He was soon regarded as an akua (god). No natives dared to enter the bay of Hanauma.
At the end of each whaling season he accumulated considerable sums in gold, a part of which he hid and a part he invested in the purchase of shares in whalers. After the season, he engaged in fishing for the rare fish only, which he supplied to the King and chiefs. Whenever the King said: "Peleg, my friend, I want some of the Ahi," Peleg sent four of his leading sharks to the Kona coast, and they returned within ten hours, with an abundance.
The King sent for him one day and said to him: "You are the most valuable man in my kingdom, and as my predecessors rewarded Isaac Davis and John Young with matrimonial alliances, I would be glad to have you look around and if you see any attractive female of the royal connection that you would like to marry, you may take her until otherwise ordered. I wish for useful men about my throne. I put on no airs, excepting a white cotton shirt. If you accept my offer you are authorized to wear an Admiral's cocked hat, and new boots on State occasion." Peleg replied that he recognized the honor, but that his heart belonged to his sharks and to the daughter of a carpenter who lived near the York State line, and he expected to visit her very soon.
A fanatical native attempted to "anaana" him or pray him to death. He gathered grass and burned it. The oily kukui nuts were thrown on the fire, and the whole resources of the Polynesian Black Art were brought into use. But Peleg lived.
A missionary, hearing of his remarkable powers, visited him and inquired about his ancestors, and among other questions asked him if he had become a heathen and allowed himself to become a kahuna or sorcerer. He replied that he did not hanker after heathenism, but, he said, that if he was in the missionary business he would open a conjuring saloon and beat all their old kahunas at sleight of hand tricks, and that would soon bring the whole crowd over to his side. The heathen, he said, couldn't do much thinking but if they saw him pull a rabbit out of his nose, or take a taro out of a man's ear, they would smash the business of their own conjuring priests. Seein' was believin'. Conjuring tricks would finally bust up their superstitions. The missionary said he and his associates could not look upon the matter in that way, but he would write to the American Board about it, and ask it to send out a respectable conjurer of high moral principle who would hitch a moral to the tail end of every trick, and then challenge a native sorcerer to do any better.
Peleg said that although he was a perverted Puritan, he would supply all of the Honolulu missionaries with fish without charge.
As he had received a very limited education owing to his father's flourishing poverty, he seldom wrote any letters. He did not forget his mother, however. She received from time to time, through Bunker & Co., of New Bedford, comfortable sums of money, with the statement that they came from her son, who was somewhere on the equator, and would come home after awhile. He also sent to Patsy McGloural, who had grown up and did the chores in the family of a rich paper manufacturer, a sandal wood box, and a dress of the finest Chinese silk, which he got from one of the vessels in the sandal wood trade. This dress was the finest in Berkshire county, and when Patsy put it on and went to church, it attracted the attention of the women, so that the preacher gave out the hymn about being "naked, poor and sinful."
Peleg had invested his money in shares in the whaleships, which made very profitable voyages, from Honolulu to the Arctic and Japan seas, and he became rich for a Berkshire man. After ten years of fishing he resolved to go home. He found a young man who came from the neighboring town of Hinsdale, on one of the new whalers, and after giving him a long trial, instructed him in the business. He consulted an attorney in Honolulu, and executed an instrument establishing the "Peleg Chapman Shark Trust," the income of which was to be used in feeding his faithful sharks with pork and beans, and in supplying the poor natives of Honolulu with fish.