A half-mile on our way,
Prince Akuli resumed.
"So Ahuna and I returned to Hiwilani, and to her happiness, lasting
to her death the year following, two more of her ancestors abided
about her in the jars of her twilight room. Also, she kept her
compact and worried my father into sending me to England. I took
old Howard along, and he perked up and confuted the doctors, so
that it was three years before I buried him restored to the bosom
of my family. Sometimes I think he was the most brilliant man I
have ever known. Not until my return from England did Ahuna die,
the last custodian of our alii secrets. And at his death-bed he
pledged me again never to reveal the location in that nameless
valley, and never to go back myself.
"Much else I have forgotten to mention did I see there in the cave
that one time. There were the bones of Kumi, the near demigod, son
of Tui Manua of Samoa, who, in the long before, married into my
line and heaven-boosted my genealogy. And the bones of my great-
grandmother who had slept in the four-poster presented her by Lord
Byron.
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