[11] Koa maka-iwa, idols with eyes of mother o’ pearl. To this class belonged Ku-kaili-moku, the famous war god of Kamehameha. [↑]
[12] Halawa, the largest valley on Moloka’i, a stronghold of priestcraft and sorcery. “Ua o’o na pule o Moloka’i,” the incantations of Moloka’i are ripe, became a proverbial expression. [↑]
[13] Hea, a stream near Haena. [↑]
CHAPTER XXV
HIIAKA UTTERS MANY PRAYERS TO RESTORE LOHIAU TO LIFE
Before proceeding to her task Hiiaka instructed Malae ha’a-koa to call in the guards stationed at Lohiau’s sepulcher and to keep the hula going for the next ten days as an attraction to draw off the people from playing the spy on her performances.
Hiiaka and her companion conquered the impossible and scaled the mountain wall as if their feet had the clinging property of the fly. Lohiau’s ghost would have escaped, but with birdlike quickness she caught it. At her command Wahine-oma’o gathered certain aromatic and fragrant herbs of the wilderness, and having made a fire, they bruised and warmed the samples and spread them upon a sheet of leaves.
While Wahine-oma’o kept fast hold of the feet, Hiiaka forced the soul-particle to pass in through one of the eye-sockets. It went as far as the cavity of the chest, then turned back and strove to escape. Hiiaka guarded the ways of exit and with skillful manipulations compelled it to go on. Reaching the loins, it balked again; but Hiiaka’s art conquered its resistance and the human particle extended its journey to the feet. There was a twitching of these parts; the hands began to move, the eye-lids to quiver; breath once more entered the body. They lifted and laid it on the blanket of aromatics and restoratives, swathing it from head to foot.
Hiiaka set a calabash of water before her and, addressing Wahine-oma’o, said, “Listen to my prayer. If it is correct and faultless, our man will live; but if it is wrong or imperfect, he will die.”