The Resolution’s deck now became a scene of tumult. Kamehameha charged toward Bligh. He was still holding his newly acquired daggers. Bligh’s blow and Kameha’s reaction followed in such swift order that neither Cook, King, nor Burney had time to respond. They merely stood and gaped as Kamehameha hurtled across the deck toward the ship’s stout master. As he ran, Kameha raised one arm, with the dagger hilts forward, to strike Bligh down. “Kameha was much bigger than P‘ulī, and he would surely have knocked him over the ship’s railing into the bay, and who knows what might have happened then,” my father recalled years later. “But at the last moment, Ko‘o‘e stepped between them.” John Gore, the Resolution’s second in command, had been standing nearby and rushed to intervene. Kameha’s hand, balled tightly around the dagger hilts and poised to strike, froze high over his head. Gore spoke sharply to Bligh, who saluted him desultorily and stalked away in obvious disgust.
Kamehameha’s insistence on trading for daggers was a harbinger. The haoles soon found that the Hawai‘ians would not trade their goods for anything else. And they found that many others were not interested in trading at all.
Bligh had thought my father meant to steal the ax, and well he might have suspected so, since during their previous visits aboard the Resolution and the Discovery, many of our people had taken to freely appropriating any easily portable haole articles that took their fancy. Others had refrained from this activity, out of respect for the god “Lono,” even after the death of Watman seemed to confirm that Kuke’s people were but mortals. But now that Cook had returned out of season, and from the wrong direction, many more of our people doubted that he was a god. Thus, those who might have been reluctant to steal from a “god” were now relieved of such reservations and felt free to pilfer from the ships whatever items of value they could, with no thought of honest exchange.
This change in the Hawai‘ians’ attitudes toward Cook and his men led to several unfortunate clashes of escalating severity throughout the day—February 13, 1779. Serious trouble began when one of our people took a liking to an unusual tool on Clerke’s ship. This implement was a pair of iron tongs that the Discovery’s blacksmith was using to manufacture the daggers that were in so much demand by the Hawai‘ians. “This person—I do not know his name, but he was one of Palea’s own people—took the tool and tried to jump into the water with it, but the haoles caught him,” my father recounted. “Kale‘eke was very angry.” Captain Clerke ordered the man flogged and tied to one of the ship’s shrouds.
Upon learning of this, my father said, “Palea went out at once to Kale‘eke’s ship. He told Kale‘eke to free this man and warned him not to beat any of our people again. He said that Kalani‘ōpu‘u would be angry with him and that violence would surely follow if he did.” Unfortunately, while Palea was upbraiding Captain Clerke, one of the men who had come aboard with him seized the tongs and a chisel, jumped overboard, and swam away. The deck of the Discovery erupted in an uproar as Clerke’s people shouted and pointed at the man. The Discovery’s marines had already been mustered on deck with their weapons. Clerke ordered them to fire at the fugitive. It was too late to stop him. Like all of our people then, he was a strong swimmer, even burdened as he was with the tools. “The man was already so far away that their mūk‘e could not reach him,” my father said. The marines’ musket balls struck only water, sending up small sprays, much like pebbles thrown by little boys. In the meantime, Palea’s canoe paddlers had pushed their vessel away from the Discovery’s side and raced to aid the man, who threw his booty into the canoe clambered aboard after it.
Clerke now ordered four of his men—including the Discovery’s master, Thomas Edgar, and a young junior officer named George Vancouver—to take one of the Discovery’s small boats, a cutter, in pursuit of the Hawai‘ians. But even with all four haoles pulling hard as they might on their own oars, they could not overtake the Hawai‘ians’ canoe.
The muskets’ report rolled across the water from the deck of the Discovery and echoed off the high pali of Kealakekua Bay, startling Cook, who had gone ashore to inspect the progress of the repairs on the Resolution’s broken mast. From his vantage point just south of the Hikiau Heiau, he watched Palea’s people help the fleeing man into their canoe and elude his own people’s pursuit. Vancouver was now standing in the bow of the haoles’ boat and pointing in the direction of Nāpo‘opo‘o. Cook could see the Hawai‘ians’ canoe coming ashore there. Palea’s men were greeted by a throng of laughing, cheering villagers who swarmed round to congratulate them on their courageous exploit. My father was there.
“After I had returned to Ka‘awaloa and recovered from the pain of Ūli‘iama P‘ulī’s blow to my head, I crossed to the other side of the bay to watch the haoles work on their mast,” he said. “Kuke was already there with Ki‘ine and his people. When I heard the sound of the guns and saw the haoles pursuing the men in the canoe, I ran at once toward Nāpo‘opo‘o. I got there just as the canoe reached the beach.” Palea’s man jumped from the canoe and waved his prizes for all to see. Cook and King also came running, but before they could gain Nāpo‘opo‘o, the crowd had enveloped the man. “One of the people told the man, ‘Quick, run mauka while we distract the haoles,’” my father said. “The man ran off on one of the trails leading inland from the village, while several other people ran off in other directions, all pretending to carry something. By the time Kuke and Ki‘ine reached the village, they did not know which way to turn.”
Cook spoke sharply to the people who were still gathered on the beach, near the canoe. “Which way?” he demanded. “You tell me now which way him go!”
Cook’s command was greeted with polite smiles. Several men pointed toward Ke‘ei, down the coast. “Him go that way,” they said.
“Kāpena Kuke could barely speak our language,” my father said, “and now he spoke it even less well. The people were trying hard not to laugh at him.” Indeed, Cook’s rage at the theft of the tools had all but robbed him of his few Hawaiian words and limited grasp of syntax. His fury, registered in his countenance, was unmistakable to the Hawai‘ians. “His white face had turned red and his lips were thinner and tighter than usual. He was waving his arms and he spoke very harshly,” my father recalled. “I had not seen him like this before. I now remembered the story that Pu‘unē had earlier told us about how angry Kuke became when the people of Eimeo took his kō‘oko, and I wondered what he might do if he could not recover his tools.”
Cook set off with long strides in the direction the Hawai‘ians had indicated. King hastened to follow him. Neither man appeared to notice that the Hawai‘ians no longer prostrated themselves as they passed.
While Cook was questioning the people on the beach at Nāpo‘opo‘o, Palea’s men had returned to the Discovery to fetch him. Palea came ashore as Cook hurried toward Ke‘ei with King following in his wake. “Palea asked the people where his man had taken the Discovery’s tools,” my father said, “and they told him where to find him.” Palea went off and soon came back with the tongs and chisel. He told his men to go out to Vancouver and Edgar, who were still offshore in their boat, and return these tools to them. My father watched from the beach. “Palea’s men drew their canoe alongside the haoles and gave them the tools. Then they turned around and began to paddle back to the beach. On shore, we all believed that the haoles would now be satisfied and would return to their great canoe,” my father said. “But we were wrong.”
Unfathomably to the onlookers and to Palea’s men, Vancouver, Edgar and their people now gave chase. Edgar and Vancouver leaped ashore as their boat beached a short distance from Palea’s canoe, followed in short order by their two comrades. The Discovery’s master and the young officer ran to Palea’s canoe and tried to push it back into the water.
“Palea had sent the tools back to them and now they were trying to take his own canoe,” my father said. “We could not understand it.” Palea would not countenance it. He ran toward the canoe, shouting at Edgar, who ignored him.
Palea now seized Edgar, holding him by his own hair with one hand and twisting one of the master’s arms behind his back with his other. “Palea was shouting at the haole all the while,” my father said.
“I have returned your tools; why would you take my canoe?” Palea demanded, pulling ever harder on Edgar’s hair and ever more tightly on his pinioned arm. Edgar screamed in pain. Vancouver stood by, frozen in shock. A score or more Hawai‘ians, including my father, gathered at a distance, transfixed by this heretofore unheard-of spectacle of a Hawai‘ian grappling with a haole.
Cook’s own larger boat was pulled up on shore some paces away, his men idling around it as they awaited their captain’s return. Upon hearing Edgar’s cries, one of these men snatched an oar from Cook’s boat and attacked Palea. “This haole beat Palea on his head and shoulders with his own big paddle until Palea stumbled under the repeated blows and released the other haole,” my father said. “This assault on one of our chiefs angered people. Slings came out.”
Now the air filled with stones as the Hawai‘ians unleashed a volley of missiles at the haoles. Several stones struck Edgar and Vancouver. Covering their heads with their hands, they backed away into the water. Meanwhile, Palea recovered his balance, wrested the oar from the man who had beaten him and snapped it in two as if it were nothing to him. He brandished the broken oar’s jagged-edged handle at the haole, who retreated in fear. More haoles now came running from Cook’s boat, wielding their own oars. The Hawai‘ians, who were many more in number, began closing in on Vancouver, Edgar, and these other men from all sides. My father, who had just joined this group, was swept along with them.
Fortunately, Palea himself had no thought for further fighting. “Enough!” he shouted to his own people. “Let these haoles be.” Palea pointed at the haole who had first attacked him. “That one has beaten me,” he said, “and in return, I have beaten him and therefore there is no further cause for conflict here. So let live.”
Edgar, Vancouver, and their companions were now astounded as the Hawai‘ians abruptly abandoned their hostility and with many friendly gestures urged them to regain their boat, which they then proceeded to help them launch. Cook’s men watched this in relieved bafflement and returned to their own boat, shaking their heads and murmuring among themselves. There they waited, unmolested, for their captain’s return. None of the haoles, save perhaps Burney, understood our people’s language or idioms well enough to appreciate the full import of Palea’s final words, “let live.” For with those two words, he had commanded all of his people to disown their anger and they had cheerfully complied. Such were our ways in those days.
“Palea foresaw that if matters continued as they were,” my father said, “someone on one side or the other, or both, would be killed, with serious and unpredictable consequences.” While Palea wanted no bloodshed, he was still intent upon having satisfaction for the disrespect the haoles had shown him—with consequences that even he could not anticipate.
News of the fray spread rapidly around the bay. “Did any of the haoles have a mūk‘e?” Kamehameha asked my father at Ka‘awaloa that night. No, he answered, there was not a musket among them. “Then you were fortunate,” Kameha said. “Those mūk‘e are more dangerous than any canoe paddle. If a haole points one at you in the future, be sure to get out of his way—and quickly. E wiki ‘oe, mai lohi, Kalanimālokuloku,” he said, tapping my father’s chest. Do not delay.
“You can be sure of that, brother,” my father replied.
When Vancouver and Edgar returned to the Discovery after the fight on the beach, they left the cutter in the water, tied to the ship’s stern. In the night, while everyone on shore and nearly everyone aboard Cook’s ships slept, Palea and one of his people paddled out to the Discovery in Palea’s canoe, untied the cutter, and towed it away. “The haoles had tried to take Palea’s own canoe,” my father said. “Thus, he retaliated by taking the haoles’ canoe.” Palea and his man towed the cutter to the beach at Ka‘awaloa. With the help of some other men, they carried it mauka, where they broke it apart to extract its iron nails. The haoles on the Discovery did not miss the cutter until daybreak.
Cook was enraged when he learned of the theft, and as he had done when the people of Eimeo stole his goats, he resolved to recover his boat without regard to any pain he might cause the inhabitants of Kealakekua Bay. Cook had already set his plans in motion as the people around the bay were waking to the new day.
“When first we rose, Kamehameha and I knew nothing of Palea’s actions during the night,” my father said. “But we could already see much activity around the haoles’ great canoes. It was unusual for so early in the morning and I wondered at the cause.”
The first thing my father and Kameha saw was two boats, one from the Resolution and the other from the Discovery, making for opposite ends of the bay. “One boat went toward Palemanō Point and the other came toward us at Ka‘awaloa,” he said. “They made no attempt to land and we could not divine their purpose.” But others soon would, for at this time, a canoe put out from Ka‘awaloa, making toward the bay’s northern point.
“Almost at once,” my father said, “the haoles in the boat closest to us commenced pulling harder on their paddles. To those of us watching from the beach, it seemed that they were giving chase.”
For the people in the canoe there was no doubt about this, because they could see the haoles shaking their fists at them and hear their shouts. Though the haoles’ words were unintelligible to the Hawai‘ians, their intent was clearly hostile. The Hawai‘ians unfurled a sail, and their canoe began to pull away from the slower haole rowboat. There followed two events that shocked residents from one side of the bay to the other.
“Kuke’s great canoe fired its cannon,” my father said. A large spout of water suddenly erupted ahead of the fleeing canoe and the cannon’s roar caromed off the bay’s high cliff. People who had still been slumbering now came stumbling out of their hales, wide-eyed. “It was as if the goddess Pele had flown from her home at Kīlauea and descended suddenly upon Kealakekua,” said my father. “People were all at once frightened and angered.” The men in the sail canoe were now paddling frantically, trying to reach the presumed safety of the shore. But the wind shifted and the Hawai‘ians lost the advantage of their sail. Now the haoles began closing on them in their own boat.
“I thought that perhaps the haoles meant to detain those men, though in that moment, I could not understand why,” said my father. “But then one of the haoles shouted at the others and they pointed their guns at the three men in the canoe. We saw fire and smoke spout from the guns. One man fell into the bay; another collapsed in the canoe and the third man dove into the water and tried to swim away. The haoles shot at him, and we heard him scream.” Above the screams of wounded and dying men, the crack of gunfire echoed off the pali. The haole who had ordered his people to fire on the Hawai‘ians was William Bligh.
Once they learned that Palea had taken the boat, the people of Kealakekua Bay understood the haoles’ anger. In those days, a vessel of any size was a valued possession among our people. Thus, they were not surprised that Kuke was unhappy. But they were shocked by the indiscriminate, sanguinary ferocity of his people’s response. Palea had taken the cutter. Kuke’s grievance was with him, not with the men his people had attacked. Only enemies punished each other in this way. Had “Lono” now become their enemy? Fearful of what was to come, the women fled mauka with their infants and small children. The men picked up their clubs and spears. Blowing on conch shells, they raised alarms from one side of the bay to the other.
“Kuke will not rest until he has retrieved his own canoe,” Kamehameha said. “He will burn our canoes; he will burn our villages if he thinks he must; it will be for us as it was for the people of Eimeo.”
Kameha spoke thus to my father while they were still standing on the rocky beach at Ka‘awaloa, watching the tumult in the bay. Now they saw several boats pull away from the Resolution and head for the spot where they sto
od. A tall haole stood at the prow of one of the boats. His figure was unmistakable. “Look there, Kameha,” my father said, “Kuke comes.”
“No doubt he is coming to speak with Kalani‘ōpu‘u,” Kamehameha said. “We must go to him at once.” Kameha and my father turned back to the village. As they made their way through the palm trees to Kalani‘ōpu‘u’s hale, they heard more musket fire and new cries coming from the direction of the bay.
Cook landed at Ka‘awaloa with an escort of nine marines and one of their officers. The marines carried muskets; Cook and the officer each carried a sword and pistol. Another launch with more armed marines remained a short distance offshore. Once Cook and his people were away, the pinnace’s crew likewise withdrew offshore.
Drawn by the commotion in the bay, a swelling crowd of Hawai‘ians was on hand as Cook and his people stepped from his pinnace to the rocky shore. Out of respect either for Cook or for the “water-squirters” that his men carried, the people made way for them. But no one laid themselves on the ground at Cook’s feet now.
Kalani‘ōpu‘u was still abed in his hale when Kamehameha and my father reached his courtyard. They sat down to wait for him to emerge. Keōua Red Cloak and Keōuape‘e‘ale, who had also gone down to the beach, now returned to their father’s hale and seated themselves in the courtyard near my father and Kameha. “As was his custom then, Kalani‘ōpu‘u had indulged his love of ‘awa well into the night,” my father said. “The noise of the haoles’ guns had failed to rouse him.”
Once There Was Fire Page 24