第73章 THE FOUR BROTHERS(2)

It was perhaps the last appearance of the harem gang.For some time already Hawaiian missionaries had been seated at Butaritari -Maka and Kanoa,two brave childlike men.Nakaeia would none of their doctrine;he was perhaps jealous of their presence;being human,he had some affection for their persons.In the house,before the eyes of Kanoa,he slew with his own hand three sailors of Oahu,crouching on their backs to knife them,and menacing the missionary if he interfered;yet he not only spared him at the moment,but recalled him afterwards (when he had fled)with some expressions of respect.Nanteitei,the weaker man,fell more completely under the spell.Maka,a light-hearted,lovable,yet in his own trade very rigorous man,gained and improved an influence on the king which soon grew paramount.Nanteitei,with the royal house,was publicly converted;and,with a severity which liberal missionaries disavow,the harem was at once reduced.It was a compendious act.The throne was thus impoverished,its influence shaken,the queen's relatives mortified,and sixteen chief women (some of great possessions)cast in a body on the market.I have been shipmates with a Hawaiian sailor who was successively married to two of these IMPROMPTU widows,and successively divorced by both for misconduct.That two great and rich ladies (for both of these were rich)should have married 'a man from another island'marks the dissolution of society.The laws besides were wholly remodelled,not always for the better.I love Maka as a man;as a legislator he has two defects:weak in the punishment of crime,stern to repress innocent pleasures.

War and revolution are the common successors of reform;yet Nanteitei died (of an overdose of chloroform),in quiet possession of the throne,and it was in the reign of the third brother,Nabakatokia,a man brave in body and feeble of character,that the storm burst.The rule of the high chiefs and notables seems to have always underlain and perhaps alternated with monarchy.The Old Men (as they were called)have a right to sit with the king in the Speak House and debate:and the king's chief superiority is a form of closure -'The Speaking is over.'After the long monocracy of Nakaeia and the changes of Nanteitei,the Old Men were doubtless grown impatient of obscurity,and they were beyond question jealous of the influence of Maka.Calumny,or rather caricature,was called in use;a spoken cartoon ran round society;Maka was reported to have said in church that the king was the first man in the island and himself the second;and,stung by the supposed affront,the chiefs broke into rebellion and armed gatherings.In the space of one forenoon the throne of Nakaeia was humbled in the dust.The king sat in the maniap'before the palace gate expecting his recruits;Maka by his side,both anxious men;and meanwhile,in the door of a house at the north entry of the town,a chief had taken post and diverted the succours as they came.They came singly or in groups,each with his gun or pistol slung about his neck.'Where are you going?'asked the chief.'The king called us,'they would reply.'Here is your place.Sit down,'returned the chief.With incredible disloyalty,all obeyed;and sufficient force being thus got together from both sides,Nabakatokia was summoned and surrendered.About this period,in almost every part of the group,the kings were murdered;and on Tapituea,the skeleton of the last hangs to this day in the chief Speak House of the isle,a menace to ambition.Nabakatokia was more fortunate;his life and the royal style were spared to him,but he was stripped of power.The Old Men enjoyed a festival of public speaking;the laws were continually changed,never enforced;the commons had an opportunity to regret the merits of Nakaeia;and the king,denied the resource of rich marriages and the service of a troop of wives,fell not only in disconsideration but in debt.