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Yet I did not attempt to drink, for these were chiefs and I was a common man. "'No, said Eoppo, commanding the chiefs to throw overboard the coffin. 'There are not two moepuus, therefore there shall be none. "'Slay the one, the chiefs cried. "But Eoppo shook his head, and said: 'We cannot send Kahekili on his way with only the tops of the taro.
That the high priest Eoppo was deciding them, and that she had overheard no less than Anapuni and me chosen as the sacrifices to go the way of Kahekili and his bones and to care for him afterward and for ever in the shadowy other world." "The moepuu, the human sacrifice," Pool commented. "Yet it was nine years since the coming of the missionaries."
That was what Malia had whispered to Anapuni at the drinking. And she had been dragged away before she could tell me. And in his blackness of heart he had not told me. "'There should be two, said Eoppo. 'It is the law. "Aimoku stopped paddling and looked back shoreward as if to return and get a second sacrifice.
But several of the chiefs contended no, saying that all commoners were fled to the mountains or were lying taboo in their houses, and that it might take days before they could catch one. In the end Eoppo gave in, though he grumbled from time to time that the law required two moepuus. "We paddled on, past Diamond Head and abreast of Koko Head, till we were in the midway of the Molokai Channel.
Then Pata-tai laughed loud And woke the goblin-god, Who severed him in two, and shut him in, So dusk of eve came on." "And at the last," Kumuhana resumed, "I was not slain. Eoppo, the killing knife in hand and ready to lift for the blow, did not lift. And I? How did I feel and think? Often, Kanaka Oolea, have I since laughed at the memory of it. I felt very thirsty. I did not want to die.
But proceed, Kumuhana. Do you remember anything also of what the priest Eoppo sang?" "At the very end," came the confirming nod, "though I was near dead myself, and nearer to die under the priest's knife, he sang what I have remembered every word of. Listen! It was thus." And in quavering falsetto, with the customary broken-notes, the old man sang.
Up and down he bobbed, and the canoe drifted closer upon him. "'Kill him! 'Bleed him! 'Thrust to the heart of him! These things the chiefs were crying out to Eoppo in their fear. 'Over with the taro tops! 'Let the alii have the half of a fish! "Eoppo, priest though he was, was likewise afraid, and his reason weakened before the sight of Kahekili in his haole coffin that would not sink.
"'There is but one moepuu, said the priest Eoppo, looking at me where I sat on the coffin in the bottom of the canoe. Already the chiefs were paddling out through the reef. "'The other has run into hiding, Aimoku answered. 'This one was all we could get. "And then I knew. I knew everything. I was to be sacrificed. Anapuni had been planned for the other sacrifice.
"Old stomachs are worn thin and tender, and we drink sparingly because we dare not drink more. We are wise, but the wisdom is bitter." "The priest Eoppo sang a long mele about Kahekili's mother and his mother's mother, and all their mothers all the way back to the beginning of time," Kumuhana resumed. "And it seemed I must die of my sand-hot dryness ere he was done.
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