Shark Devils— and Gods 141 



the ankle by a shark but had escaped. Apparently, the tattoos were con- 

 sidered good luck against shark bites. 



In 1956, the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, repository of a matchless 

 collection of Hawaiian artifacts, acquired an ancient relic known as 

 Kapaaheo, the "Shark Stone." It took a bit of shark akiia to get it, though. 

 The sorcerer was Heloke Mookini, a 71-year-old kamaaina (an old-time 

 islander is called a ka7}7aa'ma; a newcomer is a malihini). 



Long ago, according to Heloke, maidens of the Big Island— the Island 

 of Hawaii— would go swimming in a cove that sheltered them from the 

 sea. Many times, however, a swimmer would disappear and never be seen 

 again. Coincidentally, a mysterious stranger was always in the vicinity 

 when a disappearance occurred. Fishermen near the cove were suspicious 

 of the stranger, but they could not prove that he had anything to do with 

 the girls' disappearance. 



One day, armed with their spears, they went swimming with the girls. 

 A shark attacked the group, but the fishermen stabbed it several times 

 with their spears, and the shark fled. A short while later, the mysterious 

 stranger was found on the shore, dying of spear wounds. And when he 

 died, his body turned into Kapaaheo, a large stone shaped like a shark. 



When the Bishop Museum decided to ship Kapaaheo from Hawaii 

 Island to Honolulu, Heloke Mookini had a dream in which his mother 

 visited him and told him of Kapaaheo, and asked him to help with its re- 

 moval to Honolulu. 



"So I went to the stone," Heloke recounted, "and saw three bull- 

 dozers that were damaged from trying to lift the stone on a sled. I hit 

 the Shark Stone with a rock, and the sound was like a dull thud. I knew 

 the stone was unhappy. So I told it that to go to the Bishop Museum 

 and be with all its old friends of Hawaii would be the best thing." 



Heloke said he tapped the stone again, and "the sound was now like 

 a clear, ringing sound which meant that the stone was happy." 



Kapaaheo was no longer stubborn, for, according to the Honolulu 

 Star-Bullethi, "The next day a single bulldozer pushed the stone onto a 

 sled without any difficulty." 



Mythological sharks were not always malevolent. They often guided 

 lost fishermen to land, and even saved swimmers from other ill-mannered 

 sharks. Nei de Tuahine, 2l goddess in the form of a sting ray, was a one- 

 woman Coast Guard in Tahiti, according to the old tales. Her specialty 

 was saving people lost at sea. She'd load them on her broad back and 

 go skimming off to land with them. 



In the Cook Islands, the tale is told of Hina, a nasty young lady M^ho 

 wanted to journey to the sacred island of A4otu-tapu. Hina did not have a 

 canoe, but that didn't stop her. She rode a relay of fishes, leaving each 

 one permanently scarred by her rough-riding habits. She lashed one fish 



