Not long after, their journey was impeded by a demon of hideous proportions, who threw himself across their path in a narrow defile and attempted to destroy them. Pele knew their danger, however, and ordered her brothers to protect them with a rain of fire and thunder, which drove the monster to his den in the hills and enabled them to escape.
After a little time they were joined by another woman, whose name was Papau. She desired to accompany them, and proceeded a short distance on the way, when they were confronted by a ferocious-looking man who was either insane or under the influence of evil spirits. He lacked either the power or the disposition to molest the party, however, and they passed on unharmed; but Papau screamed with fright and hastily returned to her home, where she was turned into a stone as a punishment for her cowardice.
Coming to a small stream crossed by their path, they found the waters dammed by a huge moo, or lizard, lying in the bed. He was more than a hundred paces in length, and his eyes were of the size of great calabashes. He glared at the party viciously and opened his mouth as if to devour them; but Hiiaka tossed into it a stone, which became red-hot when it touched his throat, and, with a roar of pain which made the leaves of the trees tremble, he disappeared down the stream.
After many other adventures with monsters and evil spirits, which Hiiaka was able to control and sometimes punish, the party reached the coast at a place called Honoipo, where they found a number of men and women engaged in the sport of surf-riding. As they were about to start for another trial, in a spirit of mischief Hiiaka turned their surf-boards into stone, and they fled in terror from the beach, fearing that some sea-god was preparing to devour them.
Observing a fisherman drawing in his line, Hiiaka caused to be fastened to the submerged hook a human head. Raising it to the surface, the man stared at it for a moment with horror, then dropped the line and paddled swiftly away, to the great amusement of Hiiaka and her companions.
Embarking in a canoe with two men as assistants, the travelers sailed for the island of Maui, which they reached without delay or accident. Landing at Kaupo, they traveled overland toward Honuaula, near which place, in approaching the palace of the king, whose name was Olepau, and who was lying within at the point of death, Hiiaka observed a human spirit hovering around the outer enclosure. Knowing that it was the half-freed soul or spirit of the moi, she seized and tied it up in a corner of her pau.
Passing on with the soul of the king in her keeping, she met the queen, Waihimano, and told her that her husband had just died. But the queen denied that Olepau was dead, for she was a worshipper of two powerful lizard divinities, and the gods had assured her that morning that her husband would recover.
Saying no more, Hiiaka and her companions went on their way, and the queen, returning to the palace, found her husband insensible and apparently dead. Trying in vain to restore him, she hastily consulted a kaula, telling him what the strange woman had said to her. The seer by the description recognized at once the sister of Pele, who had come to heal the king, but had been deterred in her errand of mercy by the queen’s obstinate assurances of his recovery. He therefore advised that she be followed by a messenger with a spotless pig to be placed as an offering in the path before her, when she perchance might return and restore the king to life. But Hiiaka dropped behind her companions and assumed the form of an old woman, and, as the messenger did not recognize her, he returned with the report that the object of his search could not be found.
“Did you meet no one?” inquired the seer.
“No one answering the description,” replied the messenger. “I saw only an old woman, so infirm as to be scarcely able to walk.”