Malae-ha’a-koa felt a genial thrill pervading his system; new vigor came to him; he found himself able to stand on his feet and walk. Some new and wonderful power had come into his life. In the first flush of his ecstacy, he gathered up his fishing tackle, thrust the hooks and lines into his basket and walked triumphantly home on his own feet. Without a word to his wife, he began to tear down a portion of the fence that enclosed the house-lot.
“What are you about?” exclaimed his wife; “tearing down our fence!… But what has happened to you? Here you are for the first time in many years able to walk on your feet!”
The man made no immediate reply, but kept on with his work. When she repeated her questionings and expressions of wonder, he quietly asked, “Have you not seen two women about the place?”
“There were two women who came this way,” she answered thoughtfully.
“Would you think it! They were divine beings,” he exclaimed in a tone of conviction. “We must spread for them a feast. You had better prepare some luau.”
Malae-ha’a-koa himself, alii as he was, with his own hands set about dressing and preparing a dog for the oven. This was his own token of service. At his command his people brought the material for an abundant feast.
Hiiaka saw from a distance the smoke of Malae-ha’a-koa’s imu and recognized the bustle preparatory to a feast, she exclaimed to her companion, “The lame man has saved the day.”
When the repast was nearing its end and the people had well eaten, Malae-ha’a-koa and his wife stood forth and led in the performance of a sacred dance, accompanying their rhythmic motions with a long mele that recited the deeds, the events, the mysteries that had marked Pele’s reign since the establishment of her dominion in Hawaii:
O kaua a Pele i haká i Kahiki,
I hakaká ai me Na-maka-o-ka-ha’i.[2]