“And how do you know but what you are old Maui himself asleep and
dreaming that you are John Lakana talking with me in a canoe? And may
you not awake old Maui yourself, and scratch your sides and say that you
had a funny dream in which you dreamed you were a _haole_?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Besides, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“There is much more in dreams than we know,” he assured me with great
solemnity. “Dreams go deep, all the way down, maybe to before the
beginning. May not old Maui have only dreamed he pulled Hawaii up from
the bottom of the sea? Then would this Hawaii land be a dream, and you,
and I, and the squid there, only parts of Maui’s dream? And the lark
bird too?”
He sighed and let his head sink on his breast.
“And I worry my old head about the secrets undiscoverable,” he resumed,
“until I grow tired and want to forget, and so I drink swipes, and go
fishing, and sing old songs, and dream I am a lark bird singing in the
sky. I like that best of all, and often I dream it when I have drunk
much swipes . . . ”
In great dejection of mood he peered down into the lagoon through the
water-glass.
“There will be no more bites for a while,” he announced. “The
fish-sharks are prowling around, and we shall have to wait until they are
gone. And so that the time shall not be heavy, I will sing you the
canoe-hauling song to Lono. You remember:
“Give to me the trunk of the tree, O Lono!
Give me the tree’s main root, O Lono!
Give me the ear of the tree, O Lono!—”
“For the love of mercy, don’t sing!” I cut him short. “I’ve got a
headache, and your singing hurts. You may be in devilish fine form
to-day, but your throat is rotten. I’d rather you talked about dreams,
or told me whoppers.”
“It is too bad that you are sick, and you so young,” he conceded
cheerily. “And I shall not sing any more. I shall tell you something
you do not know and have never heard; something that is no dream and no
whopper, but is what I know to have happened. Not very long ago there
lived here, on the beach beside this very lagoon, a young boy whose name
was Keikiwai, which, as you know, means Water Baby. He was truly a water
baby. His gods were the sea and fish gods, and he was born with
knowledge of the language of fishes, which the fishes did not know until
the sharks found it out one day when they heard him talk it.
“It happened this way. The word had been brought, and the commands, by
swift runners, that the king was making a progress around the island, and
that on the next day a _luau_” (feast) “was to be served him by the
dwellers here of Waihee. It was always a hardship, when the king made a
progress, for the few dwellers in small places to fill his many stomachs
with food. For he came always with his wife and her women, with his
priests and sorcerers, his dancers and flute-players, and _hula_-singers,
and fighting men and servants, and his high chiefs with their wives, and
sorcerers, and fighting men, and servants.
“Sometimes, in small places like Waihee, the path of his journey was
marked afterward by leanness and famine. But a king must be fed, and it
is not good to anger a king. So, like warning in advance of disaster,
Waihee heard of his coming, and all food-getters of field and pond and
mountain and sea were busied with getting food for the feast. And
behold, everything was got, from the choicest of royal taro to sugar-cane
joints for the roasting, from _opihis_ to _limu_, from fowl to wild pig
and _poi_-fed puppies—everything save one thing. The fishermen failed to
get lobsters.
“Now be it known that the king’s favourite food was lobster. He esteemed
it above all _kai-kai_” (food), “and his runners had made special mention
of it. And there were no lobsters, and it is not good to anger a king in
the belly of him. Too many sharks had come inside the reef. That was
the trouble. A young girl and an old man had been eaten by them. And of
the young men who dared dive for lobsters, one was eaten, and one lost an
arm, and another lost one hand and one foot.
“But there was Keikiwai, the Water Baby, only eleven years old, but half
fish himself and talking the language of fishes. To his father the head
men came, begging him to send the Water Baby to get lobsters to fill the
king’s belly and divert his anger.
“Now this what happened was known and observed. For the fishermen, and
their women, and the taro-growers and the bird-catchers, and the head
men, and all Waihee, came down and stood back from the edge of the rock
where the Water Baby stood and looked down at the lobsters far beneath on
the bottom.
“And a shark, looking up with its cat’s eyes, observed him, and sent out
the shark-call of ‘fresh meat’ to assemble all the sharks in the lagoon.
For the sharks work thus together, which is why they are strong. And the
sharks answered the call till there were forty of them, long ones and
short ones and lean ones and round ones, forty of them by count; and they
talked to one another, saying: ‘Look at that titbit of a child, that
morsel delicious of human-flesh sweetness without the salt of the sea in
it, of which salt we have too much, savoury and good to eat, melting to
delight under our hearts as our bellies embrace it and extract from it
its sweet.’
“Much more they said, saying: ‘He has come for the lobsters. When he
dives in he is for one of us. Not like the old man we ate yesterday,
tough to dryness with age, nor like the young men whose members were too
hard-muscled, but tender, so tender that he will melt in our gullets ere
our bellies receive him. When he dives in, we will all rush for him, and
the lucky one of us will get him, and, gulp, he will be gone, one bite
and one swallow, into the belly of the luckiest one of us.’
“And Keikiwai, the Water Baby, heard the conspiracy, knowing the shark
language; and he addressed a prayer, in the shark language, to the shark
god Moku-halii, and the sharks heard and waved their tails to one another
and winked their cat’s eyes in token that they understood his talk. And
then he said: ‘I shall now dive for a lobster for the king. And no hurt
shall befall me, because the shark with the shortest tail is my friend
and will protect me.
“And, so saying, he picked up a chunk of lava-rock and tossed it into the
water, with a big splash, twenty feet to one side. The forty sharks
rushed for the splash, while he dived, and by the time they discovered
they had missed him, he had gone to bottom and come back and climbed out,
within his hand a fat lobster, a _wahine_ lobster, full of eggs, for the
king.
“‘Ha!’ said the sharks, very angry. ‘There is among us a traitor. The
titbit of a child, the morsel of sweetness, has spoken, and has exposed
the one among us who has saved him. Let us now measure the lengths of
our tails!
“Which they did, in a long row, side by side, the shorter-tailed ones
cheating and stretching to gain length on themselves, the longer-tailed
ones cheating and stretching in order not to be out-cheated and
out-stretched. They were very angry with the one with the shortest tail,
and him they rushed upon from every side and devoured till nothing was
left of him.
“Again they listened while they waited for the Water Baby to dive in.
And again the Water Baby made his prayer in the shark language to
Moku-halii, and said: ‘The shark with the shortest tail is my friend and
will protect me.’ And again the Water Baby tossed in a chunk of lava,
this time twenty feet away off to the other side. The sharks rushed for
the splash, and in their haste ran into one another, and splashed with
their tails till the water was all foam, and they could see nothing, each
thinking some other was swallowing the titbit. And the Water Baby came
up and climbed out with another fat lobster for the king.
“And the thirty-nine sharks measured tails, devouring the one with the
shortest tail, so that there were only thirty-eight sharks. And the
Water Baby continued to do what I have said, and the sharks to do what I
have told you, while for each shark that was eaten by his brothers there
was another fat lobster laid on the rock for the king. Of course, there
was much quarrelling and argument among the sharks when it came to
measuring tails; but in the end it worked out in rightness and justice,
for, when only two sharks were left, they were the two biggest of the
original forty.
“And the Water Baby again claimed the shark with the shortest tail was
his friend, fooled the two sharks with another lava-chunk, and brought up
another lobster. The two sharks each claimed the other had the shorter
tail, and each fought to eat the other, and the one with the longer tail
won—”
“Hold, O Kohokumu!” I interrupted. “Remember that that shark had
already—”
“I know just what you are going to say,” he snatched his recital back
from me. “And you are right. It took him so long to eat the
thirty-ninth shark, for inside the thirty-ninth shark were already the
nineteen other sharks he had eaten, and inside the fortieth shark were
already the nineteen other sharks he had eaten, and he did not have the
appetite he had started with. But do not forget he was a very big shark
to begin with.
“It took him so long to eat the other shark, and the nineteen sharks
inside the other shark, that he was still eating when darkness fell, and
the people of Waihee went away home with all the lobsters for the king.
And didn’t they find the last shark on the beach next morning dead, and
burst wide open with all he had eaten?”
Kohokumu fetched a full stop and held my eyes with his own shrewd ones.
“Hold, O Lakana!” he checked the speech that rushed to my tongue. “I
know what next you would say. You would say that with my own eyes I did
not see this, and therefore that I do not know what I have been telling
you. But I do know, and I can prove it. My father’s father knew the
grandson of the Water Baby’s father’s uncle. Also, there, on the rocky
point to which I point my finger now, is where the Water Baby stood and
dived. I have dived for lobsters there myself. It is a great place for
lobsters. Also, and often, have I seen sharks there. And there, on the
bottom, as I should know, for I have seen and counted them, are the
thirty-nine lava-rocks thrown in by the Water Baby as I have described.”
“But—” I began.
“Ha!” he baffled me. “Look! While we have talked the fish have begun
again to bite.”
He pointed to three of the bamboo poles erect and devil-dancing in token
that fish were hooked and struggling on the lines beneath. As he bent to
his paddle, he muttered, for my benefit:
“Of course I know. The thirty-nine lava rocks are still there. You can
count them any day for yourself. Of course I know, and I know for a
fact.”
GLEN ELLEN.
_October_ 2, 1916.