them, his anger terrify them, his command compel them to certain
death; yet, on the other hand, not one of them would have dreamed
of addressing him otherwise than intimately by his first name,
which name, "Hardman," was transmuted by their tongues into Kanaka
Oolea.
At a nod from him, the semicircle seated itself on the manienie
grass, and with further deprecatory smiles waited his pleasure.
"What do you want?" demanded, in Hawaiian, with a brusqueness and
sternness they knew were put on.
They smiled more broadly, and deliciously squirmed their broad
shoulders and great torsos with the appeasingness of so many
wriggling puppies. Hardman Pool singled out one of them.
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25
"Well, Iliiopoi, what do YOU want?"
"Ten dollars, Kanaka Oolea."
"Ten dollars!" Pool cried, in apparent shock at mention of so vast
a sum. "Does it mean you are going to take a second wife?
Remember the missionary teaching. One wife at a time, Iliiopoi;
one wife at a time. For he who entertains a plurality of wives
will surely go to hell."
Giggles and flashings of laughing eyes from all greeted the joke.
"No, Kanaka Oolea," came the reply. "The devil knows I am hard put
to get kow-kow for one wife and her several relations."
"Kow-kow?" Pool repeated the Chinese-introduced word for food which
the Hawaiians had come to substitute for their own paina. "Didn't
you boys get kow-kow here this noon?"
"Yes, Kanaka Oolea," volunteered an old, withered native who had
just joined the group from the direction of the house. "All of
them had kow-kow in the kitchen, and plenty of it. They ate like
lost horses brought down from the lava."
"And what do you want, Kumuhana?" Pool diverted to the old one, at
the same time motioning to the little maid to flap flies from the
other side of him.
"Twelve dollars," said Kumuhana. "I want to buy a Jackass and a
second-hand saddle and bridle. I am growing too old for my legs to
carry me in walking."
"You wait," his haole lord commanded. "I will talk with you about
the matter, and about other things of importance, when I am
finished with the rest and they are gone."
The withered old one nodded and proceeded to light his pipe.
"The kow-kow in the kitchen was good," Iliiopoi resumed, licking
his lips. "The poi was one-finger, the pig fat, the salmon-belly
unstinking, the fish of great freshness and plenty, though the
opihis" (tiny, rock-clinging shell-fish) "had been salted and
thereby made tough. Never should the opihis be salted. Often have
I told you, Kanaka Oolea, that opihis should never be salted. I am
full of good kow-kow. My belly is heavy with it. Yet is my heart
not light of it because there is no kow-kow in my own house, where
is my wife, who is the aunt of your fourth son's second wife, and
where is my baby daughter, and my wife's old mother, and my wife's
old mother's feeding child that is a cripple, and my wife's sister
who lives likewise with us along with her three children, the
father being dead of a wicked dropsy--"
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26
"Will five dollars save all of you from funerals for a day or
several?" Pool testily cut the tale short.
"Yes, Kanaka Oolea, and as well it will buy my wife a new comb and
some tobacco for myself."
From a gold-sack drawn from the hip-pocket of his dungarees,
Hardman Pool drew the gold piece and tossed it accurately into the
waiting hand.
To a bachelor who wanted six dollars for new leggings, tobacco, and
spurs, three dollars were given; the same to another who needed a
hat; and to a third, who modestly asked for two dollars, four were
given with a flowery-worded compliment anent his prowess in roping
a recent wild bull from the mountains. They knew, as a rule, that
he cut their requisitions in half, therefore they doubled the size
of their requisitions. And Hardman Pool knew they doubled, and
smiled to himself. It was his way, and, further, it was a very
good way with his multitudinous relatives, and did not reduce his
stature in their esteem.
"And you, Ahuhu?" he demanded of one whose name meant "poison-
wood."
"And the price of a pair of dungarees," Ahuhu concluded his list of
needs. "I have ridden much and hard after your cattle, Kanaka
Oolea, and where my dungarees have pressed against the seat of the
saddle there is no seat to my dungarees. It is not well that it be
said that a Kanaka Oolea cowboy, who is also a cousin of Kanaka
Oolea's wife's half-sister, should be shamed to be seen out of the
saddle save that he walks backward from all that behold him."
"The price of a dozen pairs of dungarees be thine, Ahuhu," Hardman
Pool beamed, tossing to him the necessary sum. "I am proud that my
family shares my pride. Afterward, Ahuhu, out of the dozen
dungarees you will give me one, else shall I be compelled to walk
backward, my own and only dungarees being in like manner well worn
and shameful."
And in laughter of love at their haole chief's final sally, all the
sweet-child-minded and physically gorgeous company of them departed
to their waiting horses, save the old withered one, Kumuhana, who
had been bidden to wait.
For a full five minutes they sat in silence. Then Hardman Pool
ordered the little maid to fetch a tumbler of gin and milk, which,
when she brought it, he nodded her to hand to Kumuhana. The glass
did not leave his lips until it was empty, whereon he gave a great
audible out-breath of "A-a-ah," and smacked his lips.
"Much awa have I drunk in my time," he said reflectively. "Yet is
the awa but a common man's drink, while the haole liquor is a drink
for chiefs. The awa has not the liquor's hot willingness, its spur
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27
in the ribs of feeling, its biting alive of oneself that is very
pleasant since it is pleasant to be alive."
Hardman Pool smiled, nodded agreement, and old Kumuhana continued.
"There is a warmingness to it. It warms the belly and the soul.
It warms the heart. Even the soul and the heart grow cold when one
is old."
"You ARE old," Pool conceded. "Almost as old as I."
Kumuhana shook his head and murmured. "Were I no older than you I
would be as young as you."
"I am seventy-one," said Pool.
"I do not know ages that way," was the reply. "What happened when
you were born?"
"Let me see," Pool calculated. "This is 1880. Subtract seventy-
one, and it leaves nine. I was born in 1809, which is the year
Keliimakai died, which is the year the Scotchman, Archibald
Campbell, lived in Honolulu."
"Then am I truly older than you, Kanaka Oolea. I remember the
Scotchman well, for I was playing among the grass houses of
Honolulu at the time, and already riding a surf-board in the
wahine" (woman) "surf at Waikiki. I can take you now to the spot
where was the Scotchman's grass house. The Seaman's Mission stands
now on the very ground. Yet do I know when I was born. Often my
grandmother and my mother told me of it. I was born when Madame
Pele" (the Fire Goddess or Volcano Goddess) "became angry with the
people of Paiea because they sacrificed no fish to her from their
fish-pool, and she sent down a flow of lava from Huulalai and
filled up their pond. For ever was the fish-pond of Paiea filled
up. That was when I was born."
"That was in 1801, when James Boyd was building ships for
Kamehameha at Hilo," Pool cast back through the calendar; "which
makes you seventy-nine, or eight years older than I. You are very
old."
"Yes, Kanaka Oolea," muttered Kumuhana, pathetically attempting to
swell his shrunken chest with pride.
"And you are very wise."
"Yes, Kanaka Oolea."
"And you know many of the secret things that are known only to old
men."
"Yes, Kanaka Oolea."
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28
"And then you know--" Hardman Pool broke off, the more effectively
to impress and hypnotize the other ancient with the set stare of
his pale-washed blue eyes. "They say the bones of Kahekili were
taken from their hiding-place and lie to-day in the Royal
Mausoleum. I have heard it whispered that you alone of all living
men truly know."
"I know," was the proud answer. "I alone know."
"Well, do they lie there? Yes or no?"
"Kahekili was an alii" (high chief). "It is from this straight
line that your wife Kalama came. She is an alii." The old
retainer paused and pursed his lean lips in meditation. "I belong
to her, as all my people before me belonged to her people before
her. She only can command the great secrets of me. She is wise,
too wise ever to command me to speak this secret. To you, O Kanaka
Oolea, I do not answer yes, I do not answer no. This is a secret
of the aliis that even the aliis do not know."
"Very good, Kumuhana," Hardman Pool commanded. "Yet do you forget
that I am an alii, and that what my good Kalama does not dare ask,
I command to ask. I can send for her, now, and tell her to command
your answer. But such would be a foolishness unless you prove
yourself doubly foolish. Tell me the secret, and she will never
know. A woman's lips must pour out whatever flows in through her
ears, being so made. I am a man, and man is differently made. As
you well know, my lips suck tight on secrets as a squid sucks to
the salty rock. If you will not tell me alone, then will you tell
Kalama and me together, and her lips will talk, her lips will talk,
so that the latest malahini will shortly know what, otherwise, you
and I alone will know."
Long time Kumuhana sat on in silence, debating the argument and
finding no way to evade the fact-logic of it.
"Great is your haole wisdom," he conceded at last.
"Yes? or no?" Hardman Pool drove home the point of his steel.
Kumuhana looked about him first, then slowly let his eyes come to
rest on the fly-flapping maid.
"Go," Pool commanded her. "And come not back without you hear a
clapping of my hands."
Hardman Pool spoke no further, even after the flapper had
disappeared into the house; yet his face adamantly looked: "Yes or
no?"
Again Kumuhana looked carefully about him, and up into the monkey-
pod boughs as if to apprehend a lurking listener. His lips were
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very dry. With his tongue he moistened them repeatedly. Twice he
essayed to speak, but was inarticulately husky. And finally, with
bowed head, he whispered, so low and solemnly that Hardman Pool
bent his own head to hear: "No."
Pool clapped his hands, and the little maid ran out of the house to
him in tremulous, fluttery haste.
"Bring a milk and gin for old Kumuhana, here," Pool commanded; and,
to Kumuhana: "Now tell me the whole story."
"Wait," was the answer. "Wait till the little wahine has come and
gone."
And when the maid was gone, and the gin and milk had travelled the
way predestined of gin and milk when mixed together, Hardman Pool
waited without further urge for the story. Kumuhana pressed his
hand to his chest and coughed hollowly at intervals, bidding for
encouragement; but in the end, of himself, spoke out.
"It was a terrible thing in the old days when a great alii died.
Kahekili was a great alii. He might have been king had he lived.
Who can tell? I was a young man, not yet married. You know,
Kanaka Oolea, when Kahekili died, and you can tell me how old I
was. He died when Governor Boki ran the Blonde Hotel here in
Honolulu. You have heard?"
"I was still on windward Hawaii," Pool answered. "But I have
heard. Boki made a distillery, and leased Manoa lands to grow
sugar for it, and Kaahumanu, who was regent, cancelled the lease,
rooted out the cane, and planted potatoes. And Boki was angry, and
whaleship deserters and five brass six-pounders, out at Waikiki--"
"That was the very time Kahekili died," Kumuhana broke in eagerly.
"You are very wise. You know many things of the old days better
than we old kanakas."
"It was 1829," Pool continued complacently. "You were twenty-eight
years old, and I was twenty, just coming ashore in the open boat
after the burning of the Black Prince."
"I was twenty-eight," Kumuhana resumed. "It sounds right. I
remember well Boki's brass guns at Waikiki. Kahekili died, too, at
the time, at Waikiki. The people to this day believe his bones
were taken to the Hale o Keawe" (mausoleum) "at Honaunau, in Kona--
"
"And long afterward were brought to the Royal Mausoleum here in
Honolulu," Pool supplemented.
"Also, Kanaka Oolea, there are some who believe to this day that
Queen Alice has them stored with the rest of her ancestral bones in
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the big jars in her taboo room. All are wrong. I know. The
sacred bones of Kahekili are gone and for ever gone. They rest
nowhere. They have ceased to be. And many kona winds have
whitened the surf at Waikiki since the last man looked upon the
last of Kahekili. I alone remain alive of those men. I am the
last man, and I was not glad to be at the finish.
"For see! I was a young man, and my heart was white-hot lava for
Malia, who was in Kahekili's household. So was Anapuni's heart
white-hot for her, though the colour of his heart was black, as you
shall see. We were at a drinking that night--Anapuni and I--the
night that Kahekili died. Anapuni and I were only
commoners, as
were all of us kanakas and wahines who were at the drinking with
the common sailors and whaleship men from before the mast. We were
drinking on the mats by the beach at Waikiki, close to the old
heiau" (temple) "that is not far from what is now the Wilders'
beach place. I learned then and for ever what quantities of drink
haole sailormen can stand. As for us kanakas, our heads were hot
and light and rattly as dry gourds with the whisky and the rum.
"It was past midnight, I remember well, when I saw Malia, whom
never had I seen at a drinking, come across the wet-hard sand of
the beach. My brain burned like red cinders of hell as I looked
upon Anapuni look upon her, he being nearest to her by being across
from me in the drinking circle. Oh, I know it was whisky and rum
and youth that made the heat of me; but there, in that moment, the
mad mind of me resolved, if she spoke to him and yielded to dance
with him first, that I would put both my hands around his throat
and throw him down and under the wahine surf there beside us, and
drown and choke out his life and the obstacle of him that stood
between me and her. For know, that she had never decided between
us, and it was because of him that she was not already and long
since mine.
"She was a grand young woman with a body generous as that of a
chiefess and more wonderful, as she came upon us, across the wet
sand, in the shimmer of the moonlight. Even the haole sailormen
made pause of silence, and with open mouths stared upon her. Her
walk! I have heard you talk, O Kanaka Oolea, of the woman Helen
who caused the war of Troy. I say of Malia that more men would
have stormed the walls of hell for her than went against that old-
time city of which it is your custom to talk over much and long
when you have drunk too little milk and too much gin.
"Her walk! In the moonlight there, the soft glow-fire of the
jelly-fishes in the surf like the kerosene-lamp footlights I have
seen in the new haole theatre! It was not the walk of a girl, but
a woman. She did not flutter forward like rippling wavelets on a
reef-sheltered, placid beach. There was that in her manner of walk
that was big and queenlike, like the motion of the forces of
nature, like the rhythmic flow of lava down the slopes of Kau to
the sea, like the movement of the huge orderly trade-wind seas,
like the rise and fall of the four great tides of the year that may