Wait there then for me. The water is
very cold.'
"It didn't sound good to me. I was thinking, not of the cold water
and the dark, but of the bones. 'You go first,' I said. But he
claimed he could not. 'You are my alii, my prince,' he said. 'It
is impossible that I should go before you into the sacred burial-
place of your kingly ancestors.'
"But the prospect did not please. 'Just cut out this prince
stuff,' I told him. 'It isn't what it's cracked up to be. You go
first, and I'll never tell on you.' 'Not alone the living must we
please,' he admonished, 'but, more so, the dead must we please.
Nor can we lie to the dead.'
"We argued it out, and for half an hour it was stalemate. I
wouldn't, and he simply couldn't. He tried to buck me up by
appealing to my pride. He chanted the heroic deeds of my
ancestors; and, I remember especially, he sang to me of Mokomoku,
my great-grandfather and the gigantic father of the gigantic
Kaaukuu, telling how thrice in battle Mokomoku leaped among his
foes, seizing by the neck a warrior in either hand and knocking
their heads together until they were dead.
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