"Behold," he cried. "There is a fire burning. Whose can this fire be?"
"Let us hasten to the shore and cook our food," said one.
They decided that they had better catch some fish to cook before they returned. Thus, in the morning, before the hot sun drove the fish deep down to the dark recesses of the sea, they fished until a bountiful supply lay in the bottom of the canoe.
When they came to land, Maui leaped out and ran up the mountain side to get the fire. For a long, long time they had been without fire. The great volcano Haleakala above them had become extinct--and they had lost the coals they had tried to keep alive. They had eaten fruits and uncooked roots and the shell fish broken from the reef--and sometimes the great raw fish from the far-out ocean. But now they hoped to gain living fire and cooked food.
But when Maui rushed up toward the cloudy pillar of smoke he saw a family of birds scratching the fire out. Their work was finished and they flew away just as he reached the place.
Maui and his brothers watched for fire day after day--but the birds, the curly-tailed Alae (or the mud-hens) made no fire. Finally the brothers went fishing once more--but when they looked toward the mountain, again they saw flames and smoke. Thus it happened to them again and again.
Maui proposed to his brothers that they go fishing leaving him to watch the birds. But the Alae counted the fishermen and refused to build a fire for the hidden one who was watching them. They said among themselves, "Three are in the boat and we know not where the other one is, we will make no fire today."
So the experiment failed again and again. If one or two remained or if all waited on the land there would be no fire--but the dawn which saw the four brothers in the boat, saw also the fire on the land.
Finally Maui rolled some kapa cloth together and stuck it up in one end of the canoe so that it would look like a man. He then concealed himself near the haunt of the mud-hens, while his brothers went out fishing. The birds counted the figures in the boat and then started to build a heap of wood for the fire.
Maui was impatient--and just as the old Alae began to select sticks with which to make the flames he leaped swiftly out and caught her and held her prisoner. He forgot for a moment that he wanted the secret of fire making. In his anger against the wise bird his first impulse was to taunt her and then kill her for hiding the secret of fire.