“A very fine squid,” he crooned. “It is a _wahine_” (female) “squid. I shall now sing to you the song of the cowrie shell, the red cowrie shell that we used as a bait for the squid—” “You were disgraceful last night at the funeral,” I headed him off. “I heard all about it. You made much noise. You sang till everybody was deaf. You insulted the son of the widow. You drank swipes like a pig. Swipes are not good for your extreme age. Some day you will wake up dead. You ought to be a wreck to-day—” “Ha!” he chuckled. “And you, who drank no swipes, who was a babe unborn when I was already an old man, who went to bed last night with the sun and the chickens—this day are you a wreck. Explain me that. My ears are as thirsty to listen as was my throat thirsty last night. And here to-day, behold, I am, as that Englishman who came here in his yacht used to say, I am in fine form, in devilish fine form.” “I give you up,” I retorted, shrugging my shoulders. “Only one thing is clear, and that is that the devil doesn’t want you. Report of your singing has gone before you.” “No,” he pondered the idea carefully. “It is not that. The devil will be glad for my coming, for I have some very fine songs for him, and scandals and old gossips of the high _aliis_ that will make him scratch his sides. So, let me explain to you the secret of my birth. The Sea is my mother. I was born in a double-canoe, during a Kona gale, in the channel of Kahoolawe. From her, the Sea, my mother, I received my strength. Whenever I return to her arms, as for a breast-clasp, as I have returned this day, I grow strong again and immediately. She, to me, is the milk-giver, the life-source—” “Shades of Antaeus!” thought I. “Some day,” old Kohokumu rambled on, “when I am really old, I shall be reported of men as drowned in the sea. This will be an idle thought of men. In truth, I shall have returned into the arms of my mother, there to rest under the heart of her breast until the second birth of me, when I shall emerge into the sun a flashing youth of splendour like Maui himself when he was golden young.” “A queer religion,” I commented.