“There, you see! We’d ’ave had better luck with the women aboard.” Such was the exclamation of Pi’i-ke-a-iki.
It did not take long to convince the old man Pi’i-ke-a-nui, who was captain of the canoe, that he had invited this disaster on himself, the agent of which, as he rightly suspected, was none other than the distinguished-looking young woman who now stood on the beach watching him in his predicament with unperturbed countenance.
The two men floated their canoe, collected their baggage and came ashore. When they had got the stuff dry and stowed in the waist of the craft, they escorted the women aboard, seating Wahine-oma’o, as directed by the captain, in the bow near Pi’i-ke-a-iki and Hiiaka in the after part, within arm’s length of Pi’i-ke-a-nui, and they put to sea.
The canoe was a small affair, unprovided with that central platform, the pola, that might serve as the cabin or quarter deck, on which the passengers could stretch themselves for comfort. In her weariness, Hiiaka, with her head toward the bow, reclined her body against the top rail of the canoe, thus eking out the insufficiency of the narrow thwart that was her seat; and she fell asleep, or rather, entered that border-land of Nod, in which the central watchman has not yet given over control of the muscular system and the ear still maintains its aerial reconnoissance.
The wind, meanwhile, as it caromed aft from the triangular sail of mat, coquetted with her tropical apparel and made paú and kihei shake like summer leaves.
The steersman, in whom that precious factor, a chivalrous regard for woman, was even of less value than is common to the savage breast, in the pursuit of a fixed purpose, began to direct amorous glances at the prostrate form before him and to the neglect of his own proper duties. Presently he left his steering and stole up to Hiiaka with privy paw outstretched. Hiiaka roused from her half-dreamy state on the instant, and the man sprang back and resumed his paddle.
Hiiaka, with the utmost coolness, expressed in song her remonstrance and sarcastic rebuke for this exhibition of inhospitable rudeness:
A Hono-ma-ele au, i Hono-ka-lani,
Ike au i ka ua o ko’u aina,
E halulu ana, me he kanaka la—