"
"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.
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