See yon advancing billow! The south wind sends it surging along. It rears its combing, whitening crest, and with mighty, swift-rushing volume of angry green sea, it strikes the mouth of the cave; it drives and packs the pent-up air within, and now the tightened wind rebounds, and driving back the ramming sea, bursts forth with a roar as the huge spout of sea leaps upward to the sky, and then comes curving down in gentle silver spray.
The fearful child now clasped the knees of her savage sire. “Not there, O father,” she sobbed and wailed. “The sea snake (the puhi) has his home in the cave, and he will bite and tear me, and ere I die, the crawling crabs will creep over me and pick out my weeping eyes. Alas, O father, better give me to the shark, and then my cry and moan will not hurt thine ear.”
Opunui clasped the slender girl with one sinewy arm, and with a bound he leaped into the frothed and fretted pool below. Downward with a dolphin’s ease he moved, and with his free arm beating back the brine, moved along the ocean bed into the sea cave’s jagged jaws; and then stemming with stiffened sinew the wind-driven tide, he swam onward till he struck a sunless beach and then stood inside the cave, whose mouth is beneath the sea.
Here was a broad, dry space with a lofty, salt-icicled roof. The green, translucent sea, as it rolled back and forth at their feet, gave to their brown faces a ghastly white glare. The scavenger crabs scrambled away over the dank and dripping stones, and the loathsome biting eel, slowly reached out its well-toothed, wide-gaping jaw to tear the tender feet that roused it from its horrid lair, where the dread sea god dwelt.
The poor hapless girl sank down upon this gloomy shore and cried, clinging to the kanaka’s knee: “O father, beat out my brains with this jagged stone, and do not let the eel twine around my neck, and trail with a loathsome, slimy, creeping crawl over my body before I die. Oh! the crabs will pick and tear me before my breath is gone.”
“Listen,” said Opunui. “Thou shalt go back with me to the warm sunny air. Thou shalt tread again the sweet-smelling flowery vale of Palawai, and twine thy neck with wreaths of scented jessamine, if thou wilt go with me to the house of the chief of Olowalu and there let thy bloody lord behold thee wanton with thy love in another chief’s arms.”
“Never,” shouted the lover of Kaaialii, “never will I meet any clasp of love but that of my own chief. If I cannot lay my head again upon his breast, I will lay it in death upon these cold stones. If his arm shall never again draw me to his heart, then let the eel twine my neck and let him tear away my cheeks rather than that another beside my dear lord shall press my face.”
“Then let the eel be thy mate,” cried Opunui, as he roughly unclasped the tender arms twined around his knees; “until the chief of Olowalu comes to seize thee, and carry thee to his house in the hills of Maui. Seek not to leave the cave. Thou knowest that with thy weak arms, thou wilt tear thyself against the jagged rocks in trying to swim through the swift flowing channel. Stay till I send for thee, and live.” Then dashing out into the foaming gulf with mighty buffeting arms he soon reached the upper air.
And Kaaialii stood upon the bluff, looking up to the hillside path by which his love had gone, long after her form was lost to view in the interior vales. And after slight sleep upon his mat, and walking by the shore that night, he came at dawn and climbed the bluff again to watch his love come down the hill. And as he gazed he saw a leafy skirt flutter in the wind, and his heart fluttered to clasp his little girl; but as a curly brow drew near, his soul sank to see it was not his love, but her friend Ua (rain) with some sad news upon her face.
With hot haste and eager asking eyes does the love-lorn chief meet the maiden messenger, and cries, “Why does Kaala delay in the valley? Has she twined wreaths for another’s neck for me to break? Has a wild hog torn her? Or has the anaana prayer of death struck her heart, and does she lie cold on the sod of Mahana? Speak quickly, for thy face kills me, O Ua!”