V
KEALA
The man-eating mu was in the street.
This accounted for the silence in the village. No one was in sight when the two chiefs, Kakaua and Kapahala, met.
“Ha, Kakaua, hearest thou the news? Kahekili is dead!”
“Auwe! dark the day of Maui! There will be pickings for crows, now the eagle is gone! Methinks the ‘Lonely One’ in Kohala will soon be looking this way again.”
“Ay, said not Kahekili to him: ‘When the black kapa covers me, then shalt thou be the maika-stone sweeping from Hawaii to Niihau’?”
“What say Kaeo and Kalanikapule?”
“Nay, I know not. When I left the royal enclosure they were wailing and knocking out their teeth, and between whiles they discussed the disposal of Kahekili’s bones.”
“Ah, Kalani had best grind them to powder and mix them with poi for the eating of the chiefs. They will need all the strength of Kahekili’s heart to stand up against the lord of Halawa.”
“Yea,” said a newcomer, “and methinks, Kakaua, you need to eat his liver, for I hear the man-eating mu is in the street, seeking some victim to please the gods and the dead chief therewith. The mu, who is, you may know, none other than Ahi, the priest, has a special love for you, Kakaua! Is it not so? Aloha! I go a-fishing.”
Kakaua turned white under his dusky skin, and apparently concluded to go fishing, too, for when an hour later the priest Ahi came to make a call of honor—having destined Kakaua for the sacrifice which was to appease the manes of the dead king—the intended victim was not to be found, nor was his canoe.
This looked bad, for the surf was thundering upon the reef as though the shark god himself had come to attend the obsequies of Kahekili, and Laamaomao in his train—a big leak in his calabash, from whence poured forth angry gusts of wind along the shore.
Meanwhile Ahi, acting the part of that unpopular functionary, the mu-ai-kanaka, was parading the empty streets with horrible yells and contortions of the body. In one hand he held a club with which to fell his victim from behind, in the other a hook with which to drag the body to the heiau. He was very angry, for he had calculated by this time to have had the hook in the flesh of Kakaua, against whom he bore a special grudge.
The history, as is so often the case, concerned a maiden.
Sweet Keala! ill was it for thy peace that thou wast beautiful as the lehua which is wooed by the olokele in the morning sun, and ill was it for Ahi and Kakaua that they, the one or the other, agreed not to give thee up and seek another maiden, whereof there were many in the Eight Islands!
Ahi was a priest and cruel, and Keala loved him not, loved neither himself nor his vocation; but Kakaua she loved because he was a warrior, straight as a palm-tree and smiling as the dawn. This was not pleasant knowledge to Ahi, and he had loved the idea of personating the man-eating mu, because he might thereby rid himself of his rival, and, Kakaua away—why, surely Keala would love him.
And now Kakaua was away—if not consumed upon the altar of the gods, assuredly eaten by the sharks outside the reef, for the surf which boomed upon the coral rocks had cruel white teeth which must have devoured any canoe out that night. Ahi protested to Keala that, beyond all doubt, Kakaua had gone down to the realm of Milu to eat lizards and butterflies and recline under ghostly trees—nevermore to revisit the upper air. But, somehow, such is the obstinacy of womankind, Keala loved Ahi none the more, and Kakaua none the less. Moreover, she told the priest to his face she would rather be the bride of the sharks than share his loathsome couch.
In his heart, however, Ahi was by no means so sure of the death of Kakaua, and oftentimes at night he would build a fireplace on the hearth of his hut, plant kapa-sticks at the corners and make a fire by rubbing the firestick, aulima, on a twig of akia and endeavor to send out his soul through the smoke, to discover the whereabouts of the man whom he feared absent even more than present.
But his visions for many nights were vague—rolling seas, surf-beaten shores, groves of palms, slopes of lava, concourses of men, troops preparing for battle, but no Kakaua. Each night his soul came back to his body fruitlessly wearied.
His disappointment he revenged upon the girl whom he hoped to win. Day by day he persecuted her with his advances, and day by day she repelled him with the bitterest scorn. All the power of the gods he denounced against her faithful obstinacy, but Keala refused to believe that the akua were hostile to human constancy, and bore the revilings of the priest in patience.
But it was hard to live in the Hawaii of olden time the enemy of the priests. The high chief Hua had ventured to oppose them, and of him it was said in proverbs: “Rattling are the bones of Hua in the sun.” Is it, then, to be wondered at that, week by week, the situation of Keala became more perilous? Till one day, after Ahi had been most violent in his protestations of love, and Keala most bitter in her repulse, the struggle ceased with the slaughter of the maiden—on a charge, supported by false witnesses, of having broken the kapu and eaten of the forbidden food. Like a meek lamb, and amid the tears of the people, Keala was slain before the altar of the heiau, but with her dying voice she appealed to the only goddess whose power she knew—Pele, the mistress of the great volcano whose lava-floods ravaged the coasts of Hawaii. Pele was a fickle deity, she knew, but surely she would avenge the wrongs of her sex. So Keala died, faithful to Kakaua. Yet Ahi was not happy. The people hated him, and his own heart was not at peace.
More zealous than ever in his priestly duties, he made daily offerings to propitiate the volcano goddess, for he feared the prayer of the dying maiden, and as the rumor of his subornation grew he feared even more the living arm of Kakaua, to be assured of whose death he would have given half his wealth. Again and again he projected his spirit into space, to search for his former rival, and each time he grew certain that Kakaua was alive and not dead.
But one night, no sooner had he made his fire, prepared and drunk his awa, chanted his fire-prayer and called upon the terrible name of Uli, than he felt his soul go out through the smoke, like an invisible bird, over the sand plains and over the sea, till he came to a dark mountain mass rising far above the clouds. Here he once more felt himself touch the ground and able to look about him. Down below through the driving mists he could see the gray shore-line and the white reef. The locality seemed familiar to him, though he recalled not its name. Up above was the mountain sparsely covered with ohelo and with clouds of sulphurous smoke rolling from its summit. Now he suspected his whereabouts, and when he glanced a second time along the road he was certain. The green water below was the bay of Hilo, the mountain was the terrible Kilauea, where in Halemaumau, the house of everlasting fire, the goddess Pele was wont to ride the red surges with her sisters and tilt with lances of flaming lava. The road was the mountain-path from Waiakea to Kapapala, and up the road, as the spirit of Ahi gazed at the well-known landmarks, a strangely familiar figure was making its way. A foretaste of malicious joy thrilled the disembodied spirit and he hurriedly gained the path which the toiling wayfarer must take. Right in the middle of the road he made the magic sign known only to the kahunas, uttered the imprecation of Uli, and then, although conscious that he was only a ghost, and invisible, withdrew to a cave near by to watch the working of his wizardry.
Scarcely had he reached his place of concealment when he felt a strange trembling of the earth, and a moment later, gazing out, he beheld a sight which made him, spirit though he was, shiver like a leaf. The traveler had almost reached the spellbound square when from the top of the mountain there appeared the head of a tide of lava like a river of molten lead, and on the lurid crest, as though riding upon the surf-board, was the dreaded goddess of the crater. The tide of flame was making its way straight along the channel of the road, and Ahi saw with relief it would sweep by him and leave him untouched. And when the traveler lifted his face in terror toward the oncoming death, Ahi was happy at last, for the face was indeed the face of Kakaua. The spell was working. His old enemy was doomed, and by the very power to whom Keala had made her supplication.
But Ahi’s joy was short-lived and gave way to convulsive rage when he looked again. For the terror had fled from Kakaua’s face and in its stead was joy, and the priest following the eyes of the doomed man looked upon the countenance of Pele, and lo! it was Pele no longer, but Keala. And the man stretched out his arms in ecstasy for the embrace of the goddess. Yes, Pele had, after all, hearkened to Keala’s prayer.
Darkness came over the frustrate ghost, and presently from the smoke of his own hearth Ahi’s spirit went out unbidden and stood in the halls of the underworld, the abode of Milu. A great paradise stretched out before the portals of the gloomy prison-house. There were waters fresher and palms greener than those of Waipio, and down the mossy rocks trickled the sparkling drops which made the stream, as though the tears of lovers shed on earth were here distilling into the river of the water of life. Delicious perfumes and the song of innumerable birds filled the air.
But all this gave no pleasure to the soul of Ahi, who made fruitless efforts not to see, when before him glided the happy shades of Kakaua and Keala in joyous converse, and he cursed Uli and Kiiaka and all his gods when they looked upon him and said:
“Thanks, Ahi, through thee we are alive, for we love, and thou, alas! art dead!”
Ahi awoke and the ashes upon his hearth were dead and cold.
As for Ahi himself, his hair was white and his limbs palsied. He knew that the words of Kakaua and Keala were true, and that the gods had written down his name as dead. His heart within his breast was like stone, and his life was gone from him like smoke. He lived thus many years, but he gave no more offerings to Pele, for he said: “Verily, the fires of Pele turn to sunshine, and the spells of the kahuna are vain before such love as that of Kakaua and Keala.”