Hawaii - James Michener [54]
AS THE CANOE REACHED EASTWARD and the storm abated, the daily routine became more settled. Each dawn the six slaves stopped bailing and cleaned out the canoe, while farmers moved among the animals and fed them, giving the pigs and dogs fish caught in the early hours, plus some mashed sweet potatoes and fresh water trapped in the sails. The chickens got dried coconut and a fish to pick at, but if they lagged in eating, a slim, dark object darted out from among the freight and grabbed the food away, unseen by the slaves, for as on all such trips, some rats had stowed aboard, and if the voyage turned out badly, they would be the last to die ... would indeed sustain themselves for many drifting days on those who had already perished.
After the women in the grass hut had wakened, the female slaves would move inside, throw out the slops and do the other necessary chores. Particularly, they kept clean that corner of the hut which had been cut off by lengths of tapa and reserved for those women who were experiencing their monthly sickness, for it was a tabu entailing death for there to be any communication between men and women at such time.
In general, however, the tabus which were rigidly enforced on land had to be suspended aboard a crowded canoe. For example, had any of the rowers while ashore come as near the king as all now were, or had they stepped upon his shadow, or even the shadow of his cape, they would have been killed instantly, but in the canoe the tabu was suspended, and sometimes when the king moved, men actually touched him. They recoiled as if doomed, but he ignored the insult.
The tabus which centered upon eating were also held in abeyance, for there was no one aboard of sufficient status to prepare the king's food as custom required; nor had the keeper of the king's toilet pot come on the journey, so that a slave, terrified at the task, had to throw into the sea the kingly bowel movements, rather than follow the required custom of burying them secretly in a sacred grove, lest enemies find them and with evil spells conjure the king to death.
Women upon such a trip did not fare well. Obviously, the food had to be reserved for men who did the hard work of paddling. The pigs and dogs also had to be kept alive to stock the new land, which left little for the women. That was why, at every opportunity, they set fishing lines and tended them carefully. The first fish they caught went to the king and Teroro, the next to Tupuna and his old wife, the next four to the paddlers, the seventh and eighth to the pigs, the ninth to the dogs, the tenth to the chickens and the rats. If there were more, the women could eat.
With great niggardliness, the prepared foods were doled out, a piece at a time, but when they were distributed, how good they tasted. A man would get his stick of hard and sour breadfruit, and as he chewed on it he would recall the wasteful feasts he had once held, when abundant breadfruit, fresh and sweet, had been thrown to animals. But the food that gave most pleasure, the master food of the islands, came when the king directed that one of the bamboo lengths of dried poi be opened, and then the rich purplish starch would be handed out, and as it grew sticky in the mouth, men would smile with pleasure.
But soon the poi was finished and the bundles of dried breadfruit diminished. Even the abundant rain ceased and King Tamatoa had to reduce his rations still further, until the crew were getting