Once they hollowed out a great stone and they gave it to their head fisherman for a house. He would sit in his hollow stone all day and fish for his people.
No cliff was too steep for them to climb; indeed, it was they who planted the wild taro on the cliffs; they planted it in the swamps too, and on cliff and in swamp it grows wild to this day. When they were on the march they would go in divisions. The work of the first division would be to clear the road of logs. The work of the second division would be to lower the hills. The work of the third division would be to sweep the path. Another division had to carry the sleds and the sleeping mats for the King. One division had charge of the food, and another division had charge of the planting of the crop. One division was composed of wizards and soothsayers and astrologers, and another division was made up of story-tellers, fun-makers, and musicians who made entertainment for the King. Some played on the nose-flute, and others blew trumpets that were made by ripping a ti-leaf away from the middle ridge and rolling over the torn piece. Through this they blew, varying the sound by fingering. They played stringed instruments that they held in their mouths, and they twanged the strings with their fingers. [[153]]Others beat on drums that were hollow logs with shark-skin drawn across them.
It would have been wonderful to look on the Me-ne-hu-ne when they were on the march. That would be on the nights of the full moon. Then they would all come together, and their King would speak to them.
And that reminds me of Ka-u-ki-u-ki, the Angry One. Perhaps he wanted to hold the legs of the Moon so that they might be able to listen a long time to their King, or march far in a night. I told you that he kept staring at the Owl of Ka-ne until the bird flew away in the night. But then it was too late to catch hold of the legs of the Moon. The next night he tried to do it. But although he stood on the top of the highest hill, and although he reached up to his fullest height, he could not lay hold on the legs of the Moon. And because he boasted of doing a thing that he could not do, the rest of the Me-ne-hu-ne punished him; they turned him into a stone. And a stone the Angry One is to this day—a stone on the top of the hill from which he tried to reach up and lay hold upon the legs of the Moon.
Perhaps it was on the very night which Ka-u-ki-u-ki tried to lengthen that their King told the Me-ne-hu-ne that they were to leave these Islands. Some of the Me-ne-hu-ne had married Hawaiian women, and children that were half Me-ne-hu-ne and half Hawaiian were born. The King of the Me-ne-hu-ne [[154]]folk did not like this: he wanted his people to remain pure Me-ne-hu-ne. So on a bright moonlit night he had them all come together, men, women, and children, and he spoke to them. “All of you,” he said, “who have married wives from amongst the Hawaiian people must leave them, and all of the Me-ne-hu-ne race must go away from these Islands. The food that we planted in the valley is ripe; that food we will leave for the wives and children that we do not take with us—the Hawaiian women and the half-Hawaiian children.”
When their King said this, no word was spoken for a long time from the ranks of the Me-ne-hu-ne. Then one whose name was Mo-hi-ki-a spoke up and said: “Must all of us go, O King, and may none of us stay with the Hawaiian wives that we have married? I have married an Hawaiian woman, and I have a son who is now grown to manhood. May he not go with you while I remain with my wife? He is stronger than I am. I have taught him all the skill that I possessed in the making of canoes. He can use the adze and make a canoe out of a tree trunk more quickly than any other of the Me-ne-hu-ne. And none of the Me-ne-hu-ne is so swift in the race as he is. Take my son in my place, and if it ever happens that the Me-ne-hu-ne need me, my son can run quickly for me and bring me back.”
The King would not have Mo-hi-ki-a stay behind. “We start on our journey to-morrow night,” [[155]]he said. “All the Me-ne-hu-ne will leave the Islands, and the crop that is now grown will be left for the women and children.”
And so the Me-ne-hu-ne in their great force left our Islands, and where they went there is none of us who know. Perhaps they went back to Kahiki-mo-e, for in Kahiki-mo-e they had been for a time before they came back to Hawaii. But not all of the Me-ne-hu-ne left the Islands. Some stole away from their divisions and hid in hollow logs, and their descendants we have with us to this day. There are still many Me-ne-hu-ne away up in the mountains, living in caves and in hollow logs.
But the great force of them left the Islands then. Before they went they made a monument. Upon the top of the highest hill they built it, carrying up the stones the night after the King had commanded them to leave. The monument was for the King and the Chiefs of the Me-ne-hu-ne—the monument of stones that we see. And for the Me-ne-hu-ne of common birth they made another monument. This they did by hollowing out a great cave in the mountain. The monument of stones on the top of the mountain and the cave in the side of the mountain you can see to this day.
On the next moonlit night the Me-ne-hu-ne in their thousands looked and saw the monuments they had raised. They were ready for the march as they looked, men and women, half-grown men and half-grown [[156]]women, and little children. They looked and they saw the monument that they had raised on the mountain. Thereupon all the little men raised such a shout that the fish in the pond of No-mi-lu, at the other side of the Island, jumped in fright, and the moi, the wary fish, left the beaches. And then, with trumpets sounding, flutes playing, and drums beating, the Me-ne-hu-ne started off.