That evening, before we finished work in the gardens, I went away and came back with Oriwia, who sat herself down on a log beside the corn rows without speaking to anyone – an unusual thing for her. I asked Chappy to go and sit beside her, but he wouldn’t do it at first. I had to take him there. Neither of them said a word or even looked at each other. I went to speak to my parents and grandparents, who were already wondering what was going on.

It was getting dark.

The minute I opened my mouth, and before I’d finished outlining the proposal and the problem, my mother was running over the garden, jumping rows, zigzagging, and announcing a wedding. Never mind what difficulties there might be. There was a hullabaloo as the sun made its drop.

Getting Oriwia and Chappy married in the eyes of God and the state was not as difficult as I thought. There were many Māori in those days who were without birth certificates. The Māori Birth Register didn’t open until 1913 – the year Moana-Rose and I were born – when our registration became compulsory. We had already spoken about Chappy as our adopted brother, but now Paa and Nunu decided he could become their unregistered youngest son, Chappy Star, our mother’s sibling. In a way, this made him my uncle, though Chappy has always been brother to me.

The name Star was not one which my mother’s family had plucked from the heavens. Our yellow-eyed great-grandfather who killed with his eyes had chosen it at the time when Māori were required to have surnames. Whetū, the word for star, was already part of his name, so he added the English equivalent. He became Whetū Star, or Star Star, or Whetū Whetū – however you liked to look at it. I’ve been told it was one big joke to him.

There were no problems to do with filling out and signing papers and the announcement of banns of marriage. There were no questions asked by authorities about the little pale-skinned man who spoke our language but couldn’t speak or write English. They were used to that.

Oriwia and Chappy were married by my mother’s cousin, who was the Māori pastor for the Wellington diocese. Paa’s wedding gift to Chappy and Oriwia was the piece of land handed down from the yellow-eyed great-grandfather, and from where Oriwia had been selling her fruit and vegetables. Amid all the speech-making, singing, dancing and gift-giving, I had to leave. To tell the truth, I couldn’t wait to get back on board to fire up the fires (so to speak) which would see us breaking through the seas to Hawai‘i, to Ela.

The second time I went there, that is after the tooth time, I’d planned how I was going to see my Ela again. I was to be in port for a day.