she would tell him what to do.

Then came the contest of wits. The bird told the demi-god to rub the
stalks of water plants together. He guarded the bird and tried the
plants. Water instead of fire ran out of the twisted stems. Then she
told him to rub reeds together--but they bent and broke and could make
no fire. He twisted her neck until she was half dead--then she cried
out: "I have hidden the fire in a green stick."

Maui worked hard, but not a spark of fire appeared. Again he caught his
prisoner by the head and wrung her neck, and she named a kind of dry
wood. Maui rubbed the sticks together, but they only became warm. The
neck twisting process was resumed--and repeated again and again, until
the mud-hen was almost dead--and Maui had tried tree after tree. At last
Maui found fire. Then as the flames rose he said: "There is one more
thing to rub." He took a fire stick and rubbed the top of the head of
his prisoner until the feathers fell off and the raw flesh appeared.
Thus the Hawaiian mud-hen and her descendants have ever since had bald
heads, and the Hawaiians have had the secret of fire making.

Another Hawaiian legend places the scene of Maui's contest with the
mud-hens a little inland of the town of Hilo on the Island of Hawaii.
There are three small extinct craters very near each other known as The
Halae Hills. One, the southern or Puna side of the hills, is a place
called Pohaku-nui. Here dwelt two brother birds of the Alae family. They
were gods. One had the power of fire making. Here at Pohaku-nui they
were accustomed to kindle a fire and bake their dearly loved food--baked
bananas. Here Maui planned to learn the secret of fire. The birds had
kindled the fire and the bananas were almost done, when the elder Alae
called to the younger: "Be quick, here comes the swift son of Hina."

The birds scratched out the fire, caught the bananas and fled. Maui told
his mother he would follow them until he learned the secret of fire. His
mother encouraged him because he was very strong and very swift. So he
followed the birds from place to place as they fled from him, finding
new spots on which to make their fires. At last they came to Waianae on
the island Oahu. There he saw a great fire and a multitude of birds
gathered around it, chattering loudly and trying to hasten the baking of
the bananas. Their incantation was this: "Let us cook quick." "Let us
cook quick." "The swift child of Hina will come."

Maui's moth