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
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
31
be like music in the eternal ear of God, being too slow of
occurrence in time to make a tune for ordinary quick-pulsing,
brief-living, swift-dying man.
“Anapuni was nearest. But she looked at me. Have you ever heard a
call, Kanaka Oolea, that is without sound yet is louder than the
conches of God? So called she to me across that circle of the
drinking. I half arose, for I was not yet full drunken; but
Anapuni’s arm caught her and drew her, and I sank back on my elbow
and watched and raged. He was for making her sit beside him, and I
waited. Did she sit, and, next, dance with him, I knew that ere
morning Anapuni would be a dead man, choked and drowned by me in
the shallow surf.
“Strange, is it not, Kanaka Oolea, all this heat called ‘love’?
Yet it is not strange. It must be so in the time of one’s youth,
else would mankind not go on.”
“That is why the desire of woman must be greater than the desire of
life,” Pool concurred. “Else would there be neither men nor
women.”
“Yes,” said Kumuhana. “But it is many a year now since the last of
such heat has gone out of me. I remember it as one remembers an
old sunrise–a thing that was. And so one grows old, and cold, and
drinks gin, not for madness, but for warmth. And the milk is very
nourishing.
“But Malia did not sit beside him. I remember her eyes were wild,
her hair down and flying, as she bent over him and whispered in his
ear. And her hair covered him about and hid him as she whispered,
and the sight of it pounded my heart against my ribs and dizzied my
head till scarcely could I half-see. And I willed myself with all
the will of me that if, in short minutes, she did not come over to
me, I would go across the circle and get her.
“It was one of the things never to be. You remember Chief
Konukalani? Himself he strode up to the circle. His face was
black with anger. He gripped Malia, not by the arm, but by the
hair, and dragged her away behind him and was gone. Of that, even
now, can I understand not the half. I, who was for slaying Anapuni
because of her, raised neither hand nor voice of protest when
Konukalani dragged her away by the hair–nor did Anapuni. Of
course, we were common men, and he was a chief. That I know. But
why should two common men, mad with desire of woman, with desire of
woman stronger in them than desire of life, let any one chief, even
the highest in the land, drag the woman away by the hair? Desiring
her more than life, why should the two men fear to slay then and
immediately the one chief? Here is something stronger than life,
stronger than woman, but what is it? and why?”
“I will answer you,” said Hardman Pool. “It is so because most men
are fools, and therefore must be taken care of by the few men who
On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales
32
are wise. Such is the secret of chiefship. In all the world are
chiefs over men. In all the world that has been have there ever
been chiefs, who must say to the many fool men: ‘Do this; do not
do that. Work, and work as we tell you or your bellies will remain
empty and you will perish. Obey the laws we set you or you will be
beasts and without place in the world. You would not have been,
save for the chiefs before you who ordered and regulated for your
fathers. No seed of you will come after you, except that we order
and regulate for you now. You must be peace-abiding, and decent,
and blow your noses. You must be early to bed of nights, and up
early in the morning to work if you would heave beds to sleep in
and not roost in trees like the silly fowls. This is the season
for the yam-planting and you must plant now. We say now, to-day,
and not picnicking and hulaing to-day and yam-planting to-morrow or
some other day of the many careless days. You must not kill one
another, and you must leave your neighbours’ wives alone. All this
is life for you, because you think but one day at a time, while we,
your chiefs, think for you all days and for days ahead.'”
“Like a cloud on the mountain-top that comes down and wraps about
you and that you dimly see is a cloud, so is your wisdom to me,
Kanaka Oolea,” Kumuhana murmured. “Yet is it sad that I should be
born a common man and live all my days a common man.”
“That is because you were of yourself common,” Hardman Pool assured
him. “When a man is born common, and is by nature uncommon, he
rises up and overthrows the chiefs and makes himself chief over the
chiefs. Why do you not run my ranch, with its many thousands of
cattle, and shift the pastures by the rain-fall, and pick the
bulls, and arrange the bargaining and the selling of the meat to
the sailing ships and war vessels and the people who live in the
Honolulu houses, and fight with lawyers, and help make laws, and
even tell the King what is wise for him to do and what is
dangerous? Why does not any man do this that I do? Any man of all
the men who work for me, feed out of my hand, and let me do their
thinking for them–me, who work harder than any of them, who eats
no more than any of them, and who can sleep on no more than one
lauhala mat at a time like any of them?”
“I am out of the cloud, Kanaka Oolea,” said Kumuhana, with a
visible brightening of countenance. “More clearly do I see. All
my long years have the aliis I was born under thought for me.
Ever, when I was hungry, I came to them for food, as I come to your
kitchen now. Many people eat in your kitchen, and the days of
feasts when you slay fat steers for all of us are understandable.