To the rain pattering on the leaves.
These are the storms, the storms [[29]]
Cause them to fall;
To pour in torrents.”
The rain came on—the long rain, the small rain, the rain that patters on the leaves; storms came, and rain in torrents. The fire that raged in the forests and burned on the ground was drowned out. And Ma-hui’a, who had followed him, was nearly-drowned by the torrents of rain. She saw her fire, all the fire that was in the lower and in the upper worlds, being quenched by the rain.
She gathered up what fragments of fire she could, and she hid them in barks of different trees so that the rain could not get at them and quench them. Ma-ui’s mother must have known where his great-great-grandmother hid the fire. If she did not, her sacred birds, the alae, knew it. They were able to take the barks of the trees and, by rubbing them together, to bring out fire.
In Hawaii they tell how Ma-ui and his brothers used to go out fishing every day, and how, as soon as they got far out to sea, they would see smoke rising on the mountain-side. “Behold,” they would say, “there is a fire. Whose can it be?” “Let us hasten to the shore and cook our fish at that fire,” another would say.
So, with the fish that they had caught, Ma-ui and his brothers would hasten to the shore. The swiftest of them would run up the mountain-side. But when [[30]]he would get to where the smoke had been, all he would see would be the alae scratching clay over burnt-out sticks. The alae would leave the place where they had been seen, and Ma-ui would follow them from place to place, hoping to catch them while their fire was lighted.
He would send his brothers off fishing, and he himself would watch for the smoke from the fire that the alae would kindle. But they would kindle no fire on the days that he did not go out in the canoe with his brothers. “We cannot have our cooked bananas to-day,” the old bird would say to the young birds, “for the swift son of Hina is somewhere near, and he would come upon us before we put out our fire. And remember that the guardian of the fire told us never to show a man where it is hidden or how it is taken out of its hiding place.”
Then Ma-ui understood that the bird watched for his going and that they made no fire until they saw him out at sea in his canoe. He knew that they counted the men that went out, and that if he was not in the number they did no cooking that day. Every time he went in the canoe he saw smoke rising on the mountain-side.