There are fish-hooks and fish-hooks, but the most wonderful fish-hook
that any one ever heard of was the fish-hook owned by Ku-ula. It was a
fish-hook of pearl-shell; and every time Ku-ula went fishing he took a
canoe, not five fathoms or eight fathoms in length, but ten fathoms,
and when he fished with that hook (Ka-hu-oi was the name it had) the
canoe would be filled up with the catch.
And it was the finest of fish, the aku fish, that would rise to that
hook. He would let it down into the water, and the aku would throw
themselves into the canoe. Ku-ula was rich because of all the fine fish
he could catch with his pearl hook. It had been given to him by a bird
that was called Ka-manu-wai, and this bird would sit on the rail of the
canoe that Ku-ula went fishing in and eat some of the fish that Ku-ula
caught.
One day when Ku-ula went fishing outside of Mamala the King of that
place went fishing there too. The King caught few fish, and none of
them were fine ones. He looked, and he saw Ku-ula fishing, and he saw
that the aku fish were jumping in hundreds around the hook that the
fisherman let down. His attendants told him of the pearl hook that was
called Ka-hu-oi, and the King made up his mind to have this hook. He
sent for Ku-ula, and he made him give up the hook that the bird
Ka-manu-wai had given him.
After that Ku-ula caught no more aku fish; the bird Ka-manu-wai, not
getting the food it liked, flew away; its eyes were closed with hunger
where it roosted, and the place where that bird roosted is called
Kau-maka-pili, “Roosting with Closed Eyes,” to this day. And Ku-ula got
poorer and poorer, and he and his family got more and more hungry from
that day.
And so it came about that when his child Ai-ai was born they had no
food for him. They let him float down the stream, putting him in just
above the place where the bird Ka-manu-wai roosted. The child floated
down; a rock in the stream held him, and there little Ai-ai stayed in
the shallow water. That very day the King’s daughter, who was then a
young girl, was bathing in the stream with her attendants. She found
little Ai-ai, and she took him to the King’s house; there Ai-ai grew
up, and he was tended by the King’s daughter while he was a child.
When he grew up he was a strong and handsome youth. The King’s daughter
who had saved him came to love him; she would have him marry her, and
at last he and she got married.
It happened that one day after they were married his wife was sick, and
she asked Ai-ai to get her some fish. He took a rod, and he went
fishing along the shore. He caught a few fish, and he brought them home
to her. After a while she was sick again, and she had a longing for
fish again. And this time she wanted the aku, the fine fish from the
depth of the sea.
He told her then that he could not fish for aku unless he had a canoe
and a fish-hook of pearl. When she heard him say that, she remembered
that her father had a pearl fish-hook. So she went to the King, her
father. When she came before him, he said, “What is it you want, my
daughter?” She said, “A canoe for my husband, and a pearl fish-hook.”
He told her that her husband might take a canoe out of his canoe-shed,
and then he said to her, “I have a pearl fish-hook, and I will give it
to you for him.”
So he gave a pearl fish-hook to his daughter, and she hurried home with
it. Now Ai-ai, since he had grown up, had known his father and had
heard how the King had taken away the hook Ka-hu-oi from him. So when
he saw the pearl fish-hook in his wife’s hands he was overjoyed; he
took it from her, and he got a canoe in the King’s shed, and he went
out to fish in the sea.
A bird came down and watched the shining fish-hook that he held. It
rested on the rail of the canoe as he paddled out to sea. It watched
him lower the hook. Its eyes were half closed, but now it opened them
wide and looked down after the shining hook. This was the bird
Ka-manu-wai that had given the hook to his father, Ai-ai knew; now the
bird was going to eat plenty of the fine aku.
But no aku came on the hook, and no aku dashed up on the canoe on
seeing the shining thing in the water. The bird closed its eyes again.
It gave a croak and then flew away.
Ai-ai came back to his wife without any aku for her. Again she was
sick, and she begged Ai-ai again to get her the aku fish. “It may be,”
he said, “that the King has another pearl hook. Go to him once more and
ask him for one. Tell him that in the calabash in which he keeps the
fishing utensils that he used long ago there may be another pearl
fish-hook.”
So again she went before the King. “I have come for a pearl fish-hook
so that my husband may go out and catch me the aku fish that I long
for.” “I gave the pearl fish-hook that I had.” “In the calabash in
which you keep the fishing utensils that you used long ago there may be
another pearl fish-hook.”
The King ordered that this calabash be brought to him. He searched
amongst all the utensils that were in it, and at last he found the
pearl fish-hook that he had taken. He had left it there and had
forgotten it, for he had gone fishing only once after he had taken it
from Ku-ula.
And now he gave the hook Ka-hu-oi to his daughter. She hurried home,
and she put the pearl hook into the hands of her husband Ai-ai. He went
straight down to the beach and took out the canoe and went fishing in
the place where his father used to go. As he went the bird Ka-manu-wai
flew down and lighted on the rail of the canoe. It opened wide its eyes
to watch him let down the shining hook.
When he came to Mamala the aku began to jump to the hook. They threw
themselves up and into the canoe. They filled it up—even that
ten-fathom canoe was deep with them, and Ai-ai was hardly strong enough
to paddle it back. The bird Ka-manu-wai ate of the fish, and as it ate
the gleam came back into its plumage, and it was a wide-eyed,
strong-winged bird once more.
It took the pearl fish-hook and flew away with it. But every day it
would come back with the hook when Ai-ai took out his canoe. The bird
guarded the hook and would never let it go into a stranger’s hands
again. Sometimes it would bring Ka-hu-oi to Ku-ula, Ai-ai’s father; for
the old man took to going out in his canoe again, and he would fish for
aku outside of Mamala.