Note 41 — PREFACE. (continued 3)

The day after this Aukelenuiaiku as usual took up his rod and proceeded to the seashore; and toward evening he returned home. Before he started home, however, he soaked his fish-line and hook into the water so as to make his wife believe that he had really been fishing. When Aukelenuiaiku arrived at the house, he began to arrange his hook and line, and as he was at it for some time, his wife said: “It would be all right to be constantly occupied with your hook and line if you caught any fish; then those at home would get some. Here you do nothing else but work on your hook and line, and yet you never bring any fish home. What a waste of time!” The husband replied: “Do you think, my wife, that the fish is something you can catch with your hands in the sea so that I could bring them home all the time? Don’t you know that the line and hook are all I have in the matter, and not the bringing of the fish? That is entirely with the fish whether to bite at my hook or not.” Shortly after this conversation Aukelenuiaiku again started out fishing, and late that evening he returned with two small fish called aloiloi.41 The wife then said to him: “How strange of you to go all day and return at night, and these are all the fish you bring home!”