“Beyond a doubt,” she murmured, “this is my half-sister! Papaakahi, The Mighty, had many loves. So had my mother; but, if this woman were my mother’s child, she could not be a fisherman’s wife.”
So Hiwa, believing that the fisherman’s wife was what her lowly condition indicated, a king’s daughter but not a queen’s, dismissed the matter from her mind as of no consequence, and passed on to the palace of Ii. It was not a single building, but, like the establishments of wealthy Hawaiians even to this day, a little village. The principal house or hall was raised on a stone embankment, a wooden framework thatched with grass. Around it were many smaller buildings, used for eating and sleeping purposes and storehouses and for servants, the whole being enclosed by a stone wall. Men in all stages of intoxication were around the palace. Sounds of drunken revelry came from within. Shouts and snatches of song told the story.
“It is,” mused Hiwa, “as Papaakahi said it would be. Ii worships only awa, and Aa rules the land. One squanders the wealth of the kingdom, and the other is grasping and cruel. The time may come, perhaps too soon, when the chiefs will be ready to fight against them both.”
On this occasion the retainers of the court were too drunk to take note of passers-by, and they had become so habitually turbulent and lawless that honest people avoided that part of the town after nightfall. Hiwa, therefore, had no difficulty in making her way undiscovered to a distant camp. When she reached it, further progress was quite another matter, for, although peace reigned throughout the land, a considerable body of men slept on their arms, guarded by vigilant sentinels. But, under cover of the night, and taking advantage of every hummock and shrub, Hiwa noiselessly crawled to the entrance of the great grass house of the chief. She found it guarded by a man who had often admitted her in times past—a warrior, brave, trusty, and silent.
Emerging from the darkness, she stood before him with uplifted hand. Instantly he dropped prone on the ground with his face in the dust.
“Laamaikahiki,” she said, in low, soft, solemn tones, “I am the Spirit of Hiwa, whom Ukanipo, the Shark God, took to himself. I have come from the other world to bless your master. Retire twenty fathoms.” Laamaikahiki, without a word or a sign, with his face still in the dust, wriggled backwards like a huge worm. Hiwa entered the house.
Kaanaana lay sleeping on a mat, his sling, spears, and war-club beside him. Hiwa stood motionless for some moments, gazing upon him. Of the two master passions of her life she herself could not have told which was the stronger: love for the man sleeping before her eyes, or for her child sleeping in the hollow of the mountain.
“Oh,” she murmured, “how I long to feel his arms about me and his kisses on my lips! Death with him is sweeter than life without him. He is my life. If I make myself known to him, he will leave all and follow me to the mountain, or muster his vassals and hurl that drunkard from the throne. It might have been! But now it cannot be, for my sin would bring the heavy wrath of Ku upon him. I am a thing accursed!”
She bent over him and lightly touched his forehead with her lips. He stirred, opened his eyes, for an instant looked wonderingly at her, and then, with a cry of joy, sprang up to clasp her in his arms.
The self-sacrifice of love held her to her purpose. Moving backward, she restrained him with a gesture.