At the chief's command the counsellor sent the Snipe and the Turnstone, Aiwohikupua's swiftest messengers, to go up and find out the truth about his men.
Not long after they had left they met another man, a bird catcher from the uplands of Olaa;[53] he asked, "Where are you two going?"
The runners said, "We are going up to find out the truth about our people who are living at Paliuli; eight times forty men have been sent—not one returned."
"They are done for," said the bird catcher, "in the great lizard,
Kihanuilulumoku; they have not been spared."
When they heard this they kept on going up; not long after they heard the sighing of the wind and the humming of the trees bending back and forth; then they remembered the bird catcher's words, "If the wind hums, that is from the lizard."
They knew then this must be the lizard; they flew in their bird bodies. They flew high and looked about. There right above them was the upper jaw shutting down upon them, and only by quickness of flight in their bird bodies did they escape.
CHAPTER XVII
As they flew far upward and were lost to sight on high, Snipe and his companion looked down at the lower jaw of the lizard plowing the earth like a shovel, and it was a fearful thing to see. It was plain their fellows must all be dead, and they returned and told Aiwohikupua what they had seen.
Then Kalahumoku, Aiwohikupua's great man-eating dog, was fetched to go and kill the lizard, then to destroy the sisters of Aiwohikupua.
When Kalahumoku, the man-eating dog from Tahiti, came into the presence of his grandchild (Aiwohikupua), "Go up this very day and destroy my sisters," said Aiwohikupua, "and bring Laieikawai."