Part 9 (2/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Outside Were Other Worlds.”]

Rupe's heart filled with the desire to find and protect the frenzied sister who had probably taken a canoe and floated away, out of the horizon, seen from New Zealand coasts, into new horizons. During the Viking age of the Pacific, when many chiefs sailed long distances, visiting the most remote islands of Polynesia, they frequently spoke of breaking through from the home land into new heavens--or of climbing up the path of the sun on the waters into a new heaven. This was their poetical way of pa.s.sing from horizon to horizon. The horizon around their particular island surrounded their complete world. Outside, somewhere, were other worlds and other heavens. Rupe's voyage was an idyll of the Pacific. It was one more story to be added to the prose poems of consecrated travel. It was a brother feeling through the mysteries of unknown lands for a sister, as dear to him as an Evangeline has been to other men.

From the mist-land of the Polynesian race comes this story of the trickery of Maui the learned, and the faithfulness of his older brother Maui-mua or Rupe--one of the ”five forgetful Mauis.” Rupe hoisted mat-sails over his canoe and thus made the winds serve him. He paddled the canoe onward through the hours when calms rested on gla.s.sy waves.

Thus he pa.s.sed out of sight of Ao-tea-roa, away from his brothers, and out of the reach of all tricks and incantations of Maui, the mischievous. He sailed until a new island rose out of the sea to greet him. Here in a ”new heaven” he found friends to care for him and prepare him for his longer journey. His restless anxiety for his sister urged him onward until days lengthened into months and months into years. He pa.s.sed from the horizons of newly-discovered islands, into the horizons of circling skies around islands of which he had never heard before.

Sometimes he found relatives, but more frequently his welcome came from those who could trace no historical touch in their genealogies.

Here and there, apparently, he found traces of a woman whose description answered that of his sister Hina-uri. At last he looked through the heavens upon a new world, and saw his sister in great trouble.

According to some legends the jealous wives of the great chief, Tini-rau, attack Hina, who was known among them as Hina-te-ngaru-moana, ”Hina, the daughter of the ocean.” Tini-rau and Hina lived away from the village of the chief until their little boy was born. When they needed food, the chief said, ”Let us go to my settlement and we shall have food provided.”

But Hina chanted:

”Let it down, let it down, Descend, oh! descend--”

and sufficient food fell before them. After a time their frail clothing wore out, and the cold chilled them, then Hina again uttered the incantation and clothing was provided for their need.

But the jealous wives, two in number, finally heard where Hina and the chief were living, and started to see them.

Tini-rau said to Hina, ”Here come my other wives--be careful how you act before them.”

She replied, ”If they come in anger it will be evil.”

She armed herself with an obsidian or volcanic-gla.s.s knife, and waited their coming.

They tried to throw enchantments around her to kill her. Then one of them made a blow at her with a weapon, but she turned it aside and killed her enemy with the obsidian knife.

Then the other wife made an attack, and again the obsidian knife brought death. She ripped open the stomachs of the jealous ones and showed the chief fish lines and sinkers and other property which they had eaten in the past and which Tini-rau had never been able to trace.

Another legend says that the two women came to kill Hina when they heard of the birth of her boy. For a time she was greatly terrified. Then she saw that they were coming from different directions. She attacked the nearest one with a stone and killed her. The body burst open, and was seen to be full of green stone. Then she killed the second wife in the same way, and found more green stones. ”Thus, according to the legends, originated the greenstone” from which the choicest and most valuable stone tools have since been made. For a time the chief and Hina lived happily together. Then he began to neglect her and abuse her, until she cried aloud for her brother--

”O Rupe! come down.

Take me and my child.”

Rupe a.s.sumed the form of a bird and flew down to this world in which he had found his sister. He chanted as he came down--

”It is Rupe, yes Rupe, The elder brother; And I am here.”

He folded the mother and her boy under his wings and flew away with them. Sir George Gray relates a legend in which Maui-mua or Rupe is recorded as having carried his sister and her child to one of the new lands, found in his long voyage, where dwelt an aged relative, of chief rank, with his retainers.

Some legends say that Tini-rau tried to catch Rupe, who was compelled to drop the child in order to escape with the mother. Tini-rau caught the child and carefully cared for him until he grew to be a strong young lad.

Then he wanted to find his mother and bring her back to his father. How this was done, how Rupe took his sister back to the old chief, and how civil wars arose are not all these told in the legends of the Maoris.

Thus the tricks of Maui the mischievous brought trouble for a time, but were finally overshadowed by happy homes in neighboring lands for his suffering sister and her descendants.

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