II.
Peace and prosperity followed the elevation of Lono to the throne of Hawaii. His fame as an able and sagacious ruler soon spread to the other islands of the group, and his court as well as his person commanded the highest respect of his subjects. Weary of inaction, and having no desire to embroil the kingdom in a foreign war, he at length concluded to visit some of the neighboring islands with his queen, and particularly Kauai, which he had once seen when a boy.
Leaving the government in charge of his brother Kanaloa, Lono embarked on his journey of pleasure with a number of large double canoes and a brilliant retinue. He took with him poloulous, kahilis and other emblems of state, and the hokeo, or large calabash, containing the bones of the six rebellious chiefs slain by his royal father at the beginning of his reign.
The double canoe provided for Kaikilani and her personal attendants was fitted out in a manner becoming the rank of its royal occupant. It was eighty feet in length, and the two together were seven feet in width. Midway between stem and stern a continuous flooring covered both canoes, which was enclosed to a height of six feet, thus providing the queen with a room seven feet broad and twenty feet in length. The apartment was abundantly supplied with cloths and mats of brilliant colors, and the walls were decorated with festoons of shells and leis of flowers and feathers. In front of the entrance stood two kahilis, and behind a kapa screen was a carved image of Ku, surrounded by a number of charms and sacred relics. The canoes were brightly painted in alternate lines of black and yellow, while above their ornamented prows towered the carved and feathered forms of two gigantic birds with human heads. Forty oarsmen comprised the crew, and sails of mats were ready to lift into every favoring breeze.
The double canoe of the king was smaller and less elaborately ornamented; and as it moved out of the harbor of Hilo, bearing the royal ensign and followed by the sumptuous barge of the queen and the humbler crafts of servants and retainers, the shores were lined with people, and hundred in canoes paddled after them to give them their parting alohas beyond the reef. The auguries had not been favorable. So said the high-priest, and so had the people whispered to each other. But, after preparing for the journey, Lono could not be persuaded to relinquish it. It was therefore with misgivings that he was seen to depart; and for many days thereafter sacrifices were offered for him in the temples, and a strict tabu was ordered for a period of three days, during which time no labor was performed and a solemn silence prevailed over all the land embraced in the dread edict. Swine were confined, fires were extinguished, dogs were muzzled, fowls were hidden under calabashes, and the priests alone were seen and heard, and they but sparingly. Such was the strict tabu for the propitiation of the gods in case of emergency or peril, and death was the certain penalty of its violation.
The weather was fair, and the royal party first stopped at Lahaina. It had been Lono’s purpose to spend a week or more at the court of Kamalalawalu, but the moi was absent at the time, and the squadron left Maui the next day for Oahu. A fair wind wafted the party through Pailolo channel to the western point of Molokai. The sky was clear, and Lono began to discern the tops of the mountains of eastern Oahu, when one of his nephews threw his spear into and wounded a large shark which for some time had been slowly moving around the bows of the canoe. In an instant the weapon was thrown back with a violence which drove the point through the rim of the boat. Blood tinged the waves, but the shark disappeared.
Before Lono could recover from his astonishment a furious wind rose from the south and west, and the fleet was driven around to the north side of Molokai, and finally succeeded in effecting a landing at Kalaupapa. Two of the canoes were destroyed during the gale, and the thoughtless young chief who cast the spear was washed into the sea and devoured by a school of black sharks before assistance could reach him. Landing with his party, Lono learned from a priest the cause of the disaster that had overtaken him. It was the god Moaalii, who had taken his characteristic form of a shark and was guiding the fleet to Oahu, that had been wounded by Lono’s nephew.
The weather continued boisterous for some days, and Lono and his party became the guests of the chiefs of Kalaupapa. It was not a very inviting spot, and to beguile the time Lono and Kaikilani amused themselves with the game of konane, played upon a checkered board and closely resembling the game of draughts. One day, when thus occupied in the shade of a palm near the foot of an abrupt hill, Lono heard a voice above them. He gave but little attention to it until the name of Kaikilani was pronounced. He listened without raising his head, and soon heard the voice repeat:
“Ho, Kaikilani! Your lover, Heakekoa, is waiting for you!”
Lono looked up, but could see no one above them. He inquired the meaning of such words addressed to the wife of the moi of Hawaii; but the queen, seemingly confused, was either unable or unwilling to offer any explanation. Enraged at what he hastily conceived to be an evidence of her infidelity, Lono seized the konane board and struck her senseless and bleeding to the earth. Without waiting to learn the result of his barbarous blow, Lono strode to the beach, and, ordering his canoe launched, set sail at once for Oahu, without leaving any orders for the remainder of the fleet.
As he shoved from the shore Kaikilani approached, and, holding out her blood-stained hands, pitifully implored him to remain or take her with him; but he waved her back in anger and resolutely put out to sea. She watched the canoe of her impetuous husband until it became a speck in the distance, and then with a despairing moan sank senseless upon the sands.
Kaikilani was tenderly borne to her domicile by her attendants, and for nine days struggled with a fever which threatened her life. During all that time she tasted neither fish nor poi, but in her delirium appealed continually to Lono, declaring that no one had called to her from the cliffs. On the tenth day her mind was clear and she partook of food, and then on her hands and knees a young woman crawled to the side of her kapa-moe, and, having permission to speak, said:
“O queen, I am the innocent cause of your misery, and my heart breaks for you. I am the daughter of the chief Keeokane, and he has sent me to you. Heakekoa loves me, and it was my name, Kaikinane, that he called from the cliffs, and not yours. It is better that confusion should come to me than shame and grief to the queen of Hawaii.”
Kaikilani admonished her attendants to remember the words of the girl, that they might be able, if necessary, to repeat them to Lono, and then dismissed her with presents and a promise to speak kindly of her to her father, who was greatly annoyed at the distress which the indiscretion of his daughter had brought to their distinguished guest.
As soon as she had sufficiently recovered, Kaikilani, not knowing what had become of her husband, sorrowfully returned to Hawaii in the hope of finding him there and explaining away the cause of his anger. But the news of Lono’s assault upon her and his sudden departure from Molokai had preceded her, probably through the return of some of the canoes of the fleet, and when she arrived at Kohala she found the kingdom in a state of rebellion.
With the avowed intent of slaying Lono, should he return to Hawaii, Kanaloa had assumed the regency, supported by the principal chiefs of the island, the relatives of the queen, and all the brothers of Lono with the exception of Pupuakea, a stalwart and warlike son of Keawenui by an humble mother unnamed in the royal annals, and who had large possessions in the district of Kau.
But Kaikilani still loved her hot-headed but instinctively generous husband, and refused to give countenance to the revolt raised in her behalf. She therefore hastily left Kohala at night, and, so sailing as to escape the observation of the rebels, suddenly appeared off the coast of Kau and placed herself in communication with Pupuakea, the only chief of note that still adhered to the fortunes of Lono. He had succeeded in rallying to the support of his cause a very considerable force, but he knew that it would avail him little against the united armies of the opposition, and after a full consideration of the situation it was decided that Pupuakea should remain on the defensive until the return of Lono, of whom Kaikilani resolved to go at once in search.
With this understanding Kaikilani, inspired by the hope of winning back her husband’s love, after a few preparations started on her errand; but not before she had made sacrifices to the gods and implored their assistance, and Pupuakea brought word to her from the temple that the auguries of her journey showed a line of dark clouds ending in sunshine. But what cared she for clouds, if the sunshine of Lono’s presence was to come at last? But where was Lono? Perhaps in the bottom of the sea; but, if alive, she resolved to find him, even though the search took her through all the group to the barren rocks of Kaula.
Rounding the capes of Kau and sailing nearly northward, Kaikilani first stopped at Lahaina; but a week spent there convinced her that Lono was not on the island of Maui. The moi treated her with great respect and kindness, and offered to assist in the search for her husband on the other islands; but she declined his services, and next visited Lanai. Causing a thorough search to be made of that island, and despatching a party to the windy wastes of Kahoolawe, the queen proceeded to Molokai, to assure herself that Lono had not returned to Kalaupapa, and then set sail for Oahu. She first landed at Waikiki, on that island, but, learning that the king had established his court at Kailua, departed for that place the next day, and reached it without difficulty, for the captain of her crew was the distinguished old navigator, Kukupea, who for a wager, in the reign of Keawenui, had made the direct passage in a canoe between the Hawaiian bay of Kealakeakua and the island of Niihau without sighting intermediate land.