Hawaii (16 page)

The critical stars had not yet risen, so that in spite of their joy, men could not suppress the questions that often assailed voyagers: "What if we have sailed away from heavens we knew? What if the Little Eyes do not rise here?" Then slowly and uncertainly, for they were not brilliant stars, the sacred group arose, precisely where it should have been, climbing up out of its appropriate pit.

"The Little Eyes are still with us!" Tupuna shouted, and the king raised his head to offer a prayer to the guardians of the world, the core around which the heavens were built.

The astronomers then met to read the signs, and they concluded that the storm had blown fairly steadily from the west, but apparently there had been, as Teura had guessed, a definite drift of the sea northward, for the Little Eyes were going to culminate much higher in the heavens than would be proper were the canoe on course to Nuku Hiva; but to say specifically how serious the drift had been, the navigators would have to wait until Three-in-a-Row appeared, which would not be for another two hours.

So the three plotters waited, and when Three-in-a-Row was well up into the heavens it became self-evident that the canoe was far, far north of the course to Nuku Hiva and was thus committed to an unknown ocean with no opportunity to replenish stores. It was therefore a solemn group that went aft to report to the king: "The storm has carried us even more swiftly than Teroro imagined."

The king's face showed his distress. "Are we lost?"

Uncle Tupuna replied, "We are far from Nuku Hiva and will see no land we know."

"Then we are lost?" the king pressed.

"No, nephew, we are not," Tupuna said carefully. "It is true that we have been carried into far regions, but they are not off our course. We seek lands which lie beneath the Seven Little Eyes, and we are nearer to them tonight than we had a right to expect. If we do not eat too much . . ."

Even though Tamatoa had given permission to keep the sails aloft, and even though he had known that the canoe thus ran the risk of missing Nuku Hiva, he had nevertheless hoped that they would stumble upon that known island, and perhaps find it congenial, and possibly establish homes there. Now he was committed to the greater journey, and he was fearful.

"We could still alter course and find Nuku Hiva," he suggested.

Teroro remained silent and allowed old Tupuna to carry the argument: "No, we are well on our way."

"But to where?"

Tupuna repeated the only chant he had ever memorized for sailing to the north. In effect it said: "Keep the canoe headed with the storm until the winds cease completely. Then turn into the dead sea where bones rot with heat and no wind blows. Paddle to the new star, and when winds strike from the east, ride with them westward until land beneath the Seven Little Eyes is found."

The king, himself an adequate astronomer, pointed due north and asked, "Then the lands we seek are there?"

"Yes," Tupuna agreed.

"But we go this way?" and he pointed eastward, where the winds of the dying storm were driving them.

"Yes."

The course seemed so improbable, to head for a promised land by

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fleeing it, that the king cried, "Can we be sure that this is the way?"

"No," the old man confessed, "we cannot be sure."

"Then why . . ."

"Because the only knowledge we have says that this is the way to do it."

The king, ever mindful of the fact that fifty-seven people were in his care, grasped Tupuna by the shoulders and asked bluntly, "What do you honestly think about the land that is supposed to be under the Little Eyes?"

The old man replied, "I think that many canoes have left these waters, some blown by storms, others like us in exile, and no man has ever returned. Whether these canoes reached land or not, we do not know. But some man, with a vision of what might be, composed that chant."

"Then we are sailing with a dream for our guide?" Tamatoa asked.

"Yes," the priest answered.

Gloom was not allowed to capture the canoe, for the reappearance of the stars had excited the paddlers and the women, so that even while the astronomers were consulting, shark-faced Pa had handed his paddle to another and had grabbed a length of tapa which he had wrapped around his shoulders, masking his head. Now imitating a very fat man, he pranced up and down the platform, shouting, "Who am I?"

"He's the headless king of Bora Bora!" Mato cried.

"Look at fat Tatai coming to be our king, with his head knocked off!"

In wild burlesque, Pa ridiculed the coronation of the headless would-be king. Paddlers stopped and began to beat rhythms on the canoe, and a woman produced a little drum with a high, almost metallic sound, and the night's revelry was launched.

"What is this new dance?" Tamatoa inquired.

"I've never seen it before," Tupuna replied.

"Do you know what he's doing?" the king asked Teroro.

"Yes," the younger man said hesitantly. "Pa is ... Well, Tamatoa, some of us heard that fat Tatai was to be king after we left . . . and . . ."

Tamatoa looked at the headless dancer and asked, "So you sneaked over to Havaiki . . . some of you . . ."

"Yes."

"And now Tatai has no head."

"Well . . . yes. You see, we felt ..."

"You could have ruined the entire voyage, couldn't you?"

"We could have, but we figured that Tatai's village wouldn't come over to Bora Bora very soon . . ."

"Why not?"

"Well, when we left there wasn't any village."

In the light of the quarter moon King Tamatoa looked at his daring young brother, and there was much that he would have said,

78

HAWAII

but the sound of ancient drumming stifled his logical thoughts, and with a stirring leap he whirled forward to where Pa was dancing and entered into the ritual dance of the kings of Bora Bora. Like a boy, he gestured and postured and told forgotten stories, until toward the end he grabbed Pa's tapa and threw it over his head and did the now popular dance of the headless king from Havaiki. When the drums had reached a crescendo he threw off the tapa, stood very straight in the night wind, and exulted: "We did not go like cowardsl I, the king, was afraid to strike at those evil worms, those faces of excrement, those vile and awful dead fish of the stinking lagoon. I was afraid to endanger the coming voyage. But Pa here was not afraid. And Mato was not afraid. And my brother ..." In gratitude Tamatoa looked aft to where Teroro stood in darkness. The king did not finish his sentence. With demonic energy he leaped into a dance of victory, shouting, "I dance in honor of brave men! Let's have the celebration you were denied!" And he ordered extra rations of food to be broken out, and more drums, and all the water anyone wanted.

Like children careless of the dawn, they reveled through the night, got drunk on laughter, and feasted on food that should have been conserved. It was a wild, wonderful night of victory, and each half hour someone shouted, "Pa! Do the dance of the headless king!" Then, one by one, in savage triumph, they rose and screamed classic island insults at the vanquished.

"Havaiki is the strong scent of spoiled meat!"

"The worthless trash of Havaiki take pleasure in their shame."

"Fat Tatai trembles in fear. The hair on his head trembles. He crawls away and hides like a hen in a secret place."

"The warriors of Havaiki are the froth of water, boys playing with mud balls."

Teroro, succumbing to the excitement, shouted, "Fat Tatai is a sneaking little dog, excrement of excrement." But as his voice shrieked in the wind, he happened to look forward to where beautiful Tehani huddled against the masts, weeping as her father was reviled. Then he also saw Mato, from the left hull, touch the girl's hand.

Mato said, "This is the way of victory. You must forgive us." From the rear new voices rose with foul invective, and the drums beat on.

In the rainy dawn, of course, King Tamatoa took gloomy stock of what the celebration had cost and for a moment he thought: "We are children. We discover we're lost and half an hour later we eat enough food for a week." Contritely, he issued stringent orders that what had been wasted must be made up by austere rationing. "Even though we have plenty of water," he warned, "each must drink only a cupful a day."

So, with the remnants of the tempest at their back and with victory in their hearts, the voyagers sailed eastward for the ninth night, and the tenth, and the fifteenth. Their swift canoe, fleetest large craft that ever up to then had plied the oceans of the world,

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averaged two hundred miles a day, better than eight miles an hour, day after day. They sailed more than halfway to the lands where Aztecs were building mighty temples, and well onto the approaches of the northern land where Cheyennes and Apaches built nothing. In the direction they were then headed they could encounter no land until they struck the continent itself; but before that happened they would have perished of thirst and starvation in the doWrums. Nevertheless, they carried on, according to Teroro's plan. There was fear each dawn when the sun rose; there was momentary joy each night when the stars reappeared to tell their progress; for day was the enemy, crowded with uncertainty and the hourly acknowledgment of their forlorn position; but night was consolation and the spiritual assurance of known stars, and the waxing of the fat moon through its many stages, and the soft cries of birds at dusk. How tremendous an experience this was, at the end of a long day which had provided only the unstable sun, to watch the return of night and to discover, there in the west where the sun went down, the evening star and its wandering companion, and out of the vastness to see the Little Eyes come peeping with their message: "You are coming closer to the land we guard." How marvelous, how marvelous the night!

As THE CANOE REACHED EASTWARD and the storm abated, the daily routine became more settled. Each dawn the six slaves stopped bailing and cleaned out the canoe, while farmers moved among the animals and fed them, giving the pigs and dogs fish caught in the early hours, plus some mashed sweet potatoes and fresh water trapped in the sails. The chickens got dried coconut and a fish to pick at, but if they lagged in eating, a slim, dark object darted out from among the freight and grabbed the food away, unseen by the slaves, for as on all such trips, some rats had stowed aboard, and if the voyage turned out badly, they would be the last to die ... would indeed sustain themselves for many drifting days on those who had already perished.

After the women in the grass hut had wakened, the female slaves would move inside, throw out the slops and do the other necessary chores. Particularly, they kept clean that corner of the hut which had been cut off by lengths of tapa and reserved for those women who were experiencing their monthly sickness, for it was a tabu entailing death for there to be any communication between men and women at such time.

In general, however, the tabus which were rigidly enforced on land had to be suspended aboard a crowded canoe. For example, had any of the rowers while ashore come as near the king as all now were, or had they stepped upon his shadow, or even the shadow of his cape, they would have been killed instantly, but in the canoe the tabu was suspended, and sometimes when the king moved, men actually touched him. They recoiled as if doomed, but he ignored the insult.

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The tabus which centered upon eating were also held in abeyance, for there was no one aboard of sufficient status to prepare the king's food as custom required; nor had the keeper of the king's toilet pot come on the journey, so that a slave, terrified at the task, had to throw into the sea the kingly bowel movements, rather than follow the required custom of burying them secretly in a sacred grove, lest enemies find them and with evil spells conjure the king to death.

Women upon such a trip did not fare well. Obviously, the food had to be reserved for men who did the hard work of paddling. The pigs and dogs also had to be kept alive to stock the new land, which left little for the women. That was why, at every opportunity, they set fishing lines and tended them carefully. The first fish they caught went to the king and Teroro, the next to Tupuna and his old wife, the next four to the paddlers, the seventh and eighth to the pigs, the ninth to the dogs, the tenth to the chickens and the rats. If there were more, the women could eat.

With great niggardliness, the prepared foods were doled out, a piece at a time, but when they were distributed, how good they tasted. A man would get his stick of hard and sour breadfruit, and as he chewed on it he would recall the wasteful feasts he had once held, when abundant breadfruit, fresh and sweet, had been thrown to animals. But the food that gave most pleasure, the master food of the islands, came when the king directed that one of the bamboo lengths of dried poi be opened, and then the rich purplish starch would be handed out, and as it grew sticky in the mouth, men would smile with pleasure.

But soon the poi was finished and the bundles of dried breadfruit diminished. Even the abundant rain ceased and King Tamatoa had to reduce his rations still further, until the crew were getting only two mouthfuls of solid food, two small portions of water. Women and slaves got half as much, so that unless the fishermen could land bonito, or trap water in the sails, all existed at the starvation level.

Early in the dry period the king and Teroro made one discovery, a tormenting and frustrating one made by all similar voyagers: when the tongue was parched and the body scorched with heat, when one's whole being craved only water, an unexpected squall often passed a mile to the left or right, dumping untold quantities of water upon the sea, just out of reach, but it was no use paddling furiously to overtake the squall, for by the time the canoe reached the spot where the rain had been falling, the squall had moved on, leaving all hands hotter and thirstier than before. Not even an expert navigator like Teroro could anticipate the vagaries of a rain squall and intercept it; all one could do was to plod patiently on, his lips burning with desire and his eyes aflame, trying to ignore the cascades of water that were being dumped out of reach; but one could also pray that if one did continue purposefully, in a seamanlike manner, sooner or later some squall would have to strike the canoe.