登陆注册
15479000000027

第27章 SHIN-BONES(2)

In the eleventh century A.D., by the Lakanaii historians, at the time brothers and sisters mated because none existed to excel them, their rank received a boost of new blood of rank that was next to heaven's door. One Hoikemaha, steering by the stars and the ancient traditions, arrived in a great double-canoe from Samoa. He married a lesser alii of Lakanaii, and when his three sons were grown, returned with them to Samoa to bring back his own youngest brother. But with him he brought back Kumi, the son of Tui Manua, which latter's rank was highest in all Polynesia, and barely second to that of the demigods and gods. So the estimable seed of Kumi, eight centuries before, had entered into the aliis of Lakanaii, and been passed down by them in the undeviating line to reposit in Prince Akuli.

Him I first met, talking with an Oxford accent, in the officers' mess of the Black Watch in South Africa. This was just before that famous regiment was cut to pieces at Magersfontein. He had as much right to be in that mess as he had to his accent, for he was Oxford-educated and held the Queen's Commission. With him, as his guest, taking a look at the war, was Prince Cupid, so nicknamed, but the true prince of all Hawaii, including Lakanaii, whose real and legal title was Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole, and who might have been the living King of Hawaii Nei had it not been for the haole (white man) Revolution and Annexation--this, despite the fact that Prince Cupid's alii genealogy was lesser to the heaven-boosted genealogy of Prince Akuli. For Prince Akuli might have been King of Lakanaii, and of all Hawaii, perhaps, had not his grandfather been soundly thrashed by the first and greatest of the Kamehamehas.

This had occurred in the year 1810, in the booming days of the sandalwood trade, and in the same year that the King of Kauai came in, and was good, and ate out of Kamehameha's hand. Prince Akuli's grandfather, in that year, had received his trouncing and subjugating because he was "old school." He had not imaged island empire in terms of gunpowder and haole gunners. Kamehameha, farther-visioned, had annexed the service of haoles, including such men as Isaac Davis, mate and sole survivor of the massacred crew of the schooner Fair American, and John Young, captured boatswain of the snow Eleanor. And Isaac Davis, and John Young, and others of their waywardly adventurous ilk, with six-pounder brass carronades from the captured Iphigenia and Fair American, had destroyed the war canoes and shattered the morale of the King of Lakanaii's land-fighters, receiving duly in return from Kamehameha, according to agreement: Isaac Davis, six hundred mature and fat hogs; John Young, five hundred of the same described pork on the hoof that was split.

And so, out of all incests and lusts of the primitive cultures and beast-man's gropings toward the stature of manhood, out of all red murders, and brute battlings, and matings with the younger brothers of the demigods, world-polished, Oxford-accented, twentieth century to the tick of the second, comes Prince Akuli, Prince Squid, pure-veined Polynesian, a living bridge across the thousand centuries, comrade, friend, and fellow-traveller out of his wrecked seven-thousand-dollar limousine, marooned with me in a begonia paradise fourteen hundred feet above the sea, and his island metropolis of Olokona, to tell me of his mother, who reverted in her old age to ancientness of religious concept and ancestor worship, and collected and surrounded herself with the charnel bones of those who had been her forerunners back in the darkness of time.

"King Kalakaua started this collecting fad, over on Oahu," Prince Akuli continued. "And his queen, Kapiolani, caught the fad from him. They collected everything--old makaloa mats, old tapas, old calabashes, old double-canoes, and idols which the priests had saved from the general destruction in 1819. I haven't seen a pearl-shell fish-hook in years, but I swear that Kalakaua accumulated ten thousand of them, to say nothing of human jaw-bone fish-hooks, and feather cloaks, and capes and helmets, and stone adzes, and poi-pounders of phallic design. When he and Kapiolani made their royal progresses around the islands, their hosts had to hide away their personal relics. For to the king, in theory, belongs all property of his people; and with Kalakaua, when it came to the old things, theory and practice were one.

"From him my father, Kanau, got the collecting bee in his bonnet, and Hiwilani was likewise infected. But father was modern to his finger-tips. He believed neither in the gods of the kahunas"

(priests) "nor of the missionaries. He didn't believe in anything except sugar stocks, horse-breeding, and that his grandfather had been a fool in not collecting a few Isaac Davises and John Youngs and brass carronades before he went to war with Kamehameha. So he collected curios in the pure collector's spirit; but my mother took it seriously. That was why she went in for bones. I remember, too, she had an ugly old stone-idol she used to yammer to and crawl around on the floor before. It's in the Deacon Museum now. I sent it there after her death, and her collection of bones to the Royal Mausoleum in Olokona.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 性空臻禅师语录

    性空臻禅师语录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 幽宇

    幽宇

    2025年,外星人的身影在世界各地频繁出现;2036年,各国政府将外星人存在的事实公布于众;2049年,一艘巨大的外星战舰出现在地球上空,同年,地球联合军与外星势力战争爆发,同年,地球,惨败。至此,地球的命运又将何去何从?
  • 九个女孩一只猫

    九个女孩一只猫

    一个离异家庭里的小女孩,父母都不在身边的日子,她将怎样度过每一天?奶奶的怀抱是温暖的,有奶奶的看管,小女孩儿也是安全的,当奶奶离开这个世界,当爷爷瘫痪,当一个又一个的打击接踵而至,当一个又一个梦破裂,女孩儿,你还能完好如昨吗?
  • 早懂经济学,早过好日子(幸福达人系列)

    早懂经济学,早过好日子(幸福达人系列)

    《早懂经济学,早过好日子》:让你很容易地搞懂经济学,搞懂政府在做什么,或者没做什么。有的人看财经新闻会闻出“钱”的味道,有的人却像是看天书……
  • 神州帝神

    神州帝神

    十零岁的主人公,在一次大赛中违反规则,结果被家人知道后强迫出去修炼旅行,在孤独旅行的途中意外听到自己家乡被毁灭,家人与父母从此失去联系,悲痛的主人公为了拯救被毁灭的家乡和救回父母,从此踏上地狱般的修行,一路上结识无数英雄好汉和红颜知己,从此以后修炼不在孤单,究竟主人公能不能拯救被灭亡的家乡
  • 黑择明

    黑择明

    宇宙无垠,天宇有规!在这天地间,万物受自然、天地的约束,使世间万物千姿百态,动静有道。一人横空出世,悟透天道,入世出世,黑里择明……
  • 佛说阿含正行经

    佛说阿含正行经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 云雾城

    云雾城

    无涯海上云雾城,青冥天下仙人行仙人必定是生而为仙的么
  • 朝暮成雪

    朝暮成雪

    短篇合集,包括古言,现言,童话改编,仙侠等等。1、桃之夭夭,灼灼其华,之子于归,宜室宜家——五百年过去了,我一直记得,有人和我约定过:春天来了,我们要一起去江南。2、有狐绥绥,在彼淇梁。心之忧矣,之子无度。——总有一天,我会变得很精神,到时候,就轮到我缠着你吧。3、用眼睛看,用耳朵听,永远都不要用心去感受。心是一切生物最大的弱点。4、姚知君对其他人是凶神恶煞的,可对他却是温柔的。5、如果曾有被看见,那大概只有时光。6、他年我若为青帝,报与桃花一处开。——黄巢《题菊花》7、十二岁的月棠,觉得世界上所有好看的东西都是属于她的,李铮然当然也不例外。…………
  • 骑马与砍杀之领主打天下

    骑马与砍杀之领主打天下

    这本书是一本主角征服骑砍位面的书。将来还会开逆战和其他的位面征服。