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And he called upon all the gods of the under world, the middle world and the over world, to care for and cherish the dead alii about to be consigned to them, and to carry out the curses they were terrible curses he laid upon all living men and men to live after who might tamper with the bones of Kahekili to use them in sport of vermin-slaying.
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.
Kahekili was a great alii. He might have been king had he lived. Who can tell? I was a young man, not yet married. You know, Kanaka Oolea, when Kahekili died, and you can tell me how old I was. He died when Governor Boki ran the Blonde Hotel here in Honolulu. You have heard?" "I was still on windward Hawaii," Pool answered. "But I have heard.
They rest nowhere. They have ceased to be. And many kona winds have whitened the surf at Waikiki since the last man looked upon the last of Kahekili. I alone remain alive of those men. I am the last man, and I was not glad to be at the finish. "For see! I was a young man, and my heart was white-hot lava for Malia, who was in Kahekili's household.
The Chief Konukalani had just dragged away Malia by the hair of the head, and you and Anapuni sat on without protest in the circle of drinking. What was it Malia whispered in Anapuni's ear, bending over him, her hair hiding the face of him?" "That Kahekili was dead. That was what she whispered to Anapuni.
Nor did I know that Kahekili was dead. Yet did I guess something serious was afoot, for the two men who kicked me were chiefs, and no common men crouched behind them to do their bidding. One was Aimoku, of Kaneche; the other Humuhumu, of Manoa.
And the canoe, without way on it, bow-on to sea and wind, was drifted down by sea and wind upon the coffin. And the glass of it was to us, so that we could see the face and head of Kahekili through the glass; and he grinned at us through the glass and seemed alive already in the other world and angry with us, and, with other-world power, about to wreak his anger upon us.
And whoever ventured out-of-doors that night was slain by the chiefs. Nor could a light be shown in a house or a whisper of noise be made. Even dogs and hogs that made a noise were slain, nor all that night were the ships' bells of the haoles in the harbour allowed to strike. It was a terrible thing in those days when an alii died. "But the night that Kahekili died.
No kanakas lay asleep in the sand, nor stole home from their love- making; and no canoes were abroad after the early fish most catchable then inside the reef at the change of the tide. But all these men were chiefs. And, though my eyes swam, and the inside of my head went around and around, and the inside of my body was a cinder athirst, I guessed that the alii who was dead was Kahekili.
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."
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