted other sharks, and these,
slaughtered in turn, lured still others to a cannibal repast and a
sudden demise. The pool swarmed with sharks, and furnished Aelani
great sport. Of course, other fish became less plentiful. Yet there
were enough.