Cook and his marines now entered the village, trailed by scores of people who had followed them from the beach. Upon seeing Cook approaching, Keōuakuahu’ula and Keōuape‘e‘ale jumped up to fetch him. “Keōua Red Cloak and his brother were much enthralled with Kuke,” my father told me. “They had visited his ship again as soon as they could after their father lifted the kapu on the bay.” Taking Cook in hand, they led him to Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s house. The marines followed their captain into the courtyard. The scores of Hawai‘ians who had followed them halted at the courtyard’s low fence. They were commoners and it was kapu for them to enter the mō‘ī’s courtyard.
Surveying the Hawai‘ians gathered in and around the courtyard, Cook asked imperiously and of no one in particular, “Where Terrioboo is?” Keōua Red Cloak and his brother pointed at the hale. “Our father is in there,” Red Cloak said. “He sleeps still.” Though his grasp of our language was only rudimentary, Cook understood Red Cloak well enough. He turned to the officer of marines who had accompanied him, spoke rapidly and pointed at the hale. This man—his name was Phillips—darted through the hale’s single doorway, disappearing into its darkened interior. Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s people gasped. It was kapu to disturb the mō‘ī during his time of rest, however long that might be. Moments later, Phillips emerged from the hale, leading Kalani‘ōpu‘u by one hand. The ruler of the Big Island blinked repeatedly against the bright light of morning into which he had been ushered so abruptly. He was bewildered.
“Kuke?” he said, looking first at Cook, then at the marines in their red uniforms, and then round at his own people, who were watching him. “Why have you come here now?” Now his eyes fixed on the haoles’ muskets. “Why do you come with so many water-squirters?”
“I come ask you come back to great canoe,” Cook replied, touching Kalani‘ōpu‘u lightly on the shoulder. “I much wish see you more.”
“Kuke was doing his best to issue a polite invitation,” my father said. But as the haoles’ own journals have since revealed, Cook’s intention was anything but polite. His plan was to hold Kalani‘ōpu‘u hostage on the Resolution, against the return of the stolen cutter.
Kalani‘ōpu‘u nodded meekly to Cook. “I will come with you, Kuke,” he said.
Cook signaled his people to turn back to the boats. Leading the way and parting the Hawai‘ians—hundreds of them now—before them like the prow of a canoe, the soldiers struck out for the shore. The boys followed them. Cook now took Kalani‘ōpu‘u lightly by the hand and led the mō‘ī to the beach. Kamehameha and my father walked behind them. The crowd followed, swelling by the minute.
Cook’s gesture of familiarity toward Kalani‘ōpu‘u drew muted protests from our people. “There was much muttering at this sight,” said my father. “God or no, they thought it was improper for ‘Lono’ to take their mō‘ī’s hand.”
The party had just emerged from the coconut grove mauka of the beach when four men in a canoe reached the shore. They were crying and wailing. “Kalimu is dead! Kalimu is dead! The haoles have killed him!”
Kalimu was a popular young chieftain who had been visiting with Kekūhaupi‘o in Ke‘ei. Shaken out of their sleep that morning by the boom and crack of cannon and musket fire reverberating off the pali at Kealakekua, he and Kekūhaupi‘o had run to Nāpo‘opo‘o and then set out by canoe for Ka‘awaloa. They had not gone more than a few hundred yards when sailors Cook had dispatched in the direction of Nāpo‘opo‘o confronted them. As part of his plan to recover the lost cutter, Cook had ordered his people to prevent all Hawai‘ians from leaving the bay. Now the violence set in motion by his blockade order fell upon Kekūhaupi‘o and Kalimu.
“As we neared their canoe, the haoles began to shout at us,” Kekūhaupi‘o told Kamehameha and my father that night, in the somber aftermath of the day’s events. “We could not understand their words or what they wanted, but they seemed very angry.” Kekūhaupi‘o and Kalimu responded to the shouts by paddling harder as they tried to evade the irate haoles. “Our canoe was faster than theirs and we were easily outdistancing them. We were already near the middle of the bay,” Kekūhaupi‘o said. Then from behind them came a loud clap that made Kekūhaupi‘o’s ears ring. The small, two-man outrigger canoe rocked suddenly, and all at once Kekūhaupi‘o felt as if he was paddling against a strong current. He turned and looked over his shoulder. Kalimu, at the canoe’s opposite end, was now slumped over, blood gushing from his neck. Kekūhaupi‘o looked back at the haoles, who were pulling hard on their oars and drawing ever closer. One of the haoles was pointing a musket at him. Now he understood. He raised his hands, palms open, to show he meant no offense. Then, turning around in order to propel the canoe as best he could with the dead weight of Kalimu’s inert body now in front of him, Kekūhaupi‘o had returned to the bay’s southern shore. He landed at Nāpo‘opo‘o to the great cries and lamentations of the villagers, who had watched from the beach as this terrible event unfolded.
The men who carried the news to Ka‘awaloa had departed at once by canoe, taking care to stay well inshore of the menacing haoles and their odd canoe. “Kalimu is dead! Kalimu is dead!” they wailed all the way across the bay. Their stricken cries echoed off the path of the gods.
The Hawai‘ians trailing Cook and Kalani‘ōpu‘u to the beach were stunned as word of Kalimu’s death at the haoles’ hands spread among them. Kalani‘ōpu‘u seemed not to notice and was still walking hand-in-hand with Cook toward the waiting boats. Red Cloak and his brother ran ahead to the shore, plunged into the water, and swam to Cook’s pinnace. Now there was a commotion at the front of the crowd. Kaneikapolei—the boys’ mother—pushed her way through the throng and fell to her knees at Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s feet. “Oh husband,” she cried, seizing his free arm, “I beg you, do not go with Lono to his great canoe. It is death to go with him.”
Unsteady in any case, and now pulled off balance by Kaneikapolei, the mō‘ī of the Big Island staggered. His hand slipped from Cook’s gentle grasp. Sensing what was happening, Cook tried to stay Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s fall but it was too late. Kalani‘ōpu‘u fell, landing on his back in the sand. For a frozen instant, Cook’s own hand remained raised above the fallen mō‘ī. Anger now followed upon the crowd’s shock.
“Kamehameha and I could see clearly what had happened,” my father told me, “but the people behind us could not. They thought Kuke had struck Kalani‘ōpu‘u.” Now, as their uncle struggled to regain his feet, Kameha and my father hurried to him, one to each side, and gently placed their hands on his shoulders to prevent him from rising. They knelt beside him. More frightened than before, Kaneikapolei retreated into the crowd. A single stone flew from the crowd’s midst, narrowly missing one of the marines. Cook, who had done his best to maintain a pleasant manner until now, shouted angrily at the Hawai‘ians in his own tongue. “We could not understand his actual words,” my father said, “but their meaning was clear.” Phillips, a few paces ahead, turned round and called out to Cook, who nodded. Phillips then shouted to the marines, who hastened to the water’s edge. The Hawai‘ians behind them parted to let them pass, thinking they meant to leave. But instead, the marines lined up abreast along the rocks and assumed a threatening posture. “All at once, the haole soldiers pointed their mūk’e at our people,” my father recounted. More stones now sailed from the crowd, and one of them struck a haole soldier, driving him to his knees. “I heard angry shouts behind us,” my father said, “and when I looked back I saw that many of our men were carrying daggers that they had gotten from the haoles in trade. They had been concealing them behind their backs.” Cook, his face to the crowd and his back to the sea, retreated slowly toward the line of marines.
Now one of the Hawai‘ians stepped forward with a spear and thrust it at Cook. “This man did not intend to strike Kuke,” my father said, “only to drive him farther away from Kalani‘ōpu‘u. Kuke did not even see him at first.” Phillips said something to his captain. Cook was carrying a double-barreled pistol. He turn
ed and pointed his weapon in the direction of his presumed assailant. “Many of the men there had brought along sleeping mats that they had soaked in water as protection against the haoles’ guns,” my father said. “When they saw Kuke point his small mūk’e at them, they raised their mats in front of them.” Cook’s pistol belched fire and smoke, but the barrel he had fired was loaded only with small shot. It had no effect on the Hawai‘ians, and they laughed at Cook from behind their heavy mats. Enraged, he fired his second barrel. This one was loaded with a musket ball. One of the men toppled to the ground. Phillips again shouted something to Cook, who shouted back. Now Phillips pointed his musket at the man with the spear, fired, and killed him.
“Only then did the people begin to understand that their mats afforded them no true protection against the haoles’ mūk‘e,” my father said.
Angrier still, but more wary now, the Hawai‘ians facing Cook and his marines backed away slowly. Then for a time, no one moved. Kamehameha met my father’s eyes with a concerned look and he understood at once. “If a haole points a mūk‘e at you, be sure to get out of his way.” They were in the way, as was their uncle, Kalani‘ōpu‘u. Without so much as a word passing between them, Kameha and my father now helped Kalani‘ōpu‘u to his feet. “We intended to guide him back to the village,” my father said. “But we did not get far.” They had only just managed to extract their uncle from the perilous ground between the opposing Hawai‘ians and haoles when the Hawai‘ians launched another volley of stones at the marines. Upon this provocation, the soldiers—their muskets already raised—fired as one into the Hawai‘ians’ ranks. Several more men fell and writhed or lay unmoving in the sand. “Our people were disheartened and might have fled in that moment,” my father said, “had it not been for Kameha, who understood at once that the haoles were now vulnerable.”
Kamehameha remembered Burney’s earlier instruction in the workings of the cannon aboard the Resolution. The marines’ muskets were little cannons. “They must stop to feed their mūk‘e now!” he shouted to the crowd. “They cannot hurt you!” Spurred on by Pai‘ea, the mover of the Naha Stone and the hero of Kaupō, the Hawai‘ians now charged the marines. Cook shouted to his men: “Take to the boats!”
“All but two of the haoles dropped their guns and turned to flee,” my father said. Of the remaining eight men, four managed to wade into the water and swim to Cook’s pinnace, but the others stumbled and fell amid the rocks close to shore. Seeing what was befalling their comrades onshore, the marines in the launch fired their muskets. The rocking of the boat hindered their aim; their volleys thus found no targets and were to no effect, other than to frighten Keōuape‘e‘ale and Keōua Red Cloak. The latter, who had gained the pinnace, dove into the water and struck out toward the middle of the bay. His brother, still in the water nearby, disappeared beneath the surface and did not reappear until he had nearly reached the narrow rocky shelf below the bay’s cliff face.
At this time, Cook backed a short distance into the water and gestured toward the launch, as if to signal the marines there to desist. The Hawai‘ians had hesitated anew at the second round of musket fire, but now they resumed their assault. Neither my father nor Kamehameha, who were steadying Kalani‘ōpu‘u, joined in this attack. Instead, they watched from where they stood with their mō‘ī.
Flowing around Cook, the Hawai‘ians surged toward the four marines who were struggling amid the rocks in calf-deep water and overwhelmed them. “They cut one man to pieces with ailon‘e axes,” my father said. “They speared another in the face. He went down screaming and did not rise again. They surrounded a third man and broke his skull with sharp lava stones. A fourth they stabbed to death.” The near-shore waters turned red with blood.
“The two haoles who did not flee had fed their mūk‘e again. They were standing just in front of Kuke, among the rocks at the water’s edge,” my father said. One of these men was Phillips; the other was a haole named Thomas. Thomas was making ready to fire his weapon when one of the Hawai‘ians lunged at him and plunged a long iron dagger deep into his stomach. He shrieked and collapsed, blood pouring from his wound. Phillips, meanwhile, tripped on a rock and fell as he was raising his musket. Another Hawai‘ian stabbed him in the shoulder. Before the Hawai‘ian could stab him again, Phillips raised his own weapon, fired, and killed the man at near point-blank range. Now he staggered to his feet, and despite his grave injury and a hail of stones thrown by the angry multitude, managed to reach deeper water and swim to the pinnace. Cook now stood alone amid the carnage at the shore.
“Throughout all, save for the one man who had threatened him with a spear, none of our people had yet dared attack Kuke,” my father said. “Perhaps it was because they still thought of him as ‘Lono.’ But then, one man approached Kuke from behind and struck him in the head with a club, though not so hard as to kill him.” Cook moaned and sank to his knees. His bi-cornered officer’s hat had fallen among the rocks. He had lost his powdered wig as well. Trembling, Cook crawled toward the rocks, trying to regain his hat, wig, and his feet at the same time. Blood from a superficial wound seeped through his short-cropped brown hair. Upon seeing this, the people cried, “Look, he bleeds. He is not a god; he is only a man after all.” The furious Hawai‘ians swarmed the fallen haole explorer.
“From where we stood, Kamehameha and I could see nothing save the men’s rising and falling arms and the long ailon‘e daggers in their clenched fists.” The daggers rose and plunged, rose and plunged, their blades dripping with Cook’s blood. Offshore in their boats, Cook’s people looked back over their shoulders in horror as they escaped to their ships. Exhausted by their own fury at last and fearing reprisal by the haoles on the Resolution and the Discovery, the Hawai‘ians fled the beach, leaving Cook’s sundered body to lie among the partially submerged lava rocks at the shore.
Supported on shaking legs by my father and Kamehameha, Kalani‘ōpu‘u had witnessed these events in a daze. Now as his nephews helped him from the beach, he looked up them and said sadly, “Our people have just slain a great chief.”
Cook and the four slain marines lay in the shallows, where they had fallen. Taking care to stay out of sight of the ships, a number of Hawai‘ians returned to the palm grove to see if the haoles would come back to retrieve their people’s bodies. Kamehameha and my father were among them. “Some of the people there wanted to go down to the shore and take the haoles’ bodies immediately,” my father said. “They said, ‘The bones belong to us. Let us go now and take them.’ But Kameha cautioned these men against hasty action.”
“If the haoles return now with their mūk‘e, we would all be in peril,” he said. “Let us wait here a while to see what they will do.” When, after a time, Cook’s people had not returned to the beach and showed no sign of doing so, the Hawai‘ians crept from the shelter of the trees and carried away the fallen haoles’ bodies. They collected the foreigners’ abandoned muskets as well.
“We took the bodies and guns to Kalani‘ōpu‘u,” my father said. The mō‘ī was sitting on a mat under a tree in the courtyard of his hale, still shaken by the morning’s events. Kameha and the others laid the corpses on the ground just beyond the courtyard’s low fence.
Kamehameha now entered the courtyard and knelt before Kalani‘ōpu‘u. “What shall we do with their bones, Uncle?” he asked.
Kalani‘ōpu‘u regarded the bodies for some time. Then, gesturing at the marines’ remains, he said, “The bones of those others you may distribute among the chiefs. But ‘Lono’s’ bones belong to me.”
“And what of their mūk‘e?” Kamehameha asked.
“You may dispose of those as you see fit, nephew,” Kalani‘ōpu‘u replied. Kamehameha decided to keep these weapons for himself, saying to my father, “Perhaps we will learn to use them someday.”
B efore setting out on his ill-considered and ill-fated attempt to take Kalani‘ōpu‘u hostage, Cook had dispatched King to Nāpo‘opo‘o to reassure the Hawai‘ians on that side of the
bay that despite the previous day’s incident, the haoles meant them no harm. The Resolution’s carpenters were still laboring close by the Hikiau Heiau to repair the ship’s broken mast and Cook wanted to ensure that the villagers would not disrupt their work, or worse still, attack his people outright. King had conveyed Cook’s assurances and personal wishes for continued amity to Koa, the priest of Lono.
Promising King that his own people were equally desirous of harmony, Koa sent some of the villagers to assist the haoles in their work. But the musket fire that claimed the life of Kalimu shattered this interlude. The villagers helping the haoles fled the worksite even as King begged them to stay. At this time, no one on that side of the bay—neither the haole carpenters working to repair the Resolution’s mast, nor King and the marines, nor the villagers of Nāpo‘opo‘o—had any hint of the bloody calamity unfolding on the beach at Ka‘awaloa.
Their first intimation that something had gone terribly wrong came in the form of a sudden bombardment of Nāpo‘opo‘o by the Discovery’s cannons. The angry thunder of the ship’s guns rolled across the bay to Ka‘awaloa. Kamehameha and my father watched as the barrage fell upon the defenseless village, demolishing hales and setting fires. Then they saw a haole boat set out from the far shore, its oarsmen pulling hard, making haste toward the Discovery. One man stood upright, waving frantically at the ship. It was King, pleading for the Discovery’s gunners to cease fire. The cannon fire ceased, but for the people of Nāpo‘opo‘o, worse was yet to come.
John Gore, who had assumed command of the Resolution, had separately sent an armed party from that ship to reinforce the haoles still onshore. Unfortunately for the people of Nāpo‘opo‘o, the Resolution’s sailing master, William Bligh, commanded this force. Though he had no orders to attack the village, Bligh assaulted it nevertheless.
Once There Was Fire: A Novel of Old Hawaii Page 25