Given in the Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and
Folk-lore, Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian
Ethnology and Natural History, Vol. V, Part II, with the title Kaao no
Punia, Legend of Pu-nia.
Like many another Polynesian hero, Pu-nia had a mother whose name was
Hina. The shark’s name, Kai-ale-ale, means “Sea in great commotion.”
But the kindling of the fire inside the shark with the fire-sticks
could not have been so easy as it is made to appear. Melville, in
Typee, describes the operation of fire-making as laborious. This is how
he saw it being done:
“A straight, dry, and partly decayed stick of the hibiscus, about six
feet in length, and half as many inches in diameter, with a smaller bit
of wood not more than a foot long, and scarcely an inch wide, is as
invariably to be met with in every house in Typee as a box of lucifer
matches in the corner of the kitchen cupboard at home. The islander,
placing the larger stick obliquely against some object, with one end
elevated at an angle of forty-five degrees, mounts astride of it like
an urchin about to gallop off upon a cane, and then grasping the
smaller one firmly in both hands, he rubs its pointed end slowly up and
down the extent of a few inches on the principal stick, until at last
he makes a narrow groove in the wood, with an abrupt termination at the
point furthest from him, where all the dusty particles which the
friction creates are accumulated in a little heap.
“At first Kory-Kory goes to work quite leisurely, but gradually
quickens his pace, and waxing warm in the employment, drives the stick
furiously along the smoking channel, plying his hands to and fro with
amazing rapidity, the perspiration starting from every pore. As he
approaches the climax of his effort, he pants and gasps for breath, and
his eyes almost start from their sockets with the violence of his
exertions. This is the critical stage of the operation; all his
previous labours are in vain if he cannot sustain the rapidity of the
movement until the reluctant spark is produced. Suddenly he stops,
becomes perfectly motionless. His hands still retain their hold of the
smaller stick, which is pressed convulsively against the further end of
the channel among the fine powder there accumulated, as if he had just
pierced through and through some little viper that was wriggling and
struggling to escape from his clutches. The next moment a delicate
wreath of smoke curls spirally into the air, the heap of dusty
particles glow with fire, and Kory-Kory, almost breathless, dismounts
from his steed.”