ter catch some fish to cook before they
returned. Thus, in the morning, before the hot sun drove the fish deep
down to the dark recesses of the sea, they fished until a bountiful
supply lay in the bottom of the canoe.

When they came to land, Maui leaped out and ran up the mountain side to
get the fire. For a long, long time they had been without fire. The
great volcano Haleakala above them had become extinct--and they had
lost the coals they had tried to keep alive. They had eaten fruits and
uncooked roots and the shell fish broken from the reef--and sometimes
the great raw fish from the far-out ocean. But now they hoped to gain
living fire and cooked food.

But when Maui rushed up toward the cloudy pillar of smoke he saw a
family of birds scratching the fire out. Their work was finished and
they flew away just as he reached the place.

Maui and his brothers watched for fire day after day--but the birds, the
curly-tailed Alae (or the mud-hens) made no fire. Finally the brothers
went fishing once more--but when they looked toward the mountain, again
they saw flames and smoke. Thus it happened to them again and again.

Maui proposed to his brothers that they go fishing leaving him to watch
the birds. But the Alae counted the fishermen and refused to build a
fire for the hidden one who was watching them. They said among
themselves, "Three are in the boat and we know not where the other one
is, we will make no fire today."

So the experiment failed again and again. If one or two remained or if
all waited on the land there would be no fire--but the dawn which saw
the four brothers in the boat, saw also the fire on the land.

Finally Maui rolled some kapa cloth together and stuck it up in one end
of the canoe so that it would look like a man. He then concealed
himself near the haunt of the mud-hens, while his brothers went out
fishing. The birds counted the figures in the boat and then started to
build a heap of wood for the fire.

Maui was impatient--and just as the old Alae began to select sticks with
which to make the flames he leaped swiftly out and caught her and held
her prisoner. He forgot for a moment that he wanted the secret of fire
making. In his anger against the wise bird his first impulse was to
taunt her and then kill her for hiding the secret of fire.

But the Alae cried out: "If you are the death of me--my secret will
perish also--and you cannot have fire."

Maui then promised to spare her life if