Page:Fairytales•Tregear•1891.pdf/34

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THE PET WHALE.

have revenge for their murdered pet. They dragged a double canoe from the shed in which it was safely kept, and this canoe was launched and provisions put into it for a voyage. Only women were allowed to go on the expedition, for they thought, “If there are only women, the party will not be attacked; and they can beguile the old magician more easily.” Hina with forty other women started in the canoe, and they sailed across the ocean. But before they went they asked, “How shall we surely know Kae?” And they were answered, “Because his teeth are uneven and overlap each other.” Then they felt certain that they should know him.

When the canoe arrived at the place in which Kae lived, all the tribe collected to see the strangers and to give them welcome. In his great house sat Kae, and at night a fire was lighted in the house; one side of the room within was allotted to the stranger women from over-seas. Kae sat near the huge pillar which supported the roof, but he sat among his own people, and was not to be distinguished by his apparel. The women did not dare to ask which was he, for it is considered a rudeness to ask the name of a distinguished person, who is assumed to be known to all the world. The women