HIWA'S VISIT
A GREAT longing came upon Hiwa to see her lover once more, and to
learn what was taking place in the kingdom. The royal city was only
eight miles away, and a swim of that distance and back again was no
great feat. Neither, as she thought, would such a visit be attended
with much danger.
So one evening, leaving Aelani asleep, she armed herself with a short
spear and swam up the coast to the Waipio River. She chanced to land
close to a fisherman's hut. The night was warm, there being no breeze
from the sea, and the fisherman and his wife and their girl baby were
sleeping on a mat outside.
The fisherman was Eaeakai, whose boat Hiwa had taken. His testimony
as an eye witness to her death had turned aside Aa's wrath and saved
his life. It did not occur to Hiwa that she had wronged him in taking
his boat. Neither had he so regarded it. It simply was his fate. No
more do we think that we wrong bees when we take their honey, or
beasts when we take their skins. We look upon them as creatures quite
different from ourselves, and existing merely for our own needs and
pleasures.
Hiwa glanced at the fisherman and at the woman and child sleeping
beside him. The appearance of the latter arrested her attention. The
child was about the age and size of Aelani, and her features were
strikingly like his and very beautiful. As Hiwa looked at the mother
she saw that she bore an equally close resemblance to herself. The
family likeness was plain as day, the blood of Wakea and Papa through
forty generations. Hiwa had heard of a fisher-girl of marvellous
beauty, but had never before deigned to notice her. This, then, must
be that girl; for no other woman in all the land could be compared
with Hiwa.
"Beyond a doubt," she murmured, "this is my half-sister! Papaakahi,
The Mighty, had many loves. So had my mother; but, if this woman were
my mother's child, she could not be a fisherman's wife."
So Hiwa, believing that the fisherman's wife was what her lowly
condition indicated, a king's daughter but not a queen's, dismissed
the matter from her mind as of no consequence, and passed on to the
palace of Ii. It was not a single building, but, like the
establishments of wealthy Hawaiians even to this day, a little
village. The principal house or hall was raised on a stone embankment,
a wooden framework thatched with grass. Around it were many smaller
buildings, used for eating and sleeping purposes and storehouses and
for servants, the whole being enclosed by a stone wall. Men in all
stages of intoxication were around the palace. Sounds of drunken
revelry came from within. Shouts and snatches of song told the story.
"It is," mused Hiwa, "as Papaakahi said it would be. Ii worships only
_awa_, and Aa rules the land. One squanders the wealth of the kingdom,
and the other is grasping and cruel. The time may come, perhaps too
soon, when the chiefs will be ready to fight against them both."
On this occasion the retainers of the court were too drunk to take
note of passers-by, and they had become so habitually turbulent and
lawless that honest people avoided that part of the town after
nightfall. Hiwa, therefore, had no difficulty in making her way
undiscovered to a distant camp. When she reached it, further progress
was quite another matter, for, although peace reigned throughout the
land, a considerable body of men slept on their arms, guarded by
vigilant sentinels. But, under cover of the night, and taking
advantage of every hummock and shrub, Hiwa noiselessly crawled to the
entrance of the great grass house of the chief. She found it guarded
by a man who had often admitted her in times past--a warrior, brave,
trusty, and silent.
Emerging from the darkness, she stood before him with uplifted hand.
Instantly he dropped prone on the ground with his face in the dust.
"Laamaikahiki," she said, in low, soft, solemn tones, "I am the Spirit
of Hiwa, whom Ukanipo, the Shark God, took to himself. I have come
from the other world to bless your master. Retire twenty fathoms."
Laamaikahiki, without a word or a sign, with his face still in the
dust, wriggled backwards like a huge worm. Hiwa entered the house.
Kaanaana lay sleeping on a mat, his sling, spears, and war-club beside
him. Hiwa stood motionless for some moments, gazing upon him. Of the
two master passions of her life she herself could not have told which
was the stronger: love for the man sleeping before her eyes, or for
her child sleeping in the hollow of the mountain.
"Oh," she murmured, "how I long to feel his arms about me and his
kisses on my lips! Death with him is sweeter than life without him. He
is my life. If I make myself known to him, he will leave all and
follow me to the mountain, or muster his vassals and hurl that
drunkard from the throne. It might have been! But now it cannot be,
for my sin would bring the heavy wrath of Ku upon him. I am a thing
accursed!"
She bent over him and lightly touched his forehead with her lips. He
stirred, opened his eyes, for an instant looked wonderingly at her,
and then, with a cry of joy, sprang up to clasp her in his arms.
The self-sacrifice of love held her to her purpose. Moving backward,
she restrained him with a gesture.
"I am only Hiwa's spirit," she said. "You cannot touch me. Do not try.
Yet I love you with all my being, as I loved you when I was flesh and
blood. I am permitted to come to you this once from the other world to
bless you. May Ku's eternal blessings rest upon you, my own, my only
love!"
Then she vanished into the darkness.
The next morning Aelani awoke in his mother's arms, and his little
body was wet with her tears.