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And in laughter of love at their haole chief's final sally, all the sweet-child-minded and physically gorgeous company of them departed to their waiting horses, save the old withered one, Kumuhana, who had been bidden to wait. For a full five minutes they sat in silence.
And when the maid was gone, and the gin and milk had travelled the way predestined of gin and milk when mixed together, Hardman Pool waited without further urge for the story. Kumuhana pressed his hand to his chest and coughed hollowly at intervals, bidding for encouragement; but in the end, of himself, spoke out. "It was a terrible thing in the old days when a great alii died.
"Yet is the awa but a common man's drink, while the haole liquor is a drink for chiefs. The awa has not the liquor's hot willingness, its spur in the ribs of feeling, its biting alive of oneself that is very pleasant since it is pleasant to be alive." Hardman Pool smiled, nodded agreement, and old Kumuhana continued. "There is a warmingness to it. It warms the belly and the soul.
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.
"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.
Again Kumuhana looked carefully about him, and up into the monkey- pod boughs as if to apprehend a lurking listener. His lips were very dry. With his tongue he moistened them repeatedly. Twice he essayed to speak, but was inarticulately husky. And finally, with bowed head, he whispered, so low and solemnly that Hardman Pool bent his own head to hear: "No."
"Yes, Kanaka Oolea," volunteered an old, withered native who had just joined the group from the direction of the house. "All of them had kow-kow in the kitchen, and plenty of it. They ate like lost horses brought down from the lava." "And what do you want, Kumuhana?" Pool diverted to the old one, at the same time motioning to the little maid to flap flies from the other side of him.
"You are very wise. You know many things of the old days better than we old kanakas." "It was 1829," Pool continued complacently. "You were twenty-eight years old, and I was twenty, just coming ashore in the open boat after the burning of the Black Prince." "I was twenty-eight," Kumuhana resumed. "It sounds right. I remember well Boki's brass guns at Waikiki.
Pool clapped his hands, and the little maid ran out of the house to him in tremulous, fluttery haste. "Bring a milk and gin for old Kumuhana, here," Pool commanded; and, to Kumuhana: "Now tell me the whole story." "Wait," was the answer. "Wait till the little wahine has come and gone."
"And the coffin immediately sank," Hardman Pool broke in; "the air that floated it escaping through the broken glass." "The coffin immediately sank, being builded by the ship's carpenter like a boat," Kumuhana confirmed. "And I, who was a moepuu, became a man once more. And I lived, though I died a thousand deaths from thirst before we gained back to the beach at Waikiki.
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