Shin-Bones
They have gone down to the pit with their weapons of war, and theyhave laid their swords under their heads."It was a sad thing to see the old lady revert."Prince Akuli shot an apprehensive glance sideward to where, underthe shade of a kukui tree, an old wahine (Hawaiian woman) was justsettling herself to begin on some work in hand."Yes," he nodded half-sadly to me, "in her last years Hiwilani wentback to the old ways, and to the old beliefs--in secret, of course.And, BELIEVE me, she was some collector herself. You should haveseen her bones. She had them all about her bedroom, in big jars,and they constituted most all her relatives, except a half-dozen orso that Kanau beat her out of by getting to them first. The waythe pair of them used to quarrel about those bones was awe-inspiring. And it gave me the creeps, when I was a boy, to go intothat big, for-ever-twilight room of hers, and know that in this jarwas all that remained of my maternal grand-aunt, and that in thatjar was my great-grandfather, and that in all the jars were thepreserved bone-remnants of the shadowy dust of the ancestors whoseseed had come down and been incorporated in the living, breathingme. Hiwilani had gone quite native at the last, sleeping on matson the hard floor--she'd fired out of the room the great, royal,canopied four-poster that had been presented to her grandmother byLord Byron, who was the cousin of the Don Juan Byron and came herein the frigate Blonde in 1825."She went back to all native, at the last, and I can see her yet,biting a bite out of the raw fish ere she tossed them to her womento eat. And she made them finish her poi, or whatever else she didnot finish of herself. She--"But he broke off abruptly, and by the sensitive dilation of hisnostrils and by the expression of his mobile features I saw that hehad read in the air and identified the odour that offended him."Deuce take it!" he cried to me. "It stinks to heaven. And Ishall be doomed to wear it until we're rescued."There was no mistaking the object of his abhorrence. The ancientcrone was making a dearest-loved lei (wreath) of the fruit of thehala which is the screw-pine or pandanus of the South Pacific. Shewas cutting the many sections or nut-envelopes of the fruit intofluted bell-shapes preparatory to stringing them on the twisted andtough inner bark of the hau tree. It certainly smelled to heaven,but, to me, a malahini (new-comer), the smell was wine-woody andfruit-juicy and not unpleasant.Prince Akuli's limousine had broken an axle a quarter of a mileaway, and he and I had sought shelter from the sun in thisveritable bowery of a mountain home. Humble and grass-thatched wasthe house, but it stood in a treasure-garden of begonias thatsprayed their delicate blooms a score of feet above our heads, thatwere like trees, with willowy trunks of trees as thick as a man'sarm. Here we refreshed ourselves with drinking-coconuts, while acowboy rode a dozen miles to the nearest telephone and summoned amachine from town. The town itself we could see, the Lakanaiimetropolis of Olokona, a smudge of smoke on the shore-line, as welooked down across the miles of cane-fields, the billow-wreathedreef-lines, and the blue haze of ocean to where the island of Oahushimmered like a dim opal on the horizon.Maui is the Valley Isle of Hawaii, and Kauai the Garden Isle; butLakanaii, lying abreast of Oahu, is recognized in the present, andwas known of old and always, as the Jewel Isle of the group. Notthe largest, nor merely the smallest, Lakanaii is conceded by allto be the wildest, the most wildly beautiful, and, in its size, therichest of all the islands. Its sugar tonnage per acre is thehighest, its mountain beef-cattle the fattest, its rainfall themost generous without ever being disastrous. It resembles Kauai inthat it is the first-formed and therefore the oldest island, sothat it had had time sufficient to break down its lava rock intothe richest soil, and to erode the canyons between the ancientcraters until they are like Grand Canyons of the Colorado, withnumberless waterfalls plunging thousands of feet in the sheer ordissipating into veils of vapour, and evanescing in mid-air todescend softly and invisibly through a mirage of rainbows, like somuch dew or gentle shower, upon the abyss-floors.Yet Lakanaii is easy to describe. But how can one describe PrinceAkuli? To know him is to know all Lakanaii most thoroughly. Inaddition, one must know thoroughly a great deal of the rest of theworld. In the first place, Prince Akuli has no recognized norlegal right to be called "Prince." Furthermore, "Akuli" means the"squid." So that Prince Squid could scarcely be the dignifiedtitle of the straight descendant of the oldest and highest aliis(high chiefs) of Hawaii--an old and exclusive stock, wherein, inthe ancient way of the Egyptian Pharaohs, brothers and sisters hadeven wed on the throne for the reason that they could not marrybeneath rank, that in all their known world there was none ofhigher rank, and that, at every hazard, the dynasty must beperpetuated.I have heard Prince Akuli's singing historians (inherited from hisfather) chanting their interminable genealogies, by which theydemonstrated that he was the highest alii in all Hawaii. Beginningwith Wakea, who is their Adam, and with Papa, their Eve, through asmany generations as there are letters in our alphabet they tracedown to Nanakaoko, the first ancestor born in Hawaii and whose wifewas Kahihiokalani. Later, but always highest, their generationssplit from the generations of Ua, who was the founder of the twodistinct lines of the Kauai and Oahu kings.In the eleventh century A.D., by the Lakanaii historians, at thetime brothers and sisters mated because none existed to excel them,their rank received a boost of new blood of rank that was next toheaven's door. One Hoikemaha, steering by the stars and theancient traditions, arrived in a great double-canoe from Samoa. Hemarried a lesser alii of Lakanaii, and when his three sons weregrown, returned with them to Samoa to bring back his own youngestbrother. But with him he brought back Kumi, the son of Tui Manua,which latter's rank was highest in all Polynesia, and barely secondto that of the demigods and gods. So the estimable seed of Kumi,eight centuries before, had entered into the aliis of Lakanaii, andbeen passed down by them in the undeviating line to reposit inPrince Akuli.Him I first met, talking with an Oxford accent, in the officers'mess of the Black Watch in South Africa. This was just before thatfamous regiment was cut to pieces at Magersfontein. He had as muchright to be in that mess as he had to his accent, for he wasOxford-educated and held the Queen's Commission. With him, as hisguest, taking a look at the war, was Prince Cupid, so nicknamed,but the true prince of all Hawaii, including Lakanaii, whose realand legal title was Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole, and who mighthave been the living King of Hawaii Nei had it not been for thehaole (white man) Revolution and Annexation--this, despite the factthat Prince Cupid's alii genealogy was lesser to the heaven-boostedgenealogy of Prince Akuli. For Prince Akuli might have been Kingof Lakanaii, and of all Hawaii, perhaps, had not his grandfatherbeen soundly thrashed by the first and greatest of the Kamehamehas.This had occurred in the year 1810, in the booming days of thesandalwood trade, and in the same year that the King of Kauai camein, and was good, and ate out of Kamehameha's hand. Prince Akuli'sgrandfather, in that year, had received his trouncing andsubjugating because he was "old school." He had not imaged islandempire in terms of gunpowder and haole gunners. Kamehameha,farther-visioned, had annexed the service of haoles, including suchmen as Isaac Davis, mate and sole survivor of the massacred crew ofthe schooner Fair American, and John Young, captured boatswain ofthe snow Eleanor. And Isaac Davis, and John Young, and others oftheir waywardly adventurous ilk, with six-pounder brass carronadesfrom the captured Iphigenia and Fair American, had destroyed thewar canoes and shattered the morale of the King of Lakanaii's land-fighters, receiving duly in return from Kamehameha, according toagreement: Isaac Davis, six hundred mature and fat hogs; JohnYoung, five hundred of the same described pork on the hoof that wassplit.And so, out of all incests and lusts of the primitive cultures andbeast-man's gropings toward the stature of manhood, out of all redmurders, and brute battlings, and matings with the younger brothersof the demigods, world-polished, Oxford-accented, twentieth centuryto the tick of the second, comes Prince Akuli, Prince Squid, pure-veined Polynesian, a living bridge across the thousand centuries,comrade, friend, and fellow-traveller out of his wrecked seven-thousand-dollar limousine, marooned with me in a begonia paradisefourteen hundred feet above the sea, and his island metropolis ofOlokona, to tell me of his mother, who reverted in her old age toancientness of religious concept and ancestor worship, andcollected and surrounded herself with the charnel bones of thosewho had been her forerunners back in the darkness of time."King Kalakaua started this collecting fad, over on Oahu," PrinceAkuli continued. "And his queen, Kapiolani, caught the fad fromhim. They collected everything--old makaloa mats, old tapas, oldcalabashes, old double-canoes, and idols which the priests hadsaved from the general destruction in 1819. I haven't seen apearl-shell fish-hook in years, but I swear that Kalakauaaccumulated ten thousand of them, to say nothing of human jaw-bonefish-hooks, and feather cloaks, and capes and helmets, and stoneadzes, and poi-pounders of phallic design. When he and Kapiolanimade their royal progresses around the islands, their hosts had tohide away their personal relics. For to the king, in theory,belongs all property of his people; and with Kalakaua, when it cameto the old things, theory and practice were one."From him my father, Kanau, got the collecting bee in his bonnet,and Hiwilani was likewise infected. But father was modern to hisfinger-tips. He believed neither in the gods of the kahunas"(priests) "nor of the missionaries. He didn't believe in anythingexcept sugar stocks, horse-breeding, and that his grandfather hadbeen a fool in not collecting a few Isaac Davises and John Youngsand brass carronades before he went to war with Kamehameha. So hecollected curios in the pure collector's spirit; but my mother tookit seriously. That was why she went in for bones. I remember,too, she had an ugly old stone-idol she used to yammer to and crawlaround on the floor before. It's in the Deacon Museum now. I sentit there after her death, and her collection of bones to the RoyalMausoleum in Olokona."I don't know whether you remember her father was Kaaukuu. Well,he was, and he was a giant. When they built the Mausoleum, hisbones, nicely cleaned and preserved, were dug out of their hiding-place, and placed in the Mausoleum. Hiwilani had an old retainer,Ahuna. She stole the key from Kanau one night, and made Ahuna goand steal her father's bones out of the Mausoleum. I know. And hemust have been a giant. She kept him in one of her big jars. Oneday, when I was a tidy size of a lad, and curious to know ifKaaukuu was as big as tradition had him, I fished his intact lowerjaw out of the jar, and the wrappings, and tried it on. I stuck myhead right through it, and it rested around my neck and on myshoulders like a horse collar. And every tooth was in the jaw,whiter than porcelain, without a cavity, the enamel unstained andunchipped. I got the walloping of my life for that offence,although she had to call old Ahuna in to help give it to me. Butthe incident served me well. It won her confidence in me that Iwas not afraid of the bones of the dead ones, and it won for me myOxford education. As you shall see, if that car doesn't arrivefirst."Old Ahuna was one of the real old ones with the hall-mark on himand branded into him of faithful born-slave service. He knew moreabout my mother's family, and my father's, than did both of themput together. And he knew, what no living other knew, the burial-place of centuries, where were hid the bones of most of herancestors and of Kanau's. Kanau couldn't worm it out of the oldfellow, who looked upon Kanau as an apostate."Hiwilani struggled with the old codger for years. How she eversucceeded is beyond me. Of course, on the face of it, she wasfaithful to the old religion. This might have persuaded Ahuna toloosen up a little. Or she may have jolted fear into him; for sheknew a lot of the line of chatter of the old Huni sorcerers, andshe could make a noise like being on terms of utmost intimacy withUli, who is the chiefest god of sorcery of all the sorcerers. Shecould skin the ordinary kahuna lapaau" (medicine man) "when it cameto praying to Lonopuha and Koleamoku; read dreams and visions andsigns and omens and indigestions to beat the band; make thepractitioners under the medicine god, Maiola, look like thirtycents; pull off a pule hee incantation that would make them dizzy;and she claimed to a practice of kahuna hoenoho, which is modernspiritism, second to none. I have myself seen her drink the wind,throw a fit, and prophesy. The aumakuas were brothers to her whenshe slipped offerings to them across the altars of the ruinedheiaus" (temples) "with a line of prayer that was as unintelligibleto me as it was hair-raising. And as for old Ahuna, she could makehim get down on the floor and yammer and bite himself when shepulled the real mystery dope on him."Nevertheless, my private opinion is that it was the anaana stuffthat got him. She snipped off a lock of his hair one day with apair of manicure scissors. This lock of hair was what we call themaunu, meaning the bait. And she took jolly good care to let himknow she had that bit of his hair. Then she tipped it off to himthat she had buried it, and was deeply engaged each night in herofferings and incantations to Uli.""That was the regular praying-to-death?" I queried in the pause ofPrince Akuli's lighting his cigarette."Sure thing," he nodded. "And Ahuna fell for it. First he triedto locate the hiding-place of the bait of his hair. Failing that,he hired a pahiuhiu sorcerer to find it for him. But Hiwilaniqueered that game by threatening to the sorcerer to practise apoleo on him, which is the art of permanently depriving a person ofthe power of speech without otherwise injuring him."Then it was that Ahuna began to pine away and get more like acorpse every day. In desperation he appealed to Kanau. I happenedto be present. You have heard what sort of a man my father was."'Pig!' he called Ahuna. 'Swine-brains! Stinking fish! Die andbe done with it. You are a fool. It is all nonsense. There isnothing in anything. The drunken haole, Howard, can prove themissionaries wrong. Square-face gin proves Howard wrong. Thedoctors say he won't last six months. Even square-face gin lies.Life is a liar, too. And here are hard times upon us, and a slumpin sugar. Glanders has got into my brood mares. I wish I couldlie down and sleep for a hundred years, and wake up to find sugarup a hundred points.'"Father was something of a philosopher himself, with a bitter witand a trick of spitting out staccato epigrams. He clapped hishands. 'Bring me a high-ball,' he commanded; 'no, bring me twohigh-balls.' Then he turned on Ahuna. 'Go and let yourself die,old heathen, survival of darkness, blight of the Pit that you are.But don't die on these premises. I desire merriment and laughter,and the sweet tickling of music, and the beauty of youthful motion,not the croaking of sick toads and googly-eyed corpses about mestill afoot on their shaky legs. I'll be that way soon enough if Ilive long enough. And it will be my everlasting regret if I don'tlive long enough. Why in hell did I sink that last twenty thousandinto Curtis's plantation? Howard warned me the slump was coming,but I thought it was the square-face making him lie. And Curtishas blown his brains out, and his head luna has run away with hisdaughter, and the sugar chemist has got typhoid, and everything'sgoing to smash.'"He clapped his hands for his servants, and commanded: 'Bring memy singing boys. And the hula dancers--plenty of them. And sendfor old Howard. Somebody's got to pay, and I'll shorten his sixmonths of life by a month. But above all, music. Let there bemusic. It is stronger than drink, and quicker than opium.'"He with his music druggery! It was his father, the old savage,who was entertained on board a French frigate, and for the firsttime heard an orchestra. When the little concert was over, thecaptain, to find which piece he liked best, asked which piece he'dlike repeated. Well, when grandfather got done describing, whatpiece do you think it was?"I gave up, while the Prince lighted a fresh cigarette."Why, it was the first one, of course. Not the real first one, butthe tuning up that preceded it."I nodded, with eyes and face mirthful of appreciation, and PrinceAkuli, with another apprehensive glance at the old wahine and herhalf-made hala lei, returned to his tale of the bones of hisancestors."It was somewhere around this stage of the game that old Ahuna gavein to Hiwilani. He didn't exactly give in. He compromised.That's where I come in. If he would bring her the bones of hermother, and of her grandfather (who was the father of Kaaukuu, andwho by tradition was rumoured to have been even bigger than hisgiant son, she would return to Ahuna the bait of his hair she waspraying him to death with. He, on the other hand, stipulated thathe was not to reveal to her the secret burial-place of all the aliiof Lakanaii all the way back. Nevertheless, he was too old to darethe adventure alone, must be helped by some one who of necessitywould come to know the secret, and I was that one. I was thehighest alii, beside my father and mother, and they were no higherthan I."So I came upon the scene, being summoned into the twilight room toconfront those two dubious old ones who dealt with the dead. Theywere a pair--mother fat to despair of helplessness, Ahuna thin as askeleton and as fragile. Of her one had the impression that if shelay down on her back she could not roll over without the aid ofblock-and-tackle; of Ahuna one's impression was that the tooth-pickedness of him would shatter to splinters if one bumped intohim."And when they had broached the matter, there was more pilikia"(trouble). "My father's attitude stiffened my resolution. Irefused to go on the bone-snatching expedition. I said I didn'tcare a whoop for the bones of all the aliis of my family and race.You see, I had just discovered Jules Verne, loaned me by oldHoward, and was reading my head off. Bones? When there were NorthPoles, and Centres of Earths, and hairy comets to ride across spaceamong the stars! Of course I didn't want to go on any bone-snatching expedition. I said my father was able-bodied, and hecould go, splitting equally with her whatever bones he broughtback. But she said he was only a blamed collector--or words tothat effect, only stronger."'I know him,' she assured me. 'He'd bet his mother's bones on ahorse-race or an ace-full.'"I stood with fat her when it came to modern scepticism, and I toldher the whole thing was rubbish. 'Bones?' I said. 'What arebones? Even field mice, and many rats, and cockroaches have bones,though the roaches wear their bones outside their meat instead ofinside. The difference between man and other animals,' I told her,'is not bones, but brain. Why, a bullock has bigger bones than aman, and more than one fish I've eaten has more bones, while awhale beats creation when it comes to bone.'"It was frank talk, which is our Hawaiian way, as you have longsince learned. In return, equally frank, she regretted she hadn'tgiven me away as a feeding child when I was born. Next shebewailed that she had ever borne me. From that it was only a stepto anaana me. She threatened me with it, and I did the bravestthing I have ever done. Old Howard had given me a knife of manyblades, and corkscrews, and screw-drivers, and all sorts ofcontrivances, including a tiny pair of scissors. I proceeded topare my finger-nails."'There,' I said, as I put the parings into her hand. 'Just toshow you what I think of it. There's bait and to spare. Go on andanaana me if you can.'"I have said it was brave. It was. I was only fifteen, and I hadlived all my days in the thick of the mystery stuff, while myscepticism, very recently acquired, was only skin-deep. I could bea sceptic out in the open in the sunshine. But I was afraid of thedark. And in that twilight room, the bones of the dead all aboutme in the big jars, why, the old lady had me scared stiff. As wesay to-day, she had my goat. Only I was brave and didn't let on.And I put my bluff across, for my mother flung the parings into myface and burst into tears. Tears in an elderly woman weighingthree hundred and twenty pounds are scarcely impressive, and Ihardened the brassiness of my bluff."She shifted her attack, and proceeded to talk with the dead. Nay,more, she summoned them there, and, though I was all ripe to seebut couldn't, Ahuna saw the father of Kaaukuu in the corner and laydown on the floor and yammered. Just the same, although I almostsaw the old giant, I didn't quite see him."'Let him talk for himself,' I said. But Hiwilani persisted indoing the talking for him, and in laying upon me his solemninjunction that I must go with Ahuna to the burial-place and bringback the bones desired by my mother. But I argued that if the deadones could be invoked to kill living men by wasting sicknesses, andthat if the dead ones could transport themselves from their burial-crypts into the corner of her room, I couldn't see why theyshouldn't leave their bones behind them, there in her room andready to be jarred, when they said good-bye and departed for themiddle world, the over world, or the under world, or wherever theyabided when they weren't paying social calls."Whereupon mother let loose on poor old Ahuna, or let loose uponhim the ghost of Kaaukuu's father, supposed to be crouching therein the corner, who commanded Ahuna to divulge to her the burial-place. I tried to stiffen him up, telling him to let the old ghostdivulge the secret himself, than whom nobody else knew it better,seeing that he had resided there upwards of a century. But Ahunawas old school. He possessed no iota of scepticism. The moreHiwilani frightened him, the more he rolled on the floor and thelouder he yammered."But when he began to bite himself, I gave in. I felt sorry forhim; but, over and beyond that, I began to admire him. He wassterling stuff, even if he was a survival of darkness. Here, withthe fear of mystery cruelly upon him, believing Hiwilani's dopeimplicitly, he was caught between two fidelities. She was hisliving alii, his alii kapo" (sacred chiefess). "He must befaithful to her, yet more faithful must he be to all the dead andgone aliis of her line who depended solely on him that their bonesshould not be disturbed."I gave in. But I, too, imposed stipulations. Steadfastly had myfather, new school, refused to let me go to England for myeducation. That sugar was slumping was reason sufficient for him.Steadfastly had my mother, old school, refused, her heathen mindtoo dark to place any value on education, while it was shrewdenough to discern that education led to unbelief in all that wasold. I wanted to study, to study science, the arts, philosophy, tostudy everything old Howard knew, which enabled him, on the edge ofthe grave, undauntedly to sneer at superstition, and to give meJules Verne to read. He was an Oxford man before he went wild andwrong, and it was he who had set the Oxford bee buzzing in mynoddle."In the end Ahuna and I, old school and new school leaguedtogether, won out. Mother promised that she'd make father send meto England, even if she had to pester him into a prolonged drinkingthat would make his digestion go back on him. Also, Howard was toaccompany me, so that I could decently bury him in England. He wasa queer one, old Howard, an individual if there ever was one. Letme tell you a little story about him. It was when Kalakaua wasstarting on his trip around the world. You remember, whenArmstrong, and Judd, and the drunken valet of a German baronaccompanied him. Kalakaua made the proposition to Howard . . . "But here the long-apprehended calamity fell upon Prince Akuli. Theold wahine had finished her lei hala. Barefooted, with noadornment of femininity, clad in a shapeless shift of much-washedcotton, with age-withered face and labour-gnarled hands, shecringed before him and crooned a mele in his honour, and, stillcringing, put the lei around his neck. It is true the hala smelledmost freshly strong, yet was the act beautiful to me, and the oldwoman herself beautiful to me. My mind leapt into the Prince'snarrative so that to Ahuna I could not help likening her.Oh, truly, to be an alii in Hawaii, even in this second decade ofthe twentieth century, is no light thing. The alii, utterly of thenew, must be kindly and kingly to those old ones absolutely of theold. Nor did the Prince without a kingdom, his loved island longsince annexed by the United States and incorporated into aterritory along with the rest of the Hawaiian Islands--nor did thePrince betray his repugnance for the odour of the hala. He bowedhis head graciously; and his royal condescending words of pureHawaiian I knew would make the old woman's heart warm until shedied with remembrance of the wonderful occasion. The wry grimacehe stole to me would not have been made had he felt any uncertaintyof its escaping her."And so," Prince Akuli resumed, after the wahine had tottered awayin an ecstasy, "Ahuna and I departed on our grave-robbingadventure. You know the Iron-bound Coast."I nodded, knowing full well the spectacle of those lava leagues ofweather coast, truly iron-bound so far as landing-places oranchorages were concerned, great forbidding cliff-walls thousandsof feet in height, their summits wreathed in cloud and rain squall,their knees hammered by the trade-wind billows into spouting,spuming white, the air, from sea to rain-cloud, spanned by a myriadleaping waterfalls, provocative, in day or night, of countless sunand lunar rainbows. Valleys, so called, but fissures rather, slitthe cyclopean walls here and there, and led away into a lofty andmadly vertical back country, most of it inaccessible to the foot ofman and trod only by the wild goat."Precious little you know of it," Prince Akuli retorted, in replyto my nod. "You've seen it only from the decks of steamers. Thereare valleys there, inhabited valleys, out of which there is no exitby land, and perilously accessible by canoe only on the selecteddays of two months in the year. When I was twenty-eight I was overthere in one of them on a hunting trip. Bad weather, in theauspicious period, marooned us for three weeks. Then five of myparty and myself swam for it out through the surf. Three of usmade the canoes waiting for us. The other two were flung back onthe sand, each with a broken arm. Save for us, the entire partyremained there until the next year, ten months afterward. And oneof them was Wilson, of Wilson & Wall, the Honolulu sugar factors.And he was engaged to be married."I've seen a goat, shot above by a hunter above, land at my feet athousand yards underneath. BELIEVE me, that landscape seemed torain goats and rocks for ten minutes. One of my canoemen fell offthe trail between the two little valleys of Aipio and Luno. He hitfirst fifteen hundred feet beneath us, and fetched up in a ledgethree hundred feet farther down. We didn't bury him. We couldn'tget to him, and flying machines had not yet been invented. Hisbones are there now, and, barring earthquake and volcano, will bethere when the Trumps of Judgment sound."Goodness me! Only the other day, when our Promotion Committee,trying to compete with Honolulu for the tourist trade, called inthe engineers to estimate what it would cost to build a scenicdrive around the Iron-bound Coast, the lowest figures were aquarter of a million dollars a mile!"And Ahuna and I, an old man and a young boy, started for thatstern coast in a canoe paddled by old men! The youngest of them,the steersman, was over sixty, while the rest of them averagedseventy at the very least. There were eight of them, and westarted in the night-time, so that none should see us go. Eventhese old ones, trusted all their lives, knew no more than thefringe of the secret. To the fringe, only, could they take us."And the fringe was--I don't mind telling that much--the fringe wasPonuloo Valley. We got there the third afternoon following. Theold chaps weren't strong on the paddles. It was a funnyexpedition, into such wild waters, with now one and now another ofour ancient-mariner crew collapsing and even fainting. One of themactually died on the second morning out. We buried him overside.It was positively uncanny, the heathen ceremonies those grey onespulled off in burying their grey brother. And I was only fifteen,alii kapo over them by blood of heathenness and right of hereditaryheathen rule, with a penchant for Jules Verne and shortly to sailfor England for my education! So one learns. Small wonder myfather was a philosopher, in his own lifetime spanning the historyof man from human sacrifice and idol worship, through the religionsof man's upward striving, to the Medusa of rank atheism at the endof it all. Small wonder that, like old Ecclesiastes, he foundvanity in all things and surcease in sugar stocks, singing boys,and hula dancers."Prince Akuli debated with his soul for an interval."Oh, well," he sighed, "I have done some spanning of time myself."He sniffed disgustedly of the odour of the hala lei that stifledhim. "It stinks of the ancient." he vouchsafed. "I? I stink ofthe modern. My father was right. The sweetest of all is sugar upa hundred points, or four aces in a poker game. If the Big Warlasts another year, I shall clean up three-quarters of a millionover a million. If peace breaks to-morrow, with the consequentslump, I could enumerate a hundred who will lose my direct bounty,and go into the old natives' homes my father and I long sinceendowed for them."He clapped his hands, and the old wahine tottered toward him in anexcitement of haste to serve. She cringed before him, as he drewpad and pencil from his breast pocket."Each month, old woman of our old race," he addressed her, "willyou receive, by rural free delivery, a piece of written paper thatyou can exchange with any storekeeper anywhere for ten dollarsgold. This shall be so for as long as you live. Behold! I writethe record and the remembrance of it, here and now, with thispencil on this paper. And this is because you are of my race andservice, and because you have honoured me this day with your matsto sit upon and your thrice-blessed and thrice-delicious lei hala."He turned to me a weary and sceptical eye, saying:"And if I die to-morrow, not alone will the lawyers contest mydisposition of my property, but they will contest my benefactionsand my pensions accorded, and the clarity of my mind."It was the right weather of the year; but even then, with our oldweak ones at the paddles, we did not attempt the landing until wehad assembled half the population of Ponuloo Valley down on thesteep little beach. Then we counted our waves, selected the bestone, and ran in on it. Of course, the canoe was swamped and theoutrigger smashed, but the ones on shore dragged us up unharmedbeyond the wash."Ahuna gave his orders. In the night-time all must remain withintheir houses, and the dogs be tied up and have their jaws bound sothat there should be no barking. And in the night-time Ahuna and Istole out on our journey, no one knowing whether we went to theright or left or up the valley toward its head. We carried jerky,and hard poi and dried aku, and from the quantity of the food Iknew we were to be gone several days. Such a trail! A Jacob'sladder to the sky, truly, for that first pali" (precipice), "almoststraight up, was three thousand feet above the sea. And we did itin the dark!"At the top, beyond the sight of the valley we had left, we sleptuntil daylight on the hard rock in a hollow nook Ahuna knew, andthat was so small that we were squeezed. And the old fellow, forfear that I might move in the heavy restlessness of lad's sleep,lay on the outside with one arm resting across me. At daybreak, Isaw why. Between us and the lip of the cliff scarcely a yardintervened. I crawled to the lip and looked, watching the abysstake on immensity in the growing light and trembling from the fearof height that was upon me. At last I made out the sea, over halfa mile straight beneath. And we had done this thing in the dark!"Down in the next valley, which was a very tiny one, we foundevidence of the ancient population, but there were no people. Theonly way was the crazy foot-paths up and down the dizzy valleywalls from valley to valley. But lean and aged as Ahuna was, heseemed untirable. In the second valley dwelt an old leper inhiding. He did not know me, and when Ahuna told him who I was, hegrovelled at my feet, almost clasping them, and mumbled a mele ofall my line out of a lipless mouth."The next valley proved to be the valley. It was long and sonarrow that its floor had caught not sufficient space of soil togrow taro for a single person. Also, it had no beach, the streamthat threaded it leaping a pali of several hundred feet down to thesea. It was a god-forsaken place of naked, eroded lava, to whichonly rarely could the scant vegetation find root-hold. For mileswe followed up that winding fissure through the towering walls, farinto the chaos of back country that lies behind the Iron-boundCoast. How far that valley penetrated I do not know, but, from thequantity of water in the stream, I judged it far. We did not go tothe valley's head. I could see Ahuna casting glances to all thepeaks, and I knew he was taking bearings, known to him alone, fromnatural objects. When he halted at the last, it was with abruptcertainty. His bearings had crossed. He threw down the portion offood and outfit he had carried. It was the place. I looked oneither hand at the hard, implacable walls, naked of vegetation, andcould dream of no burial-place possible in such bare adamant."We ate, then stripped for work. Only did Ahuna permit me toretain my shoes. He stood beside me at the edge of a deep pool,likewise apparelled and prodigiously skinny."'You will dive down into the pool at this spot,' he said. 'Searchthe rock with your hands as you descend, and, about a fathom and ahalf down, you will find a hole. Enter it, head-first, but goingslowly, for the lava rock is sharp and may cut your head and body.'"'And then?' I queried. 'You will find the hole growing larger,'was his answer. 'When you have gone all of eight fathoms along thepassage, come up slowly, and you will find your head in the air,above water, in the dark. Wait there then for me. The water isvery cold.'"It didn't sound good to me. I was thinking, not of the cold waterand the dark, but of the bones. 'You go first,' I said. But heclaimed he could not. 'You are my alii, my prince,' he said. 'Itis impossible that I should go before you into the sacred burial-place of your kingly ancestors.'"But the prospect did not please. 'Just cut out this princestuff,' I told him. 'It isn't what it's cracked up to be. You gofirst, and I'll never tell on you.' 'Not alone the living must weplease,' he admonished, 'but, more so, the dead must we please.Nor can we lie to the dead.'"We argued it out, and for half an hour it was stalemate. Iwouldn't, and he simply couldn't. He tried to buck me up byappealing to my pride. He chanted the heroic deeds of myancestors; and, I remember especially, he sang to me of Mokomoku,my great-grandfather and the gigantic father of the giganticKaaukuu, telling how thrice in battle Mokomoku leaped among hisfoes, seizing by the neck a warrior in either hand and knockingtheir heads together until they were dead. But this was not whatdecided me. I really felt sorry for old Ahuna, he was so besidehimself for fear the expedition would come to naught. And I wascoming to a great admiration for the old fellow, not least amongthe reasons being the fact of his lying down to sleep between meand the cliff-lip."So, with true alii-authority of command, saying, 'You willimmediately follow after me,' I dived in. Everything he had saidwas correct. I found the entrance to the subterranean passage,swam carefully through it, cutting my shoulder once on the lava-sharp roof, and emerged in the darkness and air. But before Icould count thirty, he broke water beside me, rested his hand on myarm to make sure of me, and directed me to swim ahead of him forthe matter of a hundred feet or so. Then we touched bottom andclimbed out on the rocks. And still no light, and I remember I wasglad that our altitude was too high for centipedes."He had brought with him a coconut calabash, tightly stoppered, ofwhale-oil that must have been landed on Lahaina beach thirty yearsbefore. From his mouth he took a water-tight arrangement of amatchbox composed of two empty rifle-cartridges fitted snuglytogether. He lighted the wicking that floated on the oil, and Ilooked about, and knew disappointment. No burial-chamber was it,but merely a lava tube such as occurs on all the islands."He put the calabash of light into my hands and started me ahead ofhim on the way, which he assured me was long, but not too long. Itwas long, at least a mile in my sober judgment, though at the timeit seemed five miles; and it ascended sharply. When Ahuna, at thelast, stopped me, I knew we were close to our goal. He knelt onhis lean old knees on the sharp lava rock, and clasped my kneeswith his skinny arms. My hand that was free of the calabash lamphe placed on his head. He chanted to me, with his old cracked,quavering voice, the line of my descent and my essential high alii-ness. And then he said:"'Tell neither Kanau nor Hiwilani aught of what you are about tobehold. There is no sacredness in Kanau. His mind is filled withsugar and the breeding of horses. I do know that he sold a feathercloak his grandfather had worn to that English collector for eightthousand dollars, and the money he lost the next day betting on thepolo game between Maui and Oahu. Hiwilani, your mother, is filledwith sacredness. She is too much filled with sacredness. Shegrows old, and weak-headed, and she traffics over-much withsorceries.'"'No,' I made answer. 'I shall tell no one. If I did, then wouldI have to return to this place again. And I do not want ever toreturn to this place. I'll try anything once. This I shall nevertry twice.'"'It is well,' he said, and arose, falling behind so that I shouldenter first. Also, he said: 'Your mother is old. I shall bringher, as promised, the bones of her mother and of her grandfather.These should content her until she dies; and then, if I die beforeher, it is you who must see to it that all the bones in her familycollection are placed in the Royal Mausoleum.'"I have given all the Islands' museums the once-over," Prince Akulilapsed back into slang, "and I must say that the totality of thecollections cannot touch what I saw in our Lakanaii burial-cave.Remember, and with reason and history, we trace back the highestand oldest genealogy in the Islands. Everything that I had everdreamed or heard of, and much more that I had not, was there. Theplace was wonderful. Ahuna, sepulchrally muttering prayers andmeles, moved about, lighting various whale-oil lamp-calabashes.They were all there, the Hawaiian race from the beginning ofHawaiian time. Bundles of bones and bundles of bones, all wrappeddecently in tapa, until for all the world it was like the parcels-post department at a post office."And everything! Kahilis, which you may know developed out of thefly-flapper into symbols of royalty until they became larger thanhearse-plumes with handles a fathom and a half and over two fathomsin length. And such handles! Of the wood of the kauila, inlaidwith shell and ivory and bone with a cleverness that had died outamong our artificers a century before. It was a centuries-oldfamily attic. For the first time I saw things I had only heard of,such as the pahoas, fashioned of whale-teeth and suspended bybraided human hair, and worn on the breast only by the highest ofrank."There were tapes and mats of the rarest and oldest; capes and leisand helmets and cloaks, priceless all, except the too-ancient ones,of the feathers of the mamo, and of the iwi and the akakane and theo-o. I saw one of the mamo cloaks that was superior to that finestone in the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and that they value atbetween half a million and a million dollars. Goodness me, Ithought at the time, it was lucky Kanau didn't know about it."Such a mess of things! Carved gourds and calabashes, shell-scrapers, nets of olona fibre, a junk of ie-ie baskets, and fish-hooks of every bone and spoon of shell. Musical instruments of theforgotten days--ukukes and nose flutes, and kiokios which arelikewise played with one unstoppered nostril. Taboo poi bowls andfinger bowls, left-handed adzes of the canoe gods, lava-cup lamps,stone mortars and pestles and poi-pounders. And adzes again, amyriad of them, beautiful ones, from an ounce in weight for thefiner carving of idols to fifteen pounds for the felling of trees,and all with the sweetest handles I have ever beheld."There were the kaekeekes--you know, our ancient drums, hollowedsections of the coconut tree, covered one end with shark-skin. Thefirst kaekeeke of all Hawaii Ahuna pointed out to me and told methe tale. It was manifestly most ancient. He was afraid to touchit for fear the age-rotted wood of it would crumble to dust, theragged tatters of the shark-skin head of it still attached. 'Thisis the very oldest and father of all our kaekeekes,' Ahuna told me.'Kila, the son of Moikeha, brought it back from far Raiatea in theSouth Pacific. And it was Kila's own son, Kahai, who made thatsame journey, and was gone ten years, and brought back with himfrom Tahiti the first breadfruit trees that sprouted and grew onHawaiian soil.'"And the bones and bones! The parcel-delivery array of them!Besides the small bundles of the long bones, there were fullskeletons, tapa-wrapped, lying in one-man, and two- and three-mancanoes of precious koa wood, with curved outriggers of wiliwiliwood, and proper paddles to hand with the io-projection at thepoint simulating the continuance of the handle, as if, like askewer, thrust through the flat length of the blade. And their warweapons were laid away by the sides of the lifeless bones that hadwielded them--rusty old horse-pistols, derringers, pepper-boxes,five-barrelled fantastiques, Kentucky long riffles, muskets handledin trade by John Company and Hudson's Bay, shark-tooth swords,wooden stabbing-knives, arrows and spears bone-headed of the fishand the pig and of man, and spears and arrows wooden-headed andfire-hardened."Ahuna put a spear in my hand, headed and pointed finely with thelong shin-bone of a man, and told me the tale of it. But first heunwrapped the long bones, arms, and legs, of two parcels, thebones, under the wrappings, neatly tied like so many faggots.'This,' said Ahuna, exhibiting the pitiful white contents of oneparcel, 'is Laulani. She was the wife of Akaiko, whose bones, nowplaced in your hands, much larger and male-like as you observe,held up the flesh of a large man, a three-hundred pounder seven-footer, three centuries agone. And this spear-head is made of theshin-bone of Keola, a mighty wrestler and runner of their own timeand place. And he loved Laulani, and she fled with him. But in aforgotten battle on the sands of Kalini, Akaiko rushed the lines ofthe enemy, leading the charge that was successful, and seized uponKeola, his wife's lover, and threw him to the ground, and sawedthrough his neck to the death with a shark-tooth knife. Thus, inthe old days as always, did man combat for woman with man. AndLaulani was beautiful; that Keola should be made into a spearheadfor her! She was formed like a queen, and her body was a long bowlof sweetness, and her fingers lomi'd' (massaged) 'to slimness andsmallness at her mother's breast. For ten generations have weremembered her beauty. Your father's singing boys to-day sing ofher beauty in the hula that is named of her! This is Laulani, whomyou hold in your hands.'"And, Ahuna done, I could but gaze, with imagination at the onetime sobered and fired. Old drunken Howard had lent me hisTennyson, and I had mooned long and often over the Idyls of theKing. Here were the three, I thought--Arthur, and Launcelot, andGuinevere. This, then, I pondered, was the end of it all, of lifeand strife and striving and love, the weary spirits of these long-gone ones to be invoked by fat old women and mangy sorcerers, thebones of them to be esteemed of collectors and betted on horse-races and ace-fulls or to be sold for cash and invested in sugarstocks."For me it was illumination. I learned there in the burial-cavethe great lesson. And to Ahuna I said: 'The spear headed with thelong bone of Keola I shall take for my own. Never shall I sell it.I shall keep it always.'"'And for what purpose?' he demanded. And I replied: 'That thecontemplation of it may keep my hand sober and my feet on earthwith the knowledge that few men are fortunate enough to have asmuch of a remnant of themselves as will compose a spearhead whenthey are three centuries dead.'"And Ahuna bowed his head, and praised my wisdom of judgment. Butat that moment the long-rotted olona-cord broke and the pitifulwoman's bones of Laulani shed from my clasp and clattered on therocky floor. One shin-bone, in some way deflected, fell under thedark shadow of a canoe-bow, and I made up my mind that it should bemine. So I hastened to help him in the picking up of the bones andthe tying, so that he did not notice its absence."'This,' said Ahuna, introducing me to another of my ancestors, 'isyour great-grandfather, Mokomoku, the father of Kaaukuu. Beholdthe size of his bones. He was a giant. I shall carry him, becauseof the long spear of Keola that will be difficult for you to carryaway. And this is Lelemahoa, your grandmother, the mother of yourmother, that you shall carry. And day grows short, and we muststill swim up through the waters to the sun ere darkness hides thesun from the world.'"But Ahuna, putting out the various calabashes of light by drowningthe wicks in the whale-oil, did not observe me include the shinboneof Laulani with the bones of my grandmother."The honk of the automobile, sent up from Olokona to rescue us,broke off the Prince's narrative. We said good-bye to the ancientand fresh-pensioned wahine, and departed. A half-mile on our way,Prince Akuli resumed."So Ahuna and I returned to Hiwilani, and to her happiness, lastingto her death the year following, two more of her ancestors abidedabout her in the jars of her twilight room. Also, she kept hercompact and worried my father into sending me to England. I tookold Howard along, and he perked up and confuted the doctors, sothat it was three years before I buried him restored to the bosomof my family. Sometimes I think he was the most brilliant man Ihave ever known. Not until my return from England did Ahuna die,the last custodian of our alii secrets. And at his death-bed hepledged me again never to reveal the location in that namelessvalley, and never to go back myself."Much else I have forgotten to mention did I see there in the cavethat one time. There were the bones of Kumi, the near demigod, sonof Tui Manua of Samoa, who, in the long before, married into myline and heaven-boosted my genealogy. And the bones of my great-grandmother who had slept in the four-poster presented her by LordByron. And Ahuna hinted tradition that there was reason for thatpresentation, as well as for the historically known lingering ofthe Blonde in Olokona for so long. And I held her poor bones in myhands--bones once fleshed with sensate beauty, informed withsparkle and spirit, instinct with love and love-warmness of armsaround and eyes and lips together, that had begat me in the end ofthe generations unborn. It was a good experience. I am modern,'tis true. I believe in no mystery stuff of old time nor of thekahunas. And yet, I saw in that cave things which I dare not nameto you, and which I, since old Ahuna died, alone of the livingknow. I have no children. With me my long line ceases. This isthe twentieth century, and we stink of gasolene. Neverthelessthese other and nameless things shall die with me. I shall neverrevisit the burial-place. Nor in all time to come will any mangaze upon it through living eyes unless the quakes of earth rendthe mountains asunder and spew forth the secrets contained in thehearts of the mountains."Prince Akuli ceased from speech. With welcome relief on his face,he removed the lei hala from his neck, and, with a sniff and asigh, tossed it into concealment in the thick lantana by the sideof the road."But the shin-bone of Laulani?" I queried softly.He remained silent while a mile of pasture land fled by us andyielded to caneland."I have it now," he at last said. "And beside it is Keola, slainere his time and made into a spear-head for love of the woman whoseshin-bone abides near to him. To them, those poor pathetic bones,I owe more than to aught else. I became possessed of them in theperiod of my culminating adolescence. I know they changed theentire course of my life and trend of my mind. They gave to me amodesty and a humility in the world, from which my father's fortunehas ever failed to seduce me."And often, when woman was nigh to winning to the empery of my mindover me, I sought Laulani's shin-bone. And often, when lustymanhood stung me into feeling over-proud and lusty, I consulted thespearhead remnant of Keola, one-time swift runner, and mightywrestler and lover, and thief of the wife of a king. Thecontemplation of them has ever been of profound aid to me, and youmight well say that I have founded my religion or practice ofliving upon them."WAIKIKI, HONOLULU, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.July 16, 1916.
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