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"'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.
But as I picked it up in my hand, Aimoku smote my hand with the paddle-edge. Behold!" He held up the hand, showing two fingers crooked from never having been set. "I had no time to vex over my pain, for worse things were upon me. All the chiefs were crying out in horror. The coffin, head-end up, had not sunk. It bobbed up and down in the sea astern of us.
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.
"'Half a fish is better than none, Aimoku said the old saying. "'Not at the burying of an alii, was the priest's quick reply. 'It is the law. We cannot be niggard with Kahekili and cut his allotment of sacrifice in half. "So, for the moment, while the coffin went overside, I was not slain. And it was strange that I was glad immediately that I was to live.
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 all Governor Boki's commoners of fighting men, as well as the haole deserters from ships, so fled, so that the brass guns lay unserved and his handful of chiefs of themselves could do nothing. "Aimoku and Humuhumu made me sit on the sand to the side from the launching of the great double-canoe.
I bent for a half-drunk drinking coconut, but Aimoku kicked it out of my shaking fingers, and Humuhumu smote me with the heel of his hand on my neck. "They walked before me, side by side, their faces solemn and black, and I walked at their heels.
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