It fared less happily with the debonnair Prince Kaululaau when he attempted force in his wooing. He found Pele watching the surf-riders at Keauhou, and was ravished by her loveliness. Her skirt glittered with crystal, her mantle was colored like a rainbow, bracelets of shell circled her wrists and ankles, her hair was held in a wreath of flowers. His admiration was not returned. She was contemptuous toward him,—one could almost say cold, but Pele was seldom that, for when the young chief approached, the earth about her was blistering hot and he was compelled to dance. With his magic spear he dissipated her power for a little and lowered the temperature she had inflamed the very earth withal. So soon, however, as she had regained her freedom, and had passed beyond the influence of this spear, she undertook to avenge herself by opening the gates of the mountain and letting loose a deluge of lava. Again with his spear-point Kaululaau drew lines on the ground, beyond which the deadly torrent could not pass, and through the hot air, amid the rain of ashes and the belching of sulphurous steam, he regained his canoe and escaped.
Only so far back as 1882 this goddess was petitioned by one of the faithful, and with effect. Mauna Loa was in eruption. A river of lava twenty-five miles long was creeping down the slope and was threatening the town of Hilo. The people raised walls and breaks of stone to deflect this stream; they dug pits across its course to check it, but without avail. The vast flow of melted rock kept on, lighting the skies, charring vegetation at a distance, and filling the air with an intolerable heat. Princess Ruth, a descendant of Kamehameha, was appealed to. She hated the white race, and would have seen with little emotion the destruction of all the European and American intruders in Hilo; but it was her own people who were most in danger, so she answered, “I will save the Hilo fish-ponds. Pele will hear a Kamehameha.” A steamer was obtained for her, and with many attendants she sailed from Honolulu to the threatened point. Climbing the slope behind the village, she built an altar close to the advancing lava, cast offerings upon the glowing mass, and solemnly prayed for the salvation of Hilo. That night the lava ceased to flow. It still forms a shining bulwark about the menaced town. The princess sailed back to Honolulu, and the faithful asked the Christians why the pagan divinity alone had answered the many prayers.
Lohiau and the Volcano Princess
With gods, as with men, who would speed his affairs must keep them in his own hands. Pele, the volcano goddess, fell in love with Lohiau, a Kauaian prince, and in human guise remained with him so long that her sisters were afraid the Kilauea fires would go out. The prince took an illness, and appeared to die, ere the honeymoon was over, so, wrapped in cloth of bark, he was put under guard to lie in state. When Pele had gone back alone to her mountain home a longing came upon her to feel the young man’s arms about her once more and hear the words of love he had such a pretty talent for telling. But, instead of going herself, she sent her sister Hiika to rescue his soul and bring it to her. This was a mistake, for the sister was not a serious creature. Stopping to brave the devils and giant lizards of the woods, turning the boards of surf-riders to stone for a prank, and scaring a fisherman by causing him to pull a human head out of the sea, the sister next found a half-released spirit hovering near a dying chief. She tied it in a corner of her skirt and slapped the skirt against a rock, so the chief finished his dying promptly. In Kauai, at last, her search was rewarded. She saw the ghost of Lohiau beckoning from a cave, in which it had been imprisoned by demons, who fled, hissing, on her approach. She broke the bars of moonbeam that confined it, tied it in her skirt, carried it to its body, restored the prince to life, then led him to Hawaii and with him scaled the mountain where Pele was waiting in great dudgeon. For Hiika had been gone so long on this journey that a wrong construction had been put on her delay. Lohiau and Hiika had, indeed, learned to esteem each other, but they had not violated the trust imposed in them by the goddess.
Pele was madly jealous, however. She turned the prince to stone on the crater brink,—the poor fellow was growing used to dying now,—and, dismayed by this act of cruelty, Hiika descended through the five spheres to the dark underworld where the spirits lived. She hoped that the young man’s ghost would follow her, for pity in his sufferings had fast increased to love. As the spirit did not come, she returned to the surface of the earth and went on a voyage of search in a boat that a god had lent to her,—a boat of cowrie shell, which in overland travel would shrink so that it could be carried in the hand; then, at the word, would swell to a stately barge of pearl with ivory masts and sails as white as the snow on the mountain. This vessel moved with the speed of the wind in any direction the occupant indicated by pointing the finger. The prince’s wandering spirit was found in Kauai, its old home; was taken by a messenger to the stone image on the crater, and put back into the body, and the prince lived again. Pele was by this time in a soft and repentant humor. She asked forgiveness of Lohiau and bade him love and wed her sister, who was good, and had earned his love. This Lohiau did, whereupon Pele restored to life several of Hiika’s friends whom, also, in her first anger, she had turned to statues of lava.
A Visit of Pele
While a great storm was raging over Hawaii a boy was born to a woman chief in the camp of King Alapai. At once the soothsayers proclaimed him as the man of prophecy who should conquer the eight islands and end their strifes. It seemed as if for once—or oftener—the kahunas were wrong, for the babe disappeared that very night. There were rumors of foul play; rumors that Alapai had killed him, that he might not stand in the way of his own progeny, for this barbarian Macbeth would have no Banquo to intercept his line or wrest the crown from him. It was five years before the fate of the child was known. He was not dead: Naole, a chief, had kidnapped him that the prophecy might come to pass. When the king heard of this he commanded that the boy be placed at court, where he might learn manners and the laws, and be kept under the eyes of the great; but, doubting his master’s motive, Naole did not send the child; he sent another of the same age, who was to cut no figure in the history of the islands, not being the favored of the gods.
The real prince was kept in so secluded a place and the secret of his parentage so well preserved—it was prophecy that he should be fathered of three kings—that he had reached the age of twenty before Naole deemed it safe to let him mingle with the multitude. He then made it known that the young man was Kamehameha. By this time King Alapai was dead, or helpless with age; but the prince, albeit liberal and just, was rough, strong, dictatorial, a natural military leader, and he did not lack enemies. Worst among these was his uncle, Pepehi, an elderly chief, who had read omens in the entrails of sacrifice warning him to be discreet and guarded in his life or it would be taken from him by one related to him, and of greater power. He could not brook the thought of Kamehameha’s ascendency, for he was a man used to deference, a man of weight and dignity, while this new-found prince was a boor. He therefore made himself unpleasant by criticisms and carpings, by false interpretations of signs, by implications against his nephew, and finding that the young man did not retaliate, he resolved to have his life.