CHAPTER VIII
MANOA
HIWA repeated her visits to Waipio many times as the years went by. In her anxiety to know the condition of affairs she frequently ventured where she was likely to be seen and recognized. She knew that she had been recognized on several occasions. By day it might have cost her her life; but, appearing only at night, when spirits were supposed to be abroad, she was regarded, not as Hiwa in living flesh and blood, but as the spirit of Hiwa that Ukanipo had taken to himself. She justly trusted to the superstition of the people for safety, knowing that she had become an object of mortal terror.
Sixteen years had passed since her escape. Ii was rapidly nearing a drunkard’s grave, or, more accurately, the time when his bones would be hidden in a cave, for mois were not buried in the ground like common men. Aa had become moi in all but name, and ruled with bloody and cruel hands. The masses groaned under his ruthless exactions. Many of the lesser chiefs had been assassinated or sacrificed on the altars of Ku, and their possessions confiscated. The great chiefs were becoming restive and alarmed. Yet who should take up arms against the Lord of Life and Death, vice-gerent of Ku? Ii and Aa were of the blood of the gods. Hiwa knew how matters stood, and believed the time for action would come soon if the great nobles understood they could have a leader of divine birth.
Aelani had not reached his seventeenth year—a mere smooth-water swimmer. The pool, swarming with sharks, was a fine training school for a boy of twelve; but the ocean was the only proper place for an athletic young man, big, powerful, destined for great deeds. Aelani had learned to love it in its varying moods, and most of all when it was stirred to wrath, when tempests raged and huge waves dashed against the cliffs and broke in spray two hundred feet high. Many a time, in calm and in storm, Hiwa and Aelani had sported together in the open sea, like the fish to which they were almost akin, but always with the greatest precautions against discovery, for the superstition which protected her might not protect him. Now the time was at hand when risks must be taken.
“Keike,” said Hiwa, one evening, “we will go windward to-night and see your royal city.”
They emerged from the water, at their journey’s end, close to Eaeakai’s hut. On this night also the fisherman and Lilii, his wife, and Manoa, their daughter, were sleeping outside. The girl—just past sixteen, which is three years older in the tropics than in the frozen north—was surpassingly beautiful, as her mother and Hiwa had been in the bloom of early womanhood. She lay in the moonlight, her lips half parted, smiling in her sleep, as if happy dreams were her guests. Her lustrous black hair, reaching in heavy masses half way to her feet, was her only covering. It was not shamelessness. Neither was it the innocence of a babe. It was Nature untainted and unpurified by what we call civilization.
The sensations of the young man who had never before seen a female face or form save his mother’s may be imagined more easily than described. He stood gazing, like one in a trance.
“Well, keike,” Hiwa observed with a peculiar smile, as he reluctantly followed her, “at last you have seen a woman! And perhaps it is time you should.”
Avoiding the town, they made their way to the Kukuihaele side of the valley, and climbed to a height of about five hundred feet. It seemed to Aelani, as the valley lay spread before him, that he had already seen it many times, it had been described to him so well. To his right was the winding trail, the serpentine ladder, that led to the heights of Kukuihaele, forming the southern exit to the outer world, and beyond, stretching northwesterly, long lines of white surf glistened in the moonlight and thundered on the beach. To his left was the mighty southern wall, and, at its further end, the stupendous falls of the Waipio River, sixteen hundred feet high. Then the wall bent irregularly to the northwest, apparently extending to the Waimano side; but Aelani knew that the valley, for a dozen miles more, wound its way, a deep chasm in the mountains. He knew the stream that traversed it, joining the Waipio River near the sea. He knew the rocky defile leading to the southwest, by which an army might some time enter to make him moi. He knew it from vivid description, although he could not see it. Opposite, across the valley, the Waimano cliffs, which Hiwa sixteen years before had sealed in her flight, rose to an altitude of three thousand feet, and below them, in the midst of rich, green lowlands, lay the royal town. In the centre of the town, distinguished by its size, was the palace of the moi, and near it that of the high-priest. Scattered through the valley, and also distinguishable by their size and the clusters of huts about them, were the town residences of the great nobles. Kaanaana’s was on the Kukuihaele side, not far from where Hiwa and Aelani stood. But it was empty. He and his retinue had long since withdrawn to his domains beyond the mountains of Hamakua.