MAU’S FISH
Now this way and that, as a [1]weka, that peers for provision,
With faces wrath-wrinkled as mud-holes are wrinkled in summer,
They twisted their eyes and their necks, staying still on their paddles,
And piteously ask’d of each other:
“O Friends! what shall we do?
If we go on, and he with us,” they said, “he will surely upset us,
If we go back, it is far—and what fish for our supper?“
“Cast him out!“ whispers one. “If we do, by some craft he will catch us—
Remember the noosing of [2]Ra”, they reply, “Remember the Theft of the Fire
(Fire, like Maui, perturbing and mischievous: true, ’tis a relish to fish)—
Who is safe from him? What shall we do?”
So they toss back and forth in the unsteady hold of their purpose,
Like river-waves, reaching the sea, but the tide flooding in.
Well, now, Maui had pity upon them.
“Let me paddle,” says Maui, “or steer!”
But Oh, no, no, no!
“If he paddle,” say they, “we are dead! he will surely capsize us;
If he steer,—we are wreck’d on some rock;
If we go on, misadventures are bound to befall us;
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