They wanted to fall upon that bird and dash it up against the sky. But the great kite was strong. The winds flung it up and flung it this way and that way. But they could not carry it off or dash it against the sky as they wanted to.
Ma-ui rejoiced. How grand it was to hold a kite that the winds strove to tear away! He called out again:
“O winds, O winds of Hilo,
Come to the mountains, come.”
Then came the west wind that had been dashing up waves in the bay of Hilo. It joined itself with the north wind and the east wind, the two winds that had been tearing and pushing at Ma-ui’s kite. Now, although the kite was made of the strongest tapa, and although it had been strengthened in every cunning way that Ma-ui knew, it was flung here and flung there. Ma-ui let his line out; the kite was borne up and up and above the mountains. And now he cried out to the kite that he had made:
“Climb up, climb up
To the highest level of the heavens, [[14]]
To all the sides of the heavens.
Climb thou to thy ancestor,
To the sacred bird in the heavens.”