Kana and Ni-he-u were brothers. Ni-he-u was such a great warrior that he would fight against a whole army without thinking about the odds, and he was able to carry such a war-club that, by resting one end of it in his canoe and putting the other end against a cliff, he could walk from the canoe on to the land. Certainly an extraordinary man was Ni-he-u.
But if Ni-he-u was extraordinary, Kana was many times more extraordinary. And what an extraordinary life Kana had! When he was born he was in the form of a piece of rope—just a piece of rope! But his grandmother (Uli was her name) took him to her house and reared him. As he began to grow she had to have a special house built for him; it had to be a very long house, a house that had to be lengthened out as Kana kept growing. At last the house that Kana lived in stretched from the mountains to the edge of the sea.
The name of the mother of Ni-he-u and Kana was Hina. She was carried away from her husband, the boys’ father. And the way Hina was carried away was very remarkable.
There was a Chief named Pe-pe’e who wanted to take Hina. He owned a hill that was called Hau-pu. [[138]]He lived on that hill; it was very strange, but he was able to make that hill move about and do things for him. I have heard that the hill was really a turtle, and that its real name was Ka-honu-nunui ma-eleka. And if that was so, it is easy to see how Pe-pe’e could get it to move about and do things for him.
One of the things that it did for him was to carry off Hina, the mother of Ni-he-u and Kana. The hill came across the sea from Mo-lo-kai to Hilo, carrying Pe-pe’e and his people upon it. Hina saw the hill when it came over to Hilo. It looked so fresh and so green that she thought it would be nice to walk upon it. So she went over and she climbed up Hau-pu. And then, all at once, the hill moved from Hilo and went over to the Island of Mo-lo-kai.
When Ni-he-u heard that his mother had been carried off he went to his father and said: “Neither I nor you can get to her and bring her back. Only Kana, my brother, can do that. You must go to him yourself, my father, and ask him to do it. Don’t be afraid of him and run away if he should turn and look at you. Just keep your eyes away from him, and then you won’t be frightened.” After Ni-he-u had told him this, the Chief, his father, went off to find Kana.
When he came to where his son was living, Kana looked at him, and the sight of Kana was so terrible that his father turned around and would have run [[139]]away. But Kana called to him and said, “What have you come for?” “I have come to tell you that the mother of you two has been carried off by Pe-pe’e, the Chief of the Hill of Hau-pu, and she is now in Mo-lo-kai, and unless you, Kana, go to bring her back, no one can bring her back.”
When Kana heard this, he said, “Go and call all your people together and order them to hew out a canoe by which we can get to Mo-lo-kai.” The Chief then went back, and he sent out an order to his people: they should gather together and hew out a great double canoe that would be ten fathoms in length. His people did as they were ordered. Then they thought that all was ready for the voyage to Mo-lo-kai.
But when the double canoe was brought down to where Kana was, he just stretched out his hand and laid it upon it, and the canoe sank out of sight. Other canoes of the same length were hewn out. But Kana did the same thing to them; he laid his hand on one after another of them, and one after another they all sank down into the sea. His father and the men of the Island were left without a canoe in which to make the voyage to Mo-lo-kai.
When the Chief told this to his son Ni-he-u, Ni-he-u said, “Then the only thing to do is to go to Uli, my grandmother and Kana’s grandmother, and ask her what we are to do about it.” The Chief went to her. And when he came before Uli, she said, [[140]]“What have you come for?” “I have come for a canoe for Kana, in which he will be able to make the voyage to Mo-lo-kai and fight Pe-pe’e, who lives on the hill Hau-pu, and bring back Hina, my wife, to me.”