Secondarily to the pure aloha motive of this luau, we had assembled our friends for the christening of the Jack London Hula, chanted stanza by stanza, each repeated by Ernest Kaai and his perfect Hawaiian singers with their instruments. Mary Low was the mother of this mélé, for in her fertile brain was conceived the idea of immortalizing, for Hawaii, Jack London himself and more specifically his progress around the Big Isle of Mounts, as was done for the chiefs of old by their bards and minstrels.
The Hawaiian woman best fitted, in Mary’s judgment, to recite the saga, was Rosalie (Lokalia) Blais-dell, who had helped in the versifying; and all Lokalia asked in return for the long evening’s effort, which with lofty sweetness she assured us was her honor and pleasure, was a copy each of Jack’s “Cruise” and my “Log” of the Snark.
Thus, during the eating of the hundred and one tropic delicacies that a swarm of pretty girls prepared and served from the kitchen, never was the gayety so robust that it did not silence instantly when Lokalia’s voice rose intoning above the lilting wash of reef waters against the sea wall thirty feet away, followed by the succession of Kaai’s lovely music to the mele. Each long stanza, carrying an incident of the progress around Hawaii and those who welcomed Jack, closed with two lines:
“Hainaia mai ana ka puana,
No Keaka Lakana neia inoa.”
“This song is then echoed,
’Tis in honor of Jack London.”
Listened critically all those qualified to judge, and now and again a low “Good,” or “Perfect,” or “Couldn’t be better, Mary,” or “All honor to Mary Kipikane!” would be forthcoming from Prince or Mayor or Senator. And there was in the mélé a swaying Spanish dance song for Lakana Wahine—Kaikilani Poloku, which is myself; for kind hearts gave me that name of a beloved queen of the long gone years, whose meaning is passing sweet to me.
Laden to the eyes with no false leis by the hands of Hawaii, we looked down from the high steamer deck into the upturned faces of the people of our Aloha Land, standing ankle-deep in flowers and serpentine. The Matsonia cast off hawsers, and, moving ahead majestical-slow, parted the veil of serpentine and flowers woven from her every deck to the quay.
“Of all lands of joy and beauty under the sun...” Jack began, the words trailing into eloquent silence. He had approached Hawaii with gifts of candor and affection in hands, and eyes, and lips. And real Hawaii, impermeable to meanness or harboring of grudge over franknesses that had but voiced a grave interest in her, has been the greater giver, in that she granted him the joy and satisfaction of realizing that they had not known each other in vain.