Yet these fairies had a taste for mischief, and could be as active in it as so many boys. When a child on Maui, Laka was so loved by his father that he would travel many miles to buy a toy for him, and hearing of a strange new plaything in Hawaii, the father sailed to that island to get it. He never returned, for the natives killed him and hid his skeleton in a cave. When Laka had come to man's estate he began preparations for a voyage to that island, that he might either find his father or know his fate, for of his death he did not learn until long after. In these preparations he was oddly thwarted. Every time he hewed down a tree for a canoe it was gone in the morning. Out of patience, he resolved to catch the thieves. In order to make their task especially hard, he dug a hole into which the tree fell, when he had chopped it, so that his enemies would have to lift it out before they could carry it away. Then, in the shadow, he waited. At midnight a small humming and giggling were heard in the bushes and a company of menehune stole out into the shine of the moon. They began to tug at the fallen tree. Laka sprang upon them and captured two, the others running away with shrill screams. Laka threatened to kill his prisoners for the trouble they had made, but he did not really intend to hurt them. Their tears and cries and the rapid beating of their hearts, that he could feel as he held them under his arms, stirred his pity, and he agreed to let them go if they would promise to assemble their tribe, drag the tree to his canoe shed on the shore and fashion it into a boat. This they promised so eagerly that he put them back on the earth and laughed as they scampered into the thicket. True to their promise, they dragged the tree to the ocean that very night, and carved and hollowed it into the finest vessel to be seen on the island; so, friendly relations being thus established, Laka set a feast for them, which they ate in thankfulness and never troubled him more. Whether he succeeded in the search for the parental bones, or left his own to whiten on the same soil, is not recorded, but you can see for yourself the hollow he dug for the tree, and his canoe shed was standing after white men reached the group. The Hawaiian Iliad