Pana-ewa’s sea scatters the bloom;
It beats at the altar of Lono.
Does she lend her heart to my cry?
Deaf—her ears are deaf to my prayer.
Let us picture to ourselves the scene of the story that now has the stage—a waterless, wind-swept, plain of volcanic slag and sand, sparsely clad with a hardy growth whose foliage betrays the influence of an environment that is at times almost Alpine in its austerity. Above the horizon-line swell the broad-based shapes of Mauna-kea, Mauna-loa and Hualalai. In the immediate foreground, overlooking the caldera—where are Pele’s headquarters—we see two figures, standing, crouching, or reclining, the lovers whose stolen bliss has furnished Pele with the pretext for her fiery discipline. Measured by the forces in opposition to them, their human forms shrink into insignificance. Measured by the boldness of their words and actions, one has to admit the power of the human will to meet the hardest shocks of fortune. Listen to the swelling words of Lohiau as Pele’s encircling fires draw nearer:
Hulihia ka mauna, wela i ke ahi;
Wela nopu i ka uka o Kui-hana-lei;
Ke á pohaku; pu’u lele mai i uka o Ke-ka-ko’i—
Ke-ka-ko’i ka ho’okela mai ka Lua.
O ka maiau[19] pololei kani le’ale’a;