myriad of them, beautiful ones, from an ounce in weight for the
finer 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, hollowed
sections of the coconut tree, covered one end with shark-skin. The
first kaekeeke of all Hawaii Ahuna pointed out to me and told me
the tale. It was manifestly most ancient. He was afraid to touch
it for fear the age-rotted wood of it would crumble to dust, the
ragged tatters of the shark-skin head of it still attached. ‘This
is the very oldest and father of all our kaekeekes,’ Ahuna told me.
‘Kila, the son of Moikeha, brought it back from far Raiatea in the
South Pacific. And it was Kila’s own son, Kahai, who made that
same journey, and was gone ten years, and brought back with him
from Tahiti the first breadfruit trees that sprouted and grew on
Hawaiian soil.’
“And the bones and bones! The parcel-delivery array of them!
Besides the small bundles of the long bones, there were full
skeletons, tapa-wrapped, lying in one-man, and two- and three-man
canoes of precious koa wood, with curved outriggers of wiliwili
wood, and proper paddles to hand with the io-projection at the
point simulating the continuance of the handle, as if, like a
skewer, thrust through the flat length of the blade. And their war
weapons were laid away by the sides of the lifeless bones that had
wielded them–rusty old horse-pistols, derringers, pepper-boxes,
five-barrelled fantastiques, Kentucky long riffles, muskets handled
in trade by John Company and Hudson’s Bay, shark-tooth swords,
wooden stabbing-knives, arrows and spears bone-headed of the fish
and the pig and of man, and spears and arrows wooden-headed and
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69
fire-hardened.
“Ahuna put a spear in my hand, headed and pointed finely with the
long shin-bone of a man, and told me the tale of it. But first he
unwrapped the long bones, arms, and legs, of two parcels, the
bones, under the wrappings, neatly tied like so many faggots.
‘This,’ said Ahuna, exhibiting the pitiful white contents of one
parcel, ‘is Laulani. She was the wife of Akaiko, whose bones, now
placed 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 the
shin-bone of Keola, a mighty wrestler and runner of their own time
and place. And he loved Laulani, and she fled with him. But in a
forgotten battle on the sands of Kalini, Akaiko rushed the lines of
the enemy, leading the charge that was successful, and seized upon
Keola, his wife’s lover, and threw him to the ground, and sawed
through his neck to the death with a shark-tooth knife. Thus, in
the old days as always, did man combat for woman with man. And
Laulani was beautiful; that Keola should be made into a spearhead
for her! She was formed like a queen, and her body was a long bowl
of sweetness, and her fingers lomi’d’ (massaged) ‘to slimness and
smallness at her mother’s breast. For ten generations have we
remembered her beauty. Your father’s singing boys to-day sing of
her beauty in the hula that is named of her! This is Laulani, whom
you hold in your hands.’
“And, Ahuna done, I could but gaze, with imagination at the one
time sobered and fired. Old drunken Howard had lent me his
Tennyson, and I had mooned long and often over the Idyls of the
King. Here were the three, I thought–Arthur, and Launcelot, and
Guinevere. This, then, I pondered, was the end of it all, of life
and strife and striving and love, the weary spirits of these long-
gone ones to be invoked by fat old women and mangy sorcerers, the
bones of them to be esteemed of collectors and betted on horse-
races and ace-fulls or to be sold for cash and invested in sugar
stocks.
“For me it was illumination. I learned there in the burial-cave
the great lesson. And to Ahuna I said: ‘The spear headed with the
long 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 the
contemplation of it may keep my hand sober and my feet on earth
with the knowledge that few men are fortunate enough to have as
much of a remnant of themselves as will compose a spearhead when
they are three centuries dead.’
“And Ahuna bowed his head, and praised my wisdom of judgment. But
at that moment the long-rotted olona-cord broke and the pitiful
woman’s bones of Laulani shed from my clasp and clattered on the
rocky floor. One shin-bone, in some way deflected, fell under the
dark shadow of a canoe-bow, and I made up my mind that it should be
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
70
mine. So I hastened to help him in the picking up of the bones and
the tying, so that he did not notice its absence.
“‘This,’ said Ahuna, introducing me to another of my ancestors, ‘is
your great-grandfather, Mokomoku, the father of Kaaukuu. Behold
the size of his bones. He was a giant. I shall carry him, because
of the long spear of Keola that will be difficult for you to carry
away. And this is Lelemahoa, your grandmother, the mother of your
mother, that you shall carry. And day grows short, and we must
still swim up through the waters to the sun ere darkness hides the
sun from the world.’
“But Ahuna, putting out the various calabashes of light by drowning
the wicks in the whale-oil, did not observe me include the shinbone
of 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 ancient
and 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, lasting
to her death the year following, two more of her ancestors abided
about her in the jars of her twilight room. Also, she kept her
compact and worried my father into sending me to England. I took
old Howard along, and he perked up and confuted the doctors, so
that it was three years before I buried him restored to the bosom
of my family. Sometimes I think he was the most brilliant man I
have ever known. Not until my return from England did Ahuna die,
the last custodian of our alii secrets. And at his death-bed he
pledged me again never to reveal the location in that nameless
valley, and never to go back myself.
“Much else I have forgotten to mention did I see there in the cave
that one time. There were the bones of Kumi, the near demigod, son
of Tui Manua of Samoa, who, in the long before, married into my
line and heaven-boosted my genealogy. And the bones of my great-
grandmother who had slept in the four-poster presented her by Lord
Byron. And Ahuna hinted tradition that there was reason for that
presentation, as well as for the historically known lingering of
the Blonde in Olokona for so long. And I held her poor bones in my
hands–bones once fleshed with sensate beauty, informed with
sparkle and spirit, instinct with love and love-warmness of arms
around and eyes and lips together, that had begat me in the end of
the generations unborn. It was a good experience. I am modern,
’tis true. I believe in no mystery stuff of old time nor of the
kahunas. And yet, I saw in that cave things which I dare not name
to you, and which I, since old Ahuna died, alone of the living
know. I have no children. With me my long line ceases. This is
the twentieth century, and we stink of gasolene. Nevertheless
these other and nameless things shall die with me. I shall never
revisit the burial-place. Nor in all time to come will any man
gaze upon it through living eyes unless the quakes of earth rend
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
71
the mountains asunder and spew forth the secrets contained in the
hearts 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 a
sigh, tossed it into concealment in the thick lantana by the side
of the road.
“But the shin-bone of Laulani?” I queried softly.
He remained silent while a mile of pasture land fled by us and
yielded to caneland.
“I have it now,” he at last said. “And beside it is Keola, slain
ere his time and made into a spear-head for love of the woman whose