What Ma-ui fished up would have been a mainland, only that his brother’s paddle dropped and the line broke. Then only an island came up out of the water. If more land had come up, all the Islands that we know would have been joined in one. [[20]]
There are people who say that his sister, Hina-of-the-Sea, was near at the time of that great fishing. They say she came floating out on a calabash. When Ma-ui let down the magic hook with their mother’s sacred bird upon it, Hina-of-the-Sea dived down and put the hook into the mouth of Old One Tooth, and then pulled at the line to let Ma-ui know that the hook was in his jaws. Some people say this, and it may be the truth. But whether or not, every one, on every Island in the Great Ocean, from Kahiki-mo-e to Hawaii nei, knows that Ma-ui fished up a great Island for men to live on. And this fishing was the third of Ma-ui’s great deeds.
How Ma-ui snared the Sun and made Him go more slowly across the Heavens.
The Sky had been lifted up, and another great Island had come from the grip of Old One Tooth and was above the waters. The world was better now for men and women to live in. But still there were miseries in it, and the greatest of these miseries was on account of the heedlessness of the Sun.
For the Sun in those days made his way too quickly across the world. He hurried so that little of his heat got to the plants and the fruits, and it took years and years for them to ripen. The farmers working on their patches would not have time in the light of a day to put down their crop into the [[21]]ground, so quickly the Sun would rush across the heavens, and the fishermen would barely have time to launch their canoes and get to the fishing grounds when the darkness would come on. And the women’s tasks were never finished. It was theirs to make the tapa-cloth: a woman would begin at one end of the board to beat the bark with her four-sided mallet, and she would be only at the middle of the board by the time the sunset came. When she was ready to go on with the work next day, the Sun would be already halfway across the heavens.
Ma-ui, when he was a child, used to watch his mother making tapa, and as he grew up he pitied her more and more because of all the toil and trouble that she had. She would break the branches from the ma-ma-ka trees and from the wau-ke trees and soak them in water until their bark was easily taken off. Then she would take off the outer bark, leaving the inner bark to be worked upon. She would take the bundles of the wet inner bark and lay them on the tapa-board and begin pounding them with little clubs. And then she would use her four-sided mallet and beat all the soft stuff into little thin sheets. Then she would paste the little sheets together, making large cloths. This was tapa—the tapa that it was every woman’s business in those days to make. As soon as morning reddened the clouds Ma-ui’s mother, Hina-of-the-Fire, would begin her task: she would begin beating the softened bark at [[22]]one end of the board, and she would be only in the middle of the board when the sunset came. And when she managed to get the tapa made she could never get it dried in a single day, so quickly the Sun made his way across the heavens. Ma-ui pitied his mother because of her unceasing toil.
He greatly blamed the Sun for his inconsiderateness of the people of the world. He took to watching the Sun. He began to know the path by which the Sun came over the great mountain Ha-le-a-ka-la (but in those days it was not called Ha-le-a-ka-la, the House of the Sun, but A-hele-a-ka-la, The Rays of the Sun). Through a great chasm in the side of this mountain the Sun used to come.
He told his mother that he was going to do something to make the Sun have more considerateness for the men and women of the world. “You will not be able to make him do anything about it,” she said; “the Sun always went swiftly, and he will always go swiftly.” But Ma-ui said that he would find a way to make the Sun remember that there were people in the world and that they were not at all pleased with the way he was going on.
Then his mother said: “If you are going to force the Sun to go more slowly you must prepare yourself for a great battle, for the Sun is a great creature, and he has much energy. Go to your grandmother who lives on the side of Ha-le-a-ka-la,” said she (but it was called A-hele-a-ka-la then), “and [[23]]beg her to give you her counsel, and also to give you a weapon to battle with the Sun.”