She crossed the pool, dived through the makai entrance, and struck boldly out to reconnoitre. The boat, as she anticipated, had been left, a thing accursed, to drift where it would. She found it, together with the paddles, a couple of miles to leaward, wedged between two rocks. It was uninjured, but dangerously near frequented fishing-grounds, and there was no time to lose. After an hour of hard work she got it loose and paddled swiftly to windward. It was necessary to load it with small rocks, to make it nearer the specific gravity of water, so that it could be floated or sunk at will; but no stones could be had for half a mile on either side of the entrance to the crater. The bare, perpendicular cliff, rising from deep water, made it impossible to get them at a nearer point, and, when she had gotten them, the weight and unwieldy bulk of her prize made progress exceedingly slow and difficult. She struggled on for hours.
“My child,” she muttered, “will need this boat before he can be moi; and moi he shall be, for what the Ruler of the Gods promises never fails!”
A huge shark attacked her. As he turned to bite she jabbed the stick into his eye, and he disappeared, leaving blood behind. It was a moment of extreme peril to her undertaking, for the incident, trifling as it was, came near causing her to lose the ballast from the boat.
At length she neared the entrance to the crater. The supreme test of fortune, courage, skill, and endurance, was at hand, for the waves pounded against the cliff with tremendous power, and the boat had to be sunk some four fathoms and steered through a narrow passage of jagged rocks, where the water sucked back and forth with frightful velocity.
“It is impossible for a mortal,” Hiwa repeated to herself, “but I am daughter of the gods—and it must be done!”
For some time she lay quietly on her back, just outside the surf-line, recovering her strength and watching for her opportunity. When it came she sank to a depth of about twenty-five feet, taking the boat with her. Then the wave struck her and bore her towards the cliff with resistless power. She had to keep the boat right side up or the ballast would be lost. She had to guide it to the entrance, straight as a spear to a warrior’s heart, or it would be dashed to pieces. She had to make the entrance herself or be hurled against the rock, mangled out of human shape. The passage was small, and certain death awaited her a single yard above or below or to the right or to the left.
Strength, skill, and fortune favored her, or, as she would have said, the will of almighty Ku. After two minutes of life and death struggle she entered the passage with her prize, escaping destruction by a hair’s-breadth.
Then the wave receded, the waters pent up within poured back, and Hiwa felt herself being irresistibly sucked to the open sea. With the quickness of thought she took a turn of the rope around a projecting rock, and thus hung on until the out-going current had nearly spent its force.
But already she had been four minutes under water. The strain of intense action, the excitement of extreme peril, and the torture of long-suspended respiration passed away. The horrible, sickening green and white of the mad flood in which she was perishing became cultivated lowlands, rich fields, beautiful meadows, and waving forests before her eyes, and the wild surge and roar seemed the loved voice of Kaanaana, in whose arms she was falling asleep.
“This,” she said to herself, longingly, “is the peace the gods send to their children!” Then the thought returned to her, “If I die the child will die also!”