Hawaiian folk tales

by Unknown

“Son of the stout spear! I know thou seekest the sweet Flower of Palawai; and no man but her sire has seen her resting-place; but I know that thou seekest in vain in the groves, and in the ravines, and in this mountain. Opunui is a great diver and has his dens in the sea. He leaves the shore when no one follows, and he sleeps with the fish gods, and thou wilt find thy love in some cave of the rock-bound southern shore.”

The chief quickly turns his face again seaward. He descends the deep shaded pathway of the ravine of Kaunolu. He winds his way through shaded thickets of ohia, sandalwood, the yellow mamani, the shrub violet, and the fragrant na-u. He halted not as he reached the plain of Palawai, though the ever overhanging canopy of cloud that shades this valley of the mountain cooled his weary feet. These upper lands were still, and no voice was heard by the pili grass huts, and the maika balls and the wickets of the bowling alley of Palawai stood untouched, because all the people were with the great chief by the shore of Kaunolu; and Kaaialii thought that he trod the flowery pathway of the still valley alone.

But there was one who, in soothing his strained limbs after he fell by the gateway of the temple, had planted strong love in her own heart; and she, Ua, with her lithe young limbs, had followed this sorrowing lord through all his weary tramp, even through the gorges, and over the ramparts of the hills, and she was near the sad, wayworn chief when he reached the southern shore.

The weary hero only stayed his steps when he reached the brow of the great bluff of Palikaholo. The sea broke many hundred feet below where he stood. The gulls and screaming boatswain birds sailed in mid-air between his perch and the green waves. He looked up the coast to his right, and saw the lofty, wondrous sea columns of Honopu. He looked to the left, and beheld the crags of Kalulu, but nowhere could he see any sign which should tell him where his love was hid away.

His strong, wild nature was touched by the distant sob and moan of the surf. It sang a song for his sad, savage soul. It roused up before his eyes other eyes, and lips, and cheeks, and clasps of tender arms. His own sinewy ones he now stretched out wildly in the mocking air. He groaned, and sobbed, and beat his breast as he cried out, “Kaala! O Kaala! Where art thou? Dost thou sleep with the fish gods, or must I go to join thee in the great shark’s maw?”

As the sad hero thought of this dread devourer of many a tender child of the isles, he hid his face with his hands,—looking with self-torture upon the image of his soft young love, crunched, bloody and shrieking, in the jaws of the horrid god of the Hawaiian seas; and as he thought and waked up in his heart the memories of his love, he felt that he must seek her even in her gory grave in the sea.

Then he looks forth again, and as he gazes down by the shore his eyes rest upon the spray of the blowing cave near Kaumalapau. It leaps high with the swell which the south wind sends. The white mist gleams in the sun. Shifting forms and shades are seen in the varied play of the up-leaping cloud. And as with fevered soul he glances, he sees a form spring up in the ever bounding spray.

He sees with his burning eyes the lines of the sweet form that twines with tender touch around his soul. He sees the waving hair, that mingles on his neck with his own swart curls. He sees,—he thinks he sees,—in the leap and play of sun-tinted spray, his love, his lost Kaala; and with hot foot he rushes downward to the shore.

He stands upon the point of rock whence Opunui sprang. He feels the throb beneath his feet of the beating, bounding tide. He sees the fret and foam of the surging gulf below the leaping spray, and is wetted by the shore-driven mist. He sees all of this wild, working water, but he does not see Kaala.

And yet he peers into this mad surf for her he seeks. The form that he has seen still leads him on. He will brave the sea god’s wrath; and he fain would cool his brow of flame in the briny bath. He thinks he hears a voice sounding down within his soul; and cries, “Where art thou, O Kaala? I come, I come!” And as he cries, he springs into the white, foaming surge of this ever fretted sea.