"Perhaps it is you that are a dream," I laughed. "And that I, and
sky, and sea, and the iron-hard land, are dreams, all dreams."
"I have often thought that," he assured me soberly. "It may well
be so. Last night I dreamed I was a lark bird, a beautiful singing
lark of the sky like the larks on the upland pastures of Haleakala.
And I flew up, up, toward the sun, singing, singing, as old
Kohokumu never sang. I tell you now that I dreamed I was a lark
bird singing in the sky. But may not I, the real I, be the lark
bird? And may not the telling of it be the dream that I, the lark
bird, am dreaming now? Who are you to tell me ay or no? Dare you
tell me I am not a lark bird asleep and dreaming that I am old
Kohokumu?"
I shrugged my shoulders, and he continued triumphantly:
"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!
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
77
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.
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
78
"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 go
d 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
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
79
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, devoting 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
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
80
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.
THE TEARS OF AH KIM
There was a great noise and racket, but no scandal, in Honolulu's
shoulders and smiled tolerantly at the disturbance as an affair of
accustomed usualness. "What is it?" asked Chin Mo, down with a
sharp pleurisy, of his wife, who had paused for a second at the
open window to listen.
"Only Ah Kim," was her reply. "His mother is beating him again."
The fracas was taking place in the garden, behind the living rooms
that were at the back of the store that fronted on the street with
the proud sign above: AH KIM COMPANY, GENERAL MERCHANDISE. The
garden was a miniature domain, twenty feet square, that somehow
cunningly seduced the eye into a sense and seeming of illimitable
vastness. There were forests of dwarf pines and oaks, centuries
old yet two or three feet in height, and imported at enormous care
and expense. A tiny bridge, a pace across, arched over a miniature
river that flowed with rapids and cataracts from a miniature lake
stocked with myriad-finned, orange-miracled goldfish that in
proportion to the lake and landscape were whales. On every side
the many windows of the several-storied shack-buildings looked
down. In the centre of the garden, on the narrow gravelled walk
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
Get any book for free on: www.Abika.com
81
close beside the lake Ah Kim was noisily receiving his beating.
No Chinese lad of tender and beatable years was Ah Kim. His was
the store of Ah Kim Company, and his was the achievement of
building it up through the long years from the shoestring of
savings of a contract coolie labourer to a bank account in four
figures and a credit that was gilt edged. An even half-century of
summ
ers and winters had passed over his head, and, in the passing,
fattened him comfortably and snugly. Short of stature, his full
front was as rotund as a water-melon seed. His face was moon-
faced. His garb was dignified and silken, and his black-silk
skull-cap with the red button atop, now, alas! fallen on the
ground, was the skull-cap worn by the successful and dignified
merchants of his race.
But his appearance, in this moment of the present, was anything but
dignified. Dodging and ducking under a rain of blows from a bamboo
cane, he was crouched over in a half-doubled posture. When he was
rapped on the knuckles and elbows, with which he shielded his face
and head, his winces were genuine and involuntary. From the many
surrounding windows the neighbourhood looked down with placid
enjoyment.
And she who wielded the stick so shrewdly from long practice!
Seventy-four years old, she looked every minute of her time. Her
thin legs were encased in straight-lined pants of linen stiff-
textured and shiny-black. Her scraggly grey hair was drawn
unrelentingly and flatly back from a narrow, unrelenting forehead.
Eyebrows she had none, having long since shed them. Her eyes, of
pin-hole tininess, were blackest black. She was shockingly
cadaverous. Her shrivelled forearm, exposed by the loose sleeve,
possessed no more of muscle than several taut bowstrings stretched
across meagre bone under yellow, parchment-like skin. Along this
mummy arm jade bracelets shot up and down and clashed with every
blow.
"Ah!" she cried out, rhythmically accenting her blows in series of
three to each shrill observation. "I forbade you to talk to Li
Faa. To-day you stopped on the street with her. Not an hour ago.
Half an hour by the clock you talked.--What is that?"
"It was the thrice-accursed telephone," Ah Kim muttered, while she
suspended the stick to catch what he said. "Mrs. Chang Lucy told
you. I know she did. I saw her see me. I shall have the
telephone taken out. It is of the devil."
"It is a device of all the devils," Mrs. Tai Fu agreed, taking a
fresh grip on the stick. "Yet shall the telephone remain. I like
to talk with Mrs. Chang Lucy over the telephone."
"She has the eyes of ten thousand cats," quoth Ah Kim, ducking and
receiving the stick stinging on his knuckles. "And the tongues of
ten thousand toads," he supplemented ere his next duck.