Part 3

Then Ma-ui made for himself another kite. He flew it, and rejoiced in the flying of it, and all who saw him wondered at how high his kite went and how gracefully it bore itself in the heavens. But never again did he call upon the great winds to help him in his sport. Sometimes he would fasten his line to the black stones in the bed of the Wai-lu-ku River, and he would let the kite soar upward and range here and there. He knew by watching his soaring kite whether it would be dry and pleasant weather, and he showed his neighbors how they might know it. “Eh, neighbor,” one would say to another, “it is going to be dry weather; look how Ma-ui’s kite keeps in the sky.” They knew that they could go to the fields to work and spread out their tapa to dry, for as long as the kite soared the rain would not fall.

Ma-ui learned what a strong pull the fierce winds had. He used to bring his kite with him when he went out on the ocean in his canoe. He would let it free; then, fastening his line to the canoe, he would let the wind that pulled the kite pull him along. By flying his kite he learned how to go more swiftly over the ocean in his canoe, and how to make further voyages than ever a man made before.

Nevertheless, his kite-flying is not counted amongst the great deeds of Ma-ui.

HOW MA-UI FISHED UP THE GREAT ISLAND.

Now, although Ma-ui had done deeds as great as these, he was not thought so very much of in his own house. His brothers complained that when he went fishing with them he caught no fish, or, if he drew one up, it was a fish that had been taken on a hook belonging to one of them, and that Ma-ui had managed to get tangled on to his own line. And yet Ma-ui had invented many things that his brothers made use of. At first they had spears with smooth heads on them: if they struck a bird, the bird was often able to flutter away, drawing from the spear-head that had pierced a wing. And if they struck through a fish, the fish was often able to wriggle away. Then Ma-ui put barbs upon his spear, and his spear-head held the birds and the fish. His brothers copied the spear-head that he made, and after that they were able to kill and secure more birds and fish than ever before.

He made many things that they copied, and yet his brothers thought him a lazy and a shiftless fellow, and they made their mother think the same about him. They were the better fishermen—that was true; indeed, if there were no one but Ma-ui to go fishing, Hina-of-the-Fire, his mother, and Hina-of-the-Sea, his sister, would often go hungry.

At last Ma-ui made up his mind to do some wonderful fishing; he might not be able to catch the fine fish that his brothers desired—the u-lua and the pi-mo-e—but he would take up something from the bottom of the sea that would make his brothers forget that he was the lazy and the shiftless one.

He had to make many plans and go on many adventures before he was ready for this great fishing. First he had to get a fish-hook that was different from any fish-hook that had ever been in the world before. In those days fish-hooks were made out of bones—there was nothing else to make fish-hooks out of—and Ma-ui would have to get a wonderful bone to form into a hook. He went down into the underworld to get that bone.

He went to where his ancestress was. On one side she was dead and on the other side she was a living woman. From the side of her that was dead Ma-ui took a bone—her jaw-bone—and out of this bone he made his fish-hook. There was never a fish-hook like it in the world before, and it was called “Ma-nai-i-ka-lani,” meaning “Made fast to the heavens.” He told no one about the wonderful fish-hook he had made for himself.

He had to get a different bait from any bait that had ever been used in the world before. His mother had sacred birds, the alae, and he asked her to give him one of them for bait. She gave him one of her birds.

Then Ma-ui, with his bait and his hook hidden, and with a line that he had made from the strongest olona vines, went down to his brothers’ canoe. “Here is Ma-ui,” they said when they saw him, “here is Ma-ui, the lazy and the shiftless, and we have sworn that we will never let him come again with us in our canoe.” They pushed out when they saw him coming; they paddled away, although he begged them to take him with them.

He waited on the beach. His brothers came back, and they had to tell him that they had caught no fish. Then he begged them to go back to sea again and to let him go this time in their canoe. They let him in, and they paddled off. “Farther and farther out, my brothers,” said Ma-ui; “out there is where the u-lua and the pi-mo-e are.” They paddled far out. They let down their lines, but they caught no fish. “Where are the u-lua and the pi-mo-e that you spoke of?” said his brothers to him. Still he told them to go farther and farther out. At last they got tired with paddling, and they wanted to go back.

Then Ma-ui put a sail upon the canoe. Farther and farther out into the ocean they went. One of the brothers let down a line, and a great fish drew on it. They pulled. But what came out of the depths was a shark. They cut the line and let the shark away. The brothers were very tired now. “Oh, Ma-ui,” they said, “as ever, thou art lazy and shiftless. Thou hast brought us out all this way, and thou wilt do nothing to help us. Thou hast let down no line in all the sea we have crossed.”

It was then that Ma-ui let down his line with the magic hook upon it, the hook that was baited with the struggling alae bird. Down, down went the hook that was named “Ma-nai-i-ka-lani,” “Made fast to the heavens.” Down through the waters the hook and the bait went. Ka-uni ho-kahi, Old One Tooth, who holds fast the land to the bottom of the sea, was there. When the sacred bird came near him he took it in his mouth. And the magic hook that Ma-ui had made held fast in his jaws.

Ma-ui felt the pull upon the line. He fastened the line to the canoe, and he bade his brothers paddle their hardest, for now the great fish was caught. He dipped his own paddle into the sea, and he made the canoe dash on.

The brothers felt a great weight grow behind the canoe. But still they paddled on and on. Weighty and more weighty became the catch; harder and harder it became to pull it along. As they struggled on Ma-ui chanted a magic chant, and the weight came with them.

“O Island, O great Island, O Island, O great Island! Why art thou Sulkily biting, biting below? Beneath the earth The power is felt, The foam is seen: Come, O thou loved grandchild Of Kanaloa.”

On and on the canoe went, and heavier and heavier grew what was behind them. At last one of the brothers looked back. At what he saw he screamed out in affright. For there, rising behind them, a whole land was rising up, with mountains upon it. The brother dropped his paddle when he saw what had been fished up; as he dropped his paddle the line that was fastened to the jaws of old Ka-uni ho-kahi broke.

What Ma-ui fished up would have been a mainland, only that his brother’s paddle dropped and the line broke. Then only an island came up out of the water. If more land had come up, all the Islands that we know would have been joined in one.

There are people who say that his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea, was near at the time of that great fishing. They say she came floating out on a calabash. When Ma-ui let down the magic hook with their mother’s sacred bird upon it, Hina-of-the-Sea dived down and put the hook into the mouth of Old One Tooth, and then pulled at the line to let Ma-ui know that the hook was in his jaws. Some people say this, and it may be the truth. But whether or not, every one, on every Island in the Great Ocean, from Kahiki-mo-e to Hawaii nei, knows that Ma-ui fished up a great Island for men to live on. And this fishing was the third of Ma-ui’s great deeds.

HOW MA-UI SNARED THE SUN AND MADE HIM GO MORE SLOWLY ACROSS THE HEAVENS.

The Sky had been lifted up, and another great Island had come from the grip of Old One Tooth and was above the waters. The world was better now for men and women to live in. But still there were miseries in it, and the greatest of these miseries was on account of the heedlessness of the Sun.

For the Sun in those days made his way too quickly across the world. He hurried so that little of his heat got to the plants and the fruits, and it took years and years for them to ripen. The farmers working on their patches would not have time in the light of a day to put down their crop into the ground, so quickly the Sun would rush across the heavens, and the fishermen would barely have time to launch their canoes and get to the fishing grounds when the darkness would come on. And the women’s tasks were never finished. It was theirs to make the tapa-cloth: a woman would begin at one end of the board to beat the bark with her four-sided mallet, and she would be only at the middle of the board by the time the sunset came. When she was ready to go on with the work next day, the Sun would be already halfway across the heavens.

Ma-ui, when he was a child, used to watch his mother making tapa, and as he grew up he pitied her more and more because of all the toil and trouble that she had. She would break the branches from the ma-ma-ka trees and from the wau-ke trees and soak them in water until their bark was easily taken off. Then she would take off the outer bark, leaving the inner bark to be worked upon. She would take the bundles of the wet inner bark and lay them on the tapa-board and begin pounding them with little clubs. And then she would use her four-sided mallet and beat all the soft stuff into little thin sheets. Then she would paste the little sheets together, making large cloths. This was tapa—the tapa that it was every woman’s business in those days to make. As soon as morning reddened the clouds Ma-ui’s mother, Hina-of-the-Fire, would begin her task: she would begin beating the softened bark at one end of the board, and she would be only in the middle of the board when the sunset came. And when she managed to get the tapa made she could never get it dried in a single day, so quickly the Sun made his way across the heavens. Ma-ui pitied his mother because of her unceasing toil.

He greatly blamed the Sun for his inconsiderateness of the people of the world. He took to watching the Sun. He began to know the path by which the Sun came over the great mountain Ha-le-a-ka-la (but in those days it was not called Ha-le-a-ka-la, the House of the Sun, but A-hele-a-ka-la, The Rays of the Sun). Through a great chasm in the side of this mountain the Sun used to come.

He told his mother that he was going to do something to make the Sun have more considerateness for the men and women of the world. “You will not be able to make him do anything about it,” she said; “the Sun always went swiftly, and he will always go swiftly.” But Ma-ui said that he would find a way to make the Sun remember that there were people in the world and that they were not at all pleased with the way he was going on.

Then his mother said: “If you are going to force the Sun to go more slowly you must prepare yourself for a great battle, for the Sun is a great creature, and he has much energy. Go to your grandmother who lives on the side of Ha-le-a-ka-la,” said she (but it was called A-hele-a-ka-la then), “and beg her to give you her counsel, and also to give you a weapon to battle with the Sun.”

So Ma-ui went to his grandmother who lived on the side of the great mountain. Ma-ui’s grandmother was the one who cooked the bananas that the Sun ate as he came through the great chasm in the mountain. “You must go to the place where there is a large wili-wili tree growing,” said his mother. “There the Sun stops to eat the bananas that your grandmother cooks for him. Stay until the rooster that watches beside the wili-wili tree crows three times. Your grandmother will come out then with a bunch of bananas. When she lays them down, do you take them up. She will bring another bunch out, and do you take that up too. When all her bananas are gone she will search for the one who took them. Then do you show yourself to her. Tell her that you are Ma-ui and that you belong to Hina-of-the-Fire.”

So Ma-ui went up the side of the mountain that is now called He-le-a-ka-la, but that then was called A-hele-a-ka-la, The Rays of the Sun. He came to where a great wili-wili tree was growing. There he waited. The rooster crew three times, and then an old woman came out with a bunch of bananas. He knew that this was his grandmother. She laid the bananas down to cook them, and as she did so Ma-ui snatched them away. When she went to pick up the bunch she cried out, “Where are the bananas that I have to cook for my Lord, the Sun?” She went within and got another bunch, and this one, too, Ma-ui snatched away. This he did until the last bunch of bananas that his grandmother had was taken.

She was nearly blind, so she could not find him with her eyes. She sniffed around, and at last she got the smell of a man. “Who are you?” she said. “I am Ma-ui, and I belong to Hina-of-the-Fire,” said he. “What have you come for?” asked his grandmother. “I have come to chastise the Sun and to make him go more slowly across the heavens. He goes so fast now that my mother cannot dry the tapa that she takes all the days of the year to beat out.”

The old woman considered all that Ma-ui said to her. She knew that he was a hero born, because the birds sang, the pebbles rumbled, the grass withered, the smoke hung low, the rainbow appeared, the thunder was heard, the hairless dogs were seen, and even the ants in the grass were heard to sing in his praise. She decided to give help to him. And she told him what preparations he was to make for his battle with the Sun.

First of all he was to get sixteen of the strongest ropes that ever were made. So as to be sure they were the strongest, he was to knit them himself. And he was to make nooses for them out of the hair of the head of his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea. When the ropes were ready he was to come back to her, and she would show him what else he had to do.

Ma-ui made the sixteen ropes; he made them out of the strongest fibre, and his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea, gave him the hair of her head to make into nooses. Then, with the ropes and the nooses upon them, Ma-ui went back to his grandmother. She told him where to set the nooses, and she gave him a magic stone axe with which to do battle with the Sun.

He set the nooses as snares for the Sun, and he dug a hole beside the roots of the wili-wili tree, and in that hole he hid himself. Soon the first ray of light, the first leg of the Sun, came over the mountain wall. It was caught in one of the nooses that Ma-ui had set. One by one the legs of the Sun came over the rim, and one by one they were caught in the nooses. One leg was left hanging down the side of the mountain: it was hard for the Sun to move that leg. At last this last leg came slowly over the edge of the mountain and was caught in the snare. Then Ma-ui gathered up the ropes and tied them to the great wili-wili tree.

When the Sun saw that his sixteen legs were held fast by the nooses that Ma-ui had set he tried to back down the mountain-side and into the sea again. But the ropes held him, and the wili-wili tree stood the drag of the ropes. The Sun could not get away. Then he turned all his burning strength upon Ma-ui. They fought. The man began to strike at the Sun with his magic axe of stone; and never before did the Sun get such a beating. “Give me my life,” said the Sun. “I will give you your life,” said Ma-ui, “if you promise to go slowly across the heavens.” At last the Sun promised to do what Ma-ui asked him.

They entered into an agreement with each other, Ma-ui and the Sun. There should be longer days, the Sun making his course slower. But every six months, in the winter, the Sun might go as fast as he had been in the habit of going. Then Ma-ui let the Sun out of the snares which he had set for him. But, lest he should ever forget the agreement he had made and take to travelling swiftly again, Ma-ui left all the ropes and the nooses on the side of Ha-le-a-ka-la, so that he might see them every day that he came across the rim of the mountain. And the mountain was not called A-hele-a-ka-la, the Rays of the Sun, any more, but Ha-le-a-ka-la, the House of the Sun. After that came the saying of the people, “Long shall be the daily journey of the Sun, and he shall give light for all the peoples’ toil.” And Ma-ui’s mother, Hina-of-the-Fire, learned that she could pound on the tapa-board until she was tired, and the farmers could plant and take care of their crops, and the fishermen could go out to the deep sea and fish and come back, and the fruits and the plants got heat enough to make them ripen in their season.

HOW MA-UI WON FIRE FOR MEN.

Ma-ui’s mother must have known about fire and the use of fire; else why should she have been called Hina-of-the-Fire, and how did it come that her birds, the alae, knew where fire was hidden and how to make it blaze up? Hina must have known about fire. But her son had to search and search for fire. The people who lived in houses on the Islands did not know of it: they had to eat raw roots and raw fish, and they had to suffer the cold. It was for them that Ma-ui wanted to get fire; it was for them that he went down to the lower world, and that he went searching through the upper world for it.

In Kahiki-mo-e they have a tale about Ma-ui that the Hawaiians do not know. There they tell how he went down to the lower world and sought out his great-great-grandmother, Ma-hui’a. She was glad to see Ma-ui, of whom she had heard in the lower world; and when he asked her to give him fire to take to the upper world, she plucked a nail off her finger and gave it to him.

In this nail, fire burned. Ma-ui went to the upper world with it. But in crossing a stream of water he let the nail drop into it. And so he lost the fire that his great-great-grandmother had given him.

He went back to her again. And again Ma-hui’a plucked off a finger-nail and gave it to him. But when he went to the upper world and went to cross the stream, he let this burning nail also drop into the water. Again he went back, and his great-great-grandmother plucked off a third nail for him. And this went on, Ma-ui letting the nails fall into the water, and Ma-hui’a giving him the nails off her fingers, until at last all the nails of all her fingers were given to him.

But still he went on letting the burning nails fall into the water that he had to cross, and at last the nails of his great-great-grandmother’s toes as well as the nails of her fingers were given to him—all but the nail on the last of her toes. Ma-ui went back to her to get this last nail. Then Ma-hui’a became blazing angry; she plucked the nail off, but instead of giving it to him she flung it upon the ground.

Fire poured out of the nail and took hold on everything. Ma-ui ran to the upper world, and Ma-hui’a in her anger ran after him. He dashed into the water. But now the forests were blazing, and the earth was burning, and the water was boiling. Ma-ui ran on, and Ma-hui’a ran behind him. As he ran he chanted a magic incantation for rain to come, so that the burning might be put out:

“To the roaring thunder; To the great rain—the long rain; To the drizzling rain—the small rain; To the rain pattering on the leaves. These are the storms, the storms Cause them to fall; To pour in torrents.”

The rain came on—the long rain, the small rain, the rain that patters on the leaves; storms came, and rain in torrents. The fire that raged in the forests and burned on the ground was drowned out. And Ma-hui’a, who had followed him, was nearly-drowned by the torrents of rain. She saw her fire, all the fire that was in the lower and in the upper worlds, being quenched by the rain.

She gathered up what fragments of fire she could, and she hid them in barks of different trees so that the rain could not get at them and quench them. Ma-ui’s mother must have known where his great-great-grandmother hid the fire. If she did not, her sacred birds, the alae, knew it. They were able to take the barks of the trees and, by rubbing them together, to bring out fire.

In Hawaii they tell how Ma-ui and his brothers used to go out fishing every day, and how, as soon as they got far out to sea, they would see smoke rising on the mountain-side. “Behold,” they would say, “there is a fire. Whose can it be?” “Let us hasten to the shore and cook our fish at that fire,” another would say.

So, with the fish that they had caught, Ma-ui and his brothers would hasten to the shore. The swiftest of them would run up the mountain-side. But when he would get to where the smoke had been, all he would see would be the alae scratching clay over burnt-out sticks. The alae would leave the place where they had been seen, and Ma-ui would follow them from place to place, hoping to catch them while their fire was lighted.

He would send his brothers off fishing, and he himself would watch for the smoke from the fire that the alae would kindle. But they would kindle no fire on the days that he did not go out in the canoe with his brothers. “We cannot have our cooked bananas to-day,” the old bird would say to the young birds, “for the swift son of Hina is somewhere near, and he would come upon us before we put out our fire. And remember that the guardian of the fire told us never to show a man where it is hidden or how it is taken out of its hiding place.”

Then Ma-ui understood that the bird watched for his going and that they made no fire until they saw him out at sea in his canoe. He knew that they counted the men that went out, and that if he was not in the number they did no cooking that day. Every time he went in the canoe he saw smoke rising on the mountain-side.

Then Ma-ui thought of a trick to play on them—on the stingy alae that would not give fire, but left men to eat raw roots and raw fish. He rolled up a piece of tapa, and he put it into the canoe, making it like a man. Then he hid near the shore. The brothers went fishing, and the birds counted the figures in the canoe. “The swift son of Hina has gone fishing: we can have cooked bananas to-day.” “Make the fire, make the fire, until we cook our bananas,” said the young alae.

So they gathered the wood together, and they rubbed the barks, and they made the fire. The smoke rose up from it, and swift Ma-ui ran up the mountain-side. He came upon the flock of birds just as the old one was dashing water upon the embers. He caught her by the neck and held her.

“I will kill you,” he said, “for hiding fire from men.”

“If you kill me,” said the old alae, “there will be no one to show you how to get fire.”

“Show me how to get fire,” said Ma-ui, “and I will let you go.”

The cunning alae tried to deceive Ma-ui. She thought she would get him off his guard, that he would let go of her, and that she could fly away. “Go to the reeds and rub them together, and you will get fire,” she said.

Ma-ui went to the reeds and rubbed them together. But still he held the bird by the neck. Nothing came out of the reeds but moisture. He squeezed her neck. “If you kill me, there will be no one to tell you where to get fire,” said the cunning bird, still hoping to get him off his guard. “Go to the taro leaves and rub them together, and you will get fire.”

Ma-ui held to the bird’s neck. He went to the taro leaves and rubbed them together, but no fire came. He squeezed her neck harder. The bird was nearly dead now. But still she tried to deceive the man. “Go to the banana stumps and rub them together, and you will get fire,” she said.