But Hina went on. She was lamed, and she was filled with pain; and yet she rejoiced as she went along through the quiet night. On and on she went. She came to where the Stars were, and she said incantations to them, that they might show her how to come to the Moon. And the Stars showed her the way, and she came at last to the Moon.
She came to the Moon with the calabash that had her precious possessions; and the Moon gave her a place where she might rest. There Hina stayed. And the people of Hawaii can look up to the bright Moon and see her there. She sits, her foot lamed, and with her calabash by her side. Seeing her there, the people call her, not “Hina” any more, but “Lono Moku”—that is, “Lame Lono.” And standing outside the door you can see her now—Hina, the Woman in the Moon. But some say that, instead of the calabash, she took with her her tapa-board [[202]]and mallet; and they say that the fine fleecy clouds that you see around the Moon are really the fine tapa-cloths that Hina beats out. [[203]]
Notes.
THE BOY PU-NIA AND THE KING OF THE SHARKS
Given in the Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk-lore, Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology and Natural History, Vol. V, Part II, with the title Kaao no Punia, Legend of Pu-nia.
Like many another Polynesian hero, Pu-nia had a mother whose name was Hina. The shark’s name, Kai-ale-ale, means “Sea in great commotion.” But the kindling of the fire inside the shark with the fire-sticks could not have been so easy as it is made to appear. Melville, in Typee, describes the operation of fire-making as laborious. This is how he saw it being done:
“A straight, dry, and partly decayed stick of the hibiscus, about six feet in length, and half as many inches in diameter, with a smaller bit of wood not more than a foot long, and scarcely an inch wide, is as invariably to be met with in every house in Typee as a box of lucifer matches in the corner of the kitchen cupboard at home. The islander, placing the larger stick obliquely against some object, with one end elevated at an angle of forty-five degrees, mounts astride of it like an urchin about to gallop off upon a cane, and then grasping the smaller one firmly in both hands, he rubs its pointed end slowly up and down the extent of a few inches on the principal stick, until at last he makes a narrow groove in the wood, with an abrupt termination at the point furthest from him, where all the dusty particles which the friction creates are accumulated in a little heap.
“At first Kory-Kory goes to work quite leisurely, but gradually quickens his pace, and waxing warm in the employment, drives the stick furiously along the smoking channel, plying his hands to and fro with amazing rapidity, the perspiration [[204]]starting from every pore. As he approaches the climax of his effort, he pants and gasps for breath, and his eyes almost start from their sockets with the violence of his exertions. This is the critical stage of the operation; all his previous labours are in vain if he cannot sustain the rapidity of the movement until the reluctant spark is produced. Suddenly he stops, becomes perfectly motionless. His hands still retain their hold of the smaller stick, which is pressed convulsively against the further end of the channel among the fine powder there accumulated, as if he had just pierced through and through some little viper that was wriggling and struggling to escape from his clutches. The next moment a delicate wreath of smoke curls spirally into the air, the heap of dusty particles glow with fire, and Kory-Kory, almost breathless, dismounts from his steed.”