A Legend of Lanai  
W. M. Gibson
 
Bordering upon the land of Kealia, on the southwest coast of Lanai, where was pahonua or place of refuge, are the remains of Kaunolu, an ancient heiau, or temple. Its ruins lie within the mouth of a deep ravine, whose extending banks run out into the sea and form a bold, bluff-bound bay. On the top of the western bank there is a stone-paved platform, called the kuaha. Outside of this, and separated by a narrow alley-way, there runs a broad high wall, which quite encircles the kuaha. Other walls and structures lead down the bank, and the slope is terraced and paved down to the tide-worn stones of the shore.
 
At the beach there is a break; a great block of the bluff has been rent away by some convulsion of nature, and stands out like a lone tower, divided from the main by a gulf of the sea. Its high walls beetle from their tops, upon which neither man nor goat can climb. But you can behold on the flat summit of this islet bluff, portions of ancient work, of altars and walls, and no doubt part of the mainland temple, to which this fragment once was joined. But man can [157]visit this lone tower’s top no more, and his feet can never climb its overhanging walls.
 
Inland from the temple there are many remains of the huts of the people of the past. The stone foundations, the inclosures for swine, the round earth ovens, and other traces of a throng of people cover many acres of beach and hillside. This was a town famed as an abode of gods and a refuge for those who fled for their lives; but it drew its people mainly through the fame of its fishing-ground, which swarmed with the varied life of the Hawaiian seas.
 
To this famed fishing-ground came the great hero of Hawaii to tax the deep, when he had subdued this and the other isles. He came with his fleets of war canoes; with his faithful koas, or fighting men, with his chiefs, and priests, and women, and their trains. He had a house here. Upon the craggy bluff that forms the eastern bank of the bay there is a lonely pa, or wall, and stones of an ancient fort, overlooking the temple, town, and bay.
 
Kamehameha came to Kealia for sport rather than for worship. Who so loved to throw the maika ball, or hurl the spear, or thrust aside the many javelins flung at his naked chest, as the chief of Kohala? He rode gladly on the crest of the surf waves. He delighted to drive his canoe alone out into the storm. He fought with the monsters of the deep, as well as with men. He captured the great shark that abounds in the bay, and he would clutch in the fearful grip of his hands the deadly eel or snake of these seas, the terror of fishes and men. [158]
 
When this warrior king came to Kaunolu, the islanders thronged to the shore to pay homage to the great chief, and to lay at the feet of their sovereign, as was their wont, the products of the isle: the taro, the yam, the hala, the cocoanut, ohelo, banana, and sweet potato. They piled up a mound of food before the door of the King’s pakui, along with a clamorous multitude of fat poi-fed dogs, and of fathom-long swine.
 
Besides this tribute of the men, the workers of the land, the women filled the air with the sweet odors of their floral offerings. The maidens were twined from head to waist with leis or wreaths of the na-u, which is Lanai’s own lovely jessamine—a rare gardenia, whose sweet aroma loads the breeze, and leads you to the bush when seeking it afar off. These garlands were fastened to the plaited pili thatch of the King’s pakui; they were placed on the necks of the young warriors, who stood around the chief; and around his royal brows they twined an odorous crown of maile.
 
The Ceremony of the Hula.
 
The Ceremony of the Hula.
 
The brightest of the girlish throng who stood before the dread Lord of the Isles was Kaala, or Sweet Scented, whose fifteen suns had just burnished her sweet brown face with a soft golden gloss; and her large, round, tender eyes knew yet no wilting fires. Her neck and arms, and all of her young body not covered by the leafy pa-u, was tinted with a soft sheen like unto a rising moon. Her skin glowed with the glory of youth, and mingled its delicate odor of health with the blooms of the groves, so that the perfume of her presence received fittingly the name of Fragrance. [159]
 
In those rude days the island race was sound and clean. The supple round limbs were made bright and strong by the constant bath and the temperate breeze. They were not cumbered with clothing; they wore no long, sweating gowns, but their smooth, shining skins reflected back their sun, which gave them such a rich and dusky charm.
 
Perhaps such a race cannot long wear all our gear and live. They are best clothed with sea foam, or with the garlands of their groves. How sweetly blend the brown and green; and when young, soft, amber-tinted cheeks, glowing with the crimson tide beneath, are wreathed with the odorous evergreens of the isles, you see the poesy of our kind, and the sweet, wild grace that dwelt in the Eden Paradise.
 
The sweet Kaala stood mindless of harm, as the playful breeze rustled the long blades of the la-i (drac?na) leaves, hanging like a bundle of green swords from her waist; and as they twirled and fluttered in the air, revealed the soft, rounded form, whose charm filled the eye and heart of one who stood among the braves of the great chief—the heart of the stout young warrior Kaaialii.
 
This youth had fought in the battle of Maunalei, Lanai’s last bloody fight. With his long-reaching spear, wielded with sinewy arms, he urged the flying foe to the top of a fearful cliff, and mocking the cries of a huddled crowd of panic-scared men, drove them with thrusts and shouts till they leaped like frightened sheep into the jaws of the deep, dark chasm, and their torn corpses strewed the jagged stones below. [160]
 
Kaaialii, like many a butcher of his kind, was comely to see. With the lion’s heart, he had the lion’s tawny hue. A swart grace beamed beneath his curling brows. He had the small, firm hand to throttle or caress, and eyes full of fire for hate or love; and love’s flame now lit the face of the hero of the bloody leap, and to his great chief he said, “O King of all the isles, let this sweet flower be mine, rather than the valley thou gavest me for my domain.”
 
Said Kamehameha: “You shall plant the Lanai jessamine in the valley I gave you in Kohala. But there is another who claims our daughter, who is the stout bone-breaker, the scarred Mailou. My spearman of Maunalei can have no fear; and you shall wrestle with him; and let the one whose arms can clasp the girl after the fight carry her to his house, where one kapa shall cover the two.”
 
The poor maid, the careless gift of savage power, held up her clasped hands with a frightened gesture at the dread name of the breaker of bones; for she had heard how he had sucked the breath of many a dainty bloom like her, then crunched the wilted blossom with sinews of hate, and flung it to the sharks.
 
And the Lanai maiden loved the young chief of Hawaii. He had indeed pierced her people, but only the tender darts of his eyes had wounded her. Turning to him, she looked her savage, quick, young love, and said, “O Kaaialii, may thy grip be as sure as thy thrust. Save me from the bloody virgin-eater, and I will catch the squid and beat the kapa for thee all my days.” [161]
 
The time of contest approached. The King sat under the shade of a leafy kou, the royal tree of the olden time, which has faded away with the chiefs it once did shelter. On the smooth shell floor, covered with the hala mat, stood the bare-limbed braves, stripped to the malo, who with hot eyes of hate shot out their rage of lust and blood, and stretched out their strangling arms. They stood, beating with heavy fists their broad, glossy chests of bronze, and grinning face to face, they glowered their savage wish to kill. Then, with right foot advanced, and right arm uplifted, they pause to shout their gage of battle, and tell to each how they would maim and tear, and kill, and give each other’s flesh for food to some beastly maw.
 
And now, each drawing near to each, with arms uplifted, and outspread palms with sinewy play, like nervy claws trying to clutch or grip, they seek a chance for a deadly clinch. And swift the scarred child-strangler has sprung with his right to the young spear-man’s throat, who as quickly hooks the lunging arm within the crook of his, and with quick, sledge-like blow breaks the shoulder arm-bone.
 
With fury the baffled bone-breaker grips with the uncrippled hand; but now two stout young arms, tense with rage, soon twist and break the one unaided limb. Then with limp arms the beaten brute turns to flee; but swift hate is upon him, and clutches him by the throat; and pressing him down, the hero of Kaala holds his knee to the hapless wretch’s back, and with knee bored into the backward bended spine, he strains [162]and jerks till the jointed bones snap and break, and the dread throttler of girls and babes lies prone on the mat, a broken and bloody corpse.
 
“Good!” cried the King. “Our son has the strength of Kanekoa. Now let our daughter soothe the limbs of her lover. Let her stroke his skin, press his joints, and knead his back with the loving grip and touch of the lomilomi. We will have a great bake, with the hula and song; and when the feast is over, then shall they be one.”
 
A line of women squat down. They crone their wild refrain, praising the one who wins in strife and love. They seize in their right hand the hula gourd, clattering with pebbles inside. They whirl it aloft, they shake, they swing, they strike their palms, they thump the mat; and now with supple joints they twirl their loins, and with heave and twist, and with swing and song, the savage dance goes on.
 
The Hula Dance.
 
The Hula Dance.
 
Kaala stood up with the maiden throng, the tender, guarded gifts of kings. They twined their wreaths, they swayed, and posed their shining arms; and flapping with their hands their leafy skirts, revealed their rounded limbs. This fires the gaze of men, and the hero of the day with flaming eyes, springs and clasps his love, crying as he bears her away: “Thou shalt dance in my hut in Kohala for me alone, forever!”
 
At this, a stout yet grizzled man of the isle lifts up his voice and wails: “Kaala, my child, is gone. Who shall soothe my limbs when I return from spearing the ohua? And who shall feed me with taro and breadfruit like the chief of Olowalu, when I have no [163]daughter to give away? I must hide from the chief or I die.” And thus wailed out Opunui, the father of Kaala.
 
But a fierce hate stirred the heart of Opunui. His friend was driven over the cliff at Maunalei, and he himself had lived only by crawling at the feet of the slayer. He hid his hate, and planned to save his girl and balk the killer of his people. He said in his heart, “I will hide her in the sea, and none but the fish gods and I shall know where the ever-sounding surf surges over Kaala.”
 
Now, in the morn, when the girl with ruddy brown cheeks, and glowing with the brightening dawn of love, stood in the doorway of the lodge of her lord, and her face was sparkling with the sheen from the sun, her sire in humble guise stood forth and said, “My child, your mother at Mahana is dying. Pray you, my lord, your love, that you may see her once more before his canoe shall bear you to his great land.”
 
“Alas!” said the tender child, “since when is Kalani ill? I shall carry to her this large sweet fish speared by my lord; and when I have rubbed her aching limbs, she will be well again with the love touch of her child. Yes, my lord will let me go. Will you not, O Kaaialii; will you not let me go to give my mother a last embrace, and I shall be back again before the moon has twice spanned the bay?”
 
The hero clasped his young love with one stout twining arm, and gazing into her eyes, he with a caressing hand put back from her brow her shining hair, and thus to his heart’s life he spoke: “O my [164]sweet flower, how shall I live without thee, even for this day’s march of the sun? For thou art my very breath, and I shall pant and die like a stranded fish without thee. But no, let me not say so. Kaaialii is a chief who has fought men and sharks; and he must not speak like a girl. He too loves his mother, who looks for him in the valley of Kohala; and shall he deny thy mother, to look her last upon the sweet face and the tender limbs that she fed and reared for him? Go, my Kaala. But thy chief will sit and watch with a hungering heart, till thou come back to his arms again.”
 
And the pretty jessamine twined her arms around his neck, and laying her cheek upon his breast said, with upturned tender glances, “O my chief, who gavest me life and sweet joy; thy breath is my breath; thy eyes are my sweetest sight; thy breast is my only resting-place; and when I go away, I shall all the way look back to thee, and go slowly with a backward turned heart; but when I return to thee, I shall have wings to bear me to my lord.”
 
“Yes, my own bird,” said Kaaialii, “thou must fly, but fly swiftly in thy going as well as in thy coming; for both ways thou fliest to me. When thou art gone I shall spear the tender ohua fish, I shall bake the yam and banana, and I will fill the calabash with sweet water, to feed thee, my heart, when thou shalt come; and thou shalt feed me with thy loving eyes.
 
“Here, Opunui! take thy child. Thou gavest life to her, but now she gives life to me. Bring her back all well, ere the sun has twice risen. If she come not [165]soon, I shall die; but I should slay thee before I die; therefore, O Opunui, hasten thy going and thy coming, and bring back my life and love to me.”
 
And now the stern hero unclasped the weeping girl. His eye was calm, but his shut lips showed the work within of a strong and tender heart of love. He felt the ache of a larger woe than this short parting. He pressed the little head between his palms; he kissed the sobbing lips again and again; he gave one strong clasp, heart to heart, and then quickly strode away.
 
As Kaala tripped along the stony up-hill path, she glanced backward on her way, to get glimpses of him she loved, and she beheld her chief standing on the topmost rock of the great bluff overhanging the sea. And still as she went and looked, still there he stood; and when on the top of the ridge and about to descend into the great valley, she turned to look her last, still she saw her loving lord looking up to her.
 
The silent sire and the weeping child soon trod the round, green vale of Palawai. She heeded not now to pluck, as was her wont, the flowers in her path; but thought how she should stop a while, as she came back, to twine a wreath for her dear lord’s neck. And thus this sad young love tripped along with innocent hope by the moody Opunui’s side.
 
They passed through the groves of Kalulu and Kumoku, and then the man swerved from the path leading to Mahana and turned his face again seaward. At this the sad and silent child looked up into the face of her grim and sullen sire and said: “O father, [166]we shall not find mother on this path, but we shall lose our way and come to the sea once more.”
 
“And thy mother is by the sea, by the bay of Kaumalapau. There she gathers limpets on the rocks. She has dried a large squid for thee. She has pounded some taro and filled her calabash with poi, and would feed thee once more. She is not sick; but had I said she was well, thy lord would not have let thee go; but now thou art on the way to sleep with thy mother by the sea.”
 
The poor weary girl now trudged on with a doubting heart. She glanced sadly at her dread sire’s moody eye. Silent and sore she trod the stony path leading down to the shore, and when she came to the beach with naught in view but the rocks and sea, she said with a bursting heart, “O my father, is the shark to be my mother, and I to never see my dear chief any more?”
 
“Hear the truth,” cried Opunui. “Thy home for a time is indeed in the sea, and the shark shall be thy mate, but he shall not harm thee. Thou goest down where the sea god lives, and he shall tell thee that the accursed chief of the bloody leap shall not carry away any daughter of Lanai. When Kaaialii has sailed for Kohala then shall the chief of Olowalu come and bring thee to earth again.”
 
As the fierce sire spoke, he seized the hand of Kaala, and unheeding her sobs and cries, led her along the rugged shore to a point eastward of the bay, where the beating sea makes the rocky shore tremble beneath the feet. Here was a boiling gulf, a fret and foam of [167]the sea, a roar of waters, and a mighty jet of brine and spray from a spouting cave whose mouth lay deep beneath the battling tide.
 
See yon advancing billow! The south wind sends it surging along. It rears its combing, whitening crest, and with mighty, swift-rushing volume of angry green sea, it strikes the mouth of the cave; it drives and packs the pent-up air within, and now the tightened wind rebounds, and driving back the ramming sea, bursts forth with a roar as the huge spout of sea leaps upward to the sky, and then comes curving down in gentle silver spray.
 
The fearful child now clasped the knees of her savage sire. “Not there, O father,” she sobbed and wailed. “The sea snake (the puhi) has his home in the cave, and he will bite and tear me, and ere I die, the crawling crabs will creep over me and pick out my weeping eyes. Alas, O father, better give me to the shark, and then my cry and moan will not hurt thine ear.”
 
Opunui clasped the slender girl with one sinewy arm, and with a bound he leaped into the frothed and fretted pool below. Downward with a dolphin’s ease he moved, and with his free arm beating back the brine, moved along the ocean bed into the sea cave’s jagged jaws; and then stemming with stiffened sinew the wind-driven tide, he swam onward till he struck a sunless beach and then stood inside the cave, whose mouth is beneath the sea.
 
Here was a broad, dry space with a lofty, salt-icicled roof. The green, translucent sea, as it rolled back and [168]forth at their feet, gave to their brown faces a ghastly white glare. The scavenger crabs scrambled away over the dank and dripping stones, and the loathsome biting eel, slowly reached out its well-toothed, wide-gaping jaw to tear the tender feet that roused it from its horrid lair, where the dread sea god dwelt.
 
The poor hapless girl sank down upon this gloomy shore and cried, clinging to the kanaka’s knee: “O father, beat out my brains with this jagged stone, and do not let the eel twine around my neck, and trail with a loathsome, slimy, creeping crawl over my body before I die. Oh! the crabs will pick and tear ............