We all laughed except the humorist who could not see the joke.
"Break! you fat rascal," he exclaimed, "before I am done with you, you won't be anything but an animated brown shadow."
With sarcastic comments which did not disturb our serenity and much waving of handkerchiefs we began the descent. We went down at a very rapid gait, the loose dirt smoking at our heels and the canteen thumping against William's fat sides. In a half hour we reached the floor of the crater and stopped to take breath. After William had lighted his pipe we went on our way. First across the black lava flows and broken aa. In the days of its storm and stress this had been the hot and glowing life-blood of the great volcano, but now it was cold, black and congealed. Beyond the flows we came to long stretches of volcanic sands and the lofty cones rose above us, so perfect in form that it seemed the slightest breath of air would disturb their symmetry. Their coloring was wonderful, velvety black, gray and red shading into one another. And through the vast silence the silvery notes of a bird floated down to us from the far battlements of the crater.
After a toilsome tramp we reached the other side where the trees come down the slope, and throwing ourselves down in the shade we looked across the burning plain and enjoyed the coolness by way of contrast as we smoked and took chance shots at stray goats coming down the ridge.
"Do you know any stories or legends connected with Haleakala, William?" I asked.
"Yes, I know one, my grandma always telling."
"That's right, William," said the humorist, "take down your harp from the weeping lauhala trees, and sing to us of the departed glories of your race."
"You see my grandma great old woman, she kahuna, live at Hana. I hear this story every since I was keiki. She says it comes down from some old poets."
And after gazing across the crater for a while William began in his native tongue:
"In former times from the distant Islands of the southern sea came a strange people to Hawaii. On their spears were the great sharks' teeth, and their tabu staffs were crowned with kapa black or white. They were great of stature and became the mois of Hawaii. Then followed a people from beyond the rising sun. Small and broad they were, and came in ships such as were never before seen in Hawaiian seas. But stranger than these peoples was an alien race which came from out the distant north from whence the great trees come floating down upon the rivers of the sea, and the tradewinds take their rise, which come to cool our valleys and the burning sea.