Nevertheless, she armed herself with a spear and kept near him.
The boy swam quietly out to within a few fathoms of the shark, and then lay upon the water, almost motionless. The great fish, thinking he had an easy prey, approached slowly and turned to bite. As he did so a small hand, quick as lightning, thrust the stick between his jaws, and they closed over it, burying one sharp end in the roof of the mouth and the other through the great tongue into the lower jaw. The next instant, with the supple swiftness of an ulua, the child dived and glided away. His work was finished. He had only to keep beyond reach of the mighty tail threshing the water in death agony.
The teeth were laid carefully aside for the war-club of man’s estate, and the bones were preserved for fish-hooks and other domestic uses. Soon, however, there was a glut of sharks’ teeth and bones, for the flesh, being cast into the pool, attracted other sharks, and these, slaughtered in turn, lured still others to a cannibal repast and a sudden demise. The pool swarmed with sharks, and furnished Aelani great sport. Of course, other fish became less plentiful. Yet there were enough.
CHAPTER VI
HIWA’S VISIT
A GREAT longing came upon Hiwa to see her lover once more, and to learn what was taking place in the kingdom. The royal city was only eight miles away, and a swim of that distance and back again was no great feat. Neither, as she thought, would such a visit be attended with much danger.
So one evening, leaving Aelani asleep, she armed herself with a short spear and swam up the coast to the Waipio River. She chanced to land close to a fisherman’s hut. The night was warm, there being no breeze from the sea, and the fisherman and his wife and their girl baby were sleeping on a mat outside.
The fisherman was Eaeakai, whose boat Hiwa had taken. His testimony as an eye witness to her death had turned aside Aa’s wrath and saved his life. It did not occur to Hiwa that she had wronged him in taking his boat. Neither had he so regarded it. It simply was his fate. No more do we think that we wrong bees when we take their honey, or beasts when we take their skins. We look upon them as creatures quite different from ourselves, and existing merely for our own needs and pleasures.
Hiwa glanced at the fisherman and at the woman and child sleeping beside him. The appearance of the latter arrested her attention. The child was about the age and size of Aelani, and her features were strikingly like his and very beautiful. As Hiwa looked at the mother she saw that she bore an equally close resemblance to herself. The family likeness was plain as day, the blood of Wakea and Papa through forty generations. Hiwa had heard of a fisher-girl of marvellous beauty, but had never before deigned to notice her. This, then, must be that girl; for no other woman in all the land could be compared with Hiwa.